Chapter 45.
Then
It was August. In the middle of the night, one Saturday, my phone rang.
‘Lara?’
She was crying. She couldn’t speak.
‘What’s happened? Lara? Can you tell me what’s happened?’
Eventually, she said, ‘I told him no. I said no.’
‘Okay.’ My biggest fear was on the verge of coming to life. ‘Okay. You’re okay. It’s going to be all right. Where are you?’
She was on the other side of the city, alone in a postcode she didn’t know.
‘Stay on the phone,’ I said. ‘I’m coming to get you.’
I slipped on a pair of trainers, grabbed my wallet, gripped the phone, and ran.
I flagged down a taxi on Earlham Road and went to find her.
We didn’t speak for the whole journey home. I just held her hand, while she stared out of the window.
Back at the house, I sat her down on the sofa and made us both tea. I found a blanket and draped it over her, pressed the mug into her hands, took a seat next to her.
‘Talk to me,’ I said.
She drew a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I can’t remember his name.’
‘Did he hurt you?’
She shook her head. ‘But I could tell that he... wanted to.’
‘Tell me what happened.’
She let out a breath. ‘We got talking. In the club. He asked me back to his. But when we got there I realised...’ She started crying again.
I squeezed her hand. ‘It’s okay. I’m here. I’m here.’
‘He was married . There were wedding photos, and her stuff everywhere, and he said, “You don’t mind, do you?” And I told him I did mind, and to call me a cab, and he... He lost it. He was grabbing me, shouting at me...’
I felt a silent tear of fury slip down my cheek. ‘I’m so sorry, Lar.’
She looked at me, tear-stained. ‘What the hell is wrong with me?’
‘Nothing,’ I said firmly. ‘Nothing is wrong with you. You’re allowed to say no. To change your mind. To have principles .’
‘But I keep meeting guys and sleeping with them, and it never means anything.’
‘So what? That’s what your twenties are for.’
‘Why haven’t I settled down like you?’
‘Because... that’s not what you want. And anyway, you haven’t met your person yet.’
She laughed softly, but it sounded hollow. ‘Reckon he’s out there, do you?’
‘Yeah. I do. And you’ll meet him when you’re ready.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, eventually. ‘Maybe.’
‘Lar.’ I swallowed. ‘Can I say something?’
‘Is it going to annoy me?’
‘Probably.’
She smiled faintly.
‘You’re so much better than some arsehole who wants you for one night. Okay? I mean it. You... You deserve someone who knows your worth and who never forgets it.’
She didn’t reply.
‘I really want you to remember that.’
‘I’m going to stop kissing deadbeats in clubs,’ she said, eventually, putting her head in her hands.
I set my palm on her back, started rubbing it in slow, soothing circles. ‘Only if you like. Only if you want.’
‘I do, I think.’
‘Okay.’
She blinked up at me. ‘What would I do without you?’
‘That’s not something you ever have to worry about.’
The following weekend, I went to visit Jamie in London. He was interning again. Heather, apparently, had gone off to work at another firm. Jamie didn’t know where, or seem particularly fussed. I was relieved to hear she’d gone.
Three months had passed since I’d lost our baby. And even though my pregnancy had been so horribly short-lived, a constant hunger had taken hold inside me. It commanded my thoughts, had burrowed into my brain, skewed my view of the world.
I saw pregnant women everywhere. On the street, buses, TV programmes. My whole body throbbed with longing whenever I encountered them. And every time I saw Jamie, too, it was all I could think about. Making another baby. My belly ballooning. Picking out newborn clothes. Debating names.
I’d come so close to having the family I’d always longed for. And I simply couldn’t bring myself to let that go.
‘I want to try again,’ I whispered to Jamie in bed that Saturday night.
He rolled towards me. I felt the delicious comfort of his unclothed body, warm as turned earth.
He moistened his lips with his tongue. ‘Try what?’
‘To have another baby.’
For two weeks now, the papers had been declaring a heatwave. The whole country was brittle and brown, scorched by unrelenting sun. We had the air-con on full in the flat, but I knew that outside, the darkness smouldered.
Jamie’s eyes opened fully then. He took me in, his gaze tracking mine like he was waiting for the punchline. We were lying face to face, our noses almost touching. His breath felt hot in the false cold of the room.
It must have been the very middle of the night. The world was quiet as a church.
We’d discussed it a few times. The soul-searing sadness. Whether our baby would have been a boy, or a girl. If they might have arrived early, and been born on Christmas Day.
‘What do you think?’ I whispered, working a finger across the dips and peaks of his chest. His physique had softened over the course of that summer. Lots of barbecues and work drinks and client dinners. I didn’t mind. If anything, I liked that there was more of him. It made him seem sturdier, somehow.
He lowered his head to kiss me.
‘Should we try again?’ I asked, unable to wait for his reply.
I watched him taste-test the right words for a couple of moments. ‘I think we should hold off till we’ve graduated.’
This, of course, was logical. Which made it so much harder to argue with. But to me, a ten-month wait already seemed unbearable. My body wanted back what it had had.
‘It would just be less complicated,’ he said. ‘There’ll be fewer distractions. And my parents...’
I could see he believed his mum and dad might be more on board if we waited until next summer. But I knew different, of course.
I’d encountered Debra the previous month, when she made a flying visit to Norwich to see Jamie’s grandmother. It was the first time we’d come face to face since that night at the restaurant. She simply looked me up and down, then offered me a tight nod. I’d asked Jamie not to mention the miscarriage to his parents, so did she think I’d done as she’d asked?
I assumed she was satisfied, though it was hard to tell, since Debra was generally about as expressive as someone invigilating an exam.
Several times, I’d considered telling Jamie what Debra had done. But she’d been right about one thing: I loved him way too much to break his heart like that.
I fingered his crisp white bedlinen now, which smelt heavily of fabric conditioner. He must have washed the sheets, ready for my visit. The flat had been immaculate when I’d walked into it earlier. Every surface gleaming, the wooden floors so clean they were practically reflective. He’d even lit scented candles.
I thought of Lara, of the arsehole who’d wanted to hurt her last week. The whole thing had made me appreciate Jamie even more deeply. Why wouldn’t I want to start a family with this man?
‘Don’t you think having a baby might make life more difficult?’ Jamie said, shuffling a little closer. ‘I won’t be earning any kind of salary for another two years at least. You’ll need a job, next summer. And with a child to think about—’
‘I could work part-time,’ I said, hopefully, naively. ‘Or shifts, or something. Plenty of people do it, Jamie. We’d muddle through.’
Our plan had always been to stay in Norwich after graduating, but over the past year I had already seen that our life trajectory was changing. Jamie had been spending an increasing amount of time in London. And Lara had been talking about moving there too, because that was where all the TV contacts were, the best assistant jobs. Earlier in the summer, she’d stayed with her cousin in Haringey while she shadowed an art director on a comedy series being shot in Finsbury Park. I’d missed her hugely. She was my oldest friend. My sister. She had every one of my best interests at heart. Any prolonged separation felt as unthinkable as running out of air. I wanted her – needed her – living near to me.
London was starting to feel like where we were all supposed to be.
The high peal of a fire engine penetrated the stillness then. Something set alight by the heat, maybe. Tinder-dry grass ignited by the spark of a chucked cigarette, an abandoned barbecue.
I tugged Jamie’s arms more tightly around me and we lay wordlessly together for a few minutes. I was trying to remember to stay in the moment, to enjoy the press of his bare skin to mine, the cushion of his stomach against the ridge of my hip.
‘You never told me you wanted to have kids so young,’ he said.
‘I didn’t till I met you. And I was so happy when that test came back positive. So doesn’t that mean it’s the right thing?’
As Jamie seemed to be working out how to reply, my emotions overtook me without warning.
‘I don’t know how to let go,’ I gasped. Panic poured into my throat. ‘I don’t know how to not want this, Jamie.’
‘Hey, hey. It’s okay to want it, Neve. It’s okay.’ He put a hand out to stroke my face and hair, his palm cool against my skin.
I knew by now that my longing had moved beyond the boundaries of anything rational. The need to have another baby felt physical.
I’d tried to explain it to Lara before. The overwhelm of yearning for motherhood. She said she’d never felt anything physically that way. But she didn’t judge, or try to dissuade me. She was unfailingly supportive, if slightly despondent about my career, and the apparent forthcoming destruction of my vagina.
‘Let’s wait till we graduate. Ten months is going to fly,’ Jamie whispered. And then he moved tenderly on top of me, and we made love, and it was long and intense in a way that felt like he was giving me his word.