by Lisa Jewell
“Are you still in Clapham?”
“Yes, still there, rattling around that huge flat, all by myself. Too busy to even buy myself a sofa. Not that I need a sofa since I’m never actually there long enough to sit down.”
“Why do you do it? Why don’t you retire?”
“I’m going to,” she said. “I’m giving myself until thirty-five and then I’m getting out. Going to get out and find myself a lovely soft husband who wants to stay at home and look after babies, and while he’s looking after the babies I’m going to do what you did. I’m going to retrain as a teacher.”
Maya’s jaw fell open.
“Thought that might take you by surprise.” Sara smiled smugly.
“Well, yeah, I mean, I just never saw you as the marrying type, let alone the baby type or the teacher type. Christ.”
“Yes, well, I can’t keep doing this. I’ve got tons of money in the bank. And I look at the women at work who are older than me, the ones who sacrificed everything, or worse, the ones who tried to have it all and ended up with children they never see and husbands they barely know anymore. And I don’t envy them. I don’t aspire to that. I want to be normal. You know, I want to be like you.”
Maya smiled uncertainly. Before Sara could order another round of expensive cocktails, she called over a waiter and asked for a bottle of house white. Sara looked at her in horror. To which Maya responded, “You’d better get used to it if you’re planning on living on a teacher’s salary.”
Sara nodded and laughed. “I suppose so,” she said, and she already seemed like a different person to the brittle, humorless woman she’d become across the years.
Sara’s pronouncement had softened Maya’s feelings towards her old friend. They had drifted away from each other at such a sharp angle over the years that she couldn’t imagine how she could ever feel close to her again. But as the minutes ticked by in the bar that night and the cheap wine made its way through her bloodstream, she found herself feeling strangely restored to herself. It was as if the Maya who’d married a twice-married man and turned herself inside out to accommodate other people’s children and the women who’d made them, the Maya who had sex out of a sense of duty, who fell asleep at night and dreamed about her stepson and then felt disappointed when she woke up in the morning and the dream fell away, leaving behind a snoring middle-aged man with a bald patch, the Maya who was sent venomous e-mails from a stranger who knew too much about her to really be a stranger, the Maya who had lost so much sense of her own identity that she had gone to a brand-new hairdresser and asked him to do whatever he wanted, that Maya seemed to fade away, leaving in her place the original version of herself: young, fresh, silly and free.
Their conversation turned to old times: to school days and old boyfriends and strange people they had known. Another bottle of wine was ordered and delivered to their table and shortly after that two champagne cocktails sent over by a pair of men standing at the bar looking at them meaningfully.
“Do you think either of them wants to be a house husband?” Sara said through her hand.
Maya turned and looked at them. “I don’t know,” she said. “Why don’t we ask them? Excuse me,” she said, beckoning to the two men, “do either of you want to be a house husband?”
The men smiled at each other and then joined them at their table. “What do you mean by a house husband?” said man number one, who was tall and fair with a small but not offensive belly bulging above his waistband.
“You mean a husband who doesn’t leave the house?” said man number two, who was dark and small but perfectly formed.
“No,” said Sara, “we mean a man who cleans the house and shops for the house and cooks food for the people who live in the house.”
“And babies,” Maya added, “a man who looks after babies.”
“While his wife goes to work.”
“And doesn’t complain about it.”
“Or feel like less of a man.”
“And what’s in it for us?” said the fair man.
“A grateful wife. Job satisfaction. A happy family.”
“Blow jobs?” said the dark-haired man.
“Yes, blow jobs.”
They both put their hands up and all four of them laughed.
The two men stayed and chatted for a good hour. It was harmless and silly, leading nowhere. They exchanged numbers at the end and Maya immediately lost hers.
“So,” said Sara, her face flushed with exhilaration, “I suppose you need to be heading home like a good married girl.” It was eleven thirty. The last two hours seemed to have sped by in twenty minutes. Maya shook her head and said, “No way. The night is young. How about another glass each for the road?”
And so they stayed for another hour and each drank a glass of wine that neither of them really needed and it felt as though they’d both shed a few layers, and when Sara leaned in towards Maya and said, very close to her face, “So, tell me, are you really happy? Like, really and truly?” Maya had barely missed a beat to say, “No. I’m not. Not really. Actually, I’m miserable.”
“I knew it,” said Sara, banging the tabletop a little too hard. “I knew you weren’t happy. What is it? Will you tell me?”
“Oh, you were right, you were right all along, Sara. They all hate me. The whole family. I try so hard. I do everything right but still I can’t do enough. And Adrian is so sweet. He’s so kind and so nice to me but he just doesn’t get it. He thinks everyone is so happy just because he is. And . . .” She hesitated. She’d been about to tell Sara about the e-mails, but even with a bottle of white wine and two strong cocktails in her system, she lost her nerve. She would never tell anyone about the e-mails, she knew that without a doubt. “And it gets worse, Sara.” She bit her lip and threw her friend a nervous look. “I think I’m in love with someone else.”
Sara clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh. God. Who?”
“His son,” she said. “Adrian’s son.”
“Not the tall snooty one with the bad smell under his nose?”
“Yes. That’s the one.”
“But, Maya, he’s a child.”
“Well, no actually, he’s twenty-two.”
“Twenty-two! Oh good God.”
“And he’s not snooty. Well, at least, he’s not as snooty as he looks. Under the surface he’s a big softhearted fool.”
Sara looked at her skeptically. “Have you . . . ?”
“No! God! No! We’ve barely kissed.”
“So?”
“So, I don’t know. He has a girlfriend. I’m married to his dad. He’s ten years younger than me. It’s ridiculous.”
“I’d say it is.”
“Sara, seriously, whatever happens, you have to swear that you will never tell anyone what I’ve just told you. Will you? Swear?”
“Of course I will,” said Sara. “It will never pass my lips. But what are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing,” said Maya. “I’m not going to do anything about it. I’m just going to keep going through the motions until I go completely numb.”
Maya got home at one a.m. Adrian was sitting up waiting for her, some plans spread out about him, an anglepoise desk lamp throwing a perfect circle of light around him, a cup of green tea at his elbow and the laptop open at his side.
“Look at you!” he said, genially. “Pissed as a fart!”
She smiled and hooked her arms around his neck. Lovely lovely Adrian.
“Good night?”
She tipped off her boots and left them where they stood on the living room floor; then she picked up the cat and brought it to her face, breathing in the
wonderful scent of clean fur. “It was really fun,” she said.
“I can tell.” He looked up at her fondly. “How was Sara?”
“She’s going to retire in two years and retrain as a teacher.”
“Wow,” said Adrian, raising an eyebrow. “Didn’t see that one coming.”
“My period started,” she announced.
He looked up at her again and she could see the machin-ations beneath his flesh, his brain trying to decide how to make his face look. He settled on sympathetic. Which was entirely wrong. She wanted him to look devastated. “Oh,” he said in his sweetest voice, “darling. I’m so sorry.”
“What are we going to do?” she asked, more dramatically than she’d intended. “What are we going to do if we can’t have a baby?”
“Of course we’re going to have a baby.”
“No,” she said firmly. “We might not. I’ve never been pregnant in my life. And I’ve taken risks. There might be something wrong with me.”
“Well, then,” said Adrian, pinching the bridge of his nose after removing his reading glasses, “we’ll have to investigate. We’ll have to do whatever it takes.”
“But is that what you want? I mean, how much do you want another baby? Enough to go through fertility treatment? Enough to spend thousands of pounds? And then it might not even work? And supposing I do get pregnant? What then? How would that work? There’d be no more weekend sleepovers for the little ones—”
Adrian interrupted her. “Why ever not?”
“Well, where would they sleep? There’s barely room for them all as it is. And how would that make them feel? Elbowed out by the new crown prince or princess. I’m just thinking . . .” She paused for a moment. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea. I mean, maybe if no baby comes we should just be philosophical about it?”
Adrian switched off the anglepoise lamp and joined her on the sofa. He cupped his hands around hers and looked at her in that way of his, that you have my full and undivided attention way, that I’m listening way. She looked back at him, at the softness of his hazel eyes, the gentleness of his face, and it hit her with full force, hard, right at the very core of herself, that she did not love him anymore. She gasped, almost silently. He was talking, something about let’s see how you feel in another month or so, we can keep having this conversation as long as you need to have it, we’d find a way if necessary, we’d find a way, and she nodded mutely and tried to reason with herself; it’s just the alcohol, it’s just my hormones, it’s just the e-mails warping my emotions. But the more she tried to reason with herself, the more certain she became.
It was over.
She didn’t want to have a baby with this man, another suitcase to add to his towering pile of baggage. She didn’t want to live here, in this guesthouse for other people’s children; she didn’t want to be the cause of more angst and more reorganization; she didn’t want to be whispered about behind her back, to have her haircuts and her Christmas puddings judged by a panel of self-justified critics; she didn’t want to sit in the backseat of the car.
She twisted her wedding ring around and around her finger as he talked, the conviction of her realization flooding her body with adrenaline. Then she took Adrian’s hand back in hers and she looked at him and she said, with a certainty that took her completely by surprise, “You know what. Actually, I think we should stop trying for a baby, Adrian. Because”—she squeezed his hand, a little too hard—“I’m not so sure about us anymore. I’m not so sure this is working.”
The silent moment that followed this pronouncement spanned millennia and galaxies. It reached every corner of the universe and wrapped itself around every inch of everything that had ever existed across all of time.
Outside a single car passed by, throwing a pale gold curtain of light across the pair of them, highlighting the numb terror in Adrian’s eyes. The silence stretched on further and Maya began to wonder if she had even said it out loud.
Then, slowly, without rancor, Adrian pulled his hand from Maya’s, got to his feet, kissed the top of her head and said, “I’m off to bed, sweetheart, I’ll see you in the morning. Love you.”
“Love you,” Maya repeated unthinkingly.
She watched him shut down his laptop, pull his plans into a neat pile, pick up a glass of water and leave the room. It was like watching a ghost. She shook her head, questioning what she had just seen, what had just happened, or failed to happen. She made herself a coffee, poured herself a glass of water, then she sat back down and drank both, efficiently and robotically. She took her phone from her bag to charge it and saw that she had a new text message. It was from Cat. She clicked it open and read it: “You FREAK! How can you not think you look gorgeous! But I’ll delete it anyway. And don’t worry, nobody saw it, just me and Luke! .”
There. There it was. The final, crushing nail. It had sounded like exactly the sort of thing that sharp-tongued Luke would say: campily cruel, designed to elicit guilty laughter. She fought back a sob of indignation and headed towards bed.
She could hear Adrian behind the bedroom door, opening and closing the wardrobe, brushing his teeth. She stood there for a while, her head spinning slightly, her hand upon the doorknob. And then she exhaled quietly, turned, and made her bed for the night in the bottom bunk of the children’s room, her head facedown on a pillow that smelled bittersweetly of Beau’s scalp.
33
August 2012
“Where’s the Board of Harmony?” said Otis, peering at the white space on the hallway wall through his fringe.
“I took it down,” said Adrian, swinging bags of groceries through the doorway to the living room and resting them on the kitchen counter.
Otis followed behind him and added his bags to the pile on the counter. “But why?”
Beau was still standing in the hallway staring at the bare spot on the wall with his jaw hanging open as though the missing whiteboard was a spectacle on a par with a holy miracle.
“Because,” said Adrian, “it made me sad. Because she did it to make everyone like her and it doesn’t seem to have worked.”
“I liked her,” said Beau indignantly.
“Yes,” said Adrian. “Of course you liked her.”
“Well, mostly I liked her,” he continued. “But also sometimes I didn’t like her.”
Adrian looked at his baby curiously from the corner of his eye. “Oh yes?”
“Yes, like when she told me to do the right thing. Because she was a teacher, but she wasn’t my teacher. And she wasn’t my mummy.”
“No,” said Adrian, “she wasn’t your teacher or your mummy.”
“But mostly I liked her.”
“Good,” said Adrian, rolling a net of satsumas into the fruit bowl.
“Well, I’m glad,” said Otis, hunting through the bags for the packet of Maoams he had somehow persuaded Adrian to buy for him. “The Board of Harmony was basically a really, really bad idea.”
Adrian threw him a curious look.
“Yeah, it was like I almost preferred it when you forgot things because at least it was you forgetting things. You know. And the crappy presents you used to get us. At least you chose them yourself.”
Adrian draped a hand of bananas over the satsumas and frowned. “But you lot were always moaning because of that kind of thing.”
“Well, I wasn’t moaning. I was happy. You were doing your best. You were just being . . . you.”
“And I got the distinct impression from all and sundry that me being me was not good enough.”
Otis shook his head and ripped open the Maoam packet. “It was good enough for me,” he said. “I didn’t see why you needed someone to come along and change
everything for you.”
“I think the idea was that Maya was improving things, not changing things.”
Otis shrugged and put a sweet into his mouth. “Whatever,” he said, “I’m just glad it’s gone. I hated it.”
Adrian flinched. There was a darkness and a heat to his words, unexpected and unsettling. He looked at his son, his middle child, this mysterious boy of his who appeared so often to have no opinions at all, suddenly expressing one—with such vehemence. And the thought occurred to him, like a small electric shock to his consciousness, that maybe it was Otis who had sent the e-mails to Maya.
He didn’t allow the thought to grow roots. He busied himself with the preparation of a meal for his two boys. He chatted with them both about all manner of interesting topics. He arranged food onto plates in pleasing patterns with bits trimmed off and separated from each other to request. And then, halfway through loading the dishwasher, while the boys sat at the kitchen counter, eating their dinner and watching something shouty on the TV, Adrian’s phone rang. The number was vaguely familiar so he took the call. It was Jonathan Baxter.
“Hi, Adrian, listen, good news. Or at least I think so. According to my wife and my daughter, Matthew has a flatmate with mismatched eyes. Not only that but she also works for him so she might easily have had access to one of my old phones.”
Adrian stood up straight, a plastic cup still clutched in his other hand. “What’s her name?”
“She’s called Abby. They’re very close-knit apparently. Best of friends.”
“God, OK . . . What do we do now? I mean, does she know I’ve been looking for her?”
“No,” said Jonathan. “No. We haven’t said anything to Matthew or to her. I wanted to let you know first. Find out how you wanted to handle things.”
“Well, right, I’d like to talk to her ideally. As soon as possible. Can you give me a number?”
Jonathan sighed. “Well, personally, I would be very happy to give you the number but my wife is being very cautious about this. A bit paranoid. You know. So we thought we could give you Matthew’s e-mail address instead; you could write to him, and take it from there. How does that sound?”