This is Me

by Shari Low

  ‘Because you were so obsessed with Sam the world could have exploded at any point in the weeks after the millennium and you wouldn’t have noticed as long as you were with him and naked. And anyway, we decided to keep it quiet because he was going out with that Fiona chick…’

  Claire interrupted her. ‘She wasn’t just some chick. He married her a few years later!’

  There was a sharp, disapproving intake of breath from Val, while Josie muttered, ‘Slapper. Just sayin’.’

  Jeanna ignored her. ‘And how did that work out? They ended up divorced anyway. At least he had a bit of fun and brought in the new century with a bang. Quite literally.’ That set her off with the cackles again. There was definitely tequila in that coffee.

  Although, when it came to Doug’s relationship, she was right. Doug and Fiona’s marriage had fallen apart when they realised they wanted very different things. He was a maths teacher at a high school in Bearsden, but Fiona had higher aspirations. When she was headhunted to a new law firm in the capital with the promise of a partnership, she’d traded in her old job, life and husband for a swanky flat in Edinburgh, a high flying career and a relationship with a government advisor at Holyrood. It came out later that they’d been having an affair for years. Claire had expected Doug to be crushed, but he was surprisingly pragmatic about it.

  In terms of possessions, it was a marriage that was easy to dissolve. They’d never had children – Fiona hadn’t wanted a family and Doug didn’t want one enough to make it a deal breaker – so they’d simply halved their bank accounts and gone their separate ways. He’d ended up living at Claire’s house for a few months, helping out with the boys, and in some ways it had been a blessing because it made them closer than ever. At least, she’d thought they were close. They obviously weren’t tight enough that he coughed up deep dark secrets about having sex with her best friend!

  Claire wasn’t letting Jeanna off the hook. ‘You are shameless. And I’ll be speaking to my brother about this. It’ll be worth it to make him squirm. I can’t believe I’m finding this out almost twenty years later. You’re a crap pal. I really need to get a new best friend. And a new brother.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,’ Jeanna said, feigning remorse.

  Claire wasn’t buying it for a second, but she decided to let it go. In three decades of friendship, there was bound to be the occasional secret.

  Jeanna was obviously on the same wavelength. ‘Anyway, you haven’t always been candid and truthful with me either, Ms Bradley.’

  Claire knew what was coming before Jeanna said another word.

  ‘Oh, my God, this is like an episode of Emmerdale,’ Val said, refilling her teacup from her flask.

  It was Claire’s turn to deflect the inevitable. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Of course you do. Did you even bother to tell your very best friend in the whole wide world that you thought you were pregnant?’

  Nine

  Claire & Sam – 2000

  It was the usual Sunday afternoon threesome. Sam. Claire. And Robbie Williams on the CD player. Claire was lounging on the bed, reference book in hand, while Sam was lying with his head on her stomach, reading something to do with demographics and… Actually, Claire had no idea. What she knew about marketing could be written on the back of a baked beans label.

  ‘Your head is extraordinarily heavy. And big. Has anyone ever told you that?’ Claire asked, shifting her hips so that the full weight of his outsized napper wasn’t on her hips.

  Sam helped her out by raising himself up on one elbow and turning to face her, finding the comments on his physicality highly amusing. ‘No, no one has ever pointed that out. I’m thinking that even if they thought it, they’d keep it to themselves so they weren’t perceived as a cheeky cow.’

  He leaned down and pushed up her long T-shirt so he could kiss her thighs, her stomach, the appendix scar she’d had since she was a kid. Eventually, he pulled himself up on top of her and planked on her torso, making her squeal, her giggling only subsiding when he put his mouth on hers and kissed her, then swept their books aside and slipped his hand under the top of her T-shirt.

  Only then did she realise that had been her subliminal plan all along. In fact, it had pretty much been her plan on every single day of the five months they’d been dating. By the end of January, barely four weeks after they’d met, they’d known this was love. Quick love, but definitely huge, undeniable, couldn’t-get-enough-of-each-other love. Sam had more or less moved into her room at the flat and, since then, he’d stayed over almost every night, only going back to his family home in the suburb of Bearsden to pick stuff up or see his parents. Even then Claire usually went with him. Thankfully his parents didn’t seem to mind. They were happy for him. Supportive. Interested. It was all a bit of an alien concept for Claire, who still hadn’t introduced Sam to anyone in the family except Doug. She had consistently used the excuse that she didn’t have time, and there was some truth there. Between the cleaning shift she did every morning at the college and the four night shifts she did in a local restaurant, supporting herself took up much of the time that she should be socialising with her boyfriend. Or lying here snogging him. It certainly didn’t leave time for taking Sam to meet her parents. Actually, she preferred the term gene donors, since they wouldn’t understand the concept of parenting if it came with a manual and someone shouting instructions on a megaphone.

  His kisses were trailing back down her neck now, giving her the chance to reach for his belt and unhook it.

  ‘You did this deliberately,’ he whispered between kisses.

  Claire laughed. ‘Definitely beats studying on a Sunday afternoon.’

  She chose not to ponder on the fact that it would be a different matter the following week when Sam was sitting his marketing degree finals and she had a 10,000 word dissertation due in on the evolution of textiles through the last hundred years. Sod it. This was a distraction she’d take all day long.

  ‘You are such a bad influence. I’m going to end up flunking out of college and earning money to eat by busking in Buchanan Street,’ he told her while he slipped off her bra.

  ‘You can’t play any musical instruments or sing,’ she teased him, her hand pushing down the waistband of his jeans.

  ‘So I’ll live off you instead,’ he joked. ‘God, I love you,’ he murmured, his fingers working their way around to…

  ‘Fuck!’ Claire blurted, as she pushed him away and leapt up off the bed.

  ‘What the…?’ Sam gasped, confused.

  Claire didn’t stop to explain. She dived out of the room and into the bathroom next door, only just getting there in time to throw up with mortifyingly undignified sound effects.

  Sam came in behind her, just as she flushed, then slumped to the floor, the back of her head pressed against the ceramic tiles on the wall.

  ‘Again?’ he asked, concerned. ‘I thought you were going to see the doctor about this?’

  Claire shook her head. ‘I didn’t go because I was feeling better the last couple of days. I thought it was just one of those mad bugs that hangs around for a while and that I’d got over it.’

  There was a silence as he reached over and pushed her hair back off her face. Eventually, he was the first to speak. ‘So, which one of us is going to say it first?’

  They’d never discussed it, never mentioned it. It was the very anxious, full of dread and fear, convinced it was wrong, elephant in the room. The one that had been vomiting for two weeks and had taken a violent aversion to the smell of coffee, petrol and Toilet Duck. Which was unfortunate given her current location.

  ‘You say it,’ she said, dreading the inevitable. Denial was a much better place to be.

  ‘I think you might be pregnant.’

  ‘Noooooooo. Don’t make it real,’ she groaned. ‘I’m on the pill. How could I be pregnant?’

  They both knew the answer. For the first couple of months after they got together, they’d used co
ndoms, then – being completely sensible and utterly unsexy – they’d both nipped to the sexual health clinic at their local health centre for check-ups. When all was clear, they’d scrapped the condoms and Claire had switched to the pill. All they’d had to do was wait seven days before having sex to give the pills time to take effect and they’d be fine. They’d managed five.

  What were the chances of becoming pregnant in that tiny window, with the pills already in her system?

  Possibly high enough to have her lying on a bathroom floor vomiting her guts out two months later.

  She knew pregnancy was a possibility. Of course it was. She hadn’t had a period for a couple of months, but she’d put that down to going on the pill. Her boobs were sore. Again, maybe a pill thing. But the vomiting? Maybe one coincidence too many.

  ‘Stay here. I’ll be back in ten minutes. I love you,’ Sam blurted. He reached over, kissed her, then darted out of the room. Claire knew exactly where he was going. The row of shops across the road from the flat had an ‘open 7 days a week’ chemist’s that they occasionally frequented for aspirin, hair removal products, razors and the sun cream they’d bought for the cheap deal to Palma they’d managed to land at Easter.

  She couldn’t be pregnant. Just couldn’t. She still had two years of her degree left to do. Two years older and further along in his career path than her, Sam had just landed a job in a city centre marketing agency and would start there in July. They were skint, lived in student digs and their idea of a balanced meal was pakora in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other.

  It wasn’t that she had any doubts about how she felt about Sam. She had never believed that love at first sight was a real thing, but she’d been head over heels from the very first time he tried to clap out a living flame from her Puffa jacket. And, thank God, he felt the same. He’d told her he loved her a week later, while they were sharing a bath to ease his bones after a uni football game. It was the perfect setting. Intimate. Bubbles. Two people squashed in an avocado bathtub. Cheap wine that came with a screw top. And Jeanna shouting outside that she was going to call the fire brigade to break down the door if they didn’t let her in, because she needed to shave her legs in case she decided to sleep with the guy she was seeing that night. ‘My calves are like fucking Brillo pads. I could do him an injury,’ she’d yelled.

  ‘You’re everything, do you know that?’ Sam had said, grinning at her as he took a slug from the wine bottle, then passed it over.

  Claire had laughed as she’d reached for it. ‘I think you may only be saying that because I’m doing things to your penis with my toes,’ she’d teased. ‘It’s called coercion.’

  ‘You could be right,’ he’d agreed. ‘But I prefer to call it falling in love with you.’

  The bottle had frozen in mid-air and her foot had frozen in mid-fondle. ‘You’re in love with me?’ she’d asked, eyes wide, smile beaming. ‘Definitely?’

  ‘Definitely,’ he’d confirmed, grinning. ‘Just be careful what you do next with that foot.’

  In one water-splashing moment, Claire was on top of him and Jeanna never did get in to shave her legs.

  Now, with another wave of nausea assaulting her, she wished unshaved legs were her only problem in life. She couldn’t be pregnant. Just couldn’t. Not now. She had to finish college, travel a bit, get a real job in her chosen field. She had to live life first.

  She had a sudden longing to have Jeanna sitting on the floor here beside her, just as they’d done at countless parties over the years. Claire adored her best pal beyond words, but she hadn’t even told her about the sickness and the missed periods because she couldn’t face making this a reality. She also couldn’t face the inevitable bollocking that Jeanna would dish out. The whole street would be left in absolutely no doubt as to how stupid Claire had been.

  Sam burst back in the door, face flushed from running up the stairs to their second floor flat. There was no way she was getting a pram up all those stairs! She couldn’t be pregnant. No way.

  He thrust a white box at her. ‘Do you want me to stay here with you?’

  Claire shook her head. ‘You’ve already seen me vomit today. If you have to watch me pee on a stick, I’m fairly sure you’ll never want to have sex with me again. Actually, I’m so fricking terrified right now, I never want to have sex again anyway.’

  Sam squatted down, put a hand on either side of her face and kissed the top of her head. ‘Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it, OK? We’ll work it out.’

  It was just one of the many things she adored about him. He was strong, decent and he had a confidence about him that everything would always come good. Claire sometimes wondered if that came from having loving, supportive parents, whom he knew would stand by him no matter what.

  ‘Aren’t you scared?’ she asked.

  ‘Fucking terrified,’ he replied. ‘But I’m trying to do that stoic thing for you. Is it working?’

  ‘No, but thanks,’ Claire said, so grateful he wasn’t freaking out. If she wasn’t so absolutely gripped with fear, she’d be falling in love with him just a little bit more.

  He went back to the bedroom, and after brushing her teeth, taking several deep breaths, plucking up every bit of courage she possessed and then running out of ways to delay the inevitable, Claire peed on the stick.

  When she’d shuffled back through to the room, he was already lying on the bed, so she sat down beside him.

  ‘How long?’ he asked, gently pulling her head down on to his shoulder.

  The words ‘Three minutes’ got stuck in her throat.

  They didn’t even need three. Barely two had passed when the blue line appeared very clearly and absolutely undeniably in the second box.

  She was pregnant.

  She looked up at Sam and saw his eyes close, his head fall back. It was all very well saying all the right things, and being madly in love when it was all about fun and frivolous stuff. But she was about to find out if he was the kind of guy she could count on when things got tough.

  And history had already taught her, time and time again, that when it came right down to it, the people who were supposed to be there for her, to stand behind her when she was about to fall, were the ones who let her down the most.

  Ten

  Denise – 2019

  The coffee shop was busy, but Denise spotted a little table for two in the back corner. That very thought made her heart flip. Her whole life, she’d looked for tables for two. Now she would only need one. She should just have gone home, but she couldn’t face the four walls that encompassed a lifetime of memories. Here was better. She didn’t need to speak to anyone, but she was surrounded with people. It was enough to make the loneliness that seeped from every pore almost bearable. No one gave her a second glance, not even a flicker of curiosity. When had that started happening? When she was younger, Ray had loved the fact that she drew appreciative glances wherever she went. When had people – especially men – stopped looking at her with interest as she passed by? And when had she stopped caring? Someone once said to her that they’d been heartbroken when they realised that they no longer turned heads in this ageist society. Denise could honestly say that it didn’t bother her in the least. The only opinion she had ever cared about came from the man who was no longer here to give it.

  She made her way across the shabby chic, organic cafe, weaving in and out of prams, bikes and oversized bags that were thrown over the back of chairs by women in yoga pants. Didn’t anyone actually wear real clothes any more? Ray would have been horrified if she’d left the house like that. He liked her to be smart, stylish, and she did too. She’d rather stay home until the end of time than leave the house in a pair of leggings.

  ‘What can I get for you, dear?’

  The waitress interrupted her thoughts and she realised that she’d been staring at the menu for several minutes but hadn’t read a word. ‘Just a tea please. Earl Grey.’

  The waitress bustled off, almost falling over a tiny toy pram belong
ing to a little girl at the next table. A memory flicked to the front of her mind. She’d had one like that when she was a little girl. Not that her mum had bought it for her. Agnes didn’t have the money for lavish presents. No, the family next door had given it to her when their daughter had grown out of it and Denise had adored it with all her heart. It was a different story, far too soon afterwards, when she was barely out of her childhood and facing real life motherhood.

  The waitress returned and placed a china cup with a blue pattern on it in front of her, then a matching teapot, milk jug and sugar bowl. Denise thanked her but made no effort to strike up conversation.

  A sudden burst of laughter from the table of yoga women made her glance over, and as she did, one of the women put her arm around another and hugged her. It was a simple gesture and Denise longed to know what had brought it on. Sometimes people-watching was a wonderful distraction, sometimes it was like seeing a movie play out in front of you, set in a world in which you didn’t belong. Today it was the latter and it wasn’t the first time in her life that she’d had that feeling.

  She was rescued from slipping into the past by the ding of the cafe doorbell. The door opened and a woman with a stressed expression and harassed demeanour came in holding a baby on one hip, a toddler’s hand on the other side and two large bags over her shoulder, so bulky they threatened to clear every table she passed. Hair escaping from her ponytail, face flushed with exertion, brows furrowed, she stopped in front of a man sitting on his own at a table for four, just a few feet away against the left hand wall. He glanced up at her expectantly, a look of hope on his face. It was soon dashed when the woman promptly plonked the baby down on his lap, then lifted the toddler on to the seat beside him.