He looked so lost, so unhappy but he did not respond to what I had just told him. And what I couldn’t tell him was that I had also seen her ex in their flat, holding Billy. If I had said that he would have known I was watching the flat. He stood up now.
‘I’ve made my choice, Heja. It was wrong. I’m so sorry; I’ve made my choice.’
‘You chose me too, Markus.’
I longed to press my body against his so that we could comfort each other. He turned and walked out of my flat without another word and the door clicked shut behind him. And I know Markus. When he has made a decision he sticks to it.
I was so shaky I had to lie down again. That photograph, I had forgotten all about it. And now she had found it and she finally knew about us. He had left me again; a second rejection; another unbearable blow.
I remembered how Markus had left me before. We had had one of our rows, a bad one this time about a woman in his office. We made up eventually, as we always did, and we went to bed and made love. I assumed things were all right between us again. Markus thought otherwise. He left me. He left Helsinki. He wrote me a letter, which I got three days later. He had written that he loved me still, he would always love me but he could not go on with the endless cycle of jealous rows followed by reconciliations. We seemed incapable of having a calm, happy life together, he said. The relationship was hurting both of us. He had to end it. He was leaving Finland. He could not tell me where he was going.
It was a brutal rejection. I was at the height of my fame. I had money and a beautiful apartment and I was completely bereft. I made frantic enquiries about him, using my many contacts in the media. I could find no trace of where he had gone; just that he had definitely left Finland. He could have gone anywhere.
Then about three weeks into this torment I noticed that my period had not come. I put it down to the agonizing stress I was going through over Markus. I woke a few mornings later feeling queasy. I bought a pregnancy test and I tested my urine and it confirmed that I was pregnant. As I looked at the positive test I felt the most profound joy of my life. I was carrying our child. Everything would be all right now. Markus would hear of my pregnancy somehow. It would become news in a few months anyway when I started to show my bump. There would be coverage on TV and in the papers. Somehow he would hear about it and he would come back to me and we would have a new beginning. What a precious moment to get pregnant.
For the next two months I hugged my secret to myself. The world looked a different and kinder and more hopeful place. Everything in my life shifted in focus. I had a strong sense of purpose that made me feel fulfilled. Now I was glad of all the money I had earned and the position I had reached in my career. Markus and I and our child would have a good life. I started to think about where we should live. I knew Markus would want us to live by the sea. I registered with some property companies. I longed to find him and tell him the news. I wanted him to be the first person to know about the pregnancy but could not see how I could make that happen.
And then, when I was nearly three and a half months pregnant, I started to feel really ill. I was getting bad dizzy spells and days of feeling very sick. I started to feel afraid about the welfare of my baby. My doctor was worried and he kept taking blood tests. He was our family doctor and I had known him for years. Then that day came when he called me and said I needed to come to the surgery as soon as I could and perhaps I should come with a friend. The moment he said that I knew the news was bad. And when I saw his face all my fears were confirmed.
‘Sit down, Heja,’ he said quietly.
‘Is my baby OK?’
‘We’ve had the results back and it’s not good.’
‘Tell me! Is my baby OK?’
‘Heja, I’m so sorry to tell you that you have a genetic disease.’
‘I don’t understand...’
‘The illness that’s in your family...’
I couldn’t take it in.
‘Your great-aunt Tanya...’
‘You’re saying I’ve got what Tanya had?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
I started to tremble violently. My mind was racing. I remembered that day in the garden: the brilliant sunshine; the feathery grasses; hearing her cry; and her funeral.
‘They couldn’t save her...’
He looked rather white. ‘We can do much to help you, Heja.’
‘I’m twenty-eight and you’re telling me I have a terminal disease?’
‘You have the same disease.’
‘She was dead at forty-seven,’ I shrieked at him.
‘This must be the most terrible shock. Can I call your parents?’
‘No! Don’t you dare!’
I was still trembling violently. ‘But my baby’s OK?’
He didn’t want to tell me but he had to. My baby was not viable. Those were the words he used, ‘not viable’. I would have to terminate my pregnancy as soon as possible as I was already four months pregnant.
And I remembered what Tanya had said to me that day in the garden: ‘Don’t be afraid, Heja. Sometimes tears are good. They make new life grow.’
Make new life grow? I had thought I was carrying new life in my body but I was carrying her death gene. It had been there inside me from the beginning: from the day I was born; from that day in the garden; from the day I met Markus; and today. It meant our baby had to be aborted. I had to agree to the termination that afternoon in the doctor’s surgery. No one to help me; no one I could tell. He pleaded with me to call my parents so that I would have someone with me when I woke up from the general anaesthetic. He said it was a very difficult moment. I refused. He gave me strong tranquillizers to deaden the horror of that day and the days that followed.
Why didn’t I tell Markus this evening, when he was standing in my flat, saying he would not see me again? He needed to know that Billy was not the first baby he had made. He needed to know about our poor little aborted baby.
People thought I had everything – the looks, the fame, the money, the handsome boyfriend. I had nothing. All I had was the death gene working in me, waiting to claim me.
Kathy
AUGUST
‘I’ve been a complete and utter fool,’ I said.
Jennie was walking round the kitchen with Billy propped against her shoulder. She was rubbing his back with gentle circular movements and she stopped by me now and gave me a sympathetic pat.
‘Stop beating yourself up...’
‘There I was thinking Markus’s great secret was his politics and all the time his great secret was Heja!’
‘He’s asleep. I’m going to put him down, and then I’ll make us some tea.’
I’d spent a bad night in Jennie’s back bedroom and I wondered if she’d heard me pacing up and down. The floorboards were bare, except for a rug, and they creaked when you walked on them. If she had heard me she didn’t say anything about it. I had finally made myself lie down and got to sleep as the light was turning the curtains pale. Jennie had taken Billy when he’d woken up and she’d let me sleep on. Things felt a bit more bearable when I finally got up. There was no word from Markus.
Jennie came back into the kitchen, filled the kettle and sat down at the table.
‘I was going over it all last night,’ she said. ‘It’s no coincidence, her turning up at your magazine. When did she first show up?’
‘I was pregnant, maybe five or six months pregnant. I remember because when we interviewed her she kept looking at my bump.’
‘Oh, dear...’
‘And I gave her the job! In fact, there was another candidate I liked better, a man who had all the right experience. She was my second choice. Philip Parr wanted to appoint her. I remember we had a bit of a tussle about it and I gave in.’
Jennie filled the teapot and brought it to the table.
‘Can you remember the first time you told Markus about her?’
‘I’ve been trying to remember that. He wasn’t living with me then; it was just before he moved in. He’d
come over for supper and I told him we’d employed a Finnish journalist that day, and I told him her name, Heja Vanheinen.’
‘How did he react?’
‘I don’t remember him saying much at all. He certainly didn’t mention that he knew her! We were absorbed with my pregnancy, and getting on so well. Ages later I asked him if he knew she’d been a TV presenter in Helsinki, and he said, yes, she was much admired, and that was it. He shut the conversation right down. And I put that down to his not wanting to talk about his life in Finland, not that he’d been involved with her!’
‘I don’t think Markus had anything to do with this, I mean with her coming to your magazine. It was probably a huge shock to him.’
‘Then why didn’t he tell me about her the moment I mentioned her name? Can’t he see what a huge betrayal it was not to tell me?’
Jennie poured us each a mug of tea and put some lemon biscuits on a plate in front of me. The tea was richly brown and strong, how she always made it.
‘And he left Finland seven years ago. She hasn’t been in London very long so it doesn’t make sense. Why has she come now?’
We drank our tea.
‘It’s clear to me she wants to sabotage your relationship. She found out about you and that’s why she got the job there,’ Jennie said.
‘You mean she’s been stalking me?’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.’
‘Bloody hell! I’ve felt uneasy about her for quite a while, especially about the way she is around Philip.’
‘I think she’s very jealous of you. Some women won’t let go. It must have been horrible for Markus knowing she was working with you. Now at least it’s out in the open and you can talk about it.’
The tea was strongly fragrant and the biscuits light and citrusy and they did make me feel a bit better.
‘They looked so in love in that photo.’
‘They were very young,’ Jennie said.
‘And I’ll never have that with him.’
‘You’ve got something else.’
‘We’ve got a baby we both adore. I was crazy about him when I met him and really happy. It’s changed since Billy was born. We’re just not that comfortable with each other. They looked comfortable together in that picture, like they fitted each other.’
‘It’s very early days to be giving up on this relationship. Don’t let her ruin your marriage. He’s worth fighting for.’
Jennie looked at me with such affection and patted my hand encouragingly. She was remembering my troubles with Eddie, I’m sure. She wanted my marriage to work out.
‘I don’t want us to break up. I really don’t. But he can’t have these secrets from me. On our way down here he suddenly said he wanted us to leave London and come and live in Cornwall! Out of the blue it was. He said he felt trapped in London.’
‘She’s making him feel trapped,’ Jennie said.
After lunch I took Billy to a playground Jennie had told me about. It was one of those days when it’s sunny one moment and cloudy the next. The play park was full of young mums and their children. It was such a normal everyday scene yet I felt alienated from it. I was wondering how many years Heja had been with Markus. When had they split up? When he came to London? I parked the buggy by the sandpit and took Billy’s shoes and socks off and sat him in the sand. He was happy enough wriggling his toes and grabbing handfuls of sand. I showed him how to fill a bucket. I turned it upside down and made a small castle and Billy squealed with delight and squashed the castle. A toddler sitting nearby picked up a handful of sand and threw it at Billy.
‘No, Johnnie. That’s naughty,’ his mother said.
The toddler did it again. This time some of the sand landed in Billy’s hair and I shook the sand out and checked his eyes.
‘I said no, Johnnie.’ His mother slapped his hands quite hard and the toddler started to cry. I didn’t like her doing that.
‘I don’t think he meant any harm,’ I said, trying to placate her.
She threw me a contemptuous look then picked him up roughly and marched him over to the swings. Just then I saw Tina from the café by the park gates. She was standing talking to a dark-haired young man who had to be Rory’s dad. He had the same cherubic features and curly dark hair as his son. They were having an argument. He was trying to convince her of something and she kept shaking her head angrily. Rory was in his buggy, cramming some plastic toy in his mouth and watching his warring parents with huge round eyes. The young man turned and walked away fast. Her shoulders slumped, then she bent down and took the toy out of Rory’s mouth and wiped his face gently. She saw me and I waved at her.
She walked over slowly with Rory.
‘Hello again,’ I said.
‘Hi,’ she said.
She took Rory out of the buggy and took his sandals off. I noticed that he was very smartly dressed again, this time in matching yellow shorts and T-shirt.
‘He loves this sandpit,’ she said dully.
She sat on the wall next to me. I made another sandcastle for the two of them to squash.
‘Do you mind if I have a ciggie? I’ll blow the smoke the other way. I don’t usually smoke anywhere near him, it’s just I do need a ciggie.’
‘Not a problem,’ I said. ‘In fact, can I have one?’
‘Course...’
She reached for the cigarettes, offered and lit mine and then lit her own and inhaled deeply.
‘I gave up when I got pregnant. Then I started again. I don’t smoke in the house with the baby,’ she said.
I hadn’t smoked since Eddie but I enjoyed that cigarette. It seemed to calm us both as we watched our babies.
‘That was Sean, Rory’s dad.’
‘He looks so like him.’
‘I know.’
She inhaled deeply on her cigarette again.
‘He loves Rory. It’s just he finds it too much, being a dad at his age.’
‘Do you live together?’
‘At the moment we do, at my mum’s. He’ll be off before the summer’s out. He’s got the travelling bug bad.’
‘That’s tough on you.’
‘He says we should go with him, to Thailand. Find bar work out there. But he’s not thinking straight. I know it’s no good Rory being moved from pillar to post. He needs a routine.’
‘That’s true enough.’
‘Part of me really wants to go.’
‘I saw you were reading The Beach.’
‘Yeah, we’d all like to escape. But life’s not like that, is it?’
‘Not for mothers,’ I said.
When I left I gave Tina my email address and told her to keep in touch. Here was this nineteen-year-old girl about to be left on her own in Newlyn with a one-year-old baby and probably very little money. I could see that she was a very good mum to her little boy. She made me realize what a privileged life I had.
I walked back to Jennie’s and saw Markus’s Saab parked in Church Road and my heart lurched hard. The car was quite muddy and one of Billy’s soft toys lay on the back seat. Where had he been? He was standing in Jennie’s front room, looking out. As soon as he saw me he came out and knelt by Billy, unstrapped him and hugged him close.
‘It’s time to go home, Kathy,’ he said in his stern voice. ‘Pack your things and I’ll drive us home.’
‘Not so fast,’ I said. ‘We need to talk.’
‘Not here. Not in front of your aunt. We can go back to the hotel.’
‘No. I need answers, Markus, and I need them now.’
I took Billy from him, went into the house and asked Jennie if she would look after him. Markus was pacing up and down the front path.
‘We can walk down to the seafront,’ I said.
When we were some way from Jennie’s house I burst out, ‘How could you not tell me about Heja?’
‘Hear me out,’ he said. ‘When I came out of the pool and you were gone I thought you and Billy had fallen over the cliff! That cliff has a sheer drop. I knew no one could
get out alive if they fell there. I scrambled down and climbed over the rocks for ages. Then I climbed up again and walked and walked, looking for you both. Then I walked back to Botallack and thought you must be there, in the car with Billy. No sign of you. You had no right to take him away like that, without giving me any explanation. I was very frightened.’
‘Don’t you dare try to put me in the wrong! I had just found out that you and Heja were lovers.’
‘Were lovers. Past tense.’
‘You lied to me.’
‘I didn’t tell you about her.’
‘Why the hell not?’
‘It ended years ago. It was a bad ending. I was shocked when you told me she’d joined your magazine.’
‘That’s exactly when you should have told me.’
‘I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it.’
‘Why not? I needed to know.’
‘I couldn’t understand why she was at your magazine. It was strange and worrying. Heja is very possessive. You were pregnant and needed calm. I decided it was best to say nothing.’
‘Of course it wasn’t! I’ve never understood why you won’t talk about your past. How can we have anything real if there are all these secrets between us?’
My voice was rising, I knew. He, on the other hand, seemed to be getting calmer, colder and more rational.
‘I don’t agree. I’m sure you have secrets from me, Kathy. Being married doesn’t mean we have to share every thought, every impulse. That would be so oppressive.’
‘Don’t twist my words. Something as big as this, a major relationship in your life, and she turns up at my work! Can’t you see that by saying nothing you were being disloyal to me?’
‘It was over long ago, seven years ago. If I’d told you about it there would have been all kinds of trouble. I knew it would come out at some point.’
We had reached the seafront and I had to ask the question that was making me feel ill, that had kept me awake that long night in Jennie’s back bedroom. I had to ask, yet I dreaded his answer.
The Lie of You: I Will Have What Is Mine Page 16