by Adele Parks
But then, nor had her mother.
Nat began to expect departures. She did not allow herself to become too accustomed or attached to any of the pretty or not-so-pretty nannies as she knew they were finite. With a child’s logic, Nat reasoned that perhaps she deserved the constant departures, that she wasn’t someone who was worthy of an eternal commitment or constancy. Nina went some way to repairing that viewpoint.
Nina had come into Brian and Nat’s lives when Nat was four and a half. Nina had been Nat’s reception class teacher. She was already half in love with the child before she’d even met Brian at the October parents’ evening. Brian instantly noticed Nina’s cheerful smile and kind eyes but he was used to well-meaning women smiling at him with compassion and tenderness and that alone would not have encouraged him to move the relationship outside the classroom and away from the mini chairs and chalk boards. It was only when Nina crossed her legs and her wrap-round skirt split open, providing Brian with a flash of her thigh, that he thought to offer to take her out for a coffee. Had she shown him her thigh on purpose? Had he really felt a flicker of desire? It had been so, so long since he thought about anyone in that way, since he’d noticed anyone think of him in that way, that he wasn’t sure.
Nina had burst into Nat and Brian’s lives with spectacular energy. While Nat and Nina might now scream with laughter if they ever looked back at old photos of the eighties, at the time Nat had regarded Nina as some sort of modern-day fairytale princess. Nina had been fashionable, informed and energetic. It seemed that she knew everything there was to know about the New Romantic movement, which she talked about with great animation. Nat had no idea what or who the New Romantics were but she was sure that somehow Nina embodied it, whatever it was. After all, Nina was new and romantic, reasoned Nat. In the classroom, Nina chose to wear frilly blouses and tartan skirts, with her hair scraped into a tight knot, but at the weekend she wore her hair wild, wide and teased. She liked ripped jeans and neon fingerless gloves, she accessorised with large hooped earrings. Impressively, Nina could complete every side of Rubik’s cube and she could moonwalk; plus she was prepared to demonstrate both skills whenever Nat asked her to. No matter where they were or how often Nat asked, Nina didn’t tire of her.
Nina liked the fact that the Prime Minister of Britain was a woman but she loathed the woman herself and would often shout heatedly at the TV. On one occasion she’d thrown an open packet of tomato-flavoured crisps in frustration. Nat had thought this a waste, as tomato was a difficult flavour to come by and the newsreader had no idea of the protest. Nat liked it that Nina would try to explain the images that flashed across the screen and that she talked to Nat about the things she read in the newspaper, even though most of it remained complex and inaccessible. Somehow, Nat understood that it was a compliment that Nina wanted her to be part of the world and that Nina had a commitment to bringing the world to her. Mostly, Nat liked it when they played with her cabbage patch doll and Care Bears.
Nina had views and plans and politics, she had fashion sense, a record collection and a make-up bag, but most of all she had love. So, so much love. She had wanted to wash Nat and Brian in her love, she wanted it to flood around their bodies and flow through their veins, and very soon they admitted they wanted that too.
Until Nina, Nat had always carried, somewhere deep in the pit in her stomach, the hard, bleak feeling of loneliness. Even when she was in company, even when she was sitting on her father’s knee, she felt alone. It was as though she had swallowed a filthy, huge rock that she could not digest. Initially, it had sat in her belly, causing a cramping, disabling pain, but in time, as Nat had become accustomed to the loneliness, she no longer felt pain, she felt something more akin to a throbbing discomfort or the occasional flare-up of irritation. It took some time but eventually Nat stopped feeling quite so lonely. Nina’s constant, unwavering commitment to Nat’s welfare and happiness and Nina’s frequently and eloquently expressed assurances of love salved the loneliness.
There was a period when Nat felt guilty for loving Nina back with such ferocity and a few years later she also wondered whether it was OK to be quite so delighted with her bridesmaid dress and slippers and the fact that Brian and Nina were marrying. After all, these things were only happening because her mother was dead and she, Nat, had been the cause of that death. The guilt and grief caused her to stuff her bridesmaid dress down the loo and try to flush it away, as she would flush the shame and guilt if only she could. Nina had understood. She’d held the weeping child until her fury and fear had subsided. She rightly saw terror where others might only have seen a tantrum or anarchy. They secretly bought a new dress without even mentioning the incident to Brian. Both females agreed that even dry-cleaning would not make the original bridesmaid’s dress OK.
It was such a little secret. Quite understandable. But then there were bigger secrets, equally well-intended but undeniably bigger. Nina became Nat’s mother and everyone wanted it to be so. Nat wanted it so badly that she called Nina ‘Mummy’ from the moment the confetti was launched into the air. And so when, a few years later, Nina discovered she was pregnant, Brian and Nina made the decision that they would not tell this new baby that Nat was a half-sister. They did not see a reason to mention the dead mother to any of the small boys that followed. Nina and Brian reasoned it might potentially lead to Nat feeling left out again. No one wanted that. She was doing so well. She was overcoming her shyness, she rarely stuttered and even her clumsiness was abating somewhat. Children could tease horribly. It terrified Nina that one day the boys (mid sibling squabble) might taunt Nat with the fact that Nina wasn’t her real mother, so they decided not to mention the fact. They took this decision and then moved to Guildford where none of the neighbours knew their history. Nat had seen the best intentions and accepted her parents’ plan as she accepted anything her wonderful parents suggested (other than early bedtimes and extra recorder practice, those things she would argue about!). Indeed, Nina’s keenness to pass Nat off as a blood daughter made her feel especially wanted, just as Nina had hoped.
Years of normal family life, including rows about homework, TV watching and curfew times went a long way to healing Nat and Brian. Their grief, quite different but equally real, was stored away somewhere deep and private. From time to time Brian deliberately accessed his grief in order to commemorate or in order to celebrate. Nat kept hers securely buried and the only lasting tribute she bestowed on her mother’s memory was to swear that she would never, ever give birth. She would never, ever risk bringing a baby into this world and then leaving it all alone. No matter that she now had a loving stepmother. No matter that the odds of the same thing happening to her were minuscule. No matter that her husband wanted a baby. No matter what.
‘Lucky that you met a man who understood that you didn’t want babies and why you don’t,’ said Alan, interrupting Nat’s private thoughts. ‘I said you would, didn’t I?’
Yes, he had said that, as he’d hastily picked up his things and packed his bags. He’d said that Nat was a super girl and that she’d definitely meet a man who didn’t want babies just as she didn’t. Probably many, many men, he’d reassured. After all, they were only twenty-two years old. At that time in their lives Alan had been slightly unusual in his certainty that he did want kids, just as Nat was unusual for her certainty that she didn’t. But, despite his consolations and his predictions about her finding a future soul-mate, there had been something about the look in Alan’s eyes that condemned her. It had been there from the exact moment she’d told him why she didn’t want babies. That look sickened and haunted her. He regarded her as a crazy woman; that much was crystal clear. Not necessarily crazy because she didn’t want babies but crazy because she believed that she, too, might die in childbirth. He’d thought her unreasonable and hysterical. He’d spent a few days reciting statistics to her about how very few women suffered this tragic thing. He’d asked about her mother’s health so that he could ascertain whether she’d suffered from a
condition that Nat might have inherited. He’d tried to reason with her, but she was not reasonable. Nat could not shift her fear that she might leave a tiny baby girl alone in this world, a baby burdened with the knowledge that she had killed her mother. She couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t risk that. Not for anyone. Alan, who had encouraged Nat’s timidity in terms of hemlines and social interaction, was now demanding that she be brave and fearless about the one thing that scared her most. He did not understand how she could be such a coward. That was the word he had used, just once, in their final row. He’d regretted it immediately and rushed to retract it but the word had been branded on to her consciousness. Of course Alan would think she was a coward. That was what most people would think. Crazy or a coward. Unreasonable or gutless.
Nat decided she would never again risk telling anyone the truth; it was better that they thought she was a career bitch or just plain selfish as she was not willing to bring up kids. She reasoned that it didn’t matter why she didn’t want kids, what mattered was that she didn’t want them.
‘I’ve never told Neil why I don’t want kids,’ confessed Nat bluntly. She wasn’t sure why she felt compelled to tell Alan as much. Wine consumption possibly. Desperation probably.
‘Oh.’ Alan looked surprised.
‘And now he wants kids.’
‘Oh.’ Now, Alan looked uncomfortable.
‘Should I get another bottle?’ offered Nat. Getting drunk seemed like the only answer.
‘No, I’ll get it. My round.’
27
‘So I take it you had a good time with Becky last night?’ Neil asked this question while lying prone in their bed. He stared at the ceiling, rather than meet his wife’s eye. This wasn’t the question he wanted to ask but it was a start.
‘Uh huh,’ said Nat.
‘Where did you go?’
‘I thought I told you.’ Nat was pretty sure she had made up a lie about where she’d supposedly been last night but was now uncertain as to exactly what it was she’d said. She didn’t want to say anything more, in case her second lie contradicted her first one and Neil noticed.
‘Oh, yes, the pair of you were going into Leicester Square to see a movie and grab a bite to eat, right?’
‘Right,’ said Nat carefully. She thought Neil was behaving a little strangely. As they’d operated like ships that pass in the night of late, she was no longer used to him taking so much notice of what she’d been up to. She checked the date on her watch. It was the thirteenth. A Friday. Friday the thirteenth was not a date to get sloppy about alibis, thought Nat superstitiously.
‘Did that pan out?’ he asked, trying to sound casual.
‘Well, we missed the start of the film, so we skipped that and then we drank more than we ate,’ said Nat. She realised she had to account for her drunken state last night. Her heart beat at treble speed. Despite popular wisdom, Nat had found that lying didn’t become easier with increased frequency. In fact, the more lies she embedded in their relationship, the worse she felt.
Neil’s stomach plummeted. He’d hoped to hear that there’d been a change of plan.
‘Why aren’t you getting ready for work?’ asked Nat. She hoped for a change of subject.
‘I’m taking it easy this morning. I’m planning on having a lie-in and then going to work after the rush hour is over.’
Neil wanted to say that he was hanging around the house because he thought there was a dire need for them to talk. The opportunities to do so in the evenings were increasingly infrequent, whereas the need to do so was patently increasingly urgent.
The room smelt stale, full of sour breath, sweat and yesterday’s alcohol. Neil wanted to fling open a window and let in some fresh life, even if that meant an icy, November blast of wind, but opening a window would require moving and he didn’t feel ready to give up his duvet yet. Where had she been last night? Really been? Neil didn’t believe his wife’s account as he’d spotted Becky, quite by chance, at Hammersmith tube station last night and she’d been alone, Nat was nowhere in sight.
Or at least he thought it was Becky, he was almost certain the girl in the blue hat, recharging her Oyster card, was Becky but he supposed there was a possibility he had been mistaken. A possibility he both embraced and doubted, like he would an errant lover. The problem was he couldn’t mention the sighting to Nat outright. How would he explain why he was in Hammersmith at 5.45p.m.? It wasn’t his usual route home from work. He’d said he was having a quiet night in and it was true, in part. He’d left Hush Hush early, even Cindy couldn’t distract him. He had been home by 9p.m. Then he’d spent the rest of the night quietly stewing.
Neil was not normally the sort of man to wrap himself up in livid tangles of desolate nasty imaginings. Stupid suspicions and distasteful deductions were a sure route to a sort of hell he never wanted to visit. That said, if a wife (who was refusing to even discuss having a baby) had recently taken to frequently going out alone (offering up only the most cobweb-thin alibis and excuses as to her whereabouts) then most blokes would leap to the conclusion that said wife was having an affair. They might then try to get hold of her phone to get a look at her call log or they might hack into her email account to see if they could find evidence to back up their torrid, sordid, horrid conclusion. But not Neil, he was above that and Nat was better than that. Wasn’t she? He told himself that there’d be some uncomplicated reason to explain why Nat hadn’t been with Becky last night and yet had said she was.
He just couldn’t think what that simple explanation might be.
Maybe Becky had just popped to the station to refill her Oyster card and then returned to work to meet Nat. Or maybe Nat had followed Becky into central London once she’d finished up at work. Nat was very conscientious, that was possible.
Possible but not probable.
Neil looked at his wife. Could she be having an affair? She looked just the same as she had the morning before. Same blond hair swishing around her toned shoulders, her lips were still as plump as ever (although the smile seemed to have gone AWOL). Her eyes were the same vibrant, stunning blue and her arse was just as tidy. Yes, she looked the same as she always had. She didn’t look like someone who was lying and deceiving him. He caught a glimpse of himself in the dressing-table mirror. But then nor did he look like someone who was lying and deceiving, he looked unchanged too. What a shambles.
‘You’ll be late,’ she warned.
‘Yes, technically.’ He couldn’t bring himself to care about that.
‘Won’t you get into bother?’ Nat was conducting this conversation while rushing around the room pulling together the things she needed for work. Last night, she’d carelessly dropped her handbag in the corner of the room, the contents of which were now scattered nearby. She hurriedly picked up her mobile phone, her lipstick, her purse and the Little Black Book; slyly, she slipped it out of sight. She couldn’t imagine Neil asking her about the book, let alone him associating the book with her ever more frequent independent nights out, but it was a risk she didn’t want to take. A flame of guilt roared in her gut, which manifested as exasperation with Neil. ‘Well, won’t you get into bother?’ she snapped.
Neil was becoming immune to Nat’s irritated tone; it was white noise to him nowadays. ‘It’s not as though I’m scrambling up the corporate ladder, desperate for my next promotion. I leave that to the family men in the office,’ he snapped back.
Nat bit down hard on her enragement. So, he was making another point. Or rather, he was making the same point in yet another way. He didn’t have a family, so why bother with work? Was that it? ‘That’s so responsible,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Do I have to remind you we might not have kids but we do have a mortgage?’
‘Oh, relax. I’m going to be forty minutes late, I’m not handing in my notice. You’re overreacting because you’re hung-over.’
‘I’m not hung-over.’
‘I’d say you are.’
‘Oh, well, if you say I am, I must be,’ Natalie mu
ttered. He was right, actually. She felt terrible.
Meeting up with Alan had been a mistake on a number of levels. For a start, the second Friday in the month was a bad day to have a hangover as that was when the monthly heads of department status meetings took place at work. Nat usually tried to be especially perky and responsive for those meetings and that was particularly important now, considering yesterday they’d been told budgets had to be cut and head count too, possibly. This was not the time to become slovenly; she needed to be at the top of her game. She looked at Neil and considered explaining all of this to him, but what would be the point, she asked herself with a defeated internal shrug. He didn’t even know about her last promotion, he wasn’t aware that she was head of a department.
Besides hampering her chances to shine at the office today, Nat also deeply regretted meeting Alan Jones because the evening was categorically the worst of all her get-togethers with her ex-boyfriends. Talking to Alan had reawakened all her old feelings of grief and guilt and sadness, a lethal cocktail when mixed with vulnerability, insecurity and paranoia; feelings she had worked for years to put aside.
Bugger.
Nat was ashamed that she’d got so drunk last night, that she was lying to her husband and that she couldn’t explain her refusal to give him his heart’s desire. It was irritating that her hangover didn’t numb her stinging conscience. Her head felt fluffy and her tongue was furry, her fingers were cold and her legs were slow. She wanted to admit this and much more to Neil. Part of her desperately wanted to tell him all about Alan, and her other exes, and the Little Black Book come to that. She wanted him to put his arms around her, to soothe her, then perhaps draw her back into bed. She knew the cosy, warm comfort that being under the duvet would guarantee; she still remembered that. If only they could talk and make love, she’d feel better, so much better. She was sure of it. If there was one thing that meeting her exes was teaching her, it was that no one ever healed her with such a tender touch as Neil did. A word from him, a hug, a joke and she could practically feel her self-esteem repairing like skin cells in the sunshine.