11
Inga screamed with excitement. Alex jumped onto the table, narrowly missing the salad bowl, and swung himself down in the space beside me like someone dismounting from the pommel horse in the Olympic games.
“Really?” he said, his face inches from mine. “That’s really a yes?”
I nodded. He kissed me—a suction cup smacker of a kiss. Then he fumbled in his shirt pocket, brought out a ring and slid it onto my finger where it twinkled brightly against some black oil pastel I’d missed under one of my nails when I’d washed my hands.
“Congratulations, you two,” said Matt, getting up to kiss first me, then Alex, a kiss that turned into back slapping, hand shaking, and much brotherly laughter.
“Wow,” said Inga, embracing me in turn. “Just wow. I’m so happy for you both.”
“Thank you,” I said, ignoring what looked like questions on her face. “ Did you have any idea about this? Are you sure you want to say yes? ”
“This calls for champagne,” she said. “Do they sell champagne in your corner shop?”
“No need,” said Alex smugly. “There’s a bottle in the fridge.”
“To Alex and Lily!” Matt toasted us after the cork had been popped and the glasses filled.
“To Alex and Lily.”
“Are you happy?” Alex asked me in bed, after Matt and Inga had gone home.
My face ached from smiling. My head from the champagne. I wanted to say, I think so, yes. I just need some time to process it all. It was lovely of you to ask me, but I wish we’d talked about it together first. That you’d asked me when we were alone.
But I didn’t say any of that.
“Yes, I’m happy.”
Alex beamed at me. “Good. Come here.”
We made love, the easy passion of two people who have learnt how to play each other’s bodies. In the morning, there was a text from Inga. Call me. Let’s meet. Soon. I knew she didn’t want to discuss bridesmaid dresses or hen parties. She wanted to grill me about my feelings. But I wasn’t entirely sure what they were myself, so she would have to wait.
I had to go to a staff meeting that morning. I never had enjoyed them; all the other tutors seemed to have known each other forever, bandying jargon and acronyms about all over the place, speaking about learning outcomes and self-evaluation. They were always polite to me; friendly, even. But, feeling out of my depth as I did, I tended to keep myself to myself. Or at least, I usually did. But that morning, my manager spotted my engagement ring the second I stepped foot in the meeting room, and the first five minutes of the meeting was given over to congratulations. Well, it felt like five minutes. Ten, even, with everyone looking at me and oohing and aahing at the ring. I had never been so popular.
“I didn’t put you down as the marrying type,” my manager said.
It was difficult to know what to say to that. “Didn’t you?”
“No. You seem too independent.”
“What a gorgeous ring,” somebody else said. “Have you set a date yet?”
“Not yet, no. Alex only asked me last night.”
“Oh, how romantic! Did he get down on one knee? My husband almost fell over when he asked me. It was so funny.”
Etc.
I was quite glad when the meeting got underway. Not that I absorbed much of it. I was too busy trying to make sense of what had just happened. It was as if, by agreeing to marry Alex, I’d joined some sort of a club. As if I was suddenly like other people. Which only drew my attention to the fact that I never had felt like that. As a child and a teenager, it had been what I wanted more than anything—just to be an ordinary kid, demanding the latest toys before moving on to plaster my bedroom wall with posters of pop stars. To have parents who nagged when I wore my skirts too short or developed a liking for black lipstick.
I never had managed that because Mum hadn’t cared what I did. Well, she hadn’t cared much about anything, really. And until that last disastrous night, I’d been too busy looking out for Violet to do much in the way of rebellion. I was used to being on the sidelines; being different.
Twisting the ring round and round on my finger, I attempted to pinpoint exactly what was wrong. I loved Alex. We’d been together for a while now. Marriage was the logical next step, especially as we’d just bought a house together. Everything was fine. I just needed to get used to the idea, that was all.
I was meeting Alex for lunch in the city after my meeting finished. I arrived at the café first and managed to get a table by the window. I soon saw Alex walking across the square from the covered market, blond hair flopping about in the wind. It needed cutting; he always left it a bit too long between appointments, so it was as if he had two identities—the floppy-haired dandy of a man he was now and the short-haired serious man he was when he had it all cut off. The longer hairstyle made him look boyish. Which he was. Alex loved fooling around and making jokes. He hadn’t changed much at all in the time since we’d met.
I saw him notice me. Watched his face light up. His pace quicken. Then he was inside the café, bending to kiss me, grabbing hold of my left hand to take a look at the ring nestled there on my finger.
“You haven’t lost it yet, then?”
“No, Alex, I haven’t lost it.”
He grinned. “Good. How was your meeting?”
“Very dull. I’m not sure I even know what it was about, to be honest.”
“Sounds like all the meetings I’ve ever been to. What d’you want to eat? I’ll go and order.”
The café was a large space inside a building that housed the library, with tables spread inside and outside. It was a popular place, especially at lunchtime, and I’d only got a table by the window because somebody had just been leaving when I arrived. There hadn’t been time for anybody to clear our table, so, while Alex went to get our food, I stacked up the used crockery and moved it to another table a few metres away. As I did so, a voice hailed me, and I looked over to see Trish with her two children.
It was good to see her, and I smiled and went over. “Hi, Trish. How are you?”
“We’re okay, thanks. Just been in a long queue at the council offices. I promised Jack a hot chocolate because he was a good boy, but I’m busting to go to the loo. You couldn’t watch him and hold Emily while I go quickly, could you? Sorry to ask. I didn’t plan this very well.”
“Of course, it’s fine.”
“Thanks. Be a good boy for Lily, Jack. Mummy won’t be long.”
I sat down at the table, holding the baby, who seemed to stiffen slightly in distress as she saw her mother walk away. I bounced her up and down on my lap a bit.
Jack held his hands in front of his face, then pulled them away again, saying, “Peep-bo!”
I pretended to be scared. Jack laughed. More encouragingly, baby Emily seemed entertained too. So, I placed her carefully in the crook of my arm and picked up a menu from the table, using it to hide my own face. Then I moved it aside. “Peep-bo!”
She gave a gurgle of laughter, so I did it again. She laughed again, the sound making me smile. “You like that, don’t you?”
“Me do it too!” said Jack.
“Okay,” I said, “let’s both do it.”
So, we both peepboed the baby, who seemed to find it even funnier than ever. When Alex came over, all three of us were laughing.
“Hello,” he said, “who do we have here, then?”
“Oh, Alex, this is Jack and his baby sister, Emily. They’re both in one of my art classes. Mummy’s just gone to the loo. Jack, this is my boyfriend, Alex.”
I ought to have said fiancé , not boyfriend , but Alex didn’t seem to notice.
“Very pleased to meet you, Jack,” he said.
“My hands went green,” Jack told him, and Alex laughed.
“Did they? And was that Lily’s fault?”
Jack nodded seriously. “I like blue best,” he said.
“You’ll have to tell Lily to use blue dye next time,” Alex said.
“Stop it,” I told Alex, and he laughed.
Emily began to whimper again, so I continued with our game of peep-bo, while Alex told Jack that blue was his favourite colour, too, and they started to list all the things they could think of that were blue. When Trish returned to the table I introduced Alex to her. It was several minutes before we returned to our own table.
“You’re really good with kids,” Alex told me as I bit into my sandwich.
“You have to be with my job,” I said.
“Come on,” he said. “That wasn’t just work. You really liked them.”
I shrugged. “They were both being cute. What’s not to like?”
“It’s just nice to see another side to you, that’s all,” he said. Then he went on to talk about something amusing one of his friends at work had said that morning, and the subject was dropped.
But later on, at home, Alex said, “I was thinking, maybe we should move into the back bedroom. Turn the front bedroom into your studio.”
I frowned. “Why would we do that? We only recently finished decorating in there.”
We were watching TV, sitting side by side on the sofa, drinking our post-dinner cups of coffee. Alex didn’t look away from the screen. “I know, but there’s quite a lot of traffic noise, isn’t there? Besides, the back bedroom has the little room off it.”
The Victorian terraced houses in our street all had the same small box room off the second bedroom. It could only be accessed through the bedroom and was too small to be used for anything much more than storage. At the moment, I had my finished paintings stacked in there.
“What would be the benefit of that?” I asked Alex, still missing the point. “D’you fancy having a walk-in dressing room or something?”
He smiled, giving me a nudge, still not looking away from the TV. “No, silly,” he said. “I just thought we could use the small room for a cot when the time comes.”
I stared at him, aghast. He was still watching TV, but I sensed he wasn’t trying to avoid my gaze. He looked quite relaxed. Quite unaware he’d just dropped an enormous bombshell.
Jesus. I’d told him I didn’t want kids. Inga had even said it the night we met. We’d both agreed not to have any “little shits” that day on the beach. Where the hell had this come from?
“Don’t you think?” Alex prompted me when I still didn’t answer, and he was turning towards me when his phone started ringing.
He picked it up from the coffee table. “It’s Dad,” he said.
I wanted to tell him to reject the call. Tell him we needed to talk. Right now. But it was too late.
“Hi, Dad. Everything all right?”
But it soon became clear that everything was not all right at all. That whatever Alex’s father was telling Alex was about to totally eclipse what I’d been about to say to Alex about his plans for the small bedroom.
By the time Alex ended the call, his face was completely drained of colour. He turned hollow eyes in my direction. “It’s Mum,” he said. “She’s got breast cancer.”