Chapter 5
5
GEMMA
Needless to say, it wasn’t easy walking into my office on the Monday morning. My colleagues actually looked quite relieved that I’d turned up at all. I could hardly blame them. It was hard, now, to imagine how I’d sat at my desk on the previous Tuesday afternoon, my face pink and shiny from crying, my head throbbing, my eyes so sore I could barely read anything on the screen, and my mind about ten thousand miles away, instead of focusing on profits, retail discounts and customer accounts.
‘Are you feeling better, Gemma?’ Mike asked, sounding, to be honest, like his curiosity was getting the better of his sympathy – while young Sophie, our office assistant, put her arm around me and purred in my ear that she’d spoken to the universe about me and could feel good vibes. I resisted the temptation to snap that the universe could stick its good vibes where the sun didn’t shine, instead pasting what I hoped was a quasi-pleasant smile on my face and thanking everyone for their concern, offering an apology for being unwell the previous Tuesday and a promise to knuckle down to work now. I’d obviously practised this little speech at home, in the hope it would sound halfway sincere – although I knew it wouldn’t. But it was all I could manage, and everyone got the picture and left it at that.
Towards lunchtime, I looked up from my work to see Crystal standing in front of me, holding a file.
‘This,’ she said very quietly, waving the file at me, ‘is just an excuse, so I wouldn’t feel so stupid in front of everyone if I’d got the wrong office.’
I would have laughed if I hadn’t been turned to stone.
‘Hello,’ I said. I had to admit, it was nice to see her. She was a breath of fresh air in the quiet, studious atmosphere of the accounts office, with her outrageous hair (surely it hadn’t been quite so purple last week?), her jangly bracelets and beads, and… well, I wasn’t sure if her trousers had been scribbled over by a hyperactive child using a whole pack of coloured pens, and cropped off roughly around knee length by someone half-blind with blunt scissors – or if they were actually supposed to look like that. Her turquoise gypsy-style blouse, by comparison, was almost ordinary.
‘Want to go for lunch again?’ she said, without any beating about the bush. ‘Like… now?’
I liked the fact that she hadn’t asked, in front of the others, how I was feeling.
‘Yes. That’d be good.’ I glanced at Mike. ‘If that’s OK?’
‘Sure.’ He smiled at me. I think he was probably relieved to hear me speak. I’d kept my mouth shut and my nose to the grindstone, so to speak, all morning. ‘Enjoy.’
We went to the same pub and sat in the garden again. This time, I ordered a sandwich too, not that I’d regained my appetite at all, but I’d got back into the routine of eating, purely because of sharing mealtimes with Poppy. A two-and-a-half-year-old, even without a full range of vocabulary, can nevertheless manage a whole inquisition into why you might not feel like eating, and the last thing I could have faced was questions about if I’d got tummy ache, if I’d been sick and what colour it might have been, or if I’d had runny poos.
‘So,’ Crystal said finally, once we were settled down with a coffee each. She fixed me with a meaningful look. ‘How are you now?’
I shrugged. ‘Trying to work out how to stay alive.’
‘And you have to, don’t you. For your little one.’
‘Poppy. Yes.’ I sighed. ‘The thing is, I feel so angry now.’
‘Good,’ she said, nodding emphatically. ‘So you should.’
‘But I feel stupid, too. How could I have loved someone who ended up treating me like this? How could I possibly have believed he was a good guy, a decent, caring man who loved me as much as I loved him? And believed he was such a good father to Poppy, when he quite obviously couldn’t care less about her? Was I blind? What did I miss? Surely there must have been signs?’
Crystal shook her head. ‘I’m sure he did love you, and Poppy. Something must have happened to change him since he went to Australia.’
‘Yes, he’s met some other woman, that’s what’s happened, but even if he’s so obsessed with her that he couldn’t care less about me any more, how could he just cut me off like this with no communication, no financial support, no means of finding him? What am I supposed to do? How am I going to survive?’
Crystal reached across the table and laid a hand on mine. ‘You will. You can. We do.’
I looked at her, understanding dawning.
‘It’s happened to you, too?’
She nodded. ‘A few years back, yes. Something similar. I’m not saying it was as much of a shock as what’s happened to you – I suspected my boyfriend was seeing someone else and it turned out I was right. But it still hurt. There were… circumstances… that made it very painful. But I’ve survived. So will you.’
‘I don’t know how.’ I sniffed.
‘You need to take whatever help you can get. Start applying for everything you’re entitled to. As soon as possible.’
‘I know. I’ve made a list of calls to make, things to apply for – income support, all that kind of stuff…’ I dropped my head, trying not to start crying again. ‘But I keep hoping it’s all a mistake. That he’ll suddenly call me and say?—’
‘Would you take him back? After this?’
I couldn’t answer. My anger was telling me no. But my desperation, my hurt, my years of wasted love, were telling me that surely there was always room for hope, for regret and forgiveness?
Crystal, watching the look on my face, just nodded slowly, as if she understood. I supposed she did; she’d been there. In a strange way, this made me feel a bit better. Reminded me that I wasn’t the only woman who’d been dumped like a sack of garbage. Not that I’d have wished it on her, or on anyone else.
‘Have you got children?’ I said, suddenly realising I hadn’t asked much about her at all.
‘No.’ She looked away. ‘Sadly not.’
It was my turn to just nod and stay silent. I didn’t want to come out with the same old clichés that everyone probably told her: that she still had time, that she might meet someone else, or (worse) that she should make the most of her freedom. I could see from her face that it was a painful subject, that she’d have liked to have had a child, perhaps with the guy who left her.
But she quickly forced a smile back onto her face and she asked me, as our sandwiches were delivered to the table, to tell her about Poppy. I could feel my own face relaxing, the anxious frown shifting a little, as I thought about my little girl.
‘She’s two and a half, coming up for three,’ I said. ‘And, well, she can be difficult and demanding, of course – she’s a toddler, it’s her job! But… at the same time she’s… just so sweet, so adorable and funny, she comes out with the cutest things and she’s, well, I know all parents must say this, but she’s the most beautiful child in the world, she’s?—’
‘Have you got a photo of her?’
Crystal still had a smile fixed on her face, so I knew she was just being nice – polite – in showing an interest in Poppy, despite her own sadness, and this made me warm to her even more. I opened my phone and scrolled through the dozens of pictures of Poppy on there, determined to show her just one, a really good one, rather than prolonging the pain by making her look at them all. I found one of my favourites, taken just a couple of weeks ago: Poppy wearing her yellow dress with the matching sunhat, standing on the beach, holding her bucket and smiling at the camera.
‘She loves having her photo taken,’ I said, passing the phone across to Crystal. ‘She’s a real little diva!’
Crystal took the phone from me and gazed at the picture. She blinked a couple of times, looking, I thought for a moment, as if she might burst into tears.
‘Oh!’ she said. Just that. ‘Oh!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, holding my hand out to take the phone back. ‘I didn’t want to upset you.’
‘You haven’t. I asked to see her. She’s… absolutely beautiful.’ She blinked again and quickly wiped her eyes. ‘Sorry. It’s just?—’
‘It must be hard. Seeing other people with children.’
‘Yes.’ She held on to the phone and looked at the picture again, shaking her head as if she couldn’t quite believe how lovely my daughter was.
I felt bad then. She’d been so kind to me, trying to help me in my own distress, and in return I’d made her cry.
‘Sorry,’ I said again. And then, desperate to put things right, I came out with exactly the cliché I’d promised myself not to. ‘Look, surely you don’t have to rule it out completely, do you? Having a baby, I mean—’ I stopped, immediately regretting it. Apart from being tactless, I didn’t know the first thing about Crystal; I had no right to make assumptions. Just because she was sad about not having a child, it didn’t mean she was on a desperate quest to have one now.
But fortunately she gave a little snort of laughter.
‘Well, for one thing I feel like I never want to let another man into my life for anything other than servicing my car or my boiler – and definitely not for servicing me ?—’
‘I know, I get that, I shouldn’t have said?—’
‘And before you mention IVF or using a surrogate?—’
‘I wasn’t going to. Honestly, I’m sorry, I just wish I hadn’t shown you the photo.’ I sighed, thinking that she probably wouldn’t want to have lunch with me again. I was surprised to realise it mattered to me. I hardly knew her, but I liked the idea of having a friend from work, someone who wasn’t exactly a colleague but was the same sort of age, as well as being in a similar situation as me.
‘Don’t be daft,’ she said, putting a hand on mine, and managing a smile. ‘I wanted to see your little girl. It’s nice to hear about her, too. She’s lovely.’
‘Thank you.’
Crystal took a bite of her avocado sourdough roll and seemed to give herself a little shake before changing the subject, talking about her job, about the flat she lived in and the fact that her parents were both dead, her only close relative a younger brother who visited her from London occasionally, with a different girlfriend every time.
‘I’m an only child,’ I said. ‘But my mum and I are close, and she only lives in Exeter so she helps out with Poppy. She has her every Friday so I can catch up with – everything.’
I explained about my self-employed work, and Crystal looked impressed.
‘You design websites? That’s quite a change – quite creative – for someone who works as a number-cruncher!’
‘I suppose that’s why I enjoy it: it’s completely different. I was always comfortable with tech; I like fiddling around on computers. So while I was on parental leave, I thought it would be a good time to see if I could make a go of it. I write copy, too, if clients want me to – for websites, and media like newsletters or blogs.’
‘Wow, quite an entrepreneur, aren’t you! I’m glad. I was worried you were going to have a real struggle – on your own with Poppy – if you could only work here two days a week.’
‘I will be struggling,’ I said quietly, and I put my sandwich down, suddenly losing my appetite, thinking about the spreadsheet I’d made that I still didn’t want to look at. ‘The mortgage is in my name – it’s my house; Jack moved in with me. My parents helped me get the deposit together, but of course, after I had Poppy and had to cut down my working hours, he paid far more than I did. Not only the mortgage repayments, but the bills, too. I don’t know how I’m going to manage, to be honest.’
I could feel myself shaking, panic threatening to overtake me again. What the hell was I going to do? I’d have to sell the house, but I had hardly any equity in it.
‘The bastard could at least have cared enough about his daughter to make some sort of arrangements, even if he didn’t give a toss about me,’ I went on. ‘He ought to be paying maintenance.’
‘The child support people can force him to, surely?’
‘They’d have to find him first.’
‘So that’s what they need to start doing,’ Crystal said, surprising me with the intensity in her voice. ‘They need to find him; he needs to pay. You’ve got to get everyone looking for him, Gemma. Seriously, he might have gone AWOL but unless he’s changed his name?—’
‘I wouldn’t put it past him,’ I said bitterly.
‘Keep going with that anger. That’s what you need, girl, to get you through this.’
‘I’m angry, all right. With myself as much as anything – for ever thinking I loved him.’
But of course, I knew perfectly well that the trouble was. I had loved him. And if I hadn’t done, I wouldn’t have had Poppy.