by Anna Maxted
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Do you mind?’
He looked surprised – shocked, even – to see me. But not unhappy. He stood aside for me to walk in. ‘I’ll get a T-shirt,’ he said.
He galloped up the stairs, reappearing ten seconds later in a blue T-shirt and beige shorts.
‘Have you got pants on under those?’ I said, before realising that it was a question I was only entitled to ask as the long-term girlfriend, not the long-term girlfriend whose services had been dispensed with a while back.
‘Yes,’ said Tim, rolling his eyes – which I took as a good sign.
I smiled. The house was a pit. I spotted two apple cores on the side in the front hall and there were so many odd shoes and discarded clothes and rucksacks and newspapers and other debris on the floor, it was hard to find space to put my feet.
‘After you left I got a cleaner,’ said Tim.
‘Crikey,’ I said. ‘She’s awful.’
Tim sighed. ‘She resigned, after one week. She said, “I’m a cleaner, not a tidy-upper.”’
I looked at him and wanted to throw myself into his arms, but I knew I couldn’t. Wasn’t ‘sorry’ the hardest word to say? Ridiculous – it was only two syllables.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry too,’ he said.
I stepped towards him and gave him the biggest hug. After one second he squeezed me back, so hard I squeaked.
‘I love you,’ I said. ‘Please have me back.’
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I’m so glad you’re back.’
‘I’m so much better,’ I said. ‘I’m good to go!’
‘Me too.’ He held me away from him, and said, ‘Let’s look at you.’
I pouted.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said. ‘My beautiful girl.’
We fell into a kiss, and Tim groaned and said into my hair, ‘Let’s go upstairs.’
‘Ok,’ I said, giggling, and we ran upstairs holding hands.
I was pulling him towards the bedroom, when I realised he was pulling me away from it.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I want you to see this.’
He was standing outside the baby’s room. My heart thumped. It was a test! He wanted to see if I was better, or just faking. I took a deep breath as he gripped the door handle. I was ready for it – the pale blue walls, the polished floorboards, the lampshade in the shape of a dolphin, the tiny clothes, still folded neatly on the changing table, waiting for a tiny person to wear them. I’d let that tiny person go, because I had no choice. I would never forget her, but I was ready to welcome the next arrival if – please God – there was one.
Tim opened the door, and I actually flinched.
‘What have you done?’ I shouted. ‘Where is everything? What have you done with her clothes?’
All of it. Gone. The lovingly polished floorboards – vanished, buried under wall-to-wall brown sisal matting. The walls were claret red, as if to hide blood spatter. No dolphin, instead a gloomy white cotton lampshade that fell in uneven drapes like a shroud. A vase of dead – sorry – dried flowers (who bought those any more?), a framed sketch on the wall of a naked woman (by Tim’s mother who’d taken life drawing classes, she’d scrawled the face in later, it reminded me of The Scream). A desk, a chair, and a bookcase, full of my best girl books – Elizabeth Berg, Adriana Trigiani.
I looked at Tim and he was chewing the skin around his thumbnail. He saw me look at him and he said, ‘This is your new study!’
I yanked open desk drawers to see if they might contain a tiny yellow vest with a red embroidered butterfly. I found Tipp-Ex and an eraser. ‘It’s not my new study!’ I panted. ‘It’s a room of death!’
‘A room of death! What the hell are you talking about? Room of death! I thought—’
‘Where have you put her clothes?’ I shouted. ‘Where are they?’
‘I threw them in the bin!’
‘You—’
‘They’re in my bedside drawer, you nutcase!’
‘Oh my God!’ I tried to run past him, but he caught my wrist, and pulled me to him until his face was an inch from mine.
Then he yelled, ‘I thought you wanted this! Because you didn’t want another baby! I thought you said you were better! You’re not! You’re the same! You’re going to let it ruin your whole life, when this happens to millions of people again and again, and they just get on with it and try again until they get a family—’
‘You don’t know that, some people end up childless and you don’t know what damage it’s done inside!’
‘What do you want from me, Elizabeth? Shall I put the room back the way it was and get you a black veil and you can sit in there for the next fifty years renting cloth?’
‘Tim—’
He let go of my wrist and sat in a ball, hugging his knees, and crying. ‘I can’t win, can I? I can’t win! It was my baby too! It was my baby too! And you never acknowledged that, you blamed me, like I killed it, like you were the only one in pain, and you never apologised – you never apologise! This is all your shit! You say sorry, but you don’t know the meaning of the word!’
‘Tim,’ I said, and crouched beside him. ‘Tim,’ I said, ‘please forgive me. I’ve been a monster. You’re so right. You’re so right. Forgive me. I don’t blame you. It was your baby too.’ I stroked his hair, and he let me. His eyes were red. I crawled closer, and hugged his head to my chest, and stroked his back.
Eventually, he pulled away and sniffed. ‘I even laid the carpet,’ he said. ‘It was a bugger. I had to stick it with superglue in the end. I bent all the tacks.’
‘It’s a very good study,’ I said. ‘It was a shock, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting it. I saw it and it was like a cover-up, like you were pretending the baby never happened.’
‘Lizbet,’ said Tim, ‘not every action has ten hidden meanings.’
‘I know.’
‘And how could I pretend it never happened when it’s all I’ve thought about for the last five months? I’m not the enemy. I’m the father.’
I bowed my head.
‘But I don’t want to go on and on about this. I want us to have a life. That’s not disrespectful, or callous, because I will always think about that baby. It was my baby.’
‘I know,’ I whispered.
‘Do you?’
‘I do now.’
‘At some point, you have to start seeing the good, not the bad.’
‘But,’ I said – because I felt I didn’t deserve to be totally the bad guy – ‘you didn’t say you were thinking about the baby. As far as I could see, you were just doing a lot of work.’
‘Elizabeth,’ said Tim, with a note of irritation in his voice, ‘that’s the clever thing about thoughts. They occur inside a person’s head.’
I laughed, but I wasn’t amused. ‘I take your—’
‘So you mourn the baby in an all-singing, all-dancing manner – enough for both of us – while I chop on with the selfish business of pursuing my career. That’s how you saw it.’
‘Tim! Of course not! I mean, of course, I see what you’re saying. I also threw myself into work.’ I paused. ‘I didn’t mourn the baby in an all-singing all-dancing manner. That’s a really nasty thing to say. Like I was putting it on.’
‘Right, so there was no drama queen, poor me element to your behaviour? Not eating till I could have hooked a clothes hanger off your collarbone! This false gaiety, making everyone uncomfortable? Pouring yourself drinks all the time like JR! Locking yourself in the bathroom, running a neverending bath and not answering when I shouted ‘Are you alright?’ so I had to kick the door down?’
‘I had my ears submerged! And you wanted to kick the door down.’
Tim sighed and ran his hands through his hair. ‘And if I did, doesn’t that tell you something?’
I nodded. ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Forget it.’
This was not going to plan. ‘Tim, I came here to make up with you, not make
things worse.’
‘You’re not ready to make up with me.’
‘I am!’
‘No, you’re not!’ He flung an arm out. ‘You say you are, but then I show you the study and you freak.’
‘I wasn’t expecting it. That was all.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I actually came here because I’m ready to try for another baby. So, ideally, I suppose I’d have liked the room to be . . . altered, so this baby has its own style, so, say, an elephant lampshade, instead of a dolphin lampshade, and maybe the floorboards could be painted another pale colour, maybe mint green, and—’
‘Stop,’ said Tim.
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Why? But . . . but I thought you were ready. I thought you were ready to have another baby months ago.’
‘I was,’ said Tim. ‘I am. But now –’ he hesitated – ‘I’m not so sure I want it to be with you.’
Cassie
Chapter 38
I don’t go overboard on smiling. It gives people the wrong impression. But then George rang to apologise for his malicious behaviour, to assure me that he wouldn’t contest so much as a teaspoon, and was there anything he could do to help, buy some maternity pads, perhaps, or an electric breast pump? And while I knew that Mrs Hershlag was most certainly holding her son at gunpoint (with Mr Hershlag in the background, posing the tip of the bread knife at his be-cardiganed chest) I felt so light and happy and relieved that our baby would be born into a house of peace, the smile refused to budge.
I rang Lizbet that weekend to tell her that George had retracted all threats – I knew she’d want to know. I’d been surprised and touched at just how indignant she’d been on my behalf, actually. Perhaps she didn’t think I was a spoiled brat. She didn’t pick up, so I left a message. I was secretly thankful; the following morning was the grand finale of the Fitzgerald case, and I didn’t need a ninety-minute squeal-filled phonecall jangling every nerve just before bed. I knew how Lizbet would react to the good news (vehement joy and loud enthusiasm) and, sweet as it was, she’d have the same effect as a triple espresso.
‘Hello there!’ I said to Barnaby, who was in front of me in the coffee shop queue.
He spun round, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Cassie, hell-o!’ he said. ‘You look cheerful, for someone who’s about to crash and burn.’ He grinned. ‘Ah, you see, your mind’s on motherhood now. You’re not really bothered that I’m going to slaughter you this morning, that your client is going to have to pay every single cost ever invented, including my bus ticket and my graduate loan. You’re way too busy thinking, ooh, should I buy the choo-choo train mobile for baby Clyde, or should I buy the one with little sailing boats? You don’t give two hoots that my client is going to make out like a bandit, and—Ah! Mr Fitzgerald! Good morning to you! Didn’t see you come in there! And what a nice day for it!’
Hubert glared. ‘You’re supposed to be at each other’s throats! You look as thick as thieves.’
Barnaby coughed. ‘I applaud your simile. Most apt.’
Hubert shot him a scornful look.
‘It’s alright, Hubert,’ I said – a blatant lie as far as he was concerned. ‘Mr Alcock is feeling the heat, and resorting to childish taunts and outlandish threats, all of which I may sue him for at a later date.’ I stuck my nose in the air, pointed a finger at Barnaby, and hissed, ‘Enjoy your cappuccino, sonny. We’ll see you in court!’ Then I scurried out of the coffee shop, as I knew if I looked Barnaby in the eye, we’d both fall about laughing.
‘Right!’ I said to Hubert, all mirth evaporating as I met his cold gaze. When I was a kid, there was a craze at school for a product called Slime. It came in a can, was bright green and slippery. Hubert had the aura of Slime. He also had jug-ears and hair that stuck up like a toilet brush. What had Alissa seen in him? It is true that nice people get together, but it is equally true that nice people get together with utterly awful people. No idea why.
‘Right!’ I said again. ‘Are we ready?’
‘No,’ said Hubert sulkily. ‘I went in there for a cuppa. Bernice has me a brew, piping hot, waiting on my desk, without fail, every morning, rain or shine.’
Bernice is probably hoping you’ll scald your mouth, I thought.
‘Oh, poor you!’ I said briskly. ‘Never mind! Chop chop, we don’t want to be late, do we?’
Man wrangling. Certain men, of a certain age, reacted well to it. They did as they were told, as if they were twelve again, and I was matron.
In court I glanced at Alissa – her shiny brown hair was tied back in a modest ponytail at the nape of the neck (none of your brazen-hussy ponytail, jutting out high and insolent from the crown). She wore black kitten heels, a sombre grey suit, and a slick of pale red lipstick, which made her skin seem whiter, and darkened the shadows round her eyes. She caught my gaze and looked right through me, and I thought, oh, I know, absolutely. (I wasn’t bothered. If she liked me, I’d have been insulted.)
Poor Hubert. And I mean that in every sense. When the end came, it was swift. The judge fired a few questions at Hubert. Then she zipped straight into her judgement.
‘This is a case where Mr Hubert Fitzgerald decided to divorce his wife Mrs Alissa Fitzgerald, after twenty-eight years of marriage. He wishes to set up home with a new partner. He offered to provide Mrs Fitzgerald with monthly maintenance payments of a thousand pounds, on the basis that his business has a modest turnover and he can’t afford more, and that her contribution to the marriage did not entitle her to more. He is suggesting that Mrs Fitzgerald finds herself a menial part-time job to supplement his contribution. Mrs Fitzgerald has said that this budget is inadequate, and that she requires more to live on and to provide for their two teenage children. She includes adequate housing in this. Having examined Mr Fitzgerald’s assets, liabilities, income and outgoings, I find Mr Fitzgerald has greatly underestimated the financial performance of his business. I prefer the evidence of Mrs Fitzgerald. She will need a proper house, and it is unreasonable to expect her to go back to work when she has young children. As for the four thousand pounds held in her mother’s name –’ the judge gave me a reproving look over her spectacles that, I estimated, would cost Hubert fifty thou – ‘Ms Montgomery, I found that a particularly unattractive part of your cross-examination.’
I pursed my lips, and hung my head. I felt mortified. There was a downside to losing quite so robustly: I looked like a crap brief. I avoided Barnaby’s gaze. I couldn’t bear it if his expression was smug. Or worse: sympathetic. Pity – ugh.
The judge then made a few fairly obvious points about the law, during which Hubert failed to stifle a wide yawn – another fifty thou – before awarding Alissa the two-million-pound Georgian house and all its contents, monthly maintenance payments of ten thousand pounds, not including the children’s school fees, a lump sum of two million pounds, and forty per cent of all Hubert’s future earnings. Plus, the Humvee that Hubert was having shipped in from the US (he hadn’t told me about that, either). And Barnaby’s costs.
Hubert, who had been slumping in his seat – another fifty thou – jumped to sit upright, and he was in such a panic, like a drowning man, his leg shot out from under him and he kicked me hard on the ankle. He glared at me, and didn’t say sorry. He was as red as a beetroot, and his eyes bulged. He took a gulp of water, choked on it. I made an, ‘Ah, well,’ face at him, and he bared his teeth.
Alissa, meanwhile, was crying and hugging Barnaby. I sipped my water, and shook my hair back, trying to look unbothered. I was unbothered at the verdict – served him right – but I hated to lose, whatever. Plus, Alissa was hanging off Barnaby’s neck, and I thought, not too close, old girl. Still, she was looking at a cool five million. Any excuse. I’d have hung off his neck for a fiver.
Hubert recovered his composure pretty fast. He stood on the steps of the High Court, flipped open his mobile, and said, ‘The bitch is dispatched. I’ll pick you up as agreed.’ Then he hailed a cab, and jumped in, with a curt nod in my direction. I stared after him, shaking my head. Admitted
ly, Hubert had been stripped of everything except his pants and vest, but I had tried to limit the damage. I’d warned him and warned him, and he hadn’t listened, so he only had himself to blame. He might acknowledge that!
I shrugged inwardly (outwardly, there was no movement). What I really wanted was a fag and a glass of wine. I swish-swashed to the coffee shop and ordered a bottle of Badoit, a peach smoothie, and the biggest chocolate brownie they had. (‘I’ll have that one, three across, second row from the back, it’s a lot bigger than the others,’ I said, so there could be no mistake.) Then I sat in the window, like a particularly gloomy prostitute in Amsterdam.
I was happy, but the morning had momentarily derailed my happiness. I thought of Barnaby and me, flirting – there was no other word for it – in this same coffee shop only a few hours before. We were equals, then. Now I was a lowly squib, who’d had her bottom smacked in front of the whole class. Inches away, a large face pressed itself against the other side of the glass, nose and lips squashed flat and white, eyes crossed. I reared back in fright, before I realised it was Barnaby. He grinned and trotted in.
‘You’re vain, so here’s a tip – don’t do that,’ I said, with only the lightest touch of sulkiness.
His grin increased in wattage. ‘I love a bad loser,’ he said. ‘I always think a good loser is just a loser. Can I buy you a drink? Bitter lemon?’
‘Barnaby,’ I said, ‘I am not in the mood.’
‘It wasn’t your fault. You did everything you could for that silly fuck.’
‘Barnaby!’ It was the first time I’d ever heard him swear. I must say he swore beautifully. ‘Please don’t try and make me feel better about losing. It’s not possible.’
‘I’m not trying to make you feel better. I’m stating a fact. The pleasure of winning was muted. It wasn’t a fair fight. It was about as hard as robbing a baby of his rusk.’
‘I agree,’ I said. ‘You’re not trying to make me feel better.’
‘You were pretty chipper this morning, Montgomery. What happened? The verdict was a given. It can’t be a shock.’