Can't Live Without

by Joanne Phillips

  Paul looks across and smiles at me, his blue eyes crinkling with laughter. I raise my hand in a mock salute and turn away before he can see the tears blurring my eyes.

  ***

  Paul drove into Crownhill and double parked outside Stella’s house, beeping his horn lightly to get her attention. The place was looking great now, with a new front door and freshly painted windows. The decorating party had been a brilliant idea – and a great opportunity to make himself indispensable to Stella again, Paul had thought. What he hadn’t banked on was John Dean turning up, looking like an extra from DIY SOS and tackling every job that required any skills that were remotely masculine.

  Which had pretty much left only the unmasculine ones, like painting and cleaning. And who had the cleaning all sown up? Joshua, of course. Not that Paul felt threatened from that quarter anymore. Not really. It was just that for such a long time he had been Stella’s only male friend, and it was hard to see her laughing and joking with another guy, no matter how innocent or platonic it was.

  No, it was definitely John Dean who was the problem. Anyone could see that he was desperate to get Stella back. Everyone except Stella, that was. She had blithely flitted about the place all day, totally ignorant of the underhand efforts which were being employed to get in her good books.

  Efforts which Paul had been a big part of, he had to admit. Not that she’d noticed. Oh no, she was too busy being impressed by her ex’s handiwork. ‘Oh, John, you’ve made such a good job of the kitchen.’ ‘Oh, John, how can I ever thank you for replastering the ceiling.’ OK, maybe he was exaggerating a little. Stella wasn’t the type to simper. But she had seemed just a little too responsive to her ex’s efforts, and not responsive enough to Paul’s.

  At least he’d managed to get her on her own long enough to ask her about today. Her face had lit up when he told her what he had planned – he couldn’t deny that she had seemed genuinely excited about the prospect of meeting Hannah. But then, just as her voice had lowered and she’d been about to say something warm and intimate – he was sure of it – bloody John Dean had walked in and ruined it all. Typical!

  At least he had her to himself all day today. He smiled and sat back, waiting for Stella to burst from her house, late and panicky as usual.

  The sound of a high-pressure hose caught Paul’s attention and he turned to see Stella’s neighbour washing his stupid sports car. So over the top, thought Paul. Showy. But that was Joshua all over: all show and no substance. Joshua waved, and Paul smiled through gritted teeth.

  Only ten minutes late, Stella burst from her door as predicted, looking even more gorgeous than expected. She waved to Paul, a big grin on her face, and then shouted hello to Joshua. Paul give her a lingering hug when she finally got into the car.

  ‘What did I do to deserve that?’ she said, pulling her seatbelt across her stomach and slotting it into the holder with a satisfying click.

  ‘You’re just you,’ was the best Paul could come up with, feeling a bit guilty that the main motivation had been to make Joshua jealous, and trying not to focus on how the strap of the seatbelt pressed into the fabric of Stella’s top and separated her breasts into two perfectly round globes.

  Get a grip, Smart, he told himself.

  ‘So,’ Stella was saying, fiddling with the car radio. ‘Am I allowed to ask – have you sorted everything out with Hannah’s mum now? Like, does the kid actually know that you’re her dad yet?’

  ‘She does, yes. But I don’t think I should be getting her to call me “Dad” just yet. It might confuse her.’

  Stella gave him a look he couldn’t interpret. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I guess not. What is wrong with this radio? I can’t find anything except voices. Where’s all the music?’

  ‘It’s Radio Four. I don’t think it’s your cup of tea.’ Paul laughed and reached into the glove compartment. ‘Here, try this.’ He handed her his latest purchase.

  ‘“The Kaiser Chiefs”,’ she read. ‘Hmm, I suppose this is trendy music, is it? What the happening guys are listening to?’

  ‘Well, yes and no. But really, Stella, the minute you use the words “trendy” and “happening” you move yourself out of that department straight away.’

  ‘Oh I do, do I?’

  Paul risked a glance across the car and saw she was smiling. He returned her smile and experienced one of those rare moments where everything seems to click into place perfectly, where all seems to be right with the world. Stella held his eyes for a moment. Then she looked down at her hands, the smile lingering around her mouth and creating dimples in her cheeks.

  He drove with one hand on the gear stick, imagining her reaching out and laying her hand on his. He thought about how this day out with Hannah was a fantastic idea; show Stella what a great family guy he was and impress the hell out of his daughter at the same time. He just knew Hannah would love Stella. She had that way with kids; he’d watched her bring up Lipsy and do a great job of it so he knew what he was talking about. Until Lipsy turned fourteen, of course, but that was teenagers for you. The thought of Hannah as a teenager, stroppy and difficult, rude and sulky, filled Paul with a feeling of excited anticipation he wanted to bottle and keep.

  When they arrived at Hannah’s house, Paul pulled onto the drive and waited, not risking a beep of the horn this time.

  After a minute or two Hannah emerged, as angelic as ever in a pink knee-length dress over white tights. What a princess, he thought, and then looked around to check he hadn’t actually said this out loud.

  ‘Hello, Hannah,’ Paul said solemnly when his daughter reached the car, noticing her hands were wrapped tightly around a sparkly handbag. ‘This is Stella – she’s coming bowling with us, remember? I told you on the phone.’

  Stella had got out of the car and was crouching down next to Hannah, making all the right noises, complimenting her outfit and her headband and the little bag. ‘What have you got in there?’ she asked, bending her head so Hannah could whisper her answer directly into her ear. ‘Ah,’ Stella said, standing tall again and nodding seriously. ‘I always carry one of those too.’ While Paul strapped Hannah into her seat, Stella caught his eye and gave him a secret wink that made his heart beat just a little bit faster.

  On the way to the Xscape complex, Paul tried to join in the conversation that was flowing just out of his reach on the back seat, where Stella had insisted on sitting with Hannah. As predicted, the two of them got on like a house on fire – bad choice of metaphor, Paul thought, must not use that in front of Stella – and soon Paul was feeling royally left out. Not that he minded one bit. It was great to see the two of them so happy. There would be plenty of time for bonding later. Today was just about having fun. Bowling and pizza, maybe watch the skiing, to everyone else’s eyes just another happy family enjoying a Saturday afternoon out. No need to make it any more complicated than that.

  Chapter 18

  Sunday 22nd July

  There’s a baby inside me. An actual baby. It’s the weirdest thing, the weirdest feeling. According to the book my grandma got me from the library it’s about the size of a grape now, but on the internet when I looked it up it said it was the size of a baked bean. So I guess even the experts don’t know everything. In the pictures it looks like a seahorse, a tiny little baked-bean-seahorse growing in my tummy.

  Fuck. What have I done?

  Rob is getting on my nerves. I haven’t told my mum this – she’s only just starting to talk about him without hissing. I told Rosie but she’s no use; she’s been all weird since I got pregnant and I think it’s because she hasn’t had sex yet (although she said she had before, it was her who told me it was “awesome”, which it certainly is not).

  Anyway, Rob is starting to act weird too, like an old man, talking about “our responsibilities” and “being sensible”. I’m not allowed to drink, apparently. No one told me about that one. My mum said I’m not allowed to drink anyway because I’m only sixteen. No sympathy there.

  I’m not allowed
to eat Brie (which I don’t like anyway but that’s not the point) or pate (ditto) or rare steak (ditto with knobs on). Everyone keeps telling me to be careful, not to lift this, not to do that, don’t stretch, don’t run, don’t breathe! Mind you, I’m so knackered I don’t feel like doing much anyway, but that’s not the point. It’s like I’ve stopped existing and all I’m here for is to provide a safe body for the seahorse.

  I think my mum has guessed how I’m feeling. Maybe she felt like this herself when she had me – which is weird to think about. She keeps trying to think of non-baby stuff to do and to talk about and I’m so grateful I just want to hug her all the time. She’s been quiet tonight though, and I think she’s got something on her mind. I hope it’s nothing too bad; she deserves a break after everything that’s happened to her recently. I think I’ll get up early tomorrow and make her breakfast in bed before she goes to work. At least she won’t say, ‘Oh, be careful you don’t fall over with that tray.’ At least my mum treats me like a normal person, not an idiot.

  Lipsy paused and scratched her head. It was true that her mum seemed to be the only person she could really be herself with at the moment. But her mum clearly had problems of her own, problems that Lipsy would love to help with if only she knew what they were. She wondered if it could be something to do with Granddad again – her mum hadn’t mentioned how the visit went but she had seemed quite upbeat afterwards. Lipsy had overheard her telling Bonnie yesterday that she might even go back and see him again on Thursday. This sounded like good news. Lipsy wanted nothing more than for her whole family to be one big happy unit – in fact she felt pretty sure she couldn’t cope with the whole baby thing if they weren’t.

  She tapped her teeth with her pen. If her mum didn’t want to tell her what was wrong there was nothing she could do about it. Maybe it was man trouble. God, she thought, what if she does decide to get back together with my dad? That, as far as Lipsy could see, would be a Very Big Mistake. Not that she didn’t like him – love would be too strong a word after only knowing him a few years. But she’d picked up enough of the story of what had happened between them to know that there was a lot of history there – and not the good kind.

  Besides, they just don’t look right together somehow. And he clearly winds her up – on purpose sometimes. Like at the decorating party, after that dippy Joshua had trashed the shower screen, her dad had followed her mum around all afternoon making digs about it.

  ‘What’s Captain Clean up to?’ he kept saying. ‘Where’s Scourer Man?’

  Her mum had tried to ignore him but eventually snapped, ‘Will you just leave me alone.’ She’d thrown down her paintbrush, splattering Hessian Blush all over the floor of the spare room. ‘Or better still, leave us all alone. Sixteen years we hear nothing from you and now all of a sudden you’re everywhere I look. You’re like a virus.’

  ‘You weren’t complaining when I was doing your tiling,’ Lipsy heard her dad say in what she thought was a very sulky voice. She was standing in the doorway, en route to the bathroom to carry on with the cleaning after Joshua had been sent elsewhere. The door was half open and Lipsy was trying hard not to spy.

  ‘I would think,’ her mum replied huffily, ‘that the least we are entitled to is a bit of tiling. Not that it can make up for the years and years of maintenance payments you’ve missed, nor all the birthday and Christmas presents Lipsy has missed out on. So you did a bit of tiling. Whoop-de-fucking-do.’

  Go for it, Mum, thought Lipsy. She hardly ever heard her swear, didn’t know she had it in her. She supposed she should feel a bit sorry for her dad, he was obviously trying his best. He was sorry that he’d been out of their lives for so long, he’d told her so. But then again, his explanation for why he’d been out of their lives had been a bit sketchy, and Lipsy still couldn’t shake the feeling that if he didn’t still have the hots for her mum (which anyone could see he did), and if he wasn’t living in a dingy bedsit without a life of his own, he might not still be hanging around.

  Then there was Paul. She knew he and her mum had been friends, like, for ever, and he was her mum’s boss and all, but Lipsy really liked Paul; he was clever and funny and cool in a way her mum’s boyfriends were almost never cool. Part of her wished that the two of them could get together. It was pretty obvious to her that Paul’s feelings for her mother went further than just friendship. Not that her mum saw it that way.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she’d said when Lipsy had voiced her thoughts after the decorating party. ‘It’s not like that at all.’

  Lipsy had shaken her head and told her, ‘You’re wrong, Mum. I saw the way he kept looking at you today. And the way he looked at Dad. Like he wanted to punch his lights out or something.’

  ‘Well, you might be on to something there. It’s no secret that Paul doesn’t like your father, but that’s only because of what he saw me go through when he left. No, I can assure you, Paul’s feelings for me do not lie in that direction. Trust me, I know.’

  ‘But how can you be so sure?’ Lipsy had pressed.

  A shadow seemed to pass over her mother’s face before she answered. ‘I just am,’ she’d said. ‘I just am.’

  Lipsy wasn’t convinced, though. ‘I’m telling you, Mum, you’re wrong. I saw him. He was looking at you like – like he was starving and you were the best dish on the menu.’

  Anyway, Lipsy thought now, whatever happened she wished her mum would just tell her dad to back off – and mean it. Otherwise, who knew where they’d all be by the time the baby was born.

  She took the pen that she’d been absently chewing (that was probably on the list of things she shouldn’t put in her mouth too) and turned back to her diary. She had promised Rob she’d start a list of all the things they needed for the baby. “Clothes” she wrote and then “Nappies”. What else was there to buy, really?

  ***

  I’m getting into my car after a Sunday shift at Café Crème when the call comes through from my mother. As soon as I see her name on the display my heart sinks. We haven’t talked properly since before I went to visit my dad. Even at the decorating party, while she was in my kitchen playing hostess with the mostest, I was assiduously avoiding being alone with her.

  What is it with my family? Why can’t they just leave well alone? They got what they wanted, Billy and my mum – I went to see my dad. Was that enough for them? Oh, no. Now they want a complete run down of how it went: How do I feel about it? How did he seem? Am I going to go again?

  OK, maybe I haven’t received this third degree in reality but I’ve had it in my imagination and that’s just as bad. When my brother dropped in to see me today at the coffee shop I knew that while he appeared to want to moan about being thrown out of Paul’s and having to move back home, his real motive was to pump me for information about my visit. And this was probably at my mother’s instruction.

  ‘Sod off,’ I told him. And, ‘It serves you right Paul kicked you out. You’re a liability and I don’t know why he let you stay there in the first place.’ I still haven’t forgiven him for running out on us all. And his excuse for not making it to the decorating party – he had a new job. Ha! That’ll be the day.

  I look at my phone now and consider not answering it. But, like the good daughter I would so like to be, I pick up and say a weary, ‘Hi, Mum.’

  All that meets my ears is sobbing and sniffing. ‘Hang on,’ I tell her. ‘I’m on my way.’

  I arrive in Shenley Church End five minutes later. It doesn’t strike me as odd at first that the curtains and blinds are still shut. It is only when I let myself in the front door that I sense it. Call me melodramatic but I know something bad has happened. Maybe it’s the silence. My mother hates silence; she always has the television or the radio on in the background no matter what she’s doing. She even plays music low when she’s sleeping. I think it’s her way of drowning out the voices in her head but, hey, what do I know?

  I make my way down the hall, sticking my head into the dining room and th
e lounge as I go. Finding no signs of life, I carry on into the kitchen where I make a shocking discovery. The room is a complete mess – not so much “farmhouse” as “pigsty”. This is so unlike my mother I immediately imagine the worst: kidnap, alien abduction, personality transplant.

  Now I definitely know something is wrong. She is usually so house-proud she cleans all day long, except when she’s shopping of course. Not in an obsessive way like Joshua: she just likes to keep it nice, she says, in case anyone comes round. Nobody ever does.

  Feeling a little panicked, I climb the stairs, passing all the doors to the other bedrooms and bathroom before I arrive outside my mum’s. I pause. Should I knock or go straight in? I can’t remember the last time I went in there. It could be as far back as when I was a kid. I have a mental picture of pink curtains heavily patterned with roses and a kidney-shaped dressing table draped with fabric and topped with a lethal slice of glass. The dressing table was always covered with coloured bottles, boxes of powder and brushes, thick with hair.

  I open the door and step inside.

  The pink curtains with the roses have gone, only to be replaced with a spookily similar pair in cerise and white with a frilly pelmet and trim. The rest of the room is just as I remember, right down to the dressing table – they might even be the same bottles, they certainly look dusty enough. Not so house-proud in here then. Maybe she doesn’t expect anyone else to see it.

  My attention is drawn to the bed where I spot a mother-shaped lump underneath layers of covers. Thankfully, even from the doorway I can see that the lump is breathing.

  ‘Mum,’ I whisper, creeping over to the bed and sitting gingerly on the edge. As I sit I hear a clanking sound by my feet and I lift up a crumpled blanket to reveal an empty wine bottle and a half-empty bottle of gin (bottles of gin are never half full).