by Lisa Jewell
‘What – she’s pregnant?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Oh, Vince! That’s fantastic! That really is brilliant news!’
‘Yes.’ He stirred the cube idly around his cup, watching it shrink away to nothing. ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’
‘You must be so excited. And so terrified, too.’
He smiled wryly. ‘A fair amount of the former and shitloads of the latter.’
She laughed. ‘So have you sorted out your problems, you know, with Jess’s partying and staying out and everything?’
‘Yeah, kind of. I mean obviously now she’s pregnant she’s not exactly going to be clubbing and drinking anyway. She’s feeling pretty ropey, so it’s not really an issue at the moment. God knows how it’s going to work out for us in the long term, but right now it’s good. It’s exciting. It’s an adventure…’
Joy made a strange noise, halfway between a snort and laugh.
‘What?’
‘Sorry. Nothing. It’s just, George’s best man, Wilkie. Bless him – he was so flummoxed and so bewildered by the whole thing, really didn’t have a clue what was going on. And that was what he said in his speech. He said, “If nothing else, it’ll be an adventure.’” And boy, was he right.’
‘Well, yeah, it’s all a learning curve, I guess… ‘ ‘But you love her, don’t you? You do love Jess?’ He nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I do.’
‘And she loves you?’
‘Yeah. Well, I think so. I mean, she’s not actually said it, but she shows it. She’s loving, you know.’
‘Well, then – that’s all that matters. If you love each other, whatever happens you can deal with it, you can work it out. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that it’s really not much fun having an adventure with someone you’re not in love with.’
‘Yeah,’ Vince smiled. ‘I can see that.’ He looked up at someone hovering in his peripheral vision. It was Terry, another BSM instructor. He was looking at Vince expectantly, a mug of tea in one hand, his paperwork in the other. Vince patted the seat next to him and Terry sat down.
‘And whatever happens between you and Jess,’ Joy continued, ‘whether you stay together or split up, if you love each other there’ll always be that strong foundation there for your child.’
‘Yeah,’ said Vince, ‘you’re right.’ He was feeling selfconscious now, with Terry sitting next to him bristling with his desire to strike up conversation.
‘And it’s funny,’ Joy went on, ‘how people always say that marriage is the greatest commitment you can make to another person, the biggest decision you’ll ever make in your life. And maybe once upon a time it was. And obviously, I stayed with George a lot longer than I would have if I hadn’t married him, but, once I’d decided it was over, all I had to do was pop into WH Smiths, pick up a DIY divorce kit, fill it in and I never, ever have to see George again as long as I live. But babies – they’re the real commitment, aren’t they? The real glue that keeps people together. Without babies it’s all just paperwork…’
‘Yes,’ said Vince, ‘indeed. Look. Joy. I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to go.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘Someone needs to talk to me.’
‘No, that’s fine. I’ve chewed your ear off for longer than I intended to anyway. It’s just that I promised I’d call and I never break promises – oh, except ones I make in register offices, that is.’
Vince laughed. ‘I’m glad you called. Really glad. A lot’s happened to both of us since that day in Neal’s Yard.’
‘A lot’s happened to us since Hunstanton!’
‘It certainly has, it certainly has. Look, let’s stay in touch this time, eh?’
‘Definitely. I’ve got your number. And now you’ve got mine – it’ll be on your phone.’
‘Yeah. Of course. I’ll save it. And I’ll be in touch. Maybe we could get together one night, for a drink?’
‘I’d love that,’ said Joy. ‘I really would.’
‘Excellent. Well then, I’ll call you or you call me, and we’ll arrange something. Definitely’
‘Cool. I look forward to it.’
‘Me, too. And, look – well done for leaving. You’re very brave.’
‘And congratulations to you. And Jess. You’re very brave, too!’
They said goodbye and Vince slipped his phone back into his shirt pocket and turned to Terry. ‘Old friend,’ he said, by way of explanation.
Terry nodded, clearly entirely uninterested.
Vince picked up his somewhat limp toastie and ate it unenthusiastically. The cheese inside had turned cold and rubbery, and he didn’t feel particularly hungry any more.
He listened to Terry banging on about his new conservatory and thought about Joy, free, unencumbered and ready to grasp her new life firmly with both hands. It was as if she’d been reborn, as if she was getting a second stab at life. And as he thought about her he felt a sudden sense of loss that he wasn’t able to join her on her journey. He wanted to help her find a flat, help her find a job, celebrate every moment of her new-found freedom with her.
Because, even though he adored Jess, even though he was as proud as hell of his impending state of fatherhood and even though this was everything he’d always wanted, there was still a small but powerful part of him that felt overwhelmingly like he was a passenger on the wrong bus, heading towards the wrong part of town.
And if he was to follow Jon’s bus analogy to its logical conclusion, then he couldn’t help feeling that the day he’d bumped into Joy, the day Jess had told him she was pregnant, he’d actually been standing on the platform of the bus, ready to get off. And maybe if Jess hadn’t told him she was pregnant he’d have somehow ended up on the same bus as Joy. Because every instinct in his body was telling him that that was exactly where he was supposed to be.
He stared at his phone as Terry talked. Joy’s number was on there. He could call her tonight. Make plans to see her. Place himself firmly back in her life. But he knew that he wouldn’t. Because Joy wasn’t just an ‘Old friend’ – she was his first love, his soul mate and someone he still had frighteningly strong feelings for.
He’d leave it up to her. If she called, then he’d see her. If she didn’t, then he’d take it as a sign. Not that he believed in signs, but sometimes leaving things to fate was the simply the easiest option.
Vince didn’t save Joy’s number on his phone, and Joy didn’t call him.
Al & Emma’s Kitchen, 1.50 a.m.
‘You’re kidding!’ exclaimed Natalie. ‘After all that. Bloody psychic cats and predestined meetings and lost ships and wrong buses and God knows what else, you just lost touch?’
‘Yup.’
‘But that’s terrible,’ said Emma. ‘I mean, you two were so obviously destined to be together.’
‘Do you think?’
‘Er – duh– what do you think? I know you don’t believe in destiny and, actually, I don’t either particularly. But sometimes you’ve just got to think that God’s trying to tell you something.’
Vince smiled and topped up his wine glass. All the men had left the table one by one as Vince’s story had unfolded. He could hear them now in the living room, chatting loudly about Balamory and colic. Having children had made women out of all of them.
The girls remained, however, enraptured by this story of missed chances, crossed wires and lost loves.
‘But you’re single now, Vince. What if she was, too? What would you do?’
‘God, I don’t know. Go out for a drink, I suppose. Get to know each other again. See what happened. But that’s not going to happen, is it, because I didn’t keep her number. I’ve got no way of contacting her.’
‘God, you anus,’ said Natalie, slapping her hands against the tabletop with frustration. ‘God keeps throwing this woman in your path and you don’t even keep her fucking phone number. You really are a dickwad.’
Vince smiled. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if God wants me to
get it together with Joy so badly, maybe he’ll throw her into my path again.’
‘Ah, so, you don’t believe in destiny, but you do believe in serendipity?’
‘Is there a difference?’
‘God knows,’ slurred Emma, ‘but I tell you what. Next time she comes into your life, you’d better do the right thing or frankly you deserve to end up alone and unloved.’
There was a brief, uncomfortable silence as it dawned on the group that this was a little insensitive in the light of Vince’s current circumstances.
‘Oh, shit,’ said Emma, ‘I’m sorry, Vince. I didn’t mean to…’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘Really, it’s fine.’
‘So,’ Natalie glanced briefly at Emma, and began cautiously, ‘what happened? With you and Jess? Why did you split up?’
Vince smiled. It was blatantly obvious that the girls had spent hours speculating about the abrupt end of his marriage to Jess and had only found the courage to ask him about it at the bottom of a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.
‘I mean, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to… ‘ she added, taking his silence as a sign of discomfort.
‘No,’ he said, ‘really, it’s fine. I don’t mind talking about it. It all started going wrong when Lara was six months old…’
August 2001
Teen Spirit
Fifty-Three
Lara May Mellon-James was delivered in Jess’s mother’s living room in the very small hours of a windy February night, to the sounds of Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Vince had loaded 100 of his and Jess’s favourite songs of all time on to his MP3 player, and left them playing on a loop throughout the labour. The idea was that whatever song was playing when the baby was delivered would be his or her theme tune for the rest of his or her life.
Lara had failed to arrive during ‘We Have All the Time in the World’ or ‘Perfect Day’ or ‘Golden Brown’ or ‘Dancing Queen’ or ‘Nobody Does It Better’, and had emerged instead just as Kurt Cobain started screaming, ‘Here we are now, entertain us.’
Neither Jess nor her mother, nor even the midwife, had been aware of which song was playing in the excitement of the moment. It was only a few days later that Jess asked Vince if he’d noticed. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘I think it was “Wonderful World”.’ He’d tell her one day, maybe when Lara was a teenage rebel with body piercings, but in the midst of the existential perfection of having a newborn baby in their lives he didn’t feel she needed to know.
Lara’s birth marked the end of a nine-month period of ongoing tension between Vince and Jess. Jon was still living at Jess’s when she was nearly eight months’ pregnant, and Jess refused to enter into any serious discussions on the subject of their long-term living arrangements. Jon moved out suddenly and messily one afternoon, after a row that Jess refused to elaborate on, adding even more fuel to Vince’s loitering suspicion that he might have had something to do with Jess’s pregnancy. In the days leading up to Lara’s birth Vince had seriously entertained the prospect of finishing things with Jess and becoming a part-time father.
But the days and weeks following the birth of Lara May Mellon-James turned out to be the happiest of Vince’s life. He and Jess floated around in a big pink bubble of delight and amazement, completely oblivious to the world around them. And any lingering doubts he might have had about the paternity of his child were extinguished the minute he first saw her face. It was like looking at a miniature version of himself.
‘It’s a genetic trick,’ said Jess. ‘Nature makes a newborn baby look just like its father so that he knows it’s his and doesn’t mind going out and spearing a few wild boar for the mother. Clever, isn’t it?’
Lara May had thick yellow hair and legs like a chicken’s, and was covered all over in a soft layer of white down. ‘She looks just like a baby duck,’ said Kirsty when she saw her for the first time.
Lara and Jess took to breastfeeding like a pair of pros, and Vince would watch in amazement as his tiny daughter attached herself so confidently to the lifeline of her mother’s body. Kirsty hadn’t breastfed any of her children and this was the first time that Vince had watched the process at such close quarters. He’d seen women feeding their babies from a distance, in restaurants and parks, but always averted his gaze, as he would if he saw two people kissing passionately or a man urinating against a wall. But watching Lara and Jess nestled silently together against a cloud of cushions, Vince decided that it was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen in his Ufe.
If Vince had been a bit on the soft side before Lara was born, he transmogrified into a human marshmallow the moment she arrived. Everything Lara did filled him with amazement and awe. He bathed her every night in lavender-scented bubbles and gently patted her dry with a soft towel, which he snatched from the radiator at the very last minute to prevent it from losing even a degree of heat. He paraded proudly around Enfield Town with Lara strapped to his chest in a sling and showed pictures of her to all his students, whether they expressed an interest or not.
Fatherhood had lived up to all his expectations, and more. He felt complete for the first time in his life. Jess was the most incredible mother, and the two of them had never been happier together. Seeing her with Lara, so gentle and loving, so strong and nurturing, reminded him of exactly why he’d fallen in love with her in the first place. The subject of their living arrangements hadn’t ever been formalized, but 80 per cent of his possessions now lived at Jess’s, so it was as near as dammit.
For the first six months of Lara’s life, everything was perfect. It wasn’t until one sunny Sunday the following summer that everything started to go wrong.
*
It was the end of Jess’s maternity leave and rather than get involved in the time-consuming business of expressing milk for Lara to have during the day, Jess decided it would be easier to stop breastfeeding completely. She phased out Lara’s feeds, one by one, until she was entirely bottle-feeding her.
Once she was free of the restrictions of being her child’s only source of milk, she asked Vince to look after Lara for the day. She was starting back at work the following week and needed a day to herself. Vince didn’t hesitate in saying yes. He loved spending time with Lara, especially now he could feed her himself.
‘I’m going into town,’ she said, applying mascara for the first time in six months. ‘I need some new clothes for work. None of my pre-pregnancy ones fit me any more.’ She cupped her still rounded belly. ‘And I want to have a pedicure. Look –’ She showed him her feet. They looked fine to Vince, but were, apparently, ‘minging’. ‘And then I’m meeting Jon in Regent’s Park, for a picnic…’
‘Jon?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jon Jon?’
‘Yes,’ she hissed, ‘Jon Jon.’
‘But, I thought you two had fallen out.’
‘No,’ she looked at him as if he was slightly retarded. ‘Where on earth did you get that from?’
‘From the fact that you haven’t seen him since he moved out…’
‘Of course I’ve seen him.’
‘What?’
‘I see him at least once a week. He comes over here or we go to see him in his new place.’ ‘But when?’
‘God, I don’t know,’ she muttered, stuffing keys into her handbag. ‘During the day, while you’re at work.’
‘But I don’t understand. The last I heard, you two had had a row, he stormed off and you’ve not mentioned him since.’
‘Good grief, Vince. Did you honestly think that Jon and I would let a stupid little argument kill off our friendship?’
‘Christ, I don’t know. I just assumed…’
‘What – and not let him see Lara?’
‘So when did you two make it up?’
‘When he got back from the States.’
‘He went to the States?’
‘Yes, just after he moved out of here. And he phoned the minute he got back and came straigh
t round to see Lara.’
‘But why didn’t you mention it?’
‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged, and leaned down to pick Lara up from where she’d been sitting on the sofa watching her parents argue. ‘It just didn’t seem important. You don’t tell me everything you do every day…’
‘That’s because I don’t do anything worth telling you about. I teach people to drive, then I come home.’
‘Yes. But you don’t talk about your students or what you talk about or where you have your lunch.’
‘But what about me?’ he said. ‘I really like Jon. I’d like to see him, too. Show him my daughter. Show off a bit, you know. Why do you have to see him on your own?’
She smoothed down Lara’s tufty hair and stroked her cheek. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘it’s no big deal. I’ll invite him over next weekend. We’ll have lunch. Just chill out, my angel boy. Why do you always have to get so worked up about things?’ She put her hand to his face and cupped his cheek tenderly.
The feel of her hand against his skin softened him immediately. ‘I’m not getting worked up.’ He kissed the palm of her hand. ‘It’s just, I really like Jon…’
‘I know you do, my angel.’
‘And I want us to do things as a family, you know.’
‘I know you do.’
‘And I’m so proud of you both, of us.’
‘Aww…’ She pulled him towards her and they engaged in a family hug. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I promise. I’ll talk to Jon today. Arrange something for next weekend.’ She handed Lara over to him, looped her handbag over her shoulder and left the flat with a cheery ‘See you later.’
Vince and Lara had a lovely day together. After her morning nap, he put her in the car and drove round to see Chris and his mum. Vince’s grandmother was there and it was a beautiful sunny day, so they all sat out in the garden watching Chris light the barbecue.
‘So where’s Jess off to today?’ said Kirsty, rubbing sun cream into her knees.
‘Into town,’ said Vince, bouncing Lara on his lap. ‘Said she needed some new clothes for when she goes back to work tomorrow.’