‘All right.’ My father sighs, accepting, yet I can’t keep from feeling that this is another tick in some invisible column. It’s so vague, I wonder sometimes if it really exists, this tallying of mistakes and disappointments in my parents’ minds. Maybe it’s just my imagination, the feeling that I am not measuring up as I should, because I was so wanted, so chosen, and so I have to be extra good, extra grateful, extra everything. ‘Well, like I said, darling, we’re absolutely thrilled for you. Thrilled to bits.’ He sounds so sincere, and I know he is. Tears sting my eyes and I press the back of my hand to stem them.
‘I know, Dad. Thank you.’
After the call, I sit for a moment, caught between guilt, grief, and the happiness I’ve held to me like a promise since I discovered I was pregnant. Then I make myself push the whole conversation to the back of my brain, where a thousand conversations just like it jostle for space.
Now that I’ve had my scan we can start telling everyone – friends at work, at school, neighbours. We’ll celebrate with Anna and Jack, capture a little bit of that vision I shared with her all those weeks ago, us together, raising this child, because it can still be real. We’ll have them over for a meal, a celebratory dinner with champagne and cake, all of us toasting this miracle life inside of me – this baby that we are all learning to love, because he or she involves all of us. I believe that. Right now, I want to believe that.
Ten
Anna
By the time Milly calls to invite Jack and me over for dinner, we’ve been seeing each other – although I’m not actually sure I can or should use those words – for two months. We’re not dating precisely, or even at all. Nothing’s actually happened.
Yet since that first evening when we met at a sleek bar in the city for drinks, we’ve gone out a handful of times more. Drinks again, dinner once, and a pub quiz with a couple of Jack’s mates. Hardly anything, and yet for me and my general lack of a dating life, it feels like a lot.
That first night, I was so nervous I changed my outfit thr
ee times, finally settling on jeans and a loose Indian print blouse, not wanting to look as if I was trying too hard. I wasn’t even sure what Jack wanted. Was this just a friendly drink, since we shared this admittedly odd connection? Or was it – could it be – something more?
I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to be; I’d steered clear of serious relationships for a long time, for a reason. Milly kept trying to get me to go on dates, and sometimes I humoured her, but in general it didn’t feel like there was anything missing in my life; I wasn’t lonely.
And yet I still wanted to see Jack.
He was waiting in the bar when I arrived; he’d already bought a bottle of wine, had the wine glasses ready, and he stood up as I approached, which I liked, although I told myself not to make much of such details. It was only that I wasn’t used to them.
‘Anna. It’s good to see you again.’
‘You, too.’ I sat down, busying myself with my coat and bag so I wouldn’t have to say anything. But then I embarrassed myself by blurting, ‘I thought I’d scared you off.’
Surprise flickered across Jack’s face and then he smiled. ‘Not at all. Why would you think that?’
I shrugged, not meeting his eye. ‘Just that I was a bit emotional before, and I’m not normally like that. I also don’t normally air my dirty washing with someone I barely know.’ I toyed with the rim of my empty wine glass. ‘I’m usually quite a private person.’
‘It was an emotional situation.’ He shrugged my words away as he filled my glass. ‘It was entirely understandable.’
‘Right.’ I took a sip of the rich red wine, feeling both relieved and embarrassed that I’d brought it up yet again.
‘Anyway,’ Jack said smoothly. ‘You mentioned you work in HR?’
We steered clear of serious topics after that; I told him about my work, and he talked about his various housing projects, and it all started to feel remarkably easy.
The only slightly awkward part of the conversation was when he asked about university. ‘Milly mentioned you lived together during uni…?’ Such an innocuous question, but it brought a tidal wave of dark memories rising in me, a wave that had been lapping at my senses for weeks now, ever since that day in the clinic, when I felt its first cold touch.
‘We did, but I didn’t go to Bristol as she did.’ Even though I’d had a place. Jack raised his eyebrows, waiting, so I explained diffidently, ‘I failed my A level exams. Didn’t get the marks I needed.’ Two Es and a U are just about as bad as it gets when it comes to exams, and they guarantee you a university place precisely nowhere.
‘Ah.’ He nodded in understanding. ‘So what did you do instead?’
‘I did some waitressing, and then I got a graduate apprenticeship at Qi Tech, where I still work.’ I didn’t mention that I spent eight months either drunk or stoned and most certainly desperate, or that my parents, so acrimoniously divorced that they couldn’t exchange two civil words, banded together to give me what they called tough love and kicked me out of the house.
Neither did I mention the two weeks I spent sofa-surfing with people I shouldn’t have ever had to meet, and then how Milly rang me, and found me, and brought me back to her flat. If she hadn’t, I don’t know where I might have ended up, or how low I might have fallen. No, I most certainly didn’t say any of that.
At the end of the evening, we had a moment of awkwardness; Jack insisted on walking me to my car, and then I laughed uncertainly as we bobbed back and forth for a few cringeworthy seconds before he finally kissed my cheek. The touch of his cool lips on my skin was a shock, like being submerged in ice water. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been kissed, even on the cheek.
It was another few weeks before I heard from him again; we met up for drinks at a different bar, and just like before we chatted easily. I was starting to relax, and not to second-guess everything Jack or I said.
‘How’s Milly doing?’ he asked as he poured me more wine. ‘Is she starting to feel nauseous yet? Doesn’t that kick in quite early?’
It surprised me that he didn’t know – was he not in touch with Matt? I texted Milly nearly every day; I knew her food cravings as well as the things she couldn’t stand: she loved kiwis and hated Parmesan cheese. I’d brought her a fruit salad only yesterday, when I met up with her for a coffee.