The Anniversary

by Hilary Boyd

  ‘Go!’ she cried after a while. ‘For God’s sake, Jack. Just go.’

  Jack brought his hand up and cradled her cheek, his thumb gently brushing away the tears. She heard him make a small sound in his throat. ‘Go,’ she repeated softly.

  59

  Lisa was in a better mood when they got back to the cottage. Jack hadn’t been missed, apparently, because Arthur had dragged her down to see the bonfire with his dad and they’d stayed talking for a while, Eric telling her about the incredible ice cliffs in the Antarctic – so Lisa explained as they drove back to the cottage.

  ‘I thought they took the baby thing really well, didn’t you?’ she said, as they sat together on the small sofa in the sitting room. ‘Eve was so kind. And Stella gave me a lovely hug.’

  She turned to him, her face looking relieved for the first time since she’d broken the news a week ago now. ‘You’ve got such a nice family, Jack. It’ll be good to have Eve around, someone who knows about being pregnant.’

  Jack was barely listening as he remembered the tenderness in Stella’s eyes earlier. But even if Stella returned the love he felt for her, it made no difference now. He was committed to the woman who sat beside him, tied to her for all eternity by the child growing in her womb.

  ‘All my friends seem to be gay,’ Lisa was saying. ‘I don’t really have any friends with kids … not ones I’m still in touch with anyway.’ She paused. ‘But I suppose you make friends, don’t you, at antenatal classes and stuff?’

  Antenatal classes … Jack’s mind did a quick trawl through the process of being a father, taking himself back to when Stella was pregnant. But he shrank from the comparison. He and Stella had been over the moon when they’d found out about both their babies. They had dreamed and planned and hugged each other in anticipation. His heart lurched as he remembered his newborn children’s little faces, peeking out from the folds of the white hospital blanket, and the profound, almost spiritual love he had felt for them both. Could he do this all over again? Could he?

  He reached for Lisa’s hand, suddenly desperately sad for her, saddled with a man who would be just going through the motions, at worst, finding a growing acceptance at best. No elation, no joy. He vowed, in that moment, to do better by his wife.

  ‘When will you tell work?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, I’m freelance, they don’t own me. And I can stick make-up on someone’s face right up to the last minute. It’s not like I’m doing anything physically strenuous.’

  ‘You get pretty tired.’

  ‘Yeah … Well, I’ll see how it goes. But I’m not mentioning it to anyone yet. And I’d be grateful if you’d stop telling people, Jack.’

  ‘I’m not telling “people”. I told my family, that’s different. And you agreed we should.’

  ‘I know. But anything could go wrong. I’m forty-three, I could easily miscarry.’

  The fear in her voice was palpable, and Jack put his arm around her shoulder. ‘It’s going to be fine, Lisi. You’re super-healthy. I’m sure you’ll sail through.’

  She smiled up at him, gratitude and a certain amount of hope in her gaze. ‘So are you getting used to the idea, Jack? Just a teeny bit?’

  Jack didn’t reply, just smiled his best smile and hugged her tight.

  Jack took the black plastic rubbish sack out to the bin later on, and stood looking up at the stars. The air was pleasantly cold, with an autumn nip and the scent of wood-smoke on the breeze. He took a long, slow breath. Stella. So much time wasted. He felt he’d never really got a grip on his life after Jonny’s death. And it seemed he still hadn’t, even at his advanced age. He shook himself and turned back towards the house. No point remembering, he thought. Stella’s best out of it.

  60

  Three months later

  It was almost eight o’clock on New Year’s Day. Stella lay full length on her sofa in the Hammersmith flat, still in her nightie and blue-wool dressing gown, trying to summon up the energy to make herself another cup of coffee. She had been round to Annette’s swish new three-bedroomed flat in one of those wide Holland Park avenues – recently bought with some of the mega-million proceeds from the sale of her business – for a New Year’s Eve dinner. Then she’d walked home at around two in the morning, the large amounts of vodka she’d consumed keeping her warm in the freezing December night. It was an act of bravado for Stella: going out on New Year’s Eve, drinking too much, walking home in the small hours. She had been on the verge of cancelling from the second Annette invited her – her emotional state still fragile.

  She had barely been out socially since the autumn, hiding away either at Eve’s or at home, where she tended to sink into a dismal lethargy that felt hard to resist. At her daughter’s, she functioned well enough. She felt safe in the Kent house and managed to fend off her darkest thoughts when distracted by Arthur or helping Eve with little Mairi. But when she was alone in London, the pall descended, and some days she found it impossible even to move from the sofa.

  She had finally accepted the Joanie Trevelyan script Shami had been so keen for her to write, although in her current state she could barely string an email together, let alone a full-on television drama. She hovered between bouts of crying and spikes of anger at her spinelessness as she tried to chivvy her body into some action that didn’t involve lying on the sofa all day, listening to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Bird on the Wire’ on a loop. It was not like her, this apathy.

  Her only success, as she saw it, had been her total avoidance of Jack and Lisa. When they were due to visit Eve, if Stella were around she would quietly make herself scarce, inventing an excuse – which Jack probably didn’t buy for a second – of needing to visit the shops, the castle, meet a non-existent friend, leave for London before she had planned. She had even celebrated Arthur’s birthday – which conveniently fell on a Wednesday – with her grandchildren and Eve and a pile of his favourite cupcakes, then rushed back to London before Jack and Lisa descended at the weekend.

  ‘Stay, Mum,’ Eve had said the first time a family lunch was imminent. ‘I know it’s really hard, but do you have to go just because Dad’s coming round?’

  Stella had been tempted to block her daughter out, as she had so often in the past, and just go on pretending she really did have to be home for a non-existent meeting. But Eve deserved better, so she’d braced herself and said, ‘Honestly, sweetheart, I don’t think I can do it. I want to, for your sake, but I … I just can’t face a pregnant Lisa right now.’

  Eve’s face had been full of understanding. ‘OK. No, I get it.’ But she sounded disappointed.

  ‘I’ll get over it.’ Stella gave a rueful laugh. ‘At least I hope I will.’

  ‘Oh, Mum.’ Eve had put her arms around her and given her a hug. ‘I’m so sorry things didn’t work out.’

  Last night she hadn’t slept for more than a few hours before waking up shaking and sweating with fright. There had been no nightmare to set her off – none that she could remember, at least – just a visceral terror at the realization that this was the first day of a new year: a year that stretched emptily ahead of her. You’re on your own now, Stella Holt, she told herself firmly as she dragged herself out of bed. Get used to it and shape up.

  As she stood by the windows, looking out on to a winter garden that was already suffering from Iain’s absence, her phone rang behind her on the worktop.

  Jack? She stared at his name on the display, almost in a stupor. It was literally months since they had spoken. What the hell does he want? The temptation to find out was too great to resist.

  ‘Hello?’ she said, employing the tone she reserved for cold callers.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Happy New Year,’ he said, not sounding as if he thought it was.

  ‘And to you,’ she replied.

  Stella was aware of her heart fluttering. She didn’t know what to say. Having not spoken for so long, they could hardly embark upon a jolly interchange about their
separate Christmases – Stella with Eve and family; Jack with Lisa and her ageing father in Cumbria – swap stories about relatives and turkey and how knackeringly cold the weather had been up north. What does he want?

  ‘Can I come round?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she gulped, caught completely off guard by his request.

  Jack sighed. ‘I just wondered if I could pop round for a cup of coffee or something?’

  ‘I’m familiar with the concept of popping round, Jack. I just want to know what you actually mean by it,’ she replied severely, determined not to yield.

  There was a short silence, then Jack said, ‘I haven’t set eyes on you for months, Stella. Every time I go round to Eve’s, you’ve done a runner.’ He paused, and when she didn’t speak, he continued, ‘Eve says you’re fine. But she won’t talk about you to me. And Lisa is always there. I just want to know how you are.’ He seemed desperate to make her understand.

  Stella didn’t reply, her thoughts churning.

  ‘So how are you?’ she heard Jack ask again.

  ‘Eve’s right. I’m fine.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Stella …’

  ‘Don’t come round, Jack.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You can’t come round.’ Her voice sounded impressively firm – firmer than she felt by a mile – and she was proud of herself.

  Silence, then a low groan.

  ‘God, I know. I’m sorry, Stella, I shouldn’t have asked.’ He paused. ‘I just miss you like hell.’

  ‘Where’s Lisa?’

  ‘Still in Cockermouth, with her dad.’

  She listened to him breathing. ‘I can’t see you,’ she said and quickly clicked the call off, before she changed her mind. Then she went back to the sofa and lay down again, heart racing, still clutching the mobile in her hand. She knew she had done the right thing. Not just from a moral perspective – although that also would be true – but for her own self-preservation.

  As she lay there on the chilly January morning, still shaky from the call with Jack, Stella found herself unwillingly reviewing the disaster she’d made of her relationships. She and Jack should never have split up, that was the first disaster. There seemed no other option at the time, but later, couldn’t she have been kinder to him? Did she really have to treat him as Public Enemy Number One throughout Eve’s childhood?

  That they couldn’t get back together after the break they’d needed was the second disaster. Jack had tried, he really had. He’d asked her round for supper; or to join Eve and him for a day out; hovered on her doorstep hoping to be asked in more times than she cared to remember. But she had been so childishly adamant that she needed nobody; terrified, basically, of being even the slightest bit vulnerable to loving someone again.

  Poor Eve, she just had to make do: the third disaster. Stella understood, not for the first time, how incredibly lucky she was to have had another chance with her daughter. She didn’t really deserve the closeness they now shared.

  And then there was disaster number four: Iain. She had well and truly messed that one up. He hadn’t spoken to her since the night she’d told him about Jack. It said so much about their relationship, Stella thought sadly, that after seven years together there was absolutely no need to speak. They had no shared assets, no children, no Labrador, cars or favourite paintings they’d bought together in a moment of holiday madness: nothing that linked them together at all.

  Her phone rang, her heart leapt. Jack again? But it was Annette.

  ‘Well, missus, you were certainly a big hit last night. Especially with old Perry. He said you were the most “delightfully feisty” woman he’d met in a long while.’

  ‘Must have been the Black Cow.’ There had been much hilarity at the dinner about the vodka being distilled from pure milk. Stella didn’t even know that was a thing. ‘I had a great time,’ she added. ‘Thank you.’ Which was true, once she’d made the effort to get dressed up and force herself out.

  ‘So what did you think of Perry?’

  ‘I thought he was totally charming, a brilliant dinner companion. Gay, surely?’

  Annette snorted. ‘I know, you’d think. But he insists not. And I can’t see why he wouldn’t come out if he were. Maybe you should give him a run around the block and find out?’

  ‘Maybe I should,’ Stella said, almost serious.

  ‘Hey, are you OK? You sound a bit down. But then, if my head’s anything to go by, you’re probably barely conscious.’

  Stella let out a weary sigh. ‘Jack called.’

  ‘What did he want?’ Annette’s tone was instantly suspicious.

  ‘To pop round for a coffee?’

  ‘Ha! I hope you told him to sod off.’

  ‘Yeah, of course.’

  ‘So, what news of the pregnant wife?’

  ‘Still pregnant, I imagine. I didn’t ask. She’s up north with her dad, he said.’

  Her friend harrumphed. ‘So he thinks he can slink round for a snog as soon as her back’s turned?’ Annette had said, ‘I told you so,’ when she heard about the pregnancy. ‘Bloody cheek,’ she added now.

  Jack didn’t sound like he had that in mind, Stella thought. But she wasn’t going to argue. Jack didn’t deserve to be defended.

  ‘So you might be pleased if I give Perry your email?’

  Stella laughed. ‘As long as he doesn’t fancy me, Annie. I’m not in the market for any more relationships. I’ve fucked up enough on that score for a couple of lifetimes.’

  61

  ‘How was the train?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Yeah, good,’ Lisa replied, although she seemed evasive, twitchy and quickly changed the subject. ‘Dad sends his love. He was so pleased you came up.’

  Jack doubted that very much. Jack, for Lisa’s sake, had done his best over Christmas, then wimped out of New Year. He and Lisa’s father, Neil, did not get on. He could tell the man saw them both – even his daughter – as smug media types; his jibes about journalists, London and Lisa’s celebrity clients, regular and barely veiled. Jack had felt sorry for Lisa.

  ‘Are you feeling OK?’ Jack asked. His wife, he thought, looked stressed out and pale, with dark circles under her eyes. ‘Shall I make you a cuppa? You look done in.’

  She shook her head quickly. ‘Thanks, but I think I’ll go and have a lie-down.’

  Jack let her go and went to make himself one. God, this is hard, he thought, suddenly guilty as he remembered the conversation he’d had with Stella a few days earlier. He should never have called her; it was pointless. But he couldn’t bear not having contact with her.

  Things had been total crap with Lisa for months now. It wasn’t just the pregnancy. He’d decided, way back in October, to embrace that. It was the only way. No one could be angry with an unborn child. And he felt much better for making the decision. But Lisa did not seem to appreciate his efforts. It was as if she didn’t want him to be happy about the baby, to involve himself in its life. It was only because he’d insisted that she allowed him to accompany her to the twelve-week scan. If he hadn’t asked her why she was going into work so late that morning, and she had finally admitted what she was doing – after a lot of prevarication about being in a hurry and not having time to chat – he would never have known about the antenatal appointment.

  But seeing the tiny curled image on the screen had filled him with wonder. My child, he’d thought, struggling to take in the concept of this miraculous new life. Lisa had not seemed similarly affected. She’d been strung out that morning, jumping when the sonographer put the cold jelly on her stomach, barely looking at the screen: it was as if she couldn’t wait to get the whole experience over with. He wondered if she would have behaved differently if he hadn’t been present.

  He knew that pregnancy affected women in different ways, but she had changed so much. Gone was the slightly giggly, fun side to her character. She no longer snuggled into his side when they were watching television or in bed together
– she didn’t seem to want him to touch her at all – and was regularly snappish with him, brushing him off as if he were an annoying bug. Jack was bewildered.

  When she got up later that evening, wandering down in her sweatpants, an old pink jumper hiding her swelling tummy, he got her a large glass of water and sat down next to her on the sofa. She looked at him askance and moved away a little.

  Jack held up his hands. ‘What’s the matter with you, Lisa? I appreciate pregnancy is a big deal … but do you have to be so hostile all the time? You just looked at me as if you thought I was about to molest you.’

  She didn’t answer, just sat with her head bowed, cradling the glass with both hands. But he could see the muscle in her cheek twitching as she clenched her jaw.

  ‘Are you still punishing me?’ he tried again, his voice rising with frustration. ‘You know I’m totally on board with the baby now.’

  She still didn’t say anything beyond a small grunt and Jack had no idea what that signified.

  ‘Please. Can we not do this.’

  Her head shot up and she turned her round blue eyes on him. ‘What do you mean?’

  He was taken aback by her aggression. ‘I just meant we’re both miserable. Can’t we talk about it, whatever it is, find some solution?’

  She dumped the glass on the coffee table and flopped back against the cushions on the leather sofa. He stared at her face: the tight jaw, the eyes squeezed shut, her full lips skewed as she chewed the inside of her cheek.

  ‘Lisa?’

  Tears were spilling down her cheeks now, and he wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t dare touch her, not in the mood she was in. He thought, fleetingly, of his call to Stella on New Year’s Day. But Lisa couldn’t possibly know about that.

  ‘Would you cheat on me, Jack?’ she asked then, out of the blue, hunching over, arms crossed tight around her breasts. She didn’t look at him.