by Claire Sandy
‘Yeah,’ said Shen, unimpressed. ‘Let’s all get a tattoo of the date.’
‘Soon other people will take possession of Wellcome Manor,’ said Evie to Clive as they strolled down the drive to inspect the finished gates, Fang jolting along in her pushchair, and Patch variously way in front, way behind or right under their feet.
‘Do you know what you are?’ asked Clive.
‘Well, that’s an odd question.’ Evie smiled. ‘Let’s see, I’m a woman, English, five-foot-five-ish, allergic to conversations about mortgage rates, over-fond of Cadbury’s Creme Eggs.’
Clive said, ‘You’re my first ever female friend.’
‘Am I?’ The thought pleased her.
‘Never had one before. Turns out, it’s useful and – well, nice.’ Clive shook his head. ‘I must be getting old. Enjoying nice stuff.’
‘We’re all getting old.’ Evie’s age – and how much future she had – was on her mind.
‘Peculiar to think we barely knew each other just two weeks ago. Now I feel as if I know you better than most other people. Dear God, woman, don’t look so nervous! I’m not about to declare myself.’ He paused, and added, ‘again’.
‘Good. I can only take one declaration per holiday.’
‘You’re not the only female I got to know at Wellcome Manor.’ Clive bent down towards his daughter, currently kicking her legs like a chorus girl in her Bugaboo. ‘I also got to know this small, over-emotional, incontinent but thoroughly charismatic person.’
‘And Zane?’ Evie gestured to the young man, currently defying expectations by helping the workmen load tools back onto their flatbed truck. ‘Still a menace to society?’
‘Hey!’ Clive saluted his son. ‘What’s all this?You wouldn’t help me if I begged you!’
‘Nice to have something to do.’ Zane dragged a tarpaulin over the load.
‘Classic. All this opulence, paid for by the sweat of my brow, and he’s bored.’
‘Oh, Clive,’ said Evie. ‘Don’t pick him up on everything.’
‘It’s for his own good. I won’t always be here to pay the bills.’
‘Ignore him, Zane.’ As Clive’s certified Only Female Friend, Evie felt qualified to meddle. ‘Fathers are handed a pamphlet of annoying phrases when their kids are born. My dad had the same edition as yours, by the sound of things.’
‘I don’t mind him saying irritating things.’ Zane patted the side of the truck, as if it was a good dog. ‘He hardly says anything at all.’
‘I can’t win,’ said Clive, examining the gates.
‘I can’t win,’ said Zane, as the lorry sped away.
‘Actually, I think you’ll find it’s mums who can’t win,’ said Evie. ‘It’s been scientifically proven.’
Trotting up to join them, Scarlett suggested, ‘Maybe nobody has to win, eh?’, widening her eyes in an hmm, interesting way. ‘Listen, Zane, sod off. I need to talk to your dad for a minute.’
Zane sodded off back to the house, just like that; still under her spell, thought Evie, heart swelling.
‘I have a confession.’ Scarlett twirled a lock of hair that had escaped from the scarf around her head. She would have won first prize at a fancy-dress party as Tillie: baggy dungarees over a rainbow vest, earrings dangling, bangles jostling.
‘Ye-es?’ Evie and Clive took a gate apiece, closing them slowly through the ruts they’d worn in the earth.
Taking Fang out of her buggie, holding her fondly but awkwardly, Scarlett said, ‘You know when we – like – got, you know, a bit drunk?’
‘A bit?’ said Evie, as the gates clanged together. ‘You were speaking in tongues.’
‘Well, yeah, whatever, the thing is . . . it wasn’t Zane’s idea.’ She moved Fang to her other hip. ‘He kept telling us not to, but me and Tillie egged each other on, and then we made Zane join in.’ She turned to Clive. She bit her lip. ‘I didn’t stand up for him when you blamed him. But I should have.’
‘Yes,’ said Clive. He seemed rattled. ‘You should.’
‘He took the rap for us.’ Scarlett overdid the amazement, for Fang’s benefit, and was rewarded with loud giggles. ‘He was brilliant. Why would anybody do that?’
Because he loves you, you dozy child-woman, thought Evie.
‘Zane!’ The board members of Little Associates wouldn’t recognize their MD, who was scuttling breathlessly around the side of the house. ‘Wait up, Son.’
‘What?’ The habitual exquisite boredom was present and correct in Zane’s expression. ‘Dad, what?’ he repeated, when Clive just looked at him.
‘I . . .’ Clive was never at a loss for words; language did his bidding at all times. He gestured to Fang. ‘I need your help. With your sister.’
‘As she’s my half-sister,’ said Zane, ‘how about I half-help?’
‘It’s time this family stopped doing things by halves.’ Clive turned the pushchair, its handle towards Zane. ‘Go on.’
‘What do I do with her?’ He advanced fearfully, as if taking charge of a stallion.
‘Amuse her. Offer her a sippy cup of something.’ Clive folded his arms, as Zane crouched to put his face near Fang’s. It struck him for the first time that Zane and Fang were alike: something about the way their hair grew, something indefinable about the planes of their faces, something they’d both inherited from him.
‘Dad, she stinks.’ Zane recoiled.
‘I’ll show you how to change her nappy.’
The unconvincing repulsion didn’t cloak the pleasure on Zane’s face. Clive had thought he’d left it too late; maybe, where your kids were concerned, there was no such thing.
Fated to be eternally out of step, Paula tackled the steps into the pool just as the others finished their last dip. Evie, towelling Mabel’s hair, wolf-whistled.
‘See!’ she said to Paula, as Mabel darted away like a feral child returning to her orang-utan foster family, ‘Told you my swimsuit’d fit. You look fab.’
‘Oh no, gosh.’ Paula hurried into the concealing water.
‘You’re Baywatch material.’
Laughing in the shimmering water, Paula was shedding her old skin, layer by layer.
‘When we get home,’ said Evie, stooping to pick up discarded water-wings and foam batons, ‘you can come to the leisure centre with us and the kids. They have huge slides and everything. Amber’ll love it.’
‘Sounds nice,’ said Paula.
‘Don’t let Shen challenge you to a race, though. She does ten lengths by the time I’ve buttoned up my swimming hat.’ Now that Shen had renounced the dark side, she’d not only reiterated Evie’s pledge to support Paula; she’d taken over. We’ll take Paula shopping, Shen gushed. We’ll bully Paula into doing Pilates. Between them, they would launch her into school-gate society.
Paula had seemed reluctant, as if her murky half-life should continue even now there was no need for it, but Evie would persevere. It was time for Paula to face up to a host of practical and emotional problems. Evie, despite her own situation, would be there for her, as Jeremy Kyle might put it.
‘Oh!’ squealed Paula. ‘Oh-oh-oh!’
‘What?’ Evie wheeled around.
Paula let out a loud phew. ‘Nothing.’ She smiled. ‘Just thought I couldn’t touch the bottom with my feet.’
‘But you can,’ said Evie, liking the metaphor.
Her husband was at the car, doing the mysterious, pre-long-journey things that men do at cars. Evie saw him out of the window as she helped Shen pack: twenty minutes in and they’d barely made a dent in the wardrobe.
‘What sort of holiday did you think this was?’ Evie held up an evening gown. ‘You could cruise around the world and not wear the same thing twice. I’ve been in the same jeans for the past five days.’
‘I know,’ said Shen darkly. ‘Oh God, underwear,’ she groaned, opening a drawer.
‘I can see a garter. I don’t even own a garter, and you brought one on holiday.’
‘Three, actually.’ Shen stuffed
them into a small holdall. ‘I’ll have to put the whip on the roofrack.’
The most banal holiday fixes its year in the memory; 2015 would forever be when they went to a very big house in the country. The photos would nail that year’s haircuts, trouser lengths and heel heights. Mabel’s children would laugh out loud at Granddad’s car, and Mabel would grow wet-eyed at the sight of Patch, tongue lolling, one ear up, one ear down, and say, ‘Patch was a good dog.’
Evie looked out of the window and saw, framed in the stonework, a vignette of Mike letting Dan pretend to drive the not-yet-old-fashioned car. Everything became unbearably dear to her, like somebody about to leave a party and realizing what fun it’s all been.
‘Catch!’ Shen balled something up in her hands and chucked it Evie’s way. By the time it had unfurled in mid-air and landed on her face, it had revealed itself to be an ivory silk cardigan. ‘Want it?’
‘God, yeah!’ It was simply cut and elegant. ‘Thanks.’ She thanked Shen not only for the typically offhand generosity, but for bitching and joking and whining as usual.
Without thinking, without planning to, she told Shen everything, with one short sentence.
Shen’s hands flew to her mouth. She began to cry. She locked her arms tight around Evie. ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Oh God, Evie, oh God.’ She promised to help. Whatever happened. ‘And Mike . . . how’s Mike?’
When Shen discovered that he didn’t know, she wiped her eyes. ‘Go tell him,’ she said. ‘Now!’
Plodding up the drive, wiping his hands on a rag, Mike spotted his wife on the steps and halted. Her expression told him that the not-knowing-for-sure was about to end.
Evie reached for his hand and led him around the house. Together, in step, they passed through the garden and went through the wooden door in the wall, which delivered them to the outside world where nature did its own thing. They settled down, backs against the sun-warmed brick, still hand-in-hand.
Evie abandoned the opening gambits she’d rehearsed. ‘You know what I’m about to say.’
‘I do,’ said Mike, tonelessly.
She stole a look, sideways, at him. As she’d feared, his face was twisted in panic.
Mike said, ‘Please, don’t say the words. I can’t bear to hear it.’ He cringed at her dismayed intake of breath. ‘I know, I know. Just give me a minute to absorb it, and I’ll be fine. I’ll manage. I’ll look after you. And them. All of us. But don’t make me listen to the words.’ Jackknifed with unhappiness, his head sank between his knees.
Her most colourful fears hadn’t gone this far; Evie was too disappointed to speak.
‘To think you got in that bloody boat yesterday, in your state of health.’
Tired of the melodrama – just plain tired – Evie said, with none of the delicacy or understanding she’d planned, ‘Don’t start that. I’m pregnant, not ill.’
His head shot up, as if yanked by a sadistic puppeteer. ‘You’re not pregnant!’ It was a statement and a question, all at once.
‘Then what are we talking about?’ Evie drew back, her face screwed up in confusion.
‘Your cancer’s back.’
‘It is not,’ she said, affronted, as if he’d accused her of bestiality.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Christ, no. Don’t even say stuff like that, Mike.’
‘I don’t get it.’ Mike looked helpless.
Evie, in a flash, did get it. She put her hand over her mouth, then on the side of his frightened face. ‘You thought my cancer came back?’ She almost enjoyed how toothless the dreaded word was at this moment. ‘You’re wrong, darling. Wonderfully, brilliantly wrong. I’m pregnant.’ Allowing his features time to regroup, for his jaw to undrop, for his eyes to deglaze, she went on, ‘Well, actually, we’re pregnant. I didn’t do this with a turkey-baster.’
Mike opened his mouth. ‘This is . . .’
Evie willed him to say marvellous or wonderful or fantabulous.
‘A bit of a shock. We . . . but you, for God’s sake – the pill?’
Evie had had a lot of time to work it out. ‘Remember my food poisoning? That bad whelk in Brighton?’ Mike nodded; nobody who was there could forget. ‘And then we went to my Aunty Gloria’s eightieth the next day? And made the beast with two backs in the B&B?’ Free bar + no kids is a heady combination. ‘We didn’t realize I’d thrown up my pill that morning.’ She shrugged, looking down at her tummy. ‘Not the most romantic story, but probably the way most of the human race starts off.’
Mike was pale. Very pale. Practically see-through. Mildly aggrieved that she had to do so, Evie yammered on, to cover his silence. She was the one carrying the baby; all Mike had to do was say something. Anything. ‘I know, I know, it’s not planned. Our baby-years are over. We can’t afford another mouth to feed. The house is bursting at the seams, as it is.’ Never mind the small matter of her own abandoned dream of a job.
‘So,’ said Mike, as if he’d only just learned how to speak, ‘you’re really not dying?’
‘The opposite. I’m making another life.’ Putting it like that, Evie impressed herself.
‘I thought . . .’ And that was as far as Mike seemed able to get with the whole speaking thing.
It was clear he needed time to get used to the idea. But, thought Evie, I wasn’t given time to get used to it, and it’s inside me and all over me and sharing my blood. She needed Mike to come through. As she awaited his next utterance, fingers splayed on a stomach not yet swollen, something worked itself out, like a knot untying. Love for this baby landed squarely in the centre of her.
Mike said, ‘We can’t afford it. I work flat-out as it is, and Lucinda Lash doesn’t bring in much.’
Evie had forgotten all about Lucinda. She realized she’d have to crank up the old Rude Word Thesaurus again; they needed the saucy old bat.
‘And,’ said Mike, ‘it’d be eighteen years younger than Scarlett. Not to mention that – well, come on love, you’re mature to have a baby, to say the least.’
‘Gee thanks.’
‘You’ll be forty-one when it’s born.’ Mike began to breathe shallowly. ‘And sixty when it’s nineteen.’
‘Nice to know you can still do simple arithmetic, even while you’re blowing a gasket.’
‘Where will it sleep?’
‘Dunno. Biscuit tin?’
‘I’ll be at retirement age when it starts university.’
‘If it ever gets to university. Remember, it had a very disadvantaged start in life, sleeping in a biscuit tin.’
In her bleakest prophecies Evie hadn’t imagined this blind pessimism. But she’d forgotten about the see-saw dynamic of marriage. The more Mike foresaw catastrophe (‘We’ll have to move house!’, ‘You’re knackered as it is!’), the more buoyantly confident she became. She brushed aside his fears, deciding on the spot not to share with Mike the ‘options’ the doctor had outlined. The time frame – any termination would have to take place before twenty-four weeks – was meaningless. No longer was the countdown written in flame before her eyes; the countdown was a slower one, giving them months to come to terms with the demands this new-comer would make of them.
The ‘problem’ was already a Herrera. This conversation was its first taste of just how maudlin its dad could be.
Mike chuntered on. He stood up and began to pace. ‘There’s no safety net,’ he said.
Evie joined him, enjoying how he hastily stuck out his hand to help her up. She brushed her bottom free of grassy hangers-on and led him back through the door, back to the tidy borders, the precise lawn and the waiting house.
‘There is a safety net,’ she said, in the gentle, no-nonsense tone she used for sore throats and cancelled play-dates. ‘It’s made of human relationships, knitted together with love and respect. The minute we met, it started to form itself.’
They reached the soft, sandy path that looped past the treehouse, skirting the pool.
‘Your safety net was strengthened,’ Evie went on, ‘when we made so
me more humans, who rely on us just like we rely on them. You’re not the solitary boy I met. You’re a man, embedded in a far-reaching framework of affiliations and bonds and friendships. Even though Shen drives you mad, she’s one of your people. And now so is loopy old Paula. Don’t you get it? There’s a safety net, and you’re a vital part of it. If you weren’t here, there’d be a gaping, Mike-shaped hole in the world, and I wouldn’t want to live in a world like that.’
More than quiet, Mike was mute now. Evie experienced one of those abrupt energy dips she recalled from her last pregnancy. Time for her other half to clamber back on the marital see-saw. She needed to hear him say something. Something very specific. ‘Mike,’ she said, ‘do you want this baby?’
Mike looked at her. All the pent-up, unshed tears of chilly spare rooms, local-authority bedsits began to fall. ‘Do I want it?’ he asked, wild-eyed. Out they came, the tears he hadn’t cried at their no-budget wedding; at the births of Scarlett, Dan and Mabel; at Evie’s grim diagnosis; at her all-clear. ‘I already love it!’ He was every bit as messy as the kids at crying; it wasn’t a skill he’d ever refined. ‘Thank you, Evie!’
She folded him in her arms and let him sob it out.
They decided to wait until the traditional three-month juncture – ‘end of the first trimester!’: Mike was proud of his pregnancy lore – to tell the children about the tiny Herrera waiting in the wings. (Evie liked the notion of her womb having a wings section, like the London Palladium.)
‘Just, you know, in case . . .’ said Evie, aware of the possible complications of giving birth at what Mike continually referred to as ‘your age’, as if no other human had ever reached such decrepitude. She didn’t plan on thinking too hard on this topic; she would trust to luck, to the universe, to her own body, which had never, despite being sorely tested, let her down.
Practical stuff – the juggling of money, the valuing of houses, the stifled screams in pram departments – could all wait until the three-month milestone.