by Olivia Ryan
‘If you promise not to kiss me,’ I say, going back on all my resolves, ‘then I’ll be very disappointed and it will have been a complete waste of time coming in for a coffee. Won’t it?’
What am I saying? Have I completely lost the plot? This is not turning out to be the platonic date I insisted on. But after the cup of coffee, that’s actually all we do – kiss. A lovely slow, stomach-weakening, head-spinning, mind-blowing kiss – and then he stops, holds me for a while and we smile at each other as if we both know a secret but we’re not going to talk about it. He’s behaving like an old-fashioned gentleman: not at all what I was expecting. It’s strange – a relief, but frustrating, all at the same time. I’m beginning to think he’s trying to prove something to me.
We agree to go out again a few days later, to the cinema. The next weekend we go to a Chinese restaurant on the Saturday night, and on the Sunday he comes over to my place and I cook him a meal. By the end of the third week we’re phoning each other on the days we don’t see each other, and I know I haven’t got a chance in hell of turning back. It’s all too late. I’ve got all the symptoms. I’ve stopped trying to deny it. He’s gorgeous; I’ve always thought he was gorgeous, and now I’m walking around grinning from ear to ear, just thinking about the fact that we’re finally going out together. But I need to tell him something quickly – because he’s probably going to finish with me when I do. And the longer I leave it, the more it’s going to hurt.
I nearly tell him during the next week
Then I very nearly tell him during the week after that.
Then a couple of times during the following week, I get really close to telling him but I change my mind at the last minute.
On the Sunday of the week after that, we’re snuggled on my sofa together, watching a DVD, and I know I have to say something now. I can’t leave it any longer. He’s going to be upset that I haven’t told him sooner. I don’t want to upset him
‘Harry.’ It comes out in a whisper. A trembly, frightened whisper. ‘I need to tell you …’
‘Ssh. It’s all right,’ he whispers back. ‘I know.’ Tenderly, ever so tenderly, he places both hands over my stomach, where I’m just beginning, very slightly, to show a gentle little bulge. ‘When’s it due?’
My eyes suddenly fill up with tears. ‘January. When did you realise?’
‘Katie – I might not be an expert on these things, but did you really think I wouldn’t notice? First you were feeling sick and giving up alcohol. Then you started having cravings for strange things …’
‘Peppermint seaside rock,’ I admit. ‘I’ve kept the sweetshop in Leigh from going out of business.’
‘And you’re emotional, and you get tired easily, and …’
‘But I’m always like that!’ I try to smile through my tears.
‘And Emily told me.’
‘Oh!!’ I sit up and push him off the sofa, throwing a cushion after him. ‘She said she wouldn’t! I thought you were being observant and loving, and caring.’
Whoops. That wasn’t really what I meant to say.
‘I am being,’ he says, quietly, sitting next to me again and putting both arms around me. ‘I always will be.’
I pretend I haven’t heard him. I don’t think I dare to believe him. Always? That’s a scary word.
‘I had to tell Emily first. She wanted me to be a bridesmaid when I was about eight months pregnant. She’d have had to buy a bridesmaid dress to fit an elephant and have the midwife standing by at the reception.’
He laughs.
‘I know. She told me that’s why they’ve put the wedding back by a month. Now we’ll have to push the pram down the aisle behind the bride.’
‘We?’
He looks at me very, very seriously.
‘Unless he … Matt …?’
The question hangs in the air between us, unfinished. I need to tell him the whole story. It’s only fair.
I didn’t see Matt until about a week after we got back from Ireland. We’d had conversations on the phone – if you can call them conversations – terse, angry exchanges, normally finishing with me banging down the phone. We were getting nowhere. He was trying to apologise, I wasn’t having any of it. He was trying to explain, I was refusing to listen. He was attempting to broach the subject of the flat, the mortgage, the bills, the furniture, and I would just start crying. In the end, he sent me a text message:
We need to sort this out. Whatever; it has to be done. When shall I come round?
Perhaps it was the brusqueness of the simple stated fact, unadulterated by apologies, arguments, or emotion, that helped me to accept it better. It was a Saturday. I sent a message back:
OK. Come round now.
I behaved with surprisingly civility. I think he was as surprised at this as I was. I made him coffee. We sat at the kitchen table and went through paperwork together. I became an automaton. This wasn’t anything to do with splitting up from the love of my life, breaking up our home, breaking my heart: it was closing a business transaction. I tried not to look at Matt as we discussed putting the flat on the market and he made lists of the things he was taking. I was calm, I was sensible, I was in control. I was going to get through this without it killing me.
He broke first.
‘Katie …’ he said, suddenly and with a terrible crack in his voice. ‘Katie, please don’t do this.’
‘Do? I’m not doing anything. I just want to get through this and …’
And get you out of my life. The quicker the better.
‘I know I’ve hurt you.’
‘Oh! Oh, you don’t say! Well done!’ I was shuffling papers, still not looking up at him. ‘I don’t want to have this conversation. Let’s just get on, please.’
‘Can we not get over this? Try? Finish as friends?’
Now I looked up. Friends? The anger that I’d been trying to keep the lid on bubbled up to the surface again.
‘How can you say that to me?’ I spat across the table at him. ‘You … you’ve done this to me, you’re ruining my life, and you dare to say…’
‘I don’t think I am,’ he said very softly.
‘What?’
‘I don’t think I’m ruining your life. I know I’ve handled it badly. It wasn’t easy for me either.’
‘Well, poor you!’ I was shouting now. Fuck! I was crying too. I so did not want to cry.
‘But I think what we’re doing is the right thing, Katie – for both of us. I think we both knew it already. You knew it, or you wouldn’t have called off the wedding. Be honest with yourself.’
With myself.
That was the whole point, wasn’t it. It didn’t matter about anyone else. I’d been playing the heartbroken deserted bride, eaten up with misery and pain – but how honest was I being, really? Yes, it had been a shock. It had hurt to be dumped like that; as he said, Matt had handled it badly. But would I have been eyeing up another man, even while I was still in Ireland, if I was really so devastated? Would I have been cheerfully trotting off on my non-hen-weekend if cancelling the wedding had been as upsetting as it should have been? Come to that, would I have had the sort of doubts I was already having, long before the wedding … the doubts about our relationship that actually prompted me to imagine that getting married might make everything right again?
Jesus! How long had I been lying to myself? This relationship should have finished long before now. If I hadn’t been so determined to hang onto it, we’d both have been saved a lot of grief.
‘Don’t cry, Katie,’ said Matt, but I couldn’t stop, now. His voice sounded like it was coming from a long way away. I could hear him, through the waterfall of my tears, pleading with me not to be upset, everything was going to be OK, he’d sort it all out, he was sorry, he was sorry, he was sorry …
He was crying too. He was holding me now, wiping away my tears, brushing my cheeks with his lips. Making it all feel better. There was a moment, just a fraction of a second, when he held me slightly apart from him
, looked into my eyes and I saw the question in them – Is this sensible? – when I could have stopped. And then he was kissing me and it felt so right, so comforting and nice and familiar. And I thought: One last time. Why not?
Afterwards, I remembered why not. He wasn’t my boyfriend any more. He was with someone else. And I’d stopped taking the Pill.
‘I hope that wasn’t a mistake,’ he said gently as I was getting dressed.
‘I hope so, too.’ Surely I couldn’t be that unlucky? There was the morning-after pill, of course, but …
Was I already thinking that perhaps a mistake wouldn’t be such a bad thing?
‘I’ll always love you, Katie. You know? In my way. Just because it hasn’t worked out …’
‘Ssh. You don’t need to say that. You were right. It’s over, and we’re moving on.’
I left it to chance. And two weeks later, I knew I was pregnant. And I knew that, for me, it was the best thing that could have happened.
‘Matt’s not going to be involved,’ I’m telling Harry now. ‘Of course, he’s going to contribute financially. But he never wanted children, and obviously this wasn’t planned. Look, I know I said I’d decided I wanted a baby, but getting pregnant – like this – it was the last thing on my mind. It’s kind of … like it was meant to be.’ I look up at him and shrug. ‘Matt and Claire want to travel the world. Her children are nearly grown up and babies aren’t exactly going to fit into the lifestyle they’ve got in mind – backpacking down the Amazon and trekking in the foothills of the Andes. She’s been terribly upset with Matt about this baby – can you imagine?’
He shrugs. ‘I wouldn’t have expected you to care about her being upset.’
‘I don’t know. To be fair, I don’t think he lied to me: I don’t think they actually slept together until after he … finished with me. She didn’t exactly steal him from me.’
‘And now she won’t trust him again. She’ll be wondering if he’s going to keep on coming back to you.’
‘Harry.’ I look at him seriously. I know he doesn’t care what some unknown Claire thinks about that possibility. He’s feeling insecure himself! ‘Harry – there is no chance of Matt coming back to me. Not ever again! Believe me!’
‘Well, then – you believe this, Katie: I’m going to be around for you now. You and the baby.’
‘Don’t. Don’t make any promises, Harry, please. I couldn’t bear it. I’m looking forward to having this baby and I’m happy to bring it up on my own. Mum and Lisa are both so excited – I’ve got ready-made babysitters there, whenever I want them. And Mrs Blake, Felicity, is going to help me. She’s offered to have the baby while I run the shop. It’s all going to be fine. I … I don’t need anyone else.’
‘Maybe you don’t,’ he agrees, giving me another kiss. ‘But if it’s OK with you, I think I’ll stick around and see if you change your mind. If you don’t want me to make any promises, Katie, I won’t. I understand what you’ve been through this year. I’m not rushing you. But I just need to know one thing.’
One thing?
I don’t like the sound of this. It sounds too serious. I don’t want to make the same mistakes all over again. I think I’m falling in love with Harry – but look what a complete idiot I’ve been about love, all my life. I’ve got it wrong. I’ve confused it with romance. I’m still not sure I understand the difference. I need to take this slowly, see how it goes, see how we get on as friends, lovers, hopefully both. But this time I’ve got something else, or rather someone else, to consider. My baby will have to come first. I can’t promise anything, to anyone, until after he’s born. Maybe not till he’s started school. Or not till he’s at college. Maybe when he’s fulfilled his potential, become an airline pilot, or a brain surgeon, or a university lecturer. Maybe not ever.
‘What? What’s the one thing you need to know?’ I ask, warily.
‘That wedding dress. The one your sister made you. Is it still hanging in the wardrobe in her spare room?’
He’s grinning.
‘Piss off!’ I shout. We both burst out laughing at the same time. ‘No! I am not wearing that dress! Not ever! Not for anybody! She can sell it! It’s unlucky! I hate it! I never wanted to wear it in the first place! In fact, if I ever decide to get married again – if I ever get that brave, or that stupid, or that …’
‘Certain?’ he suggests, smiling.
‘Whatever…’ I agree, grudgingly, thinking briefly of Emily and Sean. ‘If that day ever arrives, I’m sticking to my guns this time, and wearing my jeans.’
‘If they ever fit you again,’ he teases, patting my tummy gently.
And I have to admit, at the moment, it’s as unlikely a possibility as me getting married.
ABOUT HAPPINESS
There’s something stirring and exciting about this music, I don’t care what anyone says. As soon as it starts up, I feel the flicker of electricity in the air. I can imagine the anticipation inside the church. Rows of friends, sitting straighter in their seats, looking over their shoulders, grinning to each other. Mothers, aunties and grandparents swallowing back lumps in their throats, getting their hankies ready for the emotional moment of that first sight of the bride stepping down the aisle.
‘Come on then, sweet’eart,’ says Emily’s dad. He’s a big man with a deep gruff voice. I used to be a bit nervous of him many years ago when I first met him, because he looks like he beats people up for a living. But I catch a wobble in his voice as he adds, ‘Let’s get this show on the road,’ and leads his only child into the church for her wedding.
I’m walking behind them with Emily’s cousin Laura who’s the other bridesmaid. It’s a cold, bright afternoon in early February and we’re wearing warm, dark red dresses with just a few flowers in our hair. It’s enough. It’s fine. I did worry about whether I’d get into the dress after Thomas was born, but I needn’t have done: breastfeeding a hungry baby every three or four hours seems to have acted like an automatic crash diet and Harry keeps telling me that motherhood must suit me because I look better than ever. Of course, he’s biased. He loves me.
There he is, on his feet near the front of the church, turning round – supposedly to look at the bride like everyone else – but his eyes seek out mine instead and I find myself smiling straight back at him. At Harry, and at my baby son, cradled fast asleep in his arms. My man, with my child.
When I think about how my life has turned around, it almost makes my head spin. Was I really planning to marry Matt such a short time ago? I’m watching him now. He’s the best man, standing at the front of the church with the bridegroom. He steps to one side as the bride approaches, and I see him give an encouraging squeeze to Sean’s arm and a smile of approval to Emily. He’s a good guy. I’m glad we’re going to stay in touch – for Thomas’ sake. Despite everything he said, he has been round to see him since he was born a month ago – only the once, mind you, and he didn’t want to hold him – but I noticed something flicker across his face when I referred to him as Daddy. It may just have been irritation, of course. We’ll see. I realise the fact of the baby has put a strain on his relationship with Claire, and, strangely enough, I do want them to be happy. I think it comes from being so happy myself.
Laura and I go to our own seats while the vicar starts the wedding service.
Dearly beloved … we are gathered here together…
Yes, we are. All my dearly beloved are gathered here today. Jude and Conor are over from Ireland. There’s a lot of speculation amongst Emily, Sean, Harry and myself that they’re going to be the next couple planning a trip down the aisle. They’ve even been making very clucky noises over Thomas’s cot.
I sneak a glance a couple of rows back, where Mum’s sitting between Auntie Joyce and Lisa. Lisa’s got her arm tucked through the arm of the man sitting next to her and looks as though she’s melting into him. Andy. She might still be dithering over whether he’s The One, but from where I’m sitting, he’s certainly doing a good impression of it. The child
ren apparently like him, he’s talking about marrying her as soon as the divorce is through, and she’s obviously crazy about him. Why’s she still hesitating?
But then, I’m a good one to talk, aren’t I?
My gaze shifts to Mum. She looks radiant in a new cream dress and navy blue jacket. I thought this wedding might upset her by bringing back memories of the one I cancelled but she’s smiling and serene and I suddenly realise: she looks happy. She is happy. This thought makes me smile too, as I turn back to concentrate on the wedding service.
I found out about Mum at Emily’s hen party. Emily wanted it as close as possible to the wedding date so that Jude could be here for both. That suited me fine, as it gave me a bit of time to recover from the birth. I’d spent Christmas at Mum’s, with the whole family fussing around me because I was so hugely pregnant and apparently incapable of doing anything. And since Thomas had arrived, two weeks early on the second of January, I’d been floating around at home in a haze of hormones and confusion, being waited on and helped by a constant stream of visitors: Mum, Joyce, Lisa and the children, Emily and Sean, Helen and Greg, Felicity Blake, various neighbours from my street, and of course Harry. It was a good thing I’d had so much help, as I barely knew which end of the baby was up to begin with, but by now I was feeling calmer, rested and in control.
Of course, despite my pregnancy dopiness, I’d noticed something about Mum over Christmas. She wasn’t drinking at all; not the customary pre-Christmas-dinner sherry, not a single glass of wine with the meal, not a brandy or a port afterwards. Because I wasn’t drinking myself, it took a while to sink in that nobody was. There was water on the dinner table, and a fruit juice punch in the evening. There was a lot of laughter and merriment – but no booze.
‘She’s doing really well,’ agreed Lisa when I mentioned it to her. ‘Her AA group really seems to be helping.’
‘You’re looking great!’ I told Mum. ‘Younger than ever.’