February #4
She smiled like she used to when we were younger and she was harbouring a secret, lips curled, eyes crinkled.
Like when she had her first kiss or got straight As in her exams, or when she was accepted to study English at university, which she did before her law conversion.
She and Noah shared a love of literature, though she never talked as animatedly about it as he did.
I liked to read too ; I just didn’t always pick up on their references.
Every Christmas I asked Noah to choose a couple of the well-thumbed classics lining the shelves in our bedroom for me.
He would take great care in his selection and tell me why he thought I would like something or find it interesting or moving or funny.
As I read, say, Pride and Prejudice , I would mentally bookmark phrases and descriptions I wanted to share with him, like ‘A lady’s imagination is very rapid ; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
’ In that instance he nodded, solemn, and replied, It’s true, fortunately.
Anna rubbed her lips together, shiny and wet-looking. She was still smiling.
‘So?’ I asked.
‘I think I might be pregnant.’
I remember this moment distinctly. My breath snagging.
Clinging onto my mug, though the china was thin and the tea piping hot against my palms. At the time I felt like I’d been winded but looking back I think a more accurate description would be that I’d caught the tip of a gentle breeze.
A taste of how simple life could be. How light and nimble.
How easy. No different from saying yes or no to a spoonful of sugar in your tea.
‘Well? Are you happy for me?’ She was laughing.
I laughed in return and felt myself blush. ‘Of course, just surprised.’ I put down my mug on the table and we hugged. ‘Congratulations!’
‘I haven’t told Caleb yet,’ she said, holding me tight again.
‘What do you mean?’ I pulled away and looked her in the eye. ‘When did you find out?’
‘Well, I haven’t yet.’ She bit her lip, eyes still smiling. ‘I just realised I’m late.’
‘Wow.’ I let out a breath of air as I said it. ‘How late?’
‘Two or three weeks.’
‘Were you trying?’ The question was out of my mouth before I had time to properly consider it. I scrunched my toes inside my socks.
Anna answered with the same coy smile. ‘We weren’t not trying.’
I felt clammy. Maybe it was the tea. She often spoke about her sex life with Caleb, how good it was, how healthy it was.
I wondered whether she used to talk to me in the same way about Noah, but I couldn’t remember.
I was living with her at the time, south of the river, in a small flat with paper-thin walls.
I could see the two of us sitting on the sofa after he’d stayed over for the first time, me leaning towards her, listening, her mouth moving at speed, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying.
I’m relieved that, although sights and smells tend to stick in my mind, I find sounds to be less adhesive.
‘I feel gross.’
‘Sick?’
‘Sick. Tired. Generally grotty.’
I nodded sympathetically while simultaneously trying to figure out if I’d felt that way when my own period was late.
‘Hey, don’t worry, I’m happy too!’
I quickly rearranged my face, which must have changed without me realising.
‘Mum’s over the fucking moon.’
‘Oh, you spoke to her already?’
She nodded, swallowing a mouthful of tea. ‘She rang just before you arrived, and I told her that I suspected it at least.’
I nodded back, wondering when they’d started talking again.
Anna regularly went through what she jokingly called periods of ‘drying out’ from her mum.
She’d always been openly envious of my ability to spend unlimited amounts of time with my own mother.
I contemplated telling her that she’d forgotten my birthday, then decided against it.
‘Hey, how about Lemonia for lunch?’ she suggested, two lines appearing between her eyebrows, eyes searching mine.
I snapped out of the wicked spiral I was on the brink of succumbing to – the one where Anna’s life decisions implicitly challenged my own – and said, ‘You’re always disappointed with what you have there.’
‘But you love it,’ she said, squeezing my arm. ‘Besides, we’re celebrating!’
I smiled. ‘Of course – I really am so happy for you.’
She tapped her forehead with her palm. ‘I mean your birthday!’
‘Oh, that,’ I said, half laughing. ‘OK, let me just nip to the loo.’
I could tell from the soft glow of our two first-floor windows that Noah had switched the ceiling lights off and the floor lamp on. It was something we did every evening in winter to make the flat feel cosier than it was. I crossed the road and hooked my keys out of my bag.
On the stairs I caught the scent of fried onions and garlic.
The smell got stronger when I opened our door, and sure enough, in the kitchen I found Noah standing over a sizzling pan, some chopped mushrooms and a packet of rice beside him on the wooden counter.
In the dining room, also the living room, I could see candles glimmering on the table, which was already laid for dinner.
Smooth-sounding jazz was playing on the radio, and Noah was humming along. Beside him was a glass of red wine.
‘Hello you,’ he said. ‘Happy with risotto?’
I helped myself to a glass and sidled up beside him. ‘More than.’
When we first met, I liked that he was interested in food, mainly because I wasn’t. If not for him, I’d have made do with a combination of hot buttered toast and one-pot meals. After a while, I became a convert.
‘Did you have a good day with Anna?’
‘I did, thanks.’
He tumbled in the mushrooms then dipped his head down to look me in the eye. ‘All OK?’
He was too accustomed to the tone of my voice, could detect even the slightest dip. I made a conscious effort to smile and said, ‘Anna thinks she’s pregnant.’
‘Wow, that’s great news.’ He raised his hands in the air as he said it.
I felt myself stiffen, just a little.
‘She’s always wanted two.’
‘How do you …’ I stopped mid-sentence. There was no use in me asking a question we both already knew the answer to.
His eyebrows twitched, almost imperceptibly, as he continued : ‘And now Theo will have a friend.’
I laughed. ‘I don’t think Theo is going to have any trouble making friends.’
‘You know what I mean.’
Noah and his brother Daniel had always been close, and when their parents died shortly after we got married, they became even closer.
We saw Daniel and his wife, Griz, roughly every other week ; even though it could take up to an hour to travel between us on public transport, either they would come to ours or, more often than not, they’d host us at their house in Golders Green.
Their youngest, Allie, had taken to making place names every time we went for dinner to ensure that she and I would be sitting next to one another.
Her favourite subject at school was art and she’d told me more than once that she wanted to work in a museum, just like me.
I’d never considered that I’d been hard done by, being an only child, until I saw her together with her brother, Nick, and her older sister, Lizzie.
I’d always thought of my father, my mother and me as a small but nicely formed family unit. Three sides of a triangle.
‘She wants a girl,’ I said, sipping my wine.
‘I’m sure she does.’
I wriggled out from under his arm and asked him to pass me the tallest glass vase on the top shelf, too high for me to reach without standing on a chair.
I unwrapped the irises and laid them out on the counter lining the other side of our narrow kitchen with my back to Noah.
As I snipped at the ends, Tom weaved in and out of my legs and purred, trying to trick me into thinking he hadn’t already been fed.
Quietly, I scooped a small handful of extra pellets out of the bag kept in the cupboard beneath the sink.
When, less quietly, I dropped them into his metal bowl, Noah made the kind of sound that accompanies raised eyebrows.
I pretended not to notice and continued with my arrangement.
Anna had always known that she wanted to be a mother.
Inexplicably, I’d always viewed it as extracurricular – something you did if you had the time and energy to spare in between holding down a relationship and a career.
It was one of the things Noah and I had in common that he and Anna didn’t.
We were better suited, a natural fit, really.
She said so herself, and not just because she wanted children and he didn’t.
She wasn’t all that interested in hearing about his students, or particularly excited when he had something published – a piece in an academic journal or a chapter in an anthology.
Likewise, his eyes glazed over whenever she talked about the law.
She was bright, on her way to becoming a barrister, one of the most promising pupils in the chambers, before she got pregnant with Theo.
It’s not that I hadn’t considered it. Every so often I would become quietly preoccupied with searching for something outside myself, something bigger.
My mind would idly drift, stray thoughts of responsibility and care slipping in and out of my consciousness.
Just occasionally, I felt I ought to be more selfless, that I had more to give.
I was happy with Noah, and doing well at work, so an extracurricular was surely viable.
Sometimes the notion coincided with my cycle, which made sense, I thought – probably it was hormonal.
Sometimes it was sparked by an announcement on social media.
Occasionally, it came out of nowhere. Whatever the source, it never lasted.
‘Hey, I have to keep stirring this, so can you please come over here?’