Chapter 16 Two Secrets Shared
“So, did you register, then? Did you sign up?”
Karim is gazing at me intently, his glass of Coke halfway to his lips. We have driven out to a countryside pub for dinner, and we are sitting in the garden together, beneath a gazebo. The evening is mild—and warm, as long as you are sheltered from the wind. Fairy lights are strewn across the roof, and it is cozy and Christmassy, even at this time of year.
“I did, yes,” I reply, keeping my hands clasped between my knees because I know they are trembling.
It is a few days after I danced it out with Erin and Katie, and I have finally told him all about it. I have given him the abridged History of Me, sticking to the facts, not letting my emotions spill over into what is already a difficult accounting. He is now up to date, and I am exhausted. I have talked about myself more in the last week than I have for the rest of my life, and I am not that interesting.
Now I feel laid bare, like a wire stripped of its insulation. My nerves are raw and jagged, and I look around at all the other tables nearby. I have already calculated that the outdoor capacity of the pub is forty-eight, and there are only twelve of us here. I look back at Karim and remain silent.
He has listened carefully to my sad tale and now seems to want to know more. Which is understandable but also disturbing—I was steeled to say my piece, but hadn’t quite prepared myself for any further probing. I tell myself that it is fine, that he is friend not foe, that it will all be okay.
Of course, part of me doesn’t believe that. Part of me thinks that Karim will hear all of this and disapprove. Think badly of me. Judge me and find me wanting. At the very least, that he will decide I am way too messy and complicated and screwed up to waste any more time on.
That thought process in itself is bad enough—but the fact that I might actually be relieved if he walks away is even worse.
If he walks away, I will be hurt. But I have been hurt before, and I know I will recover. If he stays, if we carry on with this thing we have together, then I will get in deeper and deeper and the hurt will grow bigger and bigger. It has already become so much more than I expected it to. More than I planned. How will I cope when it all goes wrong?
“And what happens next, then?” he asks quietly, rudely interrupting my internal catastrophizing.
“Well, I’ve registered my details and what I know about her—the dates and places and names and stuff. Obviously, I don’t know what her name is now. When she was born I didn’t want to choose a name for her; I just thought that was the job of the people who were adopting her, and—well, I suppose I didn’t want to make her even more real.
“So, I signed up and said that I would be open to being contacted, and now I wait. She can go on there when she is eighteen, and then—well. I don’t know what happens then.”
It had been simple to fill in, that form. A straightforward act of bureaucracy, submitted to the General Register Office, which bizarrely turned out to be just down the road from us in Southport.
Simple, but not—those dates, those times, those names, all so heavily laden with history, with emotion. And the final kicker—the question that asks you if you wish to be contacted or if you do not; a delete-as-appropriate option that hides a world of potential pain and rejection. The same option is given on the form for adopted people as well—once they are eighteen, they can register and specifically say that they don’t want to be contacted.
Such clear-cut options for something that is so very complex.
Katie won’t register when she turns eighteen because she says she isn’t interested in her birth parents yet. She knows their names and knows the details that would allow her to contact them, but doesn’t feel the need. That might change, but for now she is content to keep her distance.
It might be the same with my daughter—or it might be that she registers but says she doesn’t want to be contacted. In which case, it’s game over unless I wanted to work with some kind of tracing agency or whatever—which I don’t. I would have to respect that wish.
I explain a little of this to Karim, and he nods, processing it all, before replying: “And she’s eighteen in a few days’ time—that’s tough, Gemma, isn’t it? That waiting. And tough if she does register but says she doesn’t want to hear from you?”
“I suppose it is. But I’ve been through tougher.”
I am trying to sound calm, but even I hear the waver in my voice, feel a tremor in my lower lip.
I have been through tougher, and I have no real desire to go through it again.
Karim is sitting next to me, and his hand slides beneath the table, takes one of mine in his. I hadn’t realized how cold my fingers were until I feel the warmth of his skin. I hold on tight, more relieved than I could have expected beneath his touch.
“Thank you,” he says, squeezing my hand, “for telling me. It explains a lot about the last few weeks. And I see why it wasn’t something you wanted to share straightaway.”
“I’m not sure it’s something I want to share even now, truthfully,” I reply. “I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”
“I knew you had a past, Gemma. I didn’t think you were a virgin. What happened to you—it’s sad. It’s a small tragedy, in its own way. You were only sixteen—younger than a lot of the kids we teach. Can you imagine any of them being responsible enough to raise a child?”
I think of a few prime suspects, and I shake my head.
No. I can’t. Most of them still seem so young. Too young to even remember to bring a pen to class, or to study for a test, or to wear matching socks.
“I can tell it still affects you,” he continues, “and it’s probably affected the whole of your life. Maybe you should allow yourself a little bit of pride for what you’ve achieved, rather than a great big dollop of guilt for what you didn’t. Not many people from your background do as well as you have done.”
“I don’t think you can tell how well someone has done just from looking, can you? I mean, it depends on how you judge it. Health, wealth, happiness, whatever.”
“You’re right. You can’t tell from looking. But you got your degree. You’ve built a career. You’re building a life that is good and full.”
I look into his dark eyes and see nothing but understanding and support. It is almost as unsettling as seeing contempt and horror.
“I’m trying,” I say quietly. “But none of this comes naturally to me. I wasn’t raised to expect much of myself, or the people around me, and it’s hard to . . . unpick it, I suppose.”
He nods and replies, “Yeah. I can imagine. Have you ever thought about getting some help? You know, some counseling?”
I snort out a bitter laugh, and wonder why. It’s not exactly the world’s worst idea—but it’s also not an idea that I can ever see myself following up on. I am too self-contained, too boxed in, scared of revealing too much of myself.
“I think I’d end up lying to the therapist,” I say. “Making up easier stuff to confess to so I wouldn’t have to deal with the bigger issues.”
He smiles and rolls his eyes, like he can totally imagine that scenario.
“I had counseling, for a while, a few years ago,” he answers simply. He leaves it at that, opening the door but not shoving me through it.
“Why?” I ask. “And did it help?”
“It did help, and as for why—well, on the surface, it was because I lost a baby.”
I look up at him sharply, frowning. This is not what I expected him to say.
“Tell me about it,” I urge gently. “If you want to. But if you don’t, I understand—I’m hardly in a position to criticize anyone for keeping secrets, am I?”
He shrugs and gulps down some of his Coke. We both have plates of food in front of us, untouched, fries wilting, salad curling. The unloved burgers of the beer garden.
“You had your reasons for being secretive,” he responds. “And this isn’t something I talk about often either. When I was younger—twenty-two—I was engaged to a girl called Zara. We’d been together since we were sixteen, stuck it out through uni, and—well, we were going to get married. Looking back, we were way too young, and probably not even right for each other. But my sisters liked her, and our families were pleased, and I think we were both happy enough to go along with it.”
He pauses, and I give him the silence and the space to gather his thoughts.
“Sex before marriage, of course, was technically discouraged—but we were only human. When Zara found out she was pregnant, we didn’t tell anyone. We were shocked, and maybe, to be honest, a bit worried, and we had no idea what to do. So we kept quiet, and we—well, we adapted to the idea. Sometimes accidents can be happy, we decided. Once we’d got over the initial panic, we were both pleased. And then—long story short—she miscarried at eleven weeks.”
We are still holding hands, but now I am the one doing the comforting as I wait for him to continue.
“Nobody else knew, so we only had each other. And—well, that wasn’t enough. She was devastated, and I was too, but I had no real idea what to say or how to help her, and I was so sad myself, and we were both a mess for a long time. Eventually, we split up. We just couldn’t get over it, and maybe it made us realize that we shouldn’t be together at all. Now she’s married with four kids and I see her every now and then when I go home. Her older kids go to the same school as my niece and nephews. I’m happy for her, I really am, but I carried that pain for a long time. I still do.”
“It’s hard for the dad, I’m sure,” I say, “when that happens. You’ve both suffered the loss, but she’s the one going through it physically.”
“Exactly that. I had to focus on her; it was the right thing to do. I was useless, but I tried. The problem is that to do that, I bottled up all of my own grief, and eventually I was angry.
“Not just about the baby but about everything. It felt like the universe was against me, and I was pissed off. When we ended things between us, I felt lost. I reacted by behaving badly. I moved away from home, I was drinking, even though I never really had before, and I was—well, let’s just say I was doing a lot of stuff that was out of character for me. It wasn’t making me happy, and it was scaring the heck out of my sisters, and it was threatening my career just as it was really starting. It was Asha who made me get help. You’ve met her. She’s a tough lady—and when she tells you to do something, you do it.”
I laugh a little at that. He’s so right.
“Well, sometimes it’s good to have people in your life who care enough about you to boss you around. Is that when you saw a counselor?”
“Yeah, and it was so good for me. She helped me understand my problems—that the loss of my mum had affected me so much more than I ever thought it had. That everything was tangled up together, that I was grieving for her, for my baby, for my relationship. It was the making of me, really.”
I reach up to stroke his cheek, see the sheen of tears in his eyes. Lean in to kiss him briefly.
“See,” he says, smiling sadly, “we all have secrets. Now you know something about me that nobody else here does.”
“That makes me feel special,” I reply, finding that I like the feeling.
“Good. I think you are. The big question, though, remains—do you still fancy me, now you know I’m not the one hundred percent pure alpha male beefcake you signed up for?”
We look at each other, and there is a sense of openness, of sharing, that I don’t think I’ve ever felt before. I push aside my own concerns, my worries, my insecurities, my cowardly fear of where this might all be leading, and reply, “I don’t think I’ve ever found you more attractive.”
“What? What about that time when I took my top off on the cricket field last summer term, and you were almost salivating?”
I whack him on the arm but remember it vividly. I blushed whenever I thought about it for days afterward.
“Even more than then. Thank you. For listening, and for talking, and for just . . . being you, I suppose.”
“Being me is one of the things I’m best at. Have you finished with your food? Do you want to get out of here?”
“I do,” I reply, grinning. “Let’s go home. Let’s go to bed. Let’s make each other happy. Let’s enjoy the simple stuff for a while after all this complicated stuff.”
“You know me,” he says, winking, “I’m always up for the simple stuff.”