‘I’ve been thinking.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, John, that would involve having a brain.’
‘I know you love me really, and that’s why I’ve been thinking that you and I should really have one night of passion, you know, to get rid of this sexual tension between us.’
He’s standing at the end of the bed and he’s taken off his suit jacket. He’s wearing his black suit trousers and they fit him perfectly. They must sit just below the belly button on his flat tummy, and whereas some blokes buy shirts way too large, he doesn’t, so you can decipher his shape. Broad at the shoulders, tapering in at the waist and, although I haven’t seen his bare arms, I’ve felt them round me and I know they’re wide and muscly at the top. Badminton, who’d have thought?
‘Are you mentally undressing me?’
‘No, John, I am not.’
‘Shame. You can whenever you like.’
‘Thanks, very kind of you.’
‘Righto,’ he says, knocking back his drink. ‘Gotta get out of here.’
‘Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Why don’t we go for another drink?’
‘Because you’ll jump me.’
‘Oh ho, aren’t we full of ourselves. I won’t jump you. I might try to find out the secret of your sales success, because it’s quite unprecedented, but I promise not to jump you. I did it once and it still brings tears to my eyes.’
I smile at the memory and then I think about the offer of a drink. Why not have another drink? The one in my hand hasn’t done nearly enough anaesthetising for my liking. What else would I do? Go home alone and lie awake, wrapped in a blanket of sadness. Anything to stave that off, even a drink with Posh Boy.
‘Go on,’ he says, as if reading my mind. ‘You won’t be seeing me for a while now, I’m doing a stint at the Cricklewood branch. What do you reckon?’
‘You’re buying.’
‘Of course, highly independent, feminist woman, except when it comes to being bought drinks by men.’
‘No, but when posh blokes appear from nowhere and nick the job I’ve been working towards for five years, then yes, I let them buy me a drink.’
‘Oh, now we’re getting to the point. Did you really want Head of London Sales?’
‘Did I really want Head of London Sales? Er, no. I wanted it to go to you, a bloke who appeared from nowhere, doesn’t know the company and can’t sell as much property as I can.’
‘You will be—’ He stops.
‘Will be what?’
‘You will—’ he stops again. ‘You’ll be OK. I know you’ll be rewarded.’
‘What are you on about?’
‘Nothing, I just, um, I think Ken has something lined up for you, that’s all.’
‘What?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘Hopefully he’ll sack you and I’ll get your job.’
‘Could be.’
I don’t know what Posh Boy’s going on about, and at this particular moment in time, I don’t know if I care.
‘So what did you make of my offer?’
‘What offer?’
‘The one night of passion.’
‘Oh, please.’
‘Is that please, oh, oh, oh, John, yes, please,’ he pants orgasmically, and it’s quite funny, so I laugh.
Much later on, we’re in a hotel bar. We hadn’t planned to come in here, but he was walking me home and I needed the toilet. So we came into the hotel and when I emerged from the toilet he’d ordered me a drink. Now he’s just got me another, although I don’t remember saying I wanted one. He’s carrying my fifth or possibly sixth margarita when he asks again, ‘What do you reckon? One night of passion? Well, there can be more than one, but I thought I’d try to sell just one first.’
As he puts my drink down in front of me I reach out and touch the muscles on his upper arms, just because I want to feel them. He lets me trace the contour of his muscles with my fingers for a few moments, then he scoops me up and sits me on his lap, and there’s something about his strength that makes me feel as though I’m being lifted away from my problems. Super quickly his lips are upon mine, and the idea of one night of passion suddenly doesn’t seem so bad.
‘Come back to mine. My dad’s away,’ he whispers urgently in my ear.
‘You live with your dad! You’re such a shuttlecock!’ I screech. But I go home with him anyway, because I don’t want to go home alone to another sleepless night, because I want to block out tomorrow, and because even though they’re not the exact arms I want, I’d like to feel them around me, just for one night.
Chapter 52
‘Oh dear, Gracie,’ I say, slowly banging my head on the landing wall as the night before comes back to me. I’m creeping out of John’s house. John has already gone. Oh God, I shagged my boss. I bang my head on the wall again.
‘Why, Gracie? Why?’ I whimper. ‘It was the tequila-based cocktails, your honour, I can’t take them. I’m short.’
‘Good afternoon,’ says an oriental female voice. I keep my forehead on the wall as it’s easing the dull ache inside, and turn my face to see a small Filipino woman in a salmon-coloured dress standing a foot away from me.
I thought John had a housekeeper. His bed was made hotel taut and you practically needed a crowbar to get in it. Not that we did get in it for ages. We had sex as soon as we were through the door. He’s very strong and he kept lifting me up and moving me from cupboard top to wall. I repeatedly felt his arms and shouted shuttlecock, and he kept shh-ing me by kissing me. It was over very quickly. At least the first time was, but then there was a second time and a half-hearted third attempt, which I think I might have fallen asleep during. Still, at least I got some sleep. At least I didn’t lie awake thinking about what I have to do today.
‘You make the beds beautifully,’ I mewl. ‘Good afternoon to you, too.’
Slowly – really very slowly considering – I realise something. ‘Afternoon?’ I say quietly. ‘What time is it?’
She turns her tiny wrist so I can see her watch.
‘One twenty?’
She nods, smiles and walks away.
One twenty in the afternoon! I, Gracie Flowers, have slept until one twenty in the afternoon! I never oversleep. The trains always wake me up at home. Why didn’t Posh Boy wake me? What’s he playing at? One twenty! I’ve missed my appointment! I’ve missed the thingy!
Shit! Shit!
Or is it?
Is it a sign? Should I have this baby?
I have never been so confused. Ever.
Chapter 53
‘Dad, I need to talk to you,’ I came here early, so it’s just me and him, like the old days in the bathroom. ‘I’m pregnant.’
Normally when I talk to Dad the words flow and I drench the poor man with a power shower of language, but today there’s barely a dribble. I pause before I speak again.
‘I’ve got a baby inside me,’ I say eventually. But again I just leave the words hanging there, lonely. I can’t find them any friends. I don’t know what to say. I’m sitting cross-legged on the dirty old cushion that I’ve kept for years in the boot of my car, facing Dad’s gravestone. I reach forward and wipe a bit of wet leafy goo from it.
‘Baby,’ I say, looking down at my tummy. ‘This is my dad. He was very cool. He always knew what to do.’
If I had this baby, he or she would never meet my dad. They’d never experience his amazing hugs. They’d never know what all that love felt like. But this baby feels connected to my dad somehow. People tell me that I look like my father. Perhaps this baby will, too. It would be a little bit of him living on. I sigh.
‘Oh, Dad, can I do it alone? It won’t have a daddy.’ But, Grace, I remind myself, it would have a daddy.
‘I need to talk to Danny, don’t I?’ I say suddenly.
‘Dad, should I have this baby?’
The problem with dead people and gravestones is they don’t answer back when you need them to.
‘Dad, a
baby was so not in the plan. Nowhere near it.’
I trace his name on the stone with my finger. Camille Flowers.
‘I’ve even named it, Dad, which was probably a silly thing to do. They don’t recommend it in the abortion leaflet. Camille for a boy, Camilla for a girl. Oh, Dad, why did I name it? I should have kept it at chickpea. How can I abort it now I know its name? What should I do, Dad?’
I sit and wait for a sign – a something – but there’s nothing. For a moment the sun nearly breaks through the clouds, but there’s nothing celestial about it. I hear a train in the distance, but there’s nothing about a train that helps me make the decision whether or not to bring a baby into the world. I feel three spots of rain and a bird rustles in a tree. It’s all as it always is, and perhaps that’s the sign. Perhaps that’s what Dad is trying to say, that life goes on. That no one can make this decision but me.
‘But it’s so hard, Dad.’ I sigh and I know he agrees. ‘Of course you can’t give me a sign. I’m sorry, I always do this to you.’
Leonard and Joan arrive a few moments later and I can sense their pace slowing as they spot me sitting here morosely. I turn round to smile at them so they feel free to approach.
‘Look who we found,’ Joan says very gently, but I’ve already seen. My mother is with them. Rosemary Flowers, who hasn’t left the house for nearly three years and hasn’t visited this spot for ten, is walking between Leonard and Joan. She looks ashen, as though she might faint. We stare at each other for a moment.
‘Your dad thought I should come today. He was very insistent,’ she whispers.
‘Oh, Mum,’ I gasp.
She leaves Leonard and Joan and walks unsteadily towards me on her own until she’s standing above me.
‘Mum, I’m pregnant,’ I whisper.
She bends down and kneels on the ground by her husband’s grave and she puts her arms around me. It’s a hug. It’s the hug from my mother that I’ve been longing for.
‘Oh, Mum, I want to have the baby.’
We don’t move; we just stay there, hugging each other, next to Dad’s grave. Neither of us notices when Leonard and Joan quietly leave us. I don’t know the time, but I’m sure we’re there for nearly half an hour.
Eventually it starts to rain and Mum stands up and holds out her hand for me. We walk back to my car and drive home.
Chapter 54
After Dad died, Mum and I lived together like two loco ladies. Mum started to spend a great deal of time in bed and I sat in Dad’s study, playing every single one of his vinyl records. The hours were only punctuated by Danny popping round, me going to the shops or cemetery, or Mum randomly suggesting I enter Britain Sings its Heart Out. At first it was as though we were waiting for him to come back, for an envoy from the afterlife to drop by and say, ‘Terribly sorry about all this, we didn’t mean to take Camille; he’s on his way, he’ll be home for tea.’ For ages afterwards letters would come for him or the phone would ring and a voice would ask to speak to him, and there was always a second, a fabulous fleeting second, when he seemed to still be there and life seemed normal. ‘Oh, yes, I’ll just get him for you,’ I would say, and I’d lay down the receiver and be just about to holler, ‘Dad!’ when I’d remember. It was like learning the most awful truth, but having to keep on relearning it.
Life was going on about us but we were stuck in limbo, unable to move on. Then one day the telephone rang. It was a man called Sidney who worked in publishing and he asked if we knew how Dad had been getting on with his Five Year Plan book when he’d died. We’d forgotten about Dad’s book idea and the interest he’d had in publishing it. I went on Dad’s computer and found lots of files. He had numbered each folder and it was clear that each number held notes, which were intended to be structured into a chapter. I showed them to Mum and we agreed we should tidy them up, make them into a book and see if they still wanted to publish it, so that’s what we did. It was definitely a good thing as it gave us a purpose.
Every afternoon we would sit in Dad’s dark study, fathoming his notes and trying to draft them into a narrative. For me it was like being hypnotised. Every day I learned about the benefits of a five year plan, so perhaps it’s no surprise that I eventually made my own five year plan and became evangelical about it. I thought it was working on Mum, too, as she started to leave the house more. Nowhere too rock and roll, just the hairdresser’s and the gym, but for a few months she seemed stronger.
Then we received another phone call. A female Scottish voice told me to pass on a message to my mother. ‘Tell her that her father died,’ was all the voice said. If my mother had been buttoned up before, she became stitched in after that. I can’t be sure exactly, but I don’t think she’s left the house since that phone call.
She left the house today, though, to come to me. That’s something, isn’t it? That’s something else.
*
I’m still at Mum’s. I’ve been here all day. Now it’s late and I’m sitting up in my childhood single bed with the lamp on. I did a terrible job of moving out when I did. I shouldn’t blame Mum for the clutter in the house when I left an entire bedroom full of stuff. It’s funny, as I remember moving into my flat and feeling so free from baggage, when really I’d just loaded it all on my poor mother. I even found Dad’s old Ramones T-shirt under the bed. I’m wearing it now.
There’s a torn poster of Nina Simone on one wall, the desk I was sitting at the last time I saw Dad is still where it’s always been and the wardrobe is full of Mum’s old ballroom dancing clothes. I turn to my bedside table and open the top drawer. It’s full of cheap make-up and Topshop labels with buttons attached to them. I open the next drawer down – more crap and some truly disgusting jewellery. I open the third – yep, more crap. But I feel around more thoroughly in this one and my hand finds what it was looking for. I squeeze the soft cover of my old diary, wondering whether to pull it out or just leave the past there in the bottom drawer. Curiosity beats caution, though, and out it comes. It’s a very ugly diary. I wonder why I bought it. It’s orange with garish green flowers all over it, and it’s furry. Not posh teddy furry, more like a cheap toy you’d win at the fair.
I open the diary. I only wrote it for a few weeks and then Dad died, so I stopped.
I AM GOING TO WRITE A DIARY!!!!! IT WILL
CHART ME LEAVING SCHOOL (FINALLY!!!
RELIEF!!!) AND GETTING A LUCRATIVE
RECORDING CONTRACT WITH SONY.
I stare at the capital letters on the page. It’s as though my confident younger self is bellowing at me. I don’t know whether I can keep on reading. I don’t know whether I can take any more of this positivity. But, of course, I don’t stop reading. I turn the page and am instantly drawn in.
I GOT ASKED TO THE PROM!!!! Feel bad though, ’cos Wend and I were going to go together dressed as the Blues Brothers. It’s her dad’s favourite film and he said he’d hire the costumes for us. Oh God, he’ll be disappointed, too. Anyway, to the point! Danny Saunders asked me out. And he is well fit!!!!! AND he was wearing a Ramones T-shirt. I told Dad and he said, ‘Good man, good man.’ Then he went on and on about how he was going to speak to Danny and tell him a few things. 1) That I am not allowed to have sex until I’m forty!!! 2) That he may be a ballroom dancer but he’s quite capable of hospitalising sixteen-year-old boys who hurt his daughter. Obviously Danny is NEVER allowed to meet my dad. It was funny, though. I couldn’t stop laughing. Dad’s in a really good mood because ITV want to meet him to discuss a ballroom dancing programme for the telly. V.V.V. exciting!!! Mum made – wait for it – MACARONI CHEESE!!!! Yep, her period must be due. Excellent. Dad whispered, ‘Time of the month’ when we sat down at the table, and I laughed and Mum copped a strop, so I reckon it’s true. Did bloody geography revision all night. Like, literally nearly all night. I bloody HATE geography, remind me again why I picked it? Oh yeah, so I’ll know where I am when I go on tour with my bestselling album! Must hold that thought. Night. Knackered.
I’m sucked
in. I can’t close the book on all these capital letters and exclamation marks now.
OK. Weird day. Had small break with Danny Saunders. And YES he is fit. Ultimate fitness boot camp getting up at 6a.m. to run up a mountain with a heavy backpack on fit, BUT he is well quiet. Like, really, really quiet. Like, pretty much silent. So I had to keep talking to make up for it. I spoke a ridiculous amount of rubbish. I even told him what Dad said!!!! I must never talk to a fit bloke again. But I was nervous and he just sat there with his chocolate milk, so I had to say something and out that came. I hope he starts talking soon. Maybe blokes just talk less than girls, although that can’t be true because my dad never shuts up. Like NEVER!!! Still, at least he’s fit. Danny Saunders, I mean, not my dad. And I want to kiss him. FIRST PROPER SNOG!!!!! (I’m not counting Julian from the youth club disco last year, ’cos that was RANK!!!) First kiss reserved for Danny ‘Silent but Deadly’ Saunders.
I close the diary. That’s enough for now. It’s impossible to read the name Danny Saunders and not think about an awkward fact. I am not going to have an abortion. I am going to have his baby. Danny is the father. I have to tell him tomorrow.
Chapter 55
‘Do you want a small gin while you do it?’
‘I don’t think pregnant people are supposed to drink gin at eleven in the morning.’
‘Oh no!’ my mother clasps her hand to her mouth and starts giggling like a twelve-year-old child at the mention of the word willy. I watch her and smile. My baby is bringing us together. I wonder if it will last. I don’t wonder about it for long, though, because I’m distracted by the telephone in front of me and the Welsh telephone number lying next to it.
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