Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
My news is received with much delight back home, and if there are any raised eyebrows, they’re careful to make sure they do it behind my back.
My dad is especially delighted and tells me it’s given him even more incentive to reach his hundredth birthday, never mind his upcoming ninetieth.
I realise that I am slightly taken aback by the idea, having never imagined a world in which my father does not exist. This is a crazy concept, because nobody lives forever, and our family has not exactly been lacking in unexpected loss.
But, for some reason, I simply cannot picture Starshine without George Llewellyn in it.
‘I think a hundred is aiming low,’ I said, as he sat and smiled at my scan photos. ‘I’d predict maybe a hundred and twenty at the very least.’
He laughed off the conversation, in that way that older people do, far more stoical than the younger generation.
It did make me think, though, which is never a good thing for me.
It made me think about how I’ll be forty-four by the time this baby is born, and in my actual sixties by the time he or she turns eighteen.
That sounds absolutely ancient, and it does send me into a minor tailspin.
Can I do this alone? Is it fair to even try? And what can I even do about it anyway?
I’m still thinking about all of this while I sit with Connie in her café, finalising the plans for my dad’s party.
It’s an all day and night event that includes live music, food, drink, dancing and every imaginable kind of fun.
Including cricket, which isn’t my idea of a good time but is very much my dad’s thing.
I’m not really listening, because Connie just needs me as a thinking-aloud sounding board, and because I’m deep in the land of How Old Will My Child Be When I’m Seventy.
‘And strippers,’ she adds. ‘Lots of strippers. Male, female, anything goes, I don’t think your dad will care as long as they’re naked and covered in baby oil, do you?’
I catch the tail end of this and look up at her in shock. ‘What? Did you say strippers? My dad won’t want strippers!’
‘I know he won’t. I just wanted to see if you were still awake. You’ve been present in body only for ages now. What’s up?’
I sigh and lean back in my chair. I look around at the café, currently closed, with its vases of pretty flowers and white-washed walls and its scent of lavender and sea salt.
It’s a gorgeous place, clean and fresh but with just the right level of characterful clutter.
The remnants of approximately fifteen thousand types of cake sit on the table between us, as she’s been baking up a storm to find the ‘perfect George treat’, and insisted I test them all.
I’ve tasted lemon meringue, red velvet cake, dark chocolate mint torte, good old-fashioned apple pie, and a Black Forest trifle.
I’m surprised there’s any room for a baby left in my tummy.
She’s sipping a ginger ale, and I have a decaf coffee in front of me. Music is playing on the radio, something mellow and Motowny, and all should be well with the world.
‘I’m worried I might die early and leave my baby without a mother,’ I say, ruining it all. Connie makes a surprised ‘Oh’ noise, then pushes one of the plates towards me.
‘Eat more meringue,’ she tells me. ‘Sometimes that’s the only answer.’
I grin and do as I’m told. ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ I ask. ‘Is that the sum of your motherly wisdom – eat more cake?’
‘What more do you need? It cures pretty much everything, apart from maybe diabetes. Look, I get it, okay? I was a slightly older mum myself. You’re doing the sums, right? The ones that tell you how long you need to cling on to this mortal coil to give your offspring a fighting chance?’
I nod. That’s exactly what I was doing.
‘All mums do that,’ she tells me. ‘It’s part of the deal, especially if you’re not in the first flush of youth. But it’s completely pointless, unless it makes you change the way you live or whatever.’
‘Like makes you eat less cake?’
‘Hush now! Look, I’m just saying that I understand – and that it does you no good.
Simon was younger than me. Sandy was barely out of her twenties.
Neither of them expected to leave their kids behind like they did.
There’s no predicting, no controlling, no doing a deal…
no promising to be a good girl if you can just make it ’til they’re old enough to not need you any more.
For a start, the time they don’t need you never actually arrives, and also, there’s no brokering a deal with the universe. ’
Ah. She really does get it. I’d been negotiating with the mysterious powers that be to get another solid twenty years at least, if I was on my very best behaviour and put a lot of good Karma out into the world.
‘Okay. How do I stop thinking like that, though, Connie? I’m so worried! What if I die in childbirth? What if I have a terrible accident? What if I get big toe cancer or something?’
She rolls her eyes, and replies: ‘Big toe cancer? That’s a new one!
Okay, so you’re very unlikely to die in childbirth.
I know you’ve lived in places where that feels more real, but here not so much.
Terrible accidents… Well, I’m not one to rule that out, am I?
I know first-hand that they happen – but they’re not common.
They’re not the norm. And they’re accidents, which means that by their nature you can’t predict them or plan for them.
Cancer, heart disease, all the other ways you’ve probably already thought of that could wipe you from the face of the earth – have you considered a meteor, by the way?
Again, no way to know. All you can do is pay attention to your body, get your checks done, and look after yourself. ’
I’m still pondering the meteor thing as she continues.
‘You know Zack has chronic kidney disease, right? It’s about as much fun as it sounds.
It can be very serious, and we don’t know when it might evolve into the later stages.
He has to have regular check-ups and tests, and we’re both realistic about the fact that we might not have decades left together.
That almost stopped me being with him – I didn’t think I could risk the pain of losing him.
Except I’d have already lost him, wouldn’t I?
If I never even took the chance, I’d already have lost. Life is a great big messy game of chance at the end of the day.
Anybody who thinks otherwise is either the Dalai Lama, or a bit deluded.
It’ll all be fine – and if it’s not, then it’ll still be fine. Just in a different way.’
I don’t want to dismiss her or even argue with what she says – Connie has experienced enough loss in the life to have the right to her views. But Connie is also not me, and I find it incredibly hard to embrace the ‘it’ll all be fine, just a different kind of fine’ concept.
I’m incredibly laid-back about some things in life.
Having lived the way I have has taught me not to stress about the little things.
I don’t get road rage, or get annoyed if a bus doesn’t turn up, or fuss about food.
I don’t take the weather personally, or worry too much about money, or expect things to happen on time.
I go with the flow on the whole. But this?
This isn’t so much a flow as a tsunami that threatens to wash me away.
I now have somebody else to worry about, and that opens up a whole new world of fears.
Connie smiles at me, her eyes kind. ‘I know you don’t believe me, Suzie, but it’s true. So, imagine if, heaven forbid, something happened to Ella and Jake, and Kitty was left alone. How would that play out?’
‘I don’t know, and I feel uncomfortable even talking about it!’
‘You shouldn’t. Ella doesn’t, she’s already considered her plans.’
‘Well, she’s weird then, but what are they?’
‘They’re multi-layered,’ Connie tells me.
‘They involve Kitty potentially going to live with Jake’s brother, Josh, and Lucy.
If for some reason that didn’t work out, then she’ll come to me, or Archie and Cally.
Unless it really is a meteor shower that takes out the whole village, it’s highly unlikely that all of us will be incapable of looking after Kitty.
Of loving her and raising her like our own.
She will never, ever be alone. Now, obviously, this will probably never be necessary, but I know she finds it comforting – and maybe you could too, if you just let yourself relax. ’
Ha! I think, rolling my eyes a little like the teenaged grump I used to be. Nothing more guaranteed to make me tense than somebody telling me to relax – it’s like the way someone telling you to calm down makes you furious.
I understand what Connie is saying, the reassurance she is offering.
She is telling me that my baby will also never be alone – that it will always be loved, no matter what the future holds.
I appreciate what she is trying to do and tell myself that I need to stop resisting the comfort the idea holds.
I need to stop fighting it off and torturing myself – I’m no medical expert, but I’d guess that a mum-to-be being a nervous wreck isn’t that good for a growing baby.
I nod, eat some more cake, and remind myself that I need to do more yoga. I need to find my zen and stop tearing myself apart.
‘Anyway,’ says Connie, smirking at me a little, ‘what about Guy?’
‘What about him?’
‘Well, you two seem close. And he’s hot. And I was wondering if you were sharing nights of passion in his love tent?’
‘No, we are not!’ I say, laughing. She doesn’t look convinced, so I throw a napkin at her face to emphasise my denial. ‘We’re really not, Connie.’
‘Why not? I’ve seen the way you look at him. Like you’re dying of thirst and he’s a tall glass of water…’
I shake my head. ‘No. I don’t know if you’ve missed the newsflash, but I’m pregnant?’
‘So what? That doesn’t mean you’re dead. And didn’t you say things with the baby-daddy aren’t serious?’
‘I did. The baby-daddy is a good man, but it was never a love match. Guy is… Well, it’s complicated.’
‘Do you fancy him?’ she asks, leaning forward with her face resting in her chin. I feel like I’ve been transported into the pages of one of the teen girl magazines I used to read as a child.
Do I fancy him? Well, duh – I most definitely do. Has she not seen the man?
‘Um, yes. I do. Because he’s, you know, scrumlicious.’
‘He is! I love that word for him! And does he think you’re scrumlicious too?’
Does he? I don’t really know. Things certainly got a little hot and heavy in the ‘love tent’ a while ago, but that was definitely a one-off.
It was a moment, and we both got carried away.
Has there been any hint of that since, I ask myself?
Maybe. The odd glance. An accidental touch.
An awareness that those accidental touches could easily turn into something else.
We’re careful around each other, I suppose – neither of us wanting to jeopardise the balance of what we have.
‘I don’t know,’ I tell her honestly. ‘And it doesn’t matter anyway.’
‘Why not? Don’t we all need a bit more scrumlicious in our lives? It’s even better than cake – and I do remember how my hormones played up when I was pregnant. I couldn’t get enough, and I’m not talking about cake!’
Yuck. That’s my brother she’s talking about. But I do also know what she means. I am very much alive on the libido front, more than ever in fact.
‘I think the issue is, Connie, that I don’t want to spoil it.
I like him. He’s my friend. We’re very different, but we’re also kind of the same.
We’ve helped each other since we arrived here, in ways you probably couldn’t understand…
I don’t mean to sound as patronising as I just did, I’m sorry.
But you’re one of the village elders, so you wouldn’t get it. ’
‘Less of the elder, you cheeky moo! And that’s okay, I don’t have to get it. I don’t have to understand everything, none of us do. But I do know that I see two people who might just be right for each other, both of whom are fighting it.’
I know Connie has form for this. I know she loves to matchmake, to benignly interfere in other people’s love lives.
It’s because she believes in happy endings, despite everything that she’s been through.
She still believes in the fairy tale, in the magic and the stories and the pixie dust. Even when I was a child, I was never quite sure – and my favourite was always the Magic Faraway Tree, because it was all about escaping reality, literally climbing out of your own world and into a new one.
She’s looking at me expectantly, and I hate to disappoint her. I hate to burst her little bubble of romance and hope.
‘I’m sorry, Connie. But like I said, I value his friendship more than anything else.
We’re both trying to build something here.
Me with my family, him with Miranda and Evan.
We’re both trying to find a place to settle, to be better, to be who we want to be.
I suspect the last thing either of us needs is anything more complicated in the mix – we’ve both got more than enough going on. ’
She looks crestfallen, and sighs in disappointment. I wonder what it would be like to have her world view. To see Starshine, to see life, as this magical sparkling thing. To see every layer of every relationship as something wonderful rather than yet another rope that ties her down.
It would be, I think, very nice indeed. But some of us just aren’t made that way.