Having It All

by Maeve Haran

  ‘A grandchild, eh? And just in time too.’

  ‘Oh, Dad, don’t.’ There was real anguish in her voice that touched him to the core. ‘You’ll be better soon.’

  ‘Aye. Maybe. So, come on, lass. How long have I got to last? When’s it due?’

  ‘In August.’

  ‘Are you going to get . . . er . . . you and the father . . .?’

  ‘Married? No, Dad, we aren’t. In fact we’ve split up.’

  Her father looked up in consternation.

  ‘Don’t worry. Everything will be all right. I know it will.’ She looked away for a moment, trying to summon the courage to swim even further into the dangerous waters of truth.

  ‘Dad, I wanted to ask your advice. If you had a friend and you fell in love with her husband and he came to live with you for a bit and then left again. And then you were offered her job. Not the job she’s doing now, but the one she used to do. And it was a wonderful job. An amazing job. One of the best jobs in television . . .’ She paused, struck by the absurdity of her morally upright, no-nonsense father ever being caught in so murky a situation as she was describing. ‘Would you take it?’

  ‘Would she mind you having her old job, this friend?’

  ‘Yes I think she probably would.’

  ‘Then maybe I’d feel I’d had enough of hers already.’

  Britt grinned. She’d known he would say that. And it was exactly what she’d already decided to do.

  ‘Did you know that Britt was pregnant?’ Liz handed Ginny and Gavin a drink.

  Ginny looked appalled. ‘By David?’

  Liz nodded.

  ‘Oh, Lizzie, how awful!’

  Gavin slipped his arm round her. ‘Poor Liz. The bastard.’

  ‘And now he’s left her.’

  ‘My God.’

  ‘A happy ending then?’ Gavin joked. He’d never liked Britt.

  ‘Not for Britt.’ Liz sat down on the sofa.

  ‘Oh, come on, now!’ The idea of anyone, especially Liz, feeling sorry for Britt clearly irritated the hell out of Gavin. ‘Don’t worry about Britt. When she finds you can’t get Calvin Klein babygros she’ll probably have an abortion!’

  Despite herself, Liz giggled. She couldn’t imagine Britt as a mother either. It was impossible to picture Britt’s expensive beigeness stained with banana, or sticky fingers clutching the hem of her Armani suit. Britt was built for cruising Harrods and Harvey Nichols, not Mothercare and Toys ‘R’ Us. She imagined for a moment a baby let loose in Britt’s immaculate flat, and saw it, poor mite, dressed only in black and white, to tone in with the wallpaper.

  And then it struck her, for the first time, that now that David had left her, Britt might not go ahead with the baby at all.

  Britt sat on the uncomfortable sofa in her parents’ front room, tucked under a tartan rug. It was freezing cold and they had both gone to bed. Her father was still too weak to stay up till midnight to watch Big Ben toll in the New Year on the television.

  Britt clutched a mug of tea and watched this year’s disastrous TV attempt, live from Scotland as usual, to mix kilts and white heather with alternative comedians and rock ‘n’ roll bands in a merry Hogmanay hooley.

  New Year’s Eve, Britt had often thought, had only been invented to torture the single and the lonely. There was something about spending it alone that condemned you to the intimate social scrapheap. Even if you’d convinced yourself that you didn’t want to go to a party, that you wanted to work or to Be Alone, all that false jollity and pernicious resolution-making seeped in somehow under your front door and depressed you all the same.

  But, against all the odds, Britt didn’t feel depressed tonight. She felt happy and secure for the first time she could ever remember. Her father would get well now that he had something to stay alive for. And tomorrow she would ring Conrad Marks and turn down the job. She basked for a moment in the unfamiliar glow of her own unselfishness.

  And best of all – she hugged the cushion she held against her tummy – there was the baby.

  From now on she would never, ever, have to be alone again.

  Liz sat on the window-seat of Jamie and Daisy’s bedroom and looked out at the moonlit countryside. Any minute now the small church would start to toll in the New Year and she would go downstairs and sing Auld Lang Syne with Ginny and Gavin and this year, the worst in her life, would be over.

  Opening the latticed casement a few inches, careful not to let too much freezing air come into the bedroom and wake the children, she knelt up and sprinkled a few drops of the Glenfiddich that Gavin had brought, on the earth beneath. A kind of libation. An offering to the ancient gods of this place to lend her some of their peace.

  In the field opposite, next to the path leading up to the South Downs Way, a white horse stood in the moonlight, as though illuminated by a single spotlight. And it seemed to Liz that it was a good omen, a symbol of life, not like the chalk horse carved into the hillside to remind all who saw it of dead love.

  And looking out over the silent night it seemed to her that it was time she accepted that the love between her and David was also a dead love, that a new chapter must open in her life, and that she must accept, as she had never done yet, that moving here was not, until this moment, really the new beginning she had yearned for.

  Standing up and shaking out the pins and needles in her legs, she could hear the bells of Seamington Church begin to ring out, as they had for hundreds of years. But tonight the rolling, reverberating peal did indeed seem to toll for her, summoning her to start again without looking back this time.

  And she knew there was one more admission she had to make. Just like Mel had said. She would never be an Earth Mother. She loved her children, but she needed, at least some of the time, to get out of the house, to stretch herself. Never again would she put her career before her family, but it was time to face the fact that she also needed to work.

  Britt lay in the narrow bed she had slept in as a teenager and listened to the bells of Rothwell United Reformed Chapel tolling out the old year and in the new.

  Outside it was dark and silent. No drunken revellers or well-oiled First Footers bearing shortbread and a piece of coal to bring good luck ventured over their neighbours’ hearths in Acacia Gardens. And there was none of the cheek-kissing and cries of ‘Darling!’ that characterized London parties. In Acacia Gardens decent people watched Big Ben and went quietly to bed.

  But tonight Britt didn’t think them narrow-minded or joyless. They were just ordinary people leading quiet lives like her mum and dad. As she lay there wide-eyed and wakeful, the light from a streetlamp lit up the small room and she realized that for the first time she’d stayed here since leaving home she had unpacked her suitcases and spread her belongings around the room as though it were really her own.

  Smiling, she turned over and snuggled down under the blankets. She felt an extraordinary peace with the world tonight.

  At five o’clock, long before the first dirty streaks of light appeared in the sky, just as the dawn chorus was starting up its first noisy performance of the year, Britt felt the pain begin.

  Half-asleep she turned on to her side, hugging a pillow to her, and tried to forget about it. It was probably indigestion, the legacy of too much Christmas eating.

  And then it started again, stronger this time, a wave of pain and nausea that snapped open her eyes and dampened her palms, and made her beg that she was wrong, that this wasn’t happening.

  But she knew that it was. Uncurling herself and lying absolutely flat as she had read you must, she felt the pain grip her again and the blood seep unstoppably out, soaking the sheets and staining bright red the pure white of her silk pyjamas.

  For a moment she thought of shouting to her mother to call a doctor. But she knew that it was too late. That no one could help her now. That she had already lost the baby.

  CHAPTER 25

  ‘Why don’t you come and work for WomanPower?’

  Ginny held her breath, not
even daring to look at Liz’s face. She knew that Liz might feel WomanPower was too small beer for someone with her talents, a tinpot little venture run by a rank amateur, a housewife’s hobby.

  And the problem was, she’d be right. Ginny looked round the small, untidy office with its single phone, its dingy paintwork and its ancient filing cabinets, not to mention its screamingly inefficient eighteen-year-old receptionist/typist/dogsbody who was so unprepossessing she’d failed even to get on to a Government training scheme, but who, as a result, came extremely cheap. It was hardly Metro Television.

  For just a second, Ginny felt depressed again. WomanPower was a brilliant idea, she knew that, but if she was brutally honest with herself she just didn’t seem to have the imagination or the management skills to get it off the ground. Liz, on the other hand, had both. With her on board Ginny knew they could make a real go of it. Realizing that Liz hadn’t answered, Ginny decided to try a bit harder.

  ‘We couldn’t pay you a fortune, of course, but it’d be part time and you could still see the kids. Plus of course you wouldn’t be an employee. I’d want you to be my partner.’

  Liz looked around her and thought about it. She hadn’t meant to get a job quite so quickly and hadn’t even begun to wonder what she might do when she did. A little TV consultancy, perhaps, where she could earn as much in a day as most people earned in a week. But looking round Ginny’s tiny offices, in the lovely peaceful little market town of Lewes, she felt a wave of revulsion at the thought of dipping back into the world of television, with its crazy egos and obsessive navel-contemplation, and the idea of schlepping up to town, even for one day, which would no doubt somehow spill into two, maybe with an overnight in some anonymous hotel, suddenly seemed too horrible to contemplate.

  She was deeply touched that Ginny should ask her to be a partner in what was very much her own venture. And she didn’t need to earn a fortune. Living at the cottage without a mortgage had proved remarkably cheap compared with their lavish London lifestyle, and she’d worked out that they’d be all right providing they had some sort of income.

  ‘How much would you have in mind?’

  God! The figure Ginny mentioned wouldn’t have even been offered to the lady who cleaned the loos at Metro. Still, this wasn’t Metro. Thank God. It was WomanPower, an idea she had always believed in from the moment Ginny first told her about it. And even if it didn’t become a multinational, it would still be fascinating to meet all the women who, just like her, wanted to get back to work and still see their kids.

  Watching Liz’s face, Ginny could see she’d blown it. There was no way Liz was going to come and work for anyone who could only pay that sort of money. She could probably get ten times that, more even, if she wanted to.

  Liz took a deep breath and made up her mind. She’d always believed in following her instincts. Slipping off the ancient desk she brushed the dust from her tracksuit, snapped her bag shut and walked to the door.

  Ginny tried to hide her disappointment with a cheery smile. ‘Goodbye, Lizzie, no hard feelings. It was a nice idea.’

  ‘Yes it was.’ Liz put her arm round her friend’s shoulders and squeezed. ‘I’ll start as soon as I’ve found someone to look after the kids.’

  Ginny looked up at her open-mouthed.

  ‘I like a challenge.’ Liz’s eyes crinkled with laughter.

  ‘Oh, Liz.’ Ginny threw her arms round her friend and held her. ‘You’ve certainly got one here!’

  Smiling at her friend’s delight, Liz had no inkling of how right she was.

  Britt lay in bed, absolutely still, with her face to the wall. She felt as though someone had picked her up and poured her whole being away, like a pint of spilt milk that no one had cried over. Except her.

  The doctor had come, pink-faced and embarrassed because he was the family doctor who’d delivered her and seen her through chicken pox as a little girl, and confirmed in a hushed voice that she’d had a miscarriage. Of course I’ve had a miscarriage, she’d wanted to scream, throwing her blood-stained pyjamas in his face, but what was the point? It was all over now.

  All she felt now was a creeping deadness, a paralysing lethargy that didn’t even spark into anger when he asked her if she was single, and patted her tactlessly, saying it was all for the best then, eh? And she remembered how it was still a social disgrace to fall for a baby before you were married in Rothwell.

  And as she lay there she’d never felt so alone. She knew that her parents loved her and that they would do anything in their power to alleviate her pain. But there was nothing anyone could do.

  In its few short weeks of life the baby had opened a door inside her. A door to love, joy, closeness and now pain. And to her horror, Britt found she couldn’t close it again. She couldn’t tell herself it didn’t matter, that she had her career, her flat, her well-ordered life.

  As she turned her face to the wall to cut out both the doctor and her mother it occurred to Britt that there was one further truth she hadn’t faced. That losing the baby might just be a punishment. She had broken up a perfectly good marriage and deprived Jamie and Daisy of their father and Liz of her husband. She had betrayed her best friend. And this was the result.

  What was done, was done. But maybe it wasn’t too late to make amends. She could start today by ringing Conrad and turning down the job.

  She turned her head back and smiled, a small tired smile at her mother and asked for a cup of tea.

  ‘So how’s your search for the perfect mother’s help coming on?’ Ginny asked hopefully. She was counting the days till Liz could start.

  ‘Terrible. Five responses to the ad and none of them can speak English! One ex-Israeli army, one into glamour photography and three who sounded like Miss World candidates!’ Liz threw down her copy of the Lady in disgust. ‘I vant to vork with cheeldren because they’re so cute . . . und do you haf a car . . . und is there a vine-bar in the willage? Aaaaaaagh!’

  Ginny felt panic rising. If Liz couldn’t find someone good to look after the kids, she wouldn’t come to WomanPower at all.

  And then she remembered. ‘Wait a minute . . . what was your neighbour Ruby on about the other day? . . . I know. The landlord of the Plough and Furrow’s daughter. Going to catering college and needs a fill-in job.’

  ‘Sounds blissful.’ Liz closed her eyes, and imagined happy children and a freezer full of shepherd’s pies. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘I think she said it was Minty.’

  Liz reached for the phone. ‘Hello, is that the Plough and Furrow? Could I speak to Minty, please?’

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t want the job?’

  Conrad had smiled contentedly when his PA had told him that Britt Williams was on the line. OK, so she’d kept him waiting nearly a week, but he admired that. Nerve and brinkmanship were part of the package he was after. And now, a few days before the meeting with the Board, the stupid bitch was telling him she didn’t want the job!

  Conrad dropped the relaxed, feet-on-the-desk pose he had been adopting and jumped up, pacing backwards and forwards on the thick black carpet like an angry wasp looking for someone to sting. The greedy cow probably wanted more money. He could just picture her in one of her killer suits, behind her big dick office desk, thinking she was stringing him along.

  ‘Look, Britt, what’s behind all this? You want more money? Say so. Don’t give me this shit about not wanting the job.’

  Britt, sitting in the hall of her parents’ semi, still in her nightie, wearing the fluffy bedroom slippers that looked like twin guinea pigs she’d borrowed from her mother because she’d forgotten her own, wanted to laugh. The emptiness of the last few days had turned into a kind of Zen calm which lent unreality to even the most normal things, and made Conrad seem like something out of Laurel and Hardy.

  ‘I don’t want the job, Conrad.’

  Conrad thought for a moment. Over the years he had evolved a deadly technique using one part charm to two parts bullying. It had never failed yet.
Today his instincts told him to skip the charm and move straight on to the bullying.

  ‘Look Britt, we had a gentleman’s agreement.’

  ‘Bullshit! You told me to think about it and your secretary asked me to pencil in a meeting, that’s all.’

  ‘With the whole bloody Board of Metro Television! The day after tomorrow!’

  ‘Sorry, Conrad, but I don’t want the job.’

  ‘Then I’ll just have to put it about the industry that you’re unreliable,’ Conrad suggested silkily. ‘That you give your word one day, then break it. Indecisiveness is a dirty word in this business, Britt, especially when you’re a woman.’

  ‘Are you threatening me, Conrad?’

  Sensing that he was getting nowhere, and that Britt might actually mean what she said, he began to feel furiously angry. And when Conrad got angry he liked to have someone to blame. And he had just thought of the perfect person: Liz bloody Ward.

  Of course! This was her doing. When Britt had left his office on Christmas Eve, she would have killed for that job. He could see it in her eyes. She had tried to disguise it, of course. But then, shouting ‘Whoopee I’d love the job, I accept here and now’ would have been a little uncool. All the same, she’d wanted it all right, they both knew that. And then Liz must have nobbled her, put the screws on about betraying her friendship as well as stealing her husband. And the stupid bitch had gone for it.

  ‘Right, Britt, forget anything Liz Ward may have said to you. You wanted this job before Christmas and you want it still.’

  ‘Correction. I may have wanted it before Christmas but I don’t want it any more.’

  ‘And you’re telling me that this has absolutely nothing to do with Liz Ward?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, Conrad. But I can assure you I haven’t even mentioned the job offer to Liz and she certainly hasn’t persuaded me to refuse it.’

  ‘Then why the fuck are you turning it down?’

  Britt sloped her toes inwards so that the two guinea pigs appeared to be kissing. Suddenly she found this very funny.