FORTY
Aubrey turned to stone. Or that’s how it seemed. He went utterly, absolutely still.
“What?” he said.
Evie felt the opposite of stone. She was a trembling leaf, heart racing, heat rushing under her skin like a river.
“I might be pregnant.”
It sounded so strange said out loud. Something that couldn’t possibly be true. This was a conversation other people had. Alien and impossibly grown up.
His gaze dropped down her body, settled on her stomach—on the absolute lack of anything to be seen.
“It’s early, if I am. Six weeks, eight weeks. Something like that. I don’t really know how it all works. I need to look it up. Obviously I need to do a test first. I don’t know if I am. It’s just I’m late and…”
“Oh my God.”
He looked up from her flat stomach, and what she saw in his eyes was what she had dreaded: joy. Because what if she wasn’t? What if she wasn’t and he got excited and she did that weird thing with the stick that people did in movies and the lines didn’t say whatever it was that he hoped they said?
That was how she knew that she wanted this almost as much as he did. When she imagined the stick saying no, her insides dropped and a hollow, empty feeling filled her chest. And how absurd! Ridiculous to be hoping for a baby at her age and with everything so fragile and new between them, but God…she wanted it. There was nothing rational about it at all. There never was. Not about love or attraction or feelings or any of the things that really, truly mattered.
He took hold of her hand, his grip uncharacteristically weak. He was trembling. She felt it in the touch of his other hand on her cheek.
“Evie…”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I only just realised I was late and I need to do a test and—”
“Evie. Look at me.”
There was nothing weak in the way his eyes held hers. “Whatever happens. Whatever way it goes. It will be OK.”
She swallowed. “And you…you…”
“I want children, yes. With you. And now, if that’s what you want. Or in the future, if that’s how it goes. I can wait if…” His gaze went once more to her stomach. “If it turns out that way. Or if…if it’s too soon for you.” He looked at her again. “What do you want, Evie?”
She brought his hand to her stomach, mind full with a hundred different things. “This. I want this.”
“Oh, God…” the words broke from him, breathed to the air. She could see it in him, the hope that burned, that he was trying to keep away from.
“Shall we…shall we go and buy a test?”
They went to the same supermarket where they’d bought the ingredients for dinner. Miso soup and chicken and a hope that things might work. Now they walked the over-bright aisles hand in hand, moving as though this was a dream, the floor feeling unreal beneath her feet, here now to see if they’d somehow created an entire new person.
It ought to be harder—and she knew it could be, that it could take years, that there was no guarantee at all—but it was crazy that it could sometimes happen this way, not even knowing it was being done. It was harder to rent a car. Harder to buy a house. There ought to be forms to fill in and licences to get and declarations of intent. There ought to be a plan.
A baby… God… An actual real baby… Aubrey’s baby. Her baby. How was it even possible…? She didn’t feel qualified, not to have her body in sole charge of something like this.
Aubrey’s hand tightened on hers, and there they were, standing before a little row of rectangular boxes, pink and white and blue.
She was so clueless she felt like laughing. “Which one?”
“I have no idea. Are they…different?”
“I don’t know. Should we get two?”
“Yes…?”
She glanced at him, nearly laughing again. It was very strange to see Aubrey Ford bewildered. But the scared-little-boy look left his eyes and he grabbed a box. She grabbed one, too, and they went to pay.
“Not Romona’s flat,” said Aubrey when they were back outside. “As much as I love all the bloody lovely crockery, I don’t want to find out there.”
So they walked to his car instead. He drove them to his place. I don’t even have a home, Evie was thinking. I don’t own a houseplant. How, how, how can this work?
But Aubrey was beside her, driving steadily and quietly through the city traffic. He didn’t have a job. She didn’t have a home. Nothing at all was how it should be, but somehow none of it seemed to matter. They were both fighters. The two of them never backed down. This baby, if it existed, would be sheltered from everything, protected and wanted and loved so fiercely—the both of them were equals in that, in how they loved, no matter how differently they showed it. And Aubrey…Aubrey would be the best father imaginable. If there was one thing she was sure of beyond anything, it was that.
She followed Aubrey into the flat. It felt still. Quiet. Hushed and waiting. But maybe that was all in her head. She only had to pee on a stick. It was very unglamorous for something so important. But babies were a bit like that. She had friends with small children. Knew a little bit about the poo and the nappies and the sicky drool. Babies were unglamorous. Peeing on a stick was just the start.
“How are you doing?” Aubrey said, flicking on all the lights. He came back and helped her take off her coat. He’d been the one to carry the supermarket carrier bag into the flat, and now it sat on the counter, crinkled and innocuous.
“Nervous,” she said. “So nervous I feel sick.”
“Me, too.”
But he said it with a sympathetic smile, and the hand he put on her cold cheek was warm and kind. All her insides fluttered, all her feelings reaching for him through the pang in her chest, like a hand held out to the steady glow of a fire. She followed her feelings, stepped to him, and burrowed her head on his chest.
“It’ll be OK,” he said, his low voice both a feeling under her cheek and the warmth of his breath on her hair. “Whatever happens, it will be OK.”
“I want this,” she whispered.
He gave a quiet, rueful laugh. “I do, too, though I would have done it all properly, you know. Waited a few years. Married you first. Spent months reading books about folic acid and birthing balls and weird yoga.”
She laughed slightly and his arms tightened around her. “You still can.”
“Marry you?”
“Do yoga.”
He laughed. “I promise to do it all.”
“I need to say yes first.”
“I need to ask you first.”
“Maybe I’ll ask you.”
He gave a mock groan. “Oh God. You’re one of those hippy feminists, aren’t you? You won’t take my name. The baby won’t eat sugar until it’s twelve.”
“Gender neutral toys only.”
“All made from wood and straw.”
“I’ll wean it on knitted houmous.”
“So long as it’s organic.”
“Of course.”
They let their daft conversation lapse into amused silence. Then, in a very small voice, Evie said: “I should probably go and do it, shouldn’t I?”
She felt Aubrey nod, then she drew back and picked up the bag. He made a move to follow her.
“No. You are not coming in with me.”
“But—”
“You’re not watching me pee.”
“It doesn’t happen to be a particular kink of mine, but…”
“No, Aubrey. Some things are sacred.”
“Then promise me you’ll come straight out. We’ll wait together.”
She nodded and walked to the bathroom.
Aubrey waited. And it was hell. Each second was a torturous hour. Each second was long enough to build a paradise in his mind of Evie’s stomach swelling and a baby in his arms and Evie walking hand in hand with a toddler, long grasses brushing bare calves, and pudgy little fingers gripping crayons, and a kid with black hair and blue eyes laughing, or a kid with brown hair and brown eyes running, sand on bare toes, and oh God—each second was also long enough to tear it all back down.
It was OK. Anything that happened was OK. Evie was here. Evie was his—yes, that primal thing again. But if she wasn’t pregnant, then he wanted to make her pregnant, one day. And he wanted to have her, all of the days. Every day left to them on earth, because, God knew, he’d wasted enough of them, had hardly realised he was wasting them, because he hadn’t known, hadn’t ever known, what it was really like to love and be loved in return.
It was a fever. Right now, he burned with it. And one day, gradually, it would settle like dust falling to earth, coating everything, getting everywhere, the world indistinguishable from the feeling. A home to live in. That’s what a good relationship was. His father had it with Priya. His brother Charlie had it with his husband. He saw Roscoe building it with Poppy—every day another brick, bricks made of soft clay, moulded perfectly to shape them.
A home that grew… A home with space for more… Little footprints in the clay…
The bathroom door clicked open. Evie walked out, and together they watched the lines grow.