Last Child

by Terry Tyler

  I felt chilled to the bone. Everything was silent, just like on that first day in Spain when I thought he’d deserted me. For the umpteenth time I cursed the fact that we didn’t live together. If a man lives with you it doesn’t matter if he goes out, because you know he has to come home to sleep, but Phil’s official address was a poky little cottage in the village where, I assume, he retired that night. In the morning, at work, he apologised and said that it had turned into a bit of a ‘session’ and he hadn’t liked to come back to Lanchester Hall in the state he was in.

  Still didn’t explain why he hadn’t answered his phone.

  I dreamt of the floors disintegrating under my feet again.

  How different life was in the cold English winter. The glorious warmth of Spain felt like a lifetime away.

  The honeymoon was over.

  I began my assault. I plotted my ovulation time with the greatest of care, and made damn sure we made love at every opportunity over that period of a few days.

  By the end of the month I felt those tell-tale cramps, yet again. Why, why wasn’t it happening?

  I was pondering over this at my desk on the first day of my period, when Reggie came in with a sheaf of paper.

  “What’s this?” I asked, feigning interest.

  “The report you asked me for.”

  My mind went blank.

  “Before Christmas,” Reggie said. “You asked me to prepare a report on employees, company-wide, who aren’t pulling their weight, and on areas in which you feel that, despite natural wastage, we are still over-staffed. So that you can make redundancies in certain areas, you said. Well, I’ve completed the task.” She put the papers on my desk, and stood there with her hands behind her back, like a man. “I’ve done extensive research. You’ll find I’ve left no stone unturned. It’s a fully comprehensive assessment of the situation.”

  Of course; it was the report I’d asked Erin for a year before, and never received. I stared at the pages, not taking in any of the words and figures. “Thank you, Reggie,” I said, looking up at her and remembering to give a smile. The warm one. The ‘warm’ smile as opposed to the polite one, I mean. “I really appreciate your hard work, and I’ll get Phil to take a look at it and tell me what he thinks. Better still, perhaps you could take it in to him.”

  “Mr Castillo hasn’t been in his office for most of the morning,” she said. “I saw him in General Accounts ten minutes ago; shall I go down and see if he’s finished his business there?”

  She had the most odd look on her face. Without a word, I picked up the report and made my way down to General Accounts.

  I found Phil leaning against the supervisor’s desk, looking very relaxed, hands in the pockets of his new Hugo Boss suit. He was chatting and laughing with the supervisor, Adam, a chap of his own age, and two of the female admin assistants. One was all short black hair and rosebud lips, like Betty Boop, and the other a Keira Howard lookalike. A chav, in other words. Who were these people? I didn’t know them. How come he was so friendly with them? I scarcely knew their names; wasn’t the dark one called Layla? Yes, that was right. Layla, I’ve got you on your knees. That was what the vile oiks in IT called her, misquoting a line from some old Eric Clapton song. It was a reference to her predilection for oral sex, apparently. Susan kept me abreast of these things.

  The laughter stopped as I approached; I was vaguely aware of mutters of “Morning, Miss Lanchester.”

  I smiled round at them all. This time I chose the business-like version, which was one step down from ‘polite’. Less turning up of the lips, piercing stare. I tried them all out in the mirror sometimes to make sure they conveyed the right message. “Have we all got enough work to do?” I asked. I made a mental note to see if Layla and the chav were on Reggie’s list.

  The two silly tarts scurried off, while Adam pretended to be doing something at his computer. Phil greeted me with warmth and showed great interest in the report, but I felt an undercurrent of... I knew not what.

  That night he said he was tired, and would go back to his own place after work to get an early night.

  At eight-thirty I drove down to his cottage, but there were no lights on. Surely he couldn’t have been in bed asleep, already?

  I lay in bed on my own, sick with fear, too churned up to sleep. I could feel myself closing up again, sliding behind that protective shell that Phil’s love had broken down. Had to stop worrying, had to think of that first day, when I thought I would never see him again, when I’d felt so desperate all day. There had been no cause for alarm then, and there wouldn’t be now; I had to calm down, believe in him. Almost on cue, he texted me to say goodnight. And that he loved me.

  So I didn’t get pregnant in January.

  In February I threw my temperature charts in the bin, and trusted that our love was powerful enough to make the miracle happen.

  At the end of February I watched my body all the time for those depressing signals that my period was nigh, but they didn’t arrive.

  The depressing signals. The ones I usually tried to ignore, when they came.

  A heaviness in my lower abdomen.

  A feeling of impending doom.

  Stupid childish chocolate cravings.

  I tried forcing myself to feel these things, so as not to build my hopes up, but still I remained free of all symptoms.

  The third week passed without my wanting to smash windows and throw things like I usually did. I could still pee when I needed to. Best of all, the end of the month arrived, and I didn’t bleed.

  My day came, and nothing happened.

  I’d begun to feel terrified of the sight of blood, but not in the way most people are.

  All week I waited, carrying my beautiful secret. I wasn’t bleeding. People kept telling me how happy I looked. I was so filled with joy that I didn’t even mind when Phil said he was going down to a London club at the weekend, with Adam from General Accounts.

  By Friday the second of March I was still safe and, best of all, my practically non-existent breasts had become tender to the touch.

  Just like my mother told me hers had done, each time she was pregnant.

  After my morning shower I would run my hands over my body. It felt different. It felt pregnant.

  I found an online multiple choice quiz about symptoms, and had the result e-mailed to me. The experts thought there was a very good chance I was pregnant.

  I kissed the fertility charm I kept tucked into my bra at all times. If the gods had granted me this, I must show my gratitude.

  I was weak with excitement. I bought a test kit, and told the shop assistant all about Phil, and how badly I wanted to have his child; I had to tell someone.

  It showed ‘not pregnant’. My spirits plummeted. Back I went to the pregnancy site. Yes, it said that if you test too early, you could still get a false negative.

  Fine, fine. The best indication was, though, that I should have started my period on the twenty-fifth of February. I was a whole week, a whole glorious seven days late.

  When Phil set off for London the next night I kissed him passionately and told him to have a wonderful time, and I knew he loved me more for doing so, little knowing that soon his life would change, with nightclubs a thing of the past, but he wouldn’t mind because he would be as ecstatic as I was.

  Monday came. Monday, the fifth of March. I was ten days late, and still my period had not arrived.

  I couldn’t hold back any longer.

  I told him.

  Chapter Nine

  Jane

  March—November 2012

  “To Baby Lanchester!”

  Will Brandon made the toast; our glasses were at mid-raise, our mouths open to echo his toast when Phil laughed and piped up, “Hey! Baby Castillo, if you don’t mind.”

  Isabella linked her arm through his and put her head on his shoulder in the way she so often did, and said, “Is Lanchester-Castillo too much of a mouthful?”

  Phil turned and kissed her forehead. “I don’
t care what his or her name is, I’m just over the moon! And the wedding’s on Saturday, the twenty-first of April in the village church, okay? Izzy says we can’t do it any later because she doesn’t want to look pregnant in the photos.”

  And everyone laughed with them because they looked so delighted, and I just thought, what a crock of shit.

  Isabella wasn’t pregnant, you see.

  They were all hugging her; Erin, Rosie Brandon, Hannah, Pat, and Angie Seymour, while Will and his son Charlie, and Phil’s friends, Ian and Adam, slapped him on the back and made the usual man jokes, and I looked at my dearest friend and wondered if she was a little insane.

  Before I explain myself, I’d just like to say that I didn’t really ‘get’ Isabella and Phil, right from the start. Sure I could see why she fell in love with him; he was exactly what she didn’t know she was looking for, but him in love with her? Did not compute. It was all too convenient. One minute Dante had invited him along so that Izzy didn’t feel like a gooseberry, and the next minute he was moving to England to be with her. He made all the right noises, but it just seemed as though—oh, look, I hate this, but I’ll have to say it. It was like he thought, yes, this will do nicely. I’m not saying he’s an evil conman like you read about in the papers, but I reckon he knew a good deal when he saw it.

  He and Dante got to know each other because they both liked boats, they weren’t old friends or anything. Dante said Phil was always in a pickle with one woman or another and the latest one had chucked him out (reason not discussed), which was how he ended up on my boyfriend’s sofa.

  He’s nice, but a bit bland. I suppose he’d appeal to quite a few women; he’s attractive and very friendly, but there’s no substance behind it. He says all the right things, but they could be from a script. To be honest, I think Isabella had got to the stage in her life when she’d have fallen in love with anyone who was halfway decent looking and gave her a bit of attention. That sounds awful, because she’s my best friend, but being her best friend also means that I know her better than anyone else.

  Before Dante, my love life was an arid wasteland, like Isabella’s; it was one of the things we had in common. We’re a right pair; she’s too frosty and I’m too eager. Either way, neither of us ever got much past occasional dates. When I first started working for her we used to commiserate with each other about our lonely Bridget Jones-style Friday nights with bottles of wine and romantic films, and we became close. Aside from our off-putting behaviour with the opposite sex we’re very different emotionally, too; I’m level-headed and she’s so intense. Oh, and it’s always all about her. Since we came back from Spain she hasn’t even asked me about Dante. As it happens, the plan is that I will go over there to live, in about a year or so. I daren’t tell Isabella. God knows what sort of a fix she’s going to be in by then.

  She got the confirmation from the doctor that she was indeed pregnant, even though he said it was very, very early days. She was so happy, and to his credit so was Phil. I mean, I think it was actually genuine, he was punching the air. A lovely time for both of them. Then he went off to Rotterdam to give the good news to his parents, on his own because his father wasn’t well and he didn’t want Izzy to catch anything, he said, and that was when it happened. She had a very early miscarriage, so early it was like nothing more than a late and very heavy period. She was beside herself when she rang to tell me, so I accompanied her to the doctor immediately, and he explained what had happened; apparently, one in five pregnancies end this way, often without the woman even knowing she’s pregnant.

  When we got home I tried to comfort her, but she was off in some weird, painful place where I couldn’t reach her. She went to take a bath, hoping the hot water would ease the physical pain, while I sat downstairs and wondered how the hell I was going to help her through this. I was in no way prepared for what came next.

  “I’m still pregnant,” she announced, as she came back into the room, wrapped in a huge fluffy dressing gown.

  I honestly thought she’d had some sort of funny turn. “Isabella?” I said. “Come on, sit down. I know it’s been a terrible shock, but—”

  She curled up on the sofa next to me and took my hand. “Jane, you’re the only one I can trust. Please, please hear me out.” She stopped, and shut her eyes. “Look, I can’t bear this not to happen. I have to marry Philip, if I don’t I’m scared that he might just go off me, drift away from me. If I can just become his wife, I’ll be halfway safe. All I have to do is get pregnant again, and he’ll never know. But he’s got to marry me. So the baby will be late; well, I’ll deal with that when the time comes. I’ll pretend I got the dates wrong, or I might even come clean—look, I don’t know, I haven’t worked it all out yet, I just know that I’ve got to do this.”

  “But he’ll marry you anyway.” I said. “It’s all arranged; he’s not going to call it off.” He wasn’t likely to reject the goose and her golden egg, was he?

  “I can’t run that risk,” she said. “He might want to postpone it, so that we can do it properly; you know how he likes to spend money and make a big splash. During the wait anything could happen, couldn’t it? Jane, I’m nearly thirty-six; he could leave me for a woman who still has twenty childbearing years in front of her!”

  “Izzy, this is crazy. He’s with you because he chose to be; if having a family was his priority he’d have gone for someone younger in the first place, and thirty-six isn’t old, not these days. If you go through with this, you won’t enjoy your own wedding. Your wedding, Iz—it’ll spoil the whole day. You’ll be constantly on edge.”

  She fixed me with the most determined stare. “It’s a small price to pay. He’s going to marry me, Jane. He’s going to be my husband.”

  So I agreed to do everything I could to help. I was her closest friend, she relied on me. What else could I do?

  Of course, she got more frantic as the weeks went on. She kept saying, “If I can just be pregnant when I walk up that aisle, I’ll be safe.” She was clinging on to the fact that her own mother had given birth to her early; if only she could conceive immediately her own child might be early, too, and then Philip would never know. I could see all sorts of dodgy sub-plots being devised as she tried to keep him away from the doctor; don’t husbands usually know how far along their wives are? But she shrugged off my concerns; she would think about that once she’d got that all-important ring on her finger.

  The wedding was small, and I suppose it was a lovely occasion, but it just seemed like a farce to me. She’d timed the wedding so that if she hadn’t managed to get pregnant again her April period wouldn’t interfere with her wedding night, but by early May the miracle still hadn’t happened and we had to put Plan B into action. This consisted of me suggesting that Lanchester North might benefit from Phil’s amazing advisory skills, and Isabella saying what a great idea, it would be so good for him to spend a week up there and get to know the staff. Thus, he was packed off to Pontefract, which was when Isabella’s mythical miscarriage took place.

  She told him that she didn’t let him know as soon as it happened because she wanted him to enjoy his week up north. “That way, I get brownie points for being unselfish, too,” she told me.

  The day after he came back she was all smiles.

  “Everything’s okay!” she whispered as she crept into my office and shut the door, carefully, as though there were spies everywhere. She sat down at my desk. “He was wonderful, so concerned, but of course he was terribly upset, too. I’ve got over the shock myself, now, but I had to watch him go through it. It was awful.” There were tears in her eyes. “D’you know, I actually think that losing our baby has brought us closer. We cried together; he was mortified that he wasn’t with me when it happened.” She put her hand on her stomach and, feeling slightly disgusted, I realised what she’d done. She’d convinced herself she was telling the truth, to make her lie more believable.

  I didn’t know what to say. I just looked down at the papers in front of me on my desk a
nd said, “well, I’m glad it’s all worked out. Onwards and upwards, eh?”

  Then Philip came in to make sure she wasn’t ‘overdoing it’, and they both left, cooing at each other.

  Philip never asked after Dante either, by the way. I imagine he’d just used him for a cheap place to stay, and had now all but forgotten him.

  Both their birthdays fell in June and they had a big joint party at Hampton’s, acting like king and queen. I’d begun to be slightly sickened by the pair of them. It all seemed fake. He was faking being in love with her (I thought, though it was very convincing), and she was faking the happy wife thing, confident of her husband’s love and their future together with stacks of little Lanchester-Castillos running around. It was just another crock of shit.

  I much preferred the pre-Philip version of Isabella. She was a bit volatile, but at least she’d been real then. She was what the Americans call ‘snarky’; we used to have a right laugh together. Now, she seemed driven only by this overwhelming love for Philip, except it wasn’t a healthy love, it was obsession.

  I was glad to get home, and Skype with Dante after he’d closed the bar that night. He was so lovely and normal.

  Isabella walked around looking super-serene now that Golden Balls was living at Lanchester Hall. She revelled in being called Mrs Castillo by the staff, and if he was busy (doing what I didn’t know; probably looking up dating sites on the internet) she phoned his extension every hour over some little domestic matter, like what he wanted for dinner, or just to hear his voice. Susan sometimes listened in and would roll her eyes at their soppiness. Phil, for his part, seemed happy to go along with the role of He Who Must Be Adored.

  In August, though, they had a massive row.

  She found out that he hadn’t relinquished the tenancy of the cottage in the village, via a quarterly report from the staff accommodation clerk in HR.

  “He says it’s in case any of his friends want to come and stay, but we’re not exactly short of bedrooms, are we?” she said to me, pacing around my office.