Lexi
Lexi
“He’s at the bar,” Marissa whispers into the phone.
I close my eyes, snuggling deeper into the sofa. No, no, no . The image of Zeke standing at the bar of The Anchor, like that first day we met…it makes me want to cry, and I just don’t have the energy for more tears. I’m sapped.
In my head he’s still in those velvet trousers—I can’t quite see him in anything else. It’s a nice metaphor for the fact that I have only ever known one very specific version of this man: the version who didn’t confess to knocking up a young bartender and then telling her he wanted nothing to do with her baby.
“Don’t ring me and tell me these things, Marissa,” I groan into the phone.
Mae’s in bed, so life is happening at low volume—not quite a whisper, because Penny and I always vowed we wouldn’t live our lives like that, but we turn the telly down and wince if anyone drops something. She’s been a light sleeper since the day she was born; waking Mae is a crime punishable by serious chores.
It’s amazing, really, how I’ve slipped back into this life. Mae’s made it easier, I think: there’s something so grounding about a child. Their needs are so immediate, and they’re so physical—scuffed knees, sticky fingers, tangled hair. It’s easier to be present in the here and now when there’s someone beside you who knows no other way to be.
“What’s Marissa saying?” Penny asks, poking her head out from the kitchen, where she’s preparing her classic Saturday-evening treat for me and Ryan—a KitKat broken up over a bowl of vanilla ice cream. I fantasized many times about this KitKat ice cream on The Merry Dormouse .
I wave a hand at her, like, Not important , and she narrows her eyes, but steps back into the kitchen again. We’ve not talked about Zeke since she told me he was Mae’s father three days ago. We’ve also not talked about the fact that I have moved back into my old bedroom, or the fact that in my absence Ryan clearly moved into our flat, or the fact that I wake every night sweaty and terrified, convinced I’m going to die. We’ve talked a lot about what we’re going to order for dinner every evening, though, and she’s fully caught me up on Married at First Sight , so it’s not like we’re in complete denial or anything.
“What’s he wearing?” I whisper into the phone.
“Oh my God, I am not playing go-between for your late-night sexting with this man,” Marissa says. “I’m just telling you that he’s here, desperate to see you, and if you want to talk to him…”
“I can’t. How can you even suggest that? Whose side are you on?” I hiss, glancing at Mae on the baby monitor.
She’s too old for it now, really—if there’s anything wrong, she marches out of bed to come and get one of us to sort it. But Penny and I like to see her sleeping. There’s something so comforting about the sight of her curled up with her plait squiggling across the pillow and her bare feet poking out from under the duvet.
“I am on the side of everyone getting all the information,” Marissa says. “I’m the BBC, all right? Just…remember that people change.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, voice hollow. “It doesn’t matter if he’s changed since he made that choice, because he didn’t tell me.”
“Weren’t you guys a bit busy?” Marissa says.
“There was time.”
“He was a kid when he got Penny pregnant. Eighteen. Do you remember what you were like at eighteen?”
I think back. I was different, sure—feistier, more idealistic, more hopeful for the future. But I would never, ever have abandoned my child.
“He was so full of admiration for how I supported Penny,” I say bitterly, glancing back toward the kitchen door to check she’s not in earshot. “That just seems so ridiculous now that I know he abandoned her. Had he forgotten ?”
“I think that’s unlikely,” Marissa says.
I hear the familiar clink of glasses behind her and feel a pang of nostalgia for the pub. It’s a comfort-place for me, much like this sofa, and I resent the fact that I can no longer go there because it’s the one place Zeke would know to find me.
“I would say ‘You’ve got me pregnant’ isn’t the sort of conversation you forget, even if you’re a thoughtless eighteen-year-old man-whore.”
“Don’t call him that,” I say, pulling a cushion up to my chest.
“Whose side are you on?” Marissa asks. “I think the most likely option is that he just hasn’t made the connection between you and Penny. Or hasn’t realized the Penny he, you know…”
“Impregnated?”
“…is your Penny.”
“How many Pennys has he had?” I say, and then instantly regret it. “Please don’t try to answer that.”
“ I don’t know, do I? But you know who does, and is currently looking very mournful at my bar? Zeke.”
I imagine his face, one curl falling into his eyes, eyebrows drawn together in a worried frown. It makes me want to run down the street to the pub, pull him into my arms and tell him I love him.
But then I glance across at the baby monitor and see Mae, and my heart hardens again. That girl deserves everything. She deserves a father who had the decency to at least try to be there for her, whatever that looked like. If Zeke’s hurting, fine. He’ll move on. He would never have stayed with me anyway. He’s clearly got no loyalty.
“I’ll talk to him when I’m ready,” I say, swallowing. Right now if I look at him, I’ll crumble. “You can tell him that.”
“Tell him yourself.”
“I can’t , Marissa.”
I hate the way my voice breaks. I glance toward the kitchen again. I don’t want Penny to see how crushed I am by this. We’ve spent nearly five years merrily cursing this man—he’s been the butt of every joke, the archetype of a cruel, useless man, and the idea that I slept with him, fell in love with him…I feel as though I’ve betrayed her in the worst possible way.
Marissa gives a frustrated growl. “I’ve got customers. But please get off that sofa and come and see me tomorrow.”
“How do you know I’m on the sofa?”
“You’ve got sofa voice.”
“What’s— Never mind. I’ll be there. Message me the best time.”
“Gotcha. Try to get some sleep tonight, all right? See you, Lex.”
I hang up. I haven’t left this apartment since getting back from sea. All day, I’ve played with Mae, savoring every second of her, letting her put all her butterfly clips in my hair and watching Frozen with her in my lap. But whenever she and Penny go out, I stay behind. I can see Penny thinks it’s because I’m having trouble adjusting to the big wide world again—I know she’s been reading about how people recover from surviving extreme experiences because I saw the open tabs on her laptop. But it’s not that. It’s not even the journalists and photographers hanging around the place. It’s that every time I envisaged coming back to reality again, I imagined Zeke doing it with me, and now I’m doing it without him.
Ryan comes down the corridor from the bathroom, and I wince—Penny’s boyfriend is so loud. He’s just a big man: gigantic arms, broad shoulders, blockish head. I can’t exactly object to him on these grounds, but he does take up so much space .
Still. I suppose he probably thinks the same about me, the childhood friend of Penny’s currently installed in the flat he shares with his girlfriend.
“You all right?” Ryan says, taking the armchair and reaching for the remote.
“Not really, Ryan, no,” I say.
He pauses and looks at me. I look back at him. The silence stretches.
“I was really worried, you know,” he says. “When you went missing.”
“Really?” I say, interested.
I have reflected very little on how my disappearance affected Ryan, mainly because in my brain Ryan features only in the role of General Inconvenience. I am aware that this is potentially unfair, but experience has taught me it’s best not to get attached.
“You know, you’ve actually never asked me a single question about myself,” Ryan says, carefully placing the remote control back on the arm of the chair. “And that’s meant I sort of think you’re a bit of a prick, really. You’ve never once given me the idea that I’m welcome here.”
I am too drained to feel much at all, but I do feel a wave of guilt at this. It’s true. I’ve been waiting for Ryan to leave since the moment he arrived.
“But I know you’ve seen all the blokes before me who haven’t stuck around, and I know that’s why you keep me at arm’s length. I know you’re looking after Penny and Mae. I respect that.”
“Thanks,” I say, looking pointedly at the remote. Where’s Penny? How long does it take to get the ice cream out of the tub?
“And just so you know, I never wanted Penny to suggest you move out.”
My gaze flies to his face. I had always assumed he had a part to play in that whole drama. He looks back at me steadily. There’s something very simple about Ryan—not to say that he’s not smart, more that he’s straightforward. I don’t know if I’ve ever consciously registered that about him before, but now I think of it, I realize he’s never tried to bullshit me. He doesn’t suck up or try to make me like him. He’s just stolidly tolerated me.
“As far as I’m concerned, the more parents Mae has, the better,” he says. “You’ll always be welcome in my life as long as she’ll have me in hers.”
I open and close my mouth. That hit me somewhere in my chest.
“I’m not trying to replace you, that’s what I’m saying. I never have been. And Penny asking you to move out, that really was—well, she can tell you.”
I follow his gaze to the kitchen doorway, where Penny stands with two ice cream bowls in her hands. Her eyes are wide and pained. She doesn’t want to have this conversation. I suspect she’s been dodging it for days. I know she hates that she hurt me; I know she feels guilty; I know she wishes she could take it back, as she so often does when she’s lashed out or said something she doesn’t mean. I also know that she hates to say sorry —not because she isn’t sorry, but because she can’t stand to feel shame. She’d rather live with a mistake than confess to making one.
“It’s all right,” I say, before she can speak. “I know you were trying to—”
“I was trying to set you free , Lexi,” she says, and a tear spills over her lash line. She hurries forward with the bowls, putting them down on the coffee table and heading back into the kitchen for the third one.
“I’ll do that,” Ryan says, getting up and putting a hand on her arm. “You talk to Lexi.”
Penny turns slowly to face me. I pull my knees up, making room for her on our beloved turquoise sofa that sags in all the right places. Wordlessly, I flick my gaze to the empty space. She drags herself there and sits down.
“I’m awful,” she whispers. “I’m an awful friend. It’s my fault you got lost at sea. It’s my fault all this happened.”
“What?” I sit up, chucking the self-pity cushion off my chest. “What are you on about?”
“If I hadn’t told you to move out…Or if I’d confessed to selling the houseboat, so you’d have known you couldn’t go there to crash that night…”
“Penny. I chose to go to the houseboat without asking you. That’s on me. And I’m the one that bloody tied it to itself .”
She looks at me, eyes still forlorn and wide.
“Did you actually?” she says. “But Lex, that’s so fucking stupid?”
I burst out laughing. It’s the first time I’ve laughed in four days. If you’d told me two weeks ago that I’d stop laughing when I got off the houseboat, I would never, ever have believed you.
“I know,” I say, reaching to stretch my blanket out so it covers both our legs. “Why did you sell it? The Merry Dormouse ?”
She chews her cheek. “This guy popped up online asking to buy it—Ezekiel,” she says, flushing slightly. “Obviously I had no idea who he was, and I guess he didn’t know who I was, either, but anyway, he offered loads more than it was worth. And it was such a ball-ache, that boat—the maintenance agency was always sending bills for stuff that needed doing to it, varnishing, fixing leaks, another trip to the shipyard…”
“For that,” I say with fervor, “I thank them.”
“But I just thought…oh, go on, then. I didn’t tell you because we talked about Mae inheriting the boat one day, and I felt like I was being super selfish, but you know I’ve wanted to knock through and redo the kitchen for ages…” Her eyes fill with tears again. “See? Awful friend.”
“Don’t be daft. But you should’ve told me. I wouldn’t have cared, Pen! It’s your boat.”
“But it was your mum’s,” she says quietly, fiddling with the sofa cushion.
“And she gave it to you.”
“Do you ever kind of hate me for taking so much of your mum? Now she’s gone?” Penny says, in a very small voice.
I stare at her. “What? No!”
“You didn’t resent me?”
“ Resent you?”
She shrugs helplessly. “She treated me like her daughter, kind of. But I’m not. I wasn’t. And I feel like you were used to expecting so little from people by then, what with your dad and all, so you took it in your stride, but…Your mum was amazing, but she was always so busy, and the last thing you two needed was someone else to look after.”
“You treated me like a sister,” I say, reaching to grab her hand. “I didn’t lose something, I gained a sibling. And Mum just had a lot of love to give, I think. I never felt like I went without.”
“She was like you,” Penny says, with a small smile. “A natural nurturer.”
I laugh. “Oh yeah, that’s me. Mother Teresa. Where the fuck is Ryan with those spoons?”
“Just lurking in the kitchen, really,” Ryan says, loping out again with the third bowl and three spoons.
“That argument, the night I asked you to move out,” Penny says, with a big, shaky breath. “I want to explain. I’d been thinking for ages about how you should get a place of your own, not because I want you to go, but I just…I feel so bad , Lex. I should never have moved in with you all those years ago. I should never have let you do so much. But I was scared and on my own and it was so easy to take the help you offered.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“Yeah, but…It was selfish, wasn’t it? To ask so much from you. And lately I’ve had these fantasies, sort of imagining the life I want for you, where you’re happy and doing your own thing, running your café, meeting a gorgeous guy, having a kid of your own…”
I swallow. I’d imagined that future for myself, too, a few days ago. Now it feels farcical.
“I want that for you so badly. And that day…you took Mae out to the park, and I stayed home and pissed around watching a guy on YouTube talking about skincare and I just thought, what the hell am I doing? I felt so guilty.”
“I don’t care what you did while I was taking Mae to the park,” I say, staring at her. Where’s all this coming from? “Penny, I was giving you a bit of time to yourself. You get to choose how to spend it.”
“Yes, but that’s all you do, isn’t it? Give me time. Give me things. And I don’t give you anything back.”
“Of course you do!”
“I don’t,” she insists, gripping her spoon with both hands. She hasn’t looked at me in far too long; I nudge her with a foot, trying to catch her eye, but she keeps her gaze downturned. “I take advantage of you. And all of a sudden, I felt so bad, and I just—I wanted you to go . Take the leap, pull off the plaster. And I knew if I didn’t say something then, I’d get comfortable again and let you stay forever. So I said you should move out now that Ryan wants to move in.”
“Oh,” says Ryan, through a mouthful of ice cream. “I didn’t know that bit.”
“I know.” Penny’s crying properly now. “I shouldn’t have used Ryan as an excuse.”
“I get it,” I say. I’ve thought about this so much over the last two weeks. “It kind of is about Ryan.”
“It’s not,” Ryan and Penny say in unison.
“No, it is.” I’m talking slowly, picking my way, and this makes me think of Zeke, which makes my heart throb with pain. “Because Ryan is the first guy who’s come along who wants to be a family with you. He doesn’t see Mae as baggage. She’s part of you, so he loves her.”
Ryan nods at this. Just a little Yeah, that’s it nod.
“And that means you don’t need me as much.”
“Lexi, I—”
“It’s OK. It’s good. It’s good that you don’t need me. I’d like you to still want me around, though. I’d like to still be Mae’s auntie.” My voice is getting thick. This is hard to talk about.
“Always,” Penny says, finally looking at me. “Always, always, always. Do you know how heartbroken that little girl would be if you weren’t part of her life? I never ever wanted that. I should have made that clear. I screwed up the whole thing. It was just so hard for me to let you go, I…I was trying to be selfless and I’m not…a natural at that, so I…ballsed it up, really.”
I smile. I don’t feel any of the anger and heartache I felt when I first walked out of this flat. It got lost somewhere out there on the water. I know where she was coming from—I think even back then I knew it, really.
“Just to be clear,” I say, “you and Mae, you give me so much . Helping to raise her has been the greatest joy and privilege, and seeing you become the amazing mum you are now…I’d die for you both, Penny. And I say that as a person who has recently done a lot of nearly dying.”
She throws herself at me, sobbing.
“I’m an awful person,” she says, as I let out an oof .
“You are not an awful person.”
“I am. Lexi, you don’t even know. I’m selfish and weak and cowardly and—”
“Penny! This is crazy! Will you stop?” I smooth her hair back and shoot Ryan a look, like, A little help, here?
“Come on,” he says, easing her out of my lap and into his arms. “You’re all right, love.” He looks at me. “It’s been a hard few weeks for her,” he says quietly.
“I know,” I say, with a twist of guilt. “I know it has.”
“Viktor in Flat 6 is moving, you know,” Ryan says after a moment. “If you wanted your own place, but without going far.”
The kindness of this almost brings me to tears. I smile at him. Maybe Ryan really is fine. More than fine. Maybe Ryan is one of the good ones.
“Mummy?” Mae says from the doorway.
“Hey!” Penny says, whirling out of Ryan’s arms, wiping the tears from her face. “Hey, Mae-Mae, did we wake you?”
“Why are you crying?” Mae asks, pulling Harvey the bunny a little closer to her chest. “We got Auntie Lexi back.”
I bite down hard on my bottom lip. There are so many things that have been terrible in the last fortnight, but I think the very worst thing is knowing how frightened Mae was when I was at sea. The thought of it makes me want to crumble.
“We absolutely have,” Penny says, smiling at me, eyes still wet. “And we are so lucky to have her.”
“So why are you crying?”
Penny thinks for a moment. “Because I did something I shouldn’t have done,” she says. “I said something I shouldn’t have said. And I’ve been trying to be brave enough to say so.”
“Oh,” Mae says, looking relieved. “That’s easy. You just have to think about what Lexi would do. Lexi’s always brave.”
“Come here,” I say, as my heart breaks. “Come give me a cuddle and I’ll take you back to bed.”
As we walk hand in hand to her bedroom, I have to grip the banister to keep myself together. There is no greater gift than this little hand in mine. It was simply too much for me to hope for more, that’s all. The universe couldn’t give me Mae and Zeke—it’s more than I could possibly deserve.