Chapter 37.
Then
Just seven days after I discovered I was pregnant, Jamie’s parents came to Norwich for the weekend.
I still hadn’t told Jamie about the baby.
They’d made reservations at an uber-expensive restaurant on Upper St Giles – one that offered tasting menus and paired wine. I wondered if they’d done that partly to try to intimidate me – to prove I didn’t belong in their world, and, by extension, Jamie’s.
I wasn’t intimidated, but I was apprehensive. I didn’t often see Chris and Debra, and I was worried they might be able to guess I was pregnant. What would they say? What would they do? Would they expose my secret in the middle of the restaurant, a hushed and intimate space, where people booked tables months in advance for special occasions? I couldn’t bear to be struck by the ugly brunt of Chris’s rage in such an elegant, civilised setting.
I knew I should have told Jamie by then. But the mention of Heather the previous week had thrown me. As had the idea that, unless I did something about it, Jamie might be heading to London again for the summer.
My hesitance had turned into anxiety, withdrawal. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I would push Jamie away at night, and he’d ask if I was okay. But I couldn’t tell him. Somewhere inside me, a kernel of doubt had taken root and was growing.
None of my misgivings were to do with becoming a mum, though. I pictured it obsessively: giving birth rosy-cheeked on a damp-misted day in January. Surviving night feeds and dirty nappies and lack of sleep with cheerful, full-hearted optimism, muddling through till we graduated in June. Finding somewhere to live, the three of us. Securing another part-time internship, maybe, then working as an interior designer while Jamie completed his architecture training and we both rode the juggernaut of early parenthood. It would be a messy and chaotic but exhilarating blur.
But what if, I thought, Jamie’s parents got to him before all that? What if they persuaded him the whole thing was just too huge, too soon? That becoming a dad would be unbearably tough?
I tried to imagine my life if we couldn’t make it work. Without him waking me each morning with a kiss and cup of tea. Without his messages filling my phone – jokes and funny anecdotes and ridiculous gifs. Without the hearts he would draw for me on the steamed-up shower screen. Without him catching me whenever he came home, pressing me gently to the wall with a kiss. Without meeting his gaze and enjoying the pleasant voltage of our shared smile, knowing he was mine.
But most of all, I couldn’t imagine losing the certainty of loving him. A future with Jamie had always felt sure as the sunrise to me, a flare of orange-skied warmth in my mind. Nor could I picture parenting alone. I didn’t want to do it without him. Our baby was half him, his cells mingled with mine. I imagined the baby as a silkworm inside me, spinning a new life for the three of us, intricate and breathtaking. And all we had to do for that miracle to unfold was wait.
Alone was a prospect I simply couldn’t contemplate.
At the restaurant, Jamie’s dad was being especially obnoxious. We’d barely passed the menus back to the waiter before he started harping on about Jamie’s future.
‘You should really consider doing your masters in London,’ he said, his voice abrupt, his expression expectant. ‘I’m serious about this, Jamie.’
He and Jamie were wearing matching designer shirts that night. His was white, Jamie’s dark grey. I’d been trying to decide if I thought that was sweet or a bit absurd. Still, Jamie was on good form, which helped to distract me from the hornets’ nest in my head. He looked so handsome, and had layered on the Tom Ford Noir. I was wearing the tiny black dress he liked, though I could feel his parents’ disapproval of it the moment I removed my coat.
‘Yeah, I know,’ Jamie said, in reply to Chris, sipping his water without looking my way.
I wished Jamie would assert himself. But I understood why he felt he couldn’t. His father was implacable when he was in this kind of mood.
‘And you, Neve?’ Chris’s pick-axe gaze swivelled onto me. ‘What is your plan, for life after graduation?’
I wished I’d thought to have an answer ready for this question. Because I could hardly say, Well, that really depends on how things go with your first grandchild, Chris .
The wine arrived. I put my hand over my glass as the waiter made to fill it. ‘Hayfever,’ I said. (This bit I had practised.) ‘I’m on antihistamines.’
Jamie touched my arm in sympathy, not seeming to realise I wasn’t presenting with a single symptom of hayfever, nor had I mentioned it before now. As he did so, his designer watch caught my eye, the one Chris had given to him the previous Christmas. It was so expensive, he’d pretended when I asked that he didn’t know how much Chris had paid for it. But I Googled it the same night and felt faintly appalled. It had cost as much as a small car.
‘Ah, well,’ Chris said briskly to me, as if hayfever was a personality defect. He was probably the type of guy who didn’t believe in depression, or menstrual cramps. ‘All the more for us.’
I could feel Jamie’s mum staring at me then, for just a second longer than felt comfortable. But shortly after that, the conversation moved on, and she looked away.
She caught me outside the toilets a couple of hours later, just after Jamie’s dad had ordered coffees for everyone without asking if we wanted them first.
‘Neve.’ Debra’s voice was hushed, but her eyes were urgent. She was wearing a slash of lipstick in a violent shade of red I suspected to have been an ill-judged gift from Chris. ‘I know we don’t know each other very well, but I can see how much my son... admires you.’ (It didn’t surprise me to discover that Debra was apparently allergic to the L-word.) ‘I’d like to ask you a question, and for you to answer truthfully.’
‘Okay,’ I said, even though I already resented everything about this conversation – my assumed dishonesty, her interrogative manner, what I knew was coming next.
‘Are you pregnant?’
I could feel colour blooming across my skin. So many things were going through my head in that moment. But among them was how Debra could talk to me as if I’d been her son’s girlfriend for a matter of weeks, when in fact she’d known me since I was a child.
Seemingly unwilling to wait for my response, she said, ‘I see.’
No congratulations, or impassioned hug. Just stone-cold panic, a silent scream.
‘It’s still early.’ My mouth was dry. She was standing so close, I could taste every cloying layer of her perfume. ‘Jamie doesn’t know yet.’
Debra activated crisis mode. ‘Then I need to ask you... please... to consider not having this child.’
I stared at her, horrified. ‘It’s not your right to ask me that.’
She glanced over her shoulder. It seemed mad to me that she could have said something so ludicrous just inches from where people were enjoying romantic nights out, celebratory dinners. ‘Jamie has another internship in London this summer. Archibald & Leicester is an incredibly prestigious firm, Neve. He has big plans for his future.’
‘So do I.’
At this, she tilted her head, as if to say, You wish . ‘Neve. Parenting is a tough, tough job. And Jamie... He’s not mature enough to cope. You don’t have jobs. You don’t even have anywhere to live. Please, please don’t do this to him.’
‘I haven’t done anything to him,’ I said, appalled by her outdated assumptions. ‘It takes two people to—’
‘Chris will... never recover from this. He wants the world for Jamie. He adores him.’
I just looked at her then, unsure how she expected me to consider the feelings of a man who had never been anything other than dismissive of my very existence.
‘I understand that Chris can come across as a little... domineering. But we tried for a long time to have a sibling for Harry. And it was very hard and very... heartbreaking. Then, just when we’d given up hope, Jamie came along. I suppose you could say he was our “miracle baby”. Anyway. For that reason, Chris has always wanted the very best for him. I hope you can understand.’
‘I do,’ I said, determined to maintain my composure in the face of such outrageous intrusiveness. ‘But I want the best for Jamie too. And this is really between me and him.’
‘So why haven’t you told him?’
‘I haven’t found the right moment. But Jamie will be an amazing father.’ The fervent need to stand up for Jamie’s rights – not to mention my own, and my baby’s – began to really kick in then. ‘I know he’ll want this.’
‘Yes, in fifteen years’ time, maybe. Once you’ve both had a chance to live a little and discover... what it is you want from your futures.’
I suspected she was hoping Jamie would meet someone else in the interim. Someone from a wealthy family, with parents who played golf and understood things like cigars and wine, who holidayed in Mustique and held membership at Annabel’s. Who had connections. Who dined every week at places like this.
A thought occurred to me. ‘Do you know someone called Heather?’
‘Heather? No,’ she said sharply and too fast, which indicated to me that she very much did know someone called Heather. That Heather was perhaps even who she had in mind for her son.
A woman passed us then, to go into the toilets. She smiled neutrally at us, and I wondered what she would say, were she privy to our conversation. How absurd she would have found it. How absurd any normal-thinking human would surely have found it.
‘You know, Jamie’s father wanted to send him to private school. And the reason Jamie refused was because of you.’
‘I never asked him to do that.’
‘He’s already made big sacrifices for you, Neve.’
But isn’t that what love is? I wanted to say.
‘I’ll pay you,’ Debra said then, her voice so low I wondered for a moment if I’d misheard. She reached out to touch my arm. Her skin was marble-cold against mine. But it wasn’t a gesture of tenderness. I knew it was the precursor to something harder, uglier, far more forceful.
I met her gaze, asking her to repeat herself with my expression alone.
She did have the decency to look ashamed, even as she whispered her insistence. ‘I will pay you to take care of this, Neve. However much it takes. However much you want.’ Her voice cracked then. But she remained every inch the villain to me, with her scarlet lipstick and formaldehyde-strength perfume, behaviour spinning rapidly out of control.
I felt myself burn with sadness for Jamie – my good, sweet boyfriend, who loved and respected his parents, who would have been devastated to hear the words coming out of Debra’s mouth.
It was a gamble on her part, I could see that. If I told Jamie what she’d said, there was a chance he might never speak to her again. But Debra was obviously no stranger to manipulation. She was banking on me loving her son too much to break his heart so completely. She was sure I would take this secret to my grave.
‘This is your grandchild ,’ I said softly, placing a hand on my stomach, hoping to shame her back down to planet earth.
It didn’t work. She shook her head, disturbingly focused. ‘Just name your price,’ she said, one last stab at exerting her control.
I could have walked away, then. But instead, I imagined what Lara would say – You’re better than being treated this way, Neve – and in that moment, I knew I could channel some of her assertiveness.
I took a single step forward. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Debra, that some things in life are more important than money.’
I walked back to the table then. She followed a few moments later. By now Jamie and Chris were laughing about some friend of the family, merry enough not to notice that Debra and I had become pale and voiceless, utterly absent for the rest of the night.