Pretenders. The

by Zaza, Agatha

  ‘Jasper. You are none of those things.’

  ‘I’ve told myself that. It doesn’t help. Look at me, I’m sitting here thinking about Ovidia when I should be thinking of my brother or at least about Holly.’

  ‘Absolutely, everything you’re feeling is valid and justified,’ John said. ‘I know that sounds like a therapist talking, because it is. I’m not just your friend right now, talk to me.’

  Jasper looked at him for a moment, weighing up what he just said. ‘I met her mother and father once. They were wonderful. Her sister was wonderful — religious, but wonderful. I wanted monsters. I wanted to see people that would explain what their daughter was. But everything they said about their daughter that night was exactly what I love about her.’

  He saw John raise his eyebrows and realised he’d used the present tense.

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ John asked after a silence.

  Jasper cleared his throat. ‘I can’t just leave Edmund on his own. He’s been there for me when I needed him. He’s slept on my sofa, sat with me while I ate — and then he’s gone to work in the morning. Remember,’ he digressed, ‘the day we met, and he came when you called him?’ His voice trailed off. He calculated how long Ovidia and Edmund had been together and tried to recall exactly when that day had been and then wondered if, the next morning, Edmund had come here to Ovidia. He silently cursed them both.

  Jasper slapped his hands against his thighs, slumped forward, and continued. ‘I may be a wreck, but if he hadn’t stepped in when he had, I could’ve been much worse, dead even. I can’t leave a woman who might beat him senseless to take care of him. Oh and our parents, they’ll be devastated if they find out — and his son, well I should be there for him, too.’

  ‘You’re forgetting someone,’ John prompted him.

  ‘Holly? I can’t expect her to stick around. She puts up with so much nonsense from me already. I can’t ask any more of her. Maybe this is it for us.’ Jasper paused.

  John shook his head. ‘I meant — what about you?’

  ‘Me?’ Jasper asked. ‘What do you mean me?’

  34

  Holly and Anne had long since filled the dishwasher, cleared the counters, and emptied the detritus of food and drinks into the recycling and rubbish bins. They avoided subjects of any importance. Anne felt ill-equipped to discuss Jasper’s relationship with Ovidia. Instead, they talked about Anne’s daughters, about how Anne and John were doing an excellent job. The conversation faded, being harder to stoke until, eventually, they sat perched on the barstools in silence with wine glasses half full.

  ‘Are you okay, Holly?’ Anne finally asked. She didn’t know how else to get Holly to talk.

  ‘I’m …’ Holly started. ‘Ask me tomorrow. I need to think, but I don’t want to. Is there a way to turn the sound off in my head?’ She smiled unsteadily.

  Anne thought about a night about a month ago. John had arrived home, earphones on, and kissed her on the mouth. ‘The girls?’ he’d asked and whistled off in search of them.

  He had been perhaps twenty minutes later than usual. There had been nothing about his clothes, his coat, his smell, or even the way he whistled cheerfully that had said that he’d been with another woman. Nothing. But she had been certain of it.

  ‘If you don’t talk about it, it will gnaw at you until you think you’re going mad,’ Anne said, knowing immediately she shouldn’t have. Holly studied her for a moment, looked perplexed, but said nothing.

  John’s infidelity wasn’t something Anne thought of constantly. Instead, thoughts of him with another woman, or women, stabbed her when she was least equipped to fight back — after seeing a particularly difficult patient or in the midst of excruciating period pain. She sometimes wondered if she should hire a private detective to find out for certain. But she couldn’t, because some mornings she woke bathed in dread, afraid of what knowing what the truth would bring.

  They’d have to split. There would be no excuse to stay, especially after what had happened in Singapore. After that trip, she and John had painfully stitched their life back together again. He’d declared he’d never leave her and that he would do whatever it took to stay. He came home straight from work, he’d scoured the shops with Anne for what they needed for the baby, he cooked and cleaned — as he still did. They’d talked seemingly endlessly about love, their future, their baby. They’d discussed everything, except, she’d realised long after, what he’d done and why he’d done it. Anne had been left without an explanation.

  ‘Come on. I’m going to have a look around,’ Anne said, sliding off her seat, deferring thinking about her own life for later.

  ‘What, go snooping? Anne, we can’t,’ Holly said.

  ‘You can stay if you like,’ Anne suggested. ‘But I don’t want to just sit here. It’s too depressing.’ She didn’t want to think about deceit — Edmund’s or John’s.

  ‘Wait for me,’ Holly called. Anne was already at the foot of the stairs.

  Holly caught up with her, glancing behind her as they went.

  ‘Can you imagine what it feels like — to lose a baby? You’re a nurse, you must have seen it a lot,’ Holly asked as they arrived on the ground floor and glanced around the large soulless room before continuing up the stairs.

  ‘No, actually, I haven’t. It’s not TV, it doesn’t happen that often — not in this country anyway,’ Anne replied.

  ‘I had a miscarriage at three months,’ Holly said as they arrived on the first floor and out of earshot.

  Anne froze.

  ‘I’d been planning to get rid of it, and then suddenly it was beyond my control,’ Holly explained, stopping and straightening a picture on the wall absentmindedly. ‘That’s what really hurt. I’d been so certain I wasn’t going to keep it, and then it wasn’t my choice anymore.’

  ‘With Jasper?’ Anne asked.

  Holly nodded. ‘We’d been dating for just over three months. Two adults, above thirty, tertiary-level education, and not using birth control — would you believe that? It’s not like we were silly teenagers. I felt so stupid.’ She emphasised stupid. ‘What was I doing sleeping with a guy I’d just met without protection? How was I so sure he was the one?’

  ‘Did you tell him?’ Anne asked. They stopped at the top of the staircase.

  ‘No. I said I was having an unusually bad period. It took me weeks to get over it. I’d never been so miserable in my life.’

  She’d found herself weeks later wrapped in a blanket on her sofa awakening from the fugue she’d descended into after her miscarriage. In that state, she’d realised what it must be like to be Jasper, the man with whom she was in love. She’d felt her unhappiness surging through her body like currents too powerful to control. She’d known what it was like to stand in front of her colleagues at work, fighting back tears as she spoke, to watch her mobile ringing and yet be unable to face the idea of speaking to her own mother. But, for her, it had ended swiftly in comparison to Jasper. She felt spurred to continue with him, putting in the additional work, that extra patience that he needed.

  Holly shook her head. ‘I’ve kept it from him. It never occurred to me that he might have secrets too.’ She leaned against the wall. ‘I’m such an idiot, Anne. I should have demanded more from him, made him deal with whatever it was that was bothering him.’

  ‘What’s the problem? Is it that he never told you about her, or that she’s with Edmund?’ Anne asked.

  ‘Both,’ Holly replied. ‘Jasper sat there the whole day without saying who she was. I thought she was nice — I talked about us becoming sisters-in-law. And he has never, never said a word about her — why not?’ She stopped. ‘No. I’m not going to talk or think about it until I’ve talked to Jasper.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Anne said as she pondered which door to open first.

  They saw a master bedroom, a room with a TV and pictures of Icelandic ponies that Holly had called stunning, and a guest room. Finally, they opened the door to the last room. Anne found
what she was looking for. The nursery.

  OLIVER was emblazoned above the cot in metal letters painted in cobalt blue. Someone cleaned the room often and well — unlike the rest of the house. Neither dust nor dirt were visible anywhere. Anne could see that the nursery belonged to a baby whose parents had lavished their child with every conceivable luxury. Anne recognised the furniture from décor shops that she visited and magazines that she bought, designs she couldn’t even dream of being able to afford. The books on the shelves were traditional titles, books that Anne knew would be abandoned in favour of new contemporary titles as parents searched for something that would hold their baby’s attention.

  Anne picked up a framed picture of Oliver. ‘Look, he’s so gorgeous — what beautiful brown eyes. You know, I never realised that Edmund had really nice eyes until now. Maybe because they looked so sad today.’

  ‘Aww cute,’ Holly said, glancing only briefly and then too swiftly turning to something else, perhaps avoiding Oliver’s picture.

  Anne opened a few drawers, careful not to disturb anything. ‘I hope we get to see Ovidia again, one day, when they’re over this.’

  ‘If she stays with Edmund, it will be inevitable. I still can’t imagine what she sees in him, though,’ Holly said. ‘But she did seem nice, until … well. I just don’t get how she can go out with two brothers — even if it there was a good amount of time between them. Oh, look at this!’

  Holly quietly pulled open another drawer. She mouthed an ‘Oh’ and held up an ultrasound picture. ‘Wow,’ she said quietly, squinting as she examined the image. ‘My baby would have been almost like this. Look, you can see his outline. He’s so human.’ Without showing it to Anne, she hurriedly put the scan back in its place, slamming the drawer with surprising force. ‘I’m sure the last thing they want to find when they get home is us picking through their son’s bedroom,’ Holly said. ‘Or in their house, for that matter. I’d leave, but I don’t want Jasper here with her. Did you see the look on his face when she didn’t turn back? He was devastated. He’s obviously not over her, and he won’t be over her tomorrow or the day after …’ She paused, lost in thought. ‘I want to have this, too: a baby and a man who looks at me with adoration,’ Holly continued. ‘I want to be like you and John, ten years together, a family — grandparents falling over each other to get to look after their grandkids.’ She sat down in the nursing chair and raised her feet from the floor, pointing her toes. ‘He says he loves me, but he’s never looked at me the way Edmund looked at Ovidia today.’

  Anne thought how John looked at her like that all the time, yet it meant little and guaranteed even less. ‘That’s just what you see. If there’s anything I’ve learned today, it’s how deep secrets can run,’ Anne replied. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  ‘You know what just occurred to me,’ Holly said as they opened the door to leave. ‘When Oliver is okay, and if Jasper and I are still together, our kids would probably use some of this stuff — you know, hand me downs from their older cousin.’

  Anne thought Holly suddenly looked more cheerful. Even when the smile left her face, Holly’s eyes still appeared brighter. Holly was fooling herself, Anne decided. Holly believed her life with Jasper would return to the path it was on before today. Holly hadn’t seen Jasper at his worst, or in the state Anne had met him. She wasn’t sure Holly would be able to cope.

  Was she supposed to encourage Holly to stick by Jasper, or was she supposed to support Holly if she decided to leave Jasper? Jasper’s mental health was precarious. He could have a complete breakdown — was Holly supposed to commit to him for better or worse when the near future looked highly likely to be worse?

  They returned to the kitchen to John pouring wine into two glasses. Jasper’s eyes were red and the skin around them agitated, but neither of the women asked why. Anne saw Holly look at the floor, averting her eyes from her fiancé. She thought of their Facebook announcement and wondered what would happen if Holly deleted her status — what would her friends think, and what would they say or not say?

  Holly and Anne said nothing about their exploration, either. Anne brought out a jumbo packet of crisps she found when she’d been cleaning up. The others thanked her, and they sat, waiting again, crunching in silence.

  35

  Oliver’s brief life was over.

  Ovidia and Edmund had taken a taxi home. Occasionally, she’d glanced at Edmund. His expression was not one she’d ever seen before. It was one of complete defeat, she’d decided.

  She’d delayed their mission as long as she could. That morning, when Edmund had asked — or had he accused? — her of going on her run on such a day, she’d been afraid that she wouldn’t have an excuse not to go to hospital as early as it was permissible. She’d been that afraid that the staff would have greeted them cheerfully and then said, ‘since you are here early’, and Oliver would have lost half a day of his life.

  Ovidia stroked her phone’s interface. She observed her short, jagged nails and the dry, grey and flaking skin of her knuckles. A notification message was emblazoned across her mobile’s screen. Doris had sent her a message. Ovidia didn’t open it. She knew it was a prayer or a quote from the bible, but she knew it had nothing to do with Oliver. Her family didn’t know she was here, in a taxi, being driven across the city with Edmund beside her.

  Without Jasper, Anne, Holly, and John, neither she nor Edmund had seemed able to speak. She watched Edmund’s hands, gently restless in his lap, his fingers moving in a slow wave-like motion as if following a piece of silent music. She had wanted to take his hands and feel the music too, to be transported away from the faux-leather seats, talk radio, and incessant beeping of the driver’s mobile phone.

  Ovidia sat in the back of the taxi thinking about divine retribution and about punishment for one’s sins. Of course, at times, she’d thought that she’d deserved the death of her child, and maybe Edmund had to some extent, as well, but she’d told herself that was all nonsense. She knew the universe didn’t work that way — she believed in the laws of science, that existence was composed of atoms, molecules, energy, and everything else that lay only in the physical realm. Yet, despite not having been to church since she was a teenager, she recalled the supplications. She clenched her hands in her lap, disguising their pose with her phone — not wanting Edmund to see her pray.

  She thought back to last year in spring, at this time of the evening when she was still expecting Oliver. She’d been sitting in the annex with her feet on a stool, and she’d thought Edmund was working on his laptop in the kitchen, staying close to her. He’d suddenly flown out of the kitchen, laptop in hand.

  ‘Look at this. Isn’t it just fabulous!’ His eyes had been ablaze with childish delight.

  He’d shown her the webpage of a décor magazine; it showed a children’s playhouse set within a wild, English garden. Three children, their backs to the camera, dressed as pirates, raced around and on the playhouse, their hair streaming behind them and toys strewn on the ground.

  ‘You do realise it’ll be years before he can get on that thing?’ she’d asked, though she’d been immediately captured by the image herself, already considering simple safety measures that could be added and perhaps a slight change in colour.

  ‘I know,’ Edmund had said, resting his chin on her shoulder. ‘A bit of forward planning won’t hurt.’ He’d nestled his face against her neck.

  By this point, their baby had already been named Adam, Noah, Lucian, and even Evelyn. They’d been sure of his name and then they weren’t, once again editing the list. Would they need a middle name, and, if they did, should he use a hyphenated last name? They’d discussed which second language would be most useful and if the two of them should learn it as well.

  Like the playhouse, they’d imagined what his interests would be. Would he be inclined to sport or music, and when would he be the right age to take up art and piano lessons? They’d paused in sports shops to ask about the best bicycles for a beginner, not admitting the fut
ure cyclist was yet to be born.

  Last year, the future had been something they anticipated. It was so certain that it was almost tangible — they were having a child, it would be loved, it would grow into an adult, with every day of its life bringing them joy.

  But now he was gone. No one else who mattered in their lives knew. It was still light outside, just after eight. Ovidia watched the city’s denizens walking home from parks and playgrounds, towels slung over their shoulders, skin pink and tender from too long spent in the weak sun. Outside restaurants, she saw small groups congregating for dinner, seeking missing members of their complements, tapping furiously on their screens or leaning away from their friends, heads cocked against their phones. Some had already had too much to drink and were making their way home, their pace uneven and path meandering, tempers simmering like kindling waiting to ignite. At home their partners would be waiting, some angry, some ambivalent.

  She was pretty certain that, for most people, this night was a lot like the previous one or at least like their previous Saturday. Her sister Doris would be on her way to an evening prayer session at her church, as she’d done almost every Saturday night for years. Her parents would be settling down for Saturday evening TV; they’d have a packet of crisps and beer. The sound on the TV would be a little too loud, her mother refusing to acknowledge the slight loss of hearing that had come with her age.

  She tried to think about the city, former colleagues, friends and former friends, acquaintances — anything that was neither immediate nor important. Her thoughts kept returning to Edmund and to Oliver.

  Right now, Edmund’s mother would still be exhilarated from the previous night’s news of Jasper’s impending marriage. She’d be talking nothing but weddings, mentally compiling guest lists, weighing up her options for a venue, adding to her wish list those regrets that she still carried from her own wedding — as mothers often did. Ovidia wondered if Edmund would phone them to tell them his news, to ruin their happiness. ‘The grandchild that you never knew is now dead.’ They’d be confused, perhaps outraged. ‘How did you have a baby and not tell us?’ Ovidia could imagine Edmund’s mother saying.