Dominic
Stella looks at me like I’m the stupidest man in the entire world. ‘Did you read the test instructions before you took it?’
‘Obviously we didn’t read the instructions, it’s a pregnancy test. One line means pregnant, two lines means not pregnant.’
Stella sighs. ‘How strong was the line?’
‘Really light,’ I say, not wanting to relive it all. ‘I could hardly see it, but it’s there.’
‘You realise it could be an evaporation line?’ Stella says, like she’s pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
‘A what?’
She sighs. ‘You have to read the test within five minutes, otherwise the result is invalid. Was it a blue dye test or a pink dye test?’
She sounds absolutely insane. ‘How would I know?’
‘Were the lines on the test blue or pink?’
‘How could that possibly matter?’
She stops the pram, abruptly. Rose giggles.
Stella does not. ‘Dominic, I spent two hours a day on the fertility and pregnancy testing forums when I was planning to get pregnant with Rose. I know everything there is to know about pregnancy tests and I’m telling you that it makes a difference.
Blue dye is way, way more likely to run and cause an evaporation line. ’
I’m too dazed to really process this. ‘Uh. Blue. The lines were blue.’
‘Go and find her,’ she tells me. ‘And take another test. Pink dye. Superdrug or Boots own-brand are the most reliable. Go on!’
We reach the station and I carry the pram up one set of stairs, then go back down, around and stand on the platform at the other side.
We face each other, both sort of half laughing at the awkwardness of it.
The sun’s starting to slowly set. She must be cold, wearing a summer dress and no jacket.
I watch as she pulls the blanket over Rose and think how much I’d like to pull a blanket over Stella, on a beach or by a campfire in the woods or somewhere like that.
Her train arrives. She whips the pram around and reverses it on, then waves at me through the window. And then she’s gone.
I take the train to Peckham and then get an Uber to the bit of Camberwell where Florrie lives with all her friends.
Then, feeling like a bit of a stalker, I ring the doorbell.
One of her friends, who is either called India or Octavia, answers.
‘Is Florrie in?’ I ask, once again feeling like a complete stalker.
India/Octavia seems bemused but leads me through the dark hall with patterned tiles into the garden, where they’re sitting outside on kitchen chairs, drinking bottles of San Miguel.
‘Dom!’ Florrie says, getting up. ‘I didn’t know you were coming?’
‘I messaged you,’ I say, trying not to sound defensive.
‘Sorry,’ she apologises, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘I just needed a bit of a break from my phone so I turned it off.’
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Can we have a quick chat?’
I follow her up the many, many stairs to the top of her house where she has the attic bedroom.
It’s a really great place, with a sloping ceiling and huge windows looking out over the gardens of Camberwell, but we don’t spend much time here because she’s (gloriously) loud in bed and her housemates don’t always appreciate it.
‘I think we need to take another test,’ I say, trying not to sound out of breath from the stairs. ‘Apparently, sometimes, if you don’t read it quickly enough, it can be a false positive.’
She shakes her head. ‘No, I don’t. I took a bunch more when I got home; they were all negative. It must have been an evaporation line.’
‘How does everyone else in the world know about evaporation lines apart from me?’ I say, louder than I intended and drowning in a confusing cocktail of relief and something that feels a tiny bit like disappointment.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I ask. I know I shouldn’t make this about myself but I can’t help feeling like this is information I probably could have been given, over a WhatsApp if nothing else.
‘I didn’t think it made any difference,’ she says, sitting down on the bed. She crosses her long, tanned legs. ‘We both knew what I was going to do if I was pregnant.’
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Yeah, I get that. But there would have been a discussion, and being pregnant and then having an abortion is a pretty big deal—’
‘No, it’s not.’
I try to process this. It’s her body, and it would have been her choice, and I don’t deny that for a second.
But I think I’d have found it a big deal, to watch her go through that, to find out what actually happens, to know that we’d made a decision to not become parents.
Not that I’d have objected, of course, and I wouldn’t have had any right to voice it even if I did object, but it’s okay to think that it’s significant, right?
Like, as a plot point in my life, in her life, it’s meaningful, right?
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Well, look, I’m so glad you got the result you wanted, and I’m so glad we don’t have to think about this again. At least not for a long time.’
‘A long time?’ She cocks her head to one side.
‘Well. I mean, this is all very, very hypothetical, but I guess I’d like to have kids at some point, one day, so if we stayed together then maybe we’d talk about it—’
‘I’m not having kids.’
Oh. ‘Right. Okay. Well, that’s also totally fine. . .’
‘Kids ruin your life.’
I think about this for a moment. ‘I get that it might seem that way, but I think a lot of people would argue that they change your life rather than ruining it, so as long as you’re on board for those specific changes, then it’s more—’
‘It would ruin my life,’ she says, getting up.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Totally your call. I’m not pitching to have a load of babies right now, just open to the idea. In the future.’
She gives me a look that could reasonably be described as withering. ‘You’re in your thirties.’
I mean, yeah, I’m in my thirties. That’s a normal time to think about kids.
I mean normal for a man. And yeah, that’s not fair, I get that.
My sister, Georgie, was shipping her blood to companies she’d seen advertised on Instagram to get her ‘levels’ checked from the day she turned twenty-nine.
Sure, it’s a luxury that I’ve got bollocks and my sperm don’t start getting problematically old for longer, but we all know my entire life is easier because I’m a man, and I’m aware of that and I try not to do anything evil with whatever good fortune I’ve got.
This doesn’t feel like the most opportune moment to start talking about unearned privilege.
Florrie swallows, and stands up. ‘Honestly,’ she says. ‘If you want babies then you should probably go do that with someone who has already given up on having an exciting life.’
‘Right,’ I say, getting up. ‘Okay. Well, I’m glad we talked about this and I’m going to head home; it’s been a headfuck of a day.’
‘For you? You weren’t the one who thought they were pregnant.’
My calm is running out now. ‘I mean, I thought that I’d got you pregnant for about nine hours longer than you thought that you were pregnant, because you couldn’t bring yourself to write me a three-word message.’
‘You’re centering yourself in my pregnancy scare now?’ she snaps.
‘I’m not “centering” myself. Anyway, I’m just saying, typing “I’m not pregnant” wouldn’t have been that much to ask.’
‘You’re being so demographically clichéd,’ she fires back.
I open the bedroom door and start down the many flights of stairs until I hear her footsteps behind me, presumably because she’s decided to apologise.
‘Dom,’ she calls.
‘Yes?’ I reply, stopping on the stairs.
‘How did you know about the false positive thing?’ she asks. I look upwards and she’s standing above me, pale and furious, not sounding at all like she’s about to say she’s sorry.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘The evaporation line. Who told you about that?’
I sigh. I know exactly how this is going to go down. ‘Stella told me,’ I say quietly.
She flushes pink. ‘So you told her that I was pregnant before I’d even had a chance to process it? You thought she should know that extremely personal news about my life before anyone I’d actually told?’
‘I needed someone to talk to,’ I argue, my voice harder than I’d intended it to be. ‘I was worried. I didn’t know if you wanted to keep the baby. She’s had a kid, she knows about this stuff.’
‘You knew that I was struggling with my feelings around her and you went to her instead of talking to me.’
‘You’d turned your bloody phone off!’ I snap.
She picks up her phone and throws it across the stairwell, down the stairs. It hits the wall behind my head and the screen cracks, then it hits the stairs and bounces down to the landing, where it lands precariously between two spindles. ‘I needed a break!’ she yells as she throws it.
I look at her. At the phone. Back to her.
She bursts into sobs, tears streaming down her face.
What I would really like to do right now is go downstairs, without looking behind me, slam the door on this house and all the privileged, entitled women who live in it, and never speak to her again.
But before I’ve got the strength to do it, I look up at her one more time.
Her eyes are navy blue against the pinkness of her eyes, still streaming with tears.
‘Will you hold me?’ she says, in a tiny voice.
‘Of course,’ I say.
I traipse back up the stairs, wrap my arms around her and then lift her up, carrying her back into her bedroom. I lie down next to her and stroke her arms and shoulders and hair as she cries.
She twists around and presses her face into my chest. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘It’s been such a horrible day.’
I nod. ‘It’s okay. We all have our moments.’
Eventually her sobs subside and she looks up at me. Her cheeks are swollen and her lips are fat. ‘Can I ask you to do something for me?’
I nod. ‘Sure.’
‘Please will you stop seeing Stella?’
Everything Florrie has ever told me about her take on ethical non-monogamy (which is a lot) has focused on how having ‘a veto’ (aka the right to ask someone to stop seeing someone else) is not fair.
She’s described it as unreasonable, immature, even once as controlling.
So it’s hard to take this complete about-face in my stride.
But she looks sad. And young. Her face is pinched and she’s looking up at me through her fringe and I don’t want to hurt her feelings, at all.
So I think about it for a moment, wondering if this could be a neat way out of the incredibly stupid situation I brought upon myself. ‘What if Stella and I were just friends?’
She shakes her head. ‘You have chemistry; it doesn’t work like that. I need you to stop seeing her. Completely.’
I hold her a little tighter for a moment. Then, for once in my life, I don’t say the easy thing that will make the other person feel good enough that I don’t have to feel guilty. I say the hard thing, the thing that I don’t want to say, the right one. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper. ‘No.’