by Sara Downing
Mum eventually pulls herself up out of her comfy chair and comes over to me with a big hug, so I deduce that I’m not in trouble. Funny how, even at my age, I still sort of expect to be told off by my parents for doing something ‘naughty’. That parent/child relationship is so hard to break out of, until I suppose when it comes to that awful time later in life when our roles are reversed, with me becoming the carer, and they the cared-for. Let’s hope we’ve got a few years yet, or even decades, before that happens, I just can’t bear the thought of it.
‘He sounds lovely, though, this Tom, despite everything,’ Mum goes on, trying to sound cheery. Funny, Dad hasn’t said a word yet, and I get the feeling he is battling with his emotions and therefore struggling to come to terms with my news more than Mum is. Mum just wants to get on and help me, forget anything I may have done that doesn’t fit in with her strict moral code of conduct, and get me back on the road to happiness again.
Dad, on the other hand, is either bothered about the cheating aspect of the whole thing, and therefore contemplating just how loose his daughter must be and where he went wrong, or brooding about how much hurt these two men have caused me. I don’t feel I can ask him – he just needs to deal with it in his own time, too. Maybe he fancies a pop at the other man in my life, just like the earlier episode with Mark? His expression is dark and brooding and hard to read, so I decide not to go there for the moment.
‘Are you going to speak to him, Grace? You really should, you know,’ Mum is off on a roll now, on her fix-my-daughter’s-love-life mission, now that she has a few more of the details to play with. ‘It might not be what you think. It sounds like he worships you, surely he wouldn’t go and throw that all away so quickly?’
I tell them about his texts and the messages, and how Sarah made me send him a message, just to let him know I haven’t fallen off a cliff or anything. I see a shadow of hurt pass across Mum’s face when she realises Sarah knew about Tom before she did, but she disguises it quickly. Since that text, though, agonisingly, there have been no more messages from Tom, nothing at all. It feels to me like he doesn’t care, can’t be bothered, and doesn’t want to explain anything to me. It’s all too much effort for him. So why should I be bothered, if he’s quite clearly not? He has obviously abandoned me. I explain this to my parents, but all they can see is my stubborn streak doing it’s very best to wreck my life. They think I should just get on the phone to him and sort it out, once and for all. But it’s not as easy as that. No, he needs to be the one to make the first move; I’m not going grovelling to him. If he has something to tell me – which obviously he does – then he can damn well do it, and get on with it.
‘Grace, darling, time to get up,’ Mum calls from the bottom of the stairs, and I wake up in the Eighties. I’m close to jumping out of bed and hunting around for my clean school uniform and last night’s homework when I realise that it’s actually 2009 and I don’t have to go to school today, and as the time-warp effect fades and I remember again the events of the past few days, I pull the duvet up over my head and try to ignore Mum’s call.
She’s taking me with her to see one of her old friends today. Joy of joys, can’t wait. But she seems to have this idea that (a) it will cheer me up to get out of the house and (b) she can’t leave me alone as I might slip straight back into moroseness. Mum doesn’t think I have anything to be morose about – she seems to think a quick call to Tom will sort it all out. Yeah, right.
My attempt to hide under the duvet is short-lived however, as a violent wave of nausea sweeps in from nowhere and thumps me in the pit of my stomach. I know that if I don’t get to the bathroom THIS INSTANT I am going to decorate Mum and Dad’s nice cream carpet with a map of the world, comprising the contents of last night’s partially digested dinner. Fortunately the bathroom is empty (of course it is, no sisters living here any more, spending hours over their black eye-liner and crimped hair in the mornings), and I stare into the white bowl, heaving my insides up like there’s no tomorrow.
Mum’s head appears round the door. ‘You OK, Grace?’
‘Nooooo,’ I groan, ‘siiiiiicccckkkkkkk,’ I wail as another bout hits me. As I hold my hair back and puke for England I mentally try to work out what I might have eaten yesterday to cause such a violent reaction. I’d had some of Sarah’s kids’ sweets and candyfloss, but not enough to produce the effects I am experiencing right now, surely? And I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol last night; Mum had seemed reluctant to let me loose near their wine, for some reason. She said I looked like I needed to detoxify, which all sounded a bit twenty-first century for my Mum, but even so, I’d taken her advice and stuck to the soft stuff.
‘Arggggggghhhh,’ another bout hits, and Mum is behind me, rubbing my back and making comforting sounds, just like she used to when I was sick as a child. When I think I’m all done, I make an attempt to clean myself up quickly, and turn to Mum.
‘Don’t think I’ll be coming with you today, Mum, looks like I’ve picked up a bug or something,’ I mumble, secretly relieved that I won’t be subjected to being a voyeur in Mum’s social life after all.
‘Oh, no, you’ll be fine later,’ Mum insists, sounding a lot more positive than I can. ‘A cuppa and a piece of toast will sort you out, just you wait and see.’ She leaves the room with a conspiratorial little knowing smile. What’s she got to be so pleased with herself about?
But she’s right, I’m not sick any more, and Mum’s breakfast does sort me out, and suddenly I feel like a normal person again. In fact I have bags of energy, tonnes of it, and I suggest to Mum that I might go out for a run instead of coming with her today. She turns to me and takes a deep breath before she speaks again.
‘No, dear, no running for you, you should be taking it easy in your condition,’ she says, enigmatically. I don’t know what she’s getting at.
‘What do you mean, ‘In my condition’?’ I say sarcastically. ‘Heartbroken? Jilted? Stupid? Gullible? A run is just what I need to blow all my troubles away.’
‘Don’t be silly, Grace,’ she replies, ‘pregnant, of course. You’re pregnant.’
I choke on my tea, and this starts a fit of coughing. Mum comes up behind me, and pats me on the back, for the second time this morning. When I can draw breath again she sits down beside me and looks directly at me. It’s unnerving.
‘You’re pregnant, Grace. I spotted it the minute you walked in the door the other day. Your skin, your hair, you’re positively glowing. These food fads of yours, and then, well, your performance this morning just confirms it, doesn’t it?’ When she’s finished reeling off all the clues she’s picked up, like some amateur sleuth on a fact-finding mission, she sits back in her chair with a contented sigh.
‘Ahhh, another little Connery grandchild on the way, it’s so exciting!’ she clucks. I am still sitting with my mouth gaping wide, tea all over me, staring at her like she has just grown a second head.
‘Don’t be silly, Mum, of course I’m not pregnant. How can I be?’
‘Well, if you need me to answer that one for you, dear, then no wonder your love-life is in a mess,’ she chuckles. Her amusing quip sets her off and she giggles to herself whilst she clears the breakfast table, humming some nondescript little tune. I can’t see the funny side in any of this.
I head back from the chemist in a blind panic. Mum sent me upstairs to get dressed, then packed me off to the local pharmacy clutching a twenty pound note. It felt a bit like being sent down the shops in the old days, with a list of groceries to buy for Mum, instructions not to talk to any strangers and to bring the change straight back to her. Only this time the stranger is potentially growing inside my stomach. Arghh! Scary. I can’t be pregnant, can I? How can that have happened? But then the sinking feeling hits good and hard as I remember I’m no longer safely on the pill, and that I hadn’t given a second thought to going back on it when Mark and I split up, or even before that when I started seeing Tom. I’d been too wrapped up in my new and exciting love-life to thin
k about anything as mundane as contraception, I realise sadly.
How could I have been so stupid? Tom and I hadn’t taken any precautions – there just hadn’t been the time, or the right moment. To be honest, neither of us had given even a passing thought to it. Stupid, stupid girl. I still refuse to believe it, despite Mum’s old wives’ tales about glowing skin and hair and that ‘pregnant look’. No, the test will be negative, I know it, I just need to do it and show it to Mum, then this whole nightmare fiasco will be over. If I was pregnant I’d know, wouldn’t I? Feel something different going on with my body, surely?
I am sitting on the floor in the bathroom, staring at this little white plastic stick, and the word that has appeared on it. ‘Pregnant’ it says, followed by ‘3-4’ which according to the instructions is the number of weeks ago that I conceived. I have never used one of these things before, never been anywhere close to a scare in the past, never needed to worry if I might be pregnant and done a test just to make sure I wasn’t. This is a whole new ball-game to me. And there is no doubt, either, looking at this thing. Gone are the little blue lines of the past that I remember friends saying were sometimes so thin and pale that you still weren’t sure if you were really pregnant or not. No, mine quite clearly says that I AM PREGNANT. Shit. What now? A baby? OH MY GOD. All those feelings of fear and anxiety that I’d repressed since that day Mark had said he wanted to try for a family, come charging at me like a herd of bulls, knocking me over and trampling all over me. I can’t move.
I am still sitting there with tears rolling down my cheeks when Mum comes looking for me. She doesn’t say a word, just pulls me into her arms and we sit there together, whilst she rocks me from side to side and makes comforting noises. There are lots of ‘Don’t worry’s’ and ‘There, there’s’ and ‘It’ll be alright’s’, but not a single ‘I told you so.’
But how can it be alright, I can’t see a clear way through all this. All I see is me, with a baby, which I never really wanted in the first place, alone. And that is the crucial thing. ALONE. How ironic really, that my main bugbear with Mark about starting a family was that we weren’t married. But here I am now, not only still with no husband, but without even a boyfriend to call my own. No, just me and a BABY. Arghhhhh….. A single mother-to-be. What a complete disaster I have made of my life. I don’t even feel grown-up enough to look after a pet dog or cat, let alone a real-live human baby.
Despite my state as a fragile, emotional wreck, I am compos mentis enough to work out that at least the baby is Tom’s, as it was conceived so recently. Mark and I hadn’t slept together for some time before we split up, so at least there is no element of doubt whatsoever, no dilemma about paternity to add to the whole nightmare. Even though Tom hasn’t been seen for dust since The Blonde incident, heaven forbid that the baby were Mark’s, as he would be down here again like a shot, wanting us to get back together again and claiming his fatherly rights, and I can’t be doing with any of that. No, better that it’s Tom’s, if anyone’s, as I have no past with him and he hasn’t accumulated any rights, as far as I see it, so at this point in time the baby is just mine, if I want it to be.
Hang on a minute, for a baby I don’t want, why am I suddenly calling it mine? My baby, or my problem? ‘My’ and ‘baby’ are two words I never imagined myself saying, but it’s scary just how easily the possessive adjective slips in front of that baby word. I wrap my arms around my stomach; how weird to think that there is a new life growing inside me, so small, no bigger than the size of a pea, probably, but developing all the bits it will one day need to help it survive in the world outside my womb. Where did all these clucky baby thoughts come from? Hang on a minute, stop thinking about that little dot of humanity growing inside your body, Grace, and take a close look at your situation, will you? You are alone, with a baby on the way. A BABY, for goodness sake. That thought brings on a whole new bout of tears and I succumb to Mum’s shoulder once again.
‘Evie,’ I wail, ‘I’m pregnant.’
I’d had no choice but to phone my friend. I hadn’t wanted to disturb her holiday and burden her with my problems, but sometimes in life there are moments when only a best friend will do. A friend who has travelled the long and winding road of your life with you and understands exactly where you are coming from. I can tell Evie anything and everything and I know she will be one hundred percent on my side. Not that my parents aren’t on my side, of course, but they have a vested interest in the embryonic grandchild that has taken root in my body. And my sisters each have a brood of their own, as well as being Family, so they are hardly impartial. No, I need to speak to someone to whom I’m not related, someone who can really understand how I’m feeling.
So I have dragged Evie away from her poolside paradise in Mallorca for a bit of friend-to-friend counselling. She is welcome of the interruption, so she says. She needed a break from the sun for a few minutes. Poor thing. And it’s hardly like the Germans or Scandinavians are going to pinch her lounger and put their towels on it. No, Evie and James and the girls have the exclusive use of a six-bedroomed villa for the duration of their stay, complete with chef and staff, so the most that can happen in her absence is that one of her serfs puts out a fresh towel for her, tops up her non-alcoholic cocktail and moves the umbrella into a better position for her on her return. Lucky thing. If only all life’s problems could be dealt with so easily.
‘Evie, I’m having a baby,’ I wail again, in case she didn’t quite get the message, across the miles, the first time. There is a stunned silence on the other end of the phone. Or is it the satellite time delay? Difficult to tell.
‘Oh Grace, that’s wonderful news!’ she exclaims. ‘Although you don’t sound too thrilled?’ I realise then that of course she knows nothing about The Blonde. I haven’t spoken to her since before she went away, and our last texts had been when she’d sent me the photo of the David statue. At that time, things had been going really well with Tom and it all looked rosy for the future.
So I fill Evie in on all the details. Such a lot has happened, I don’t really know where to start, and it all comes out in a bit of a jumble.
‘So are you saying Tom is cheating on you?’ she says, as I finish my outpouring.
‘Well, she was draped all over him and they looked pretty cosy together,’ I say. I realise then that I don’t know if he is actually cheating on me, but all the signs seem to point in the direction of Cheatsville.
‘Have you spoken to him?’ she asks. Oh, not her as well. Why are all my family and friends so obsessed with me speaking to him, when it’s he who’s broken my heart and done the dirty on me? HE should be the one to speak to ME.
‘No I haven’t, he’s cheating on me!’ I scream down the phone, then apologise to Evie for my outburst. ‘I don’t want to see him, ever, ever again!’
‘Don’t be silly, Grace, of course you do. If you didn’t love him so much, you wouldn’t be in this mess. Not the pregnant bit, that’s another matter entirely, but if you didn’t want him back, you’d be over him, wouldn’t you? You just wouldn’t care so much. You’re quite clearly still madly in love with him, so do what you need to do, and for goodness sake call him. AND tell him about the baby.’
‘But I don’t want a bundle of excuses. I want him to want me, and even if there was something going on with THAT WOMAN, I don’t want him to feel a sense of responsibility to me just because I’m pregnant. It has to be me he comes back for, not the baby.’
‘Just call him, Grace, you won’t know anything until you do.’ I know she is right, but I can’t do it. He obviously doesn’t want me any more. I’ve not heard a thing from him since I texted him to tell him I was still alive. If he cares that much, he’d have tried to find out what was wrong, wouldn’t he? No, clearly I am just a conquest, a nice little interlude in his love-life, and nothing more. Why should I make the effort, it would be too humiliating to call him up, only to have him reject me. I can’t face that. He doesn’t want me, and I’ll just have to come to terms w
ith it.
I retreat to my parents’ garden with a coffee (should I be cutting back on the caffeine now? I realise I know nothing whatsoever about pregnancy and what I’m supposed to do – or not) and a squishy cushion and park myself on a lounger. No pool and poolside attendants here for me, like lucky Evie in Mallorca, and not much sun either, come to that, but it is late July in England, what do you expect? I just need to get out of the house and out from under Mum’s worried gaze, and sit here on my own to think things through for a while.
I ran away from Evie’s house to get some space between Tom and me, but now that my parents know so much about my personal life – and now the baby too – suddenly it doesn’t feel so spacious here any more. I need wide open spaces to clear my head and give me time to think, although my parents’ garden could never be really called a wide open space – there are houses on all sides and the garden is about the size of a packet of frozen peas. But it’s all that’s available to me for the moment so I shouldn’t be complaining. I have bigger issues to contemplate.
All too late I realise Dad has quietly followed me outside. He hasn’t yet broken his reticence from yesterday, and now that he has yet another piece of news to digest, I dread to think what is going through his poor, addled brain. I managed to convince Mum it would be fine for her to carry on with her plans and go and visit her friend, making it quite clear that there was no way I was coming with her.