The Story of You (20 page)

‘I was so nervous, though.’

‘I knew it!’ I said. ‘I knew you were deep down. I was picturing you pacing around the canteen.’

Things of course could still go wrong, I knew that, although it didn’t feel like the time to talk about this. No, this was a good moment. The air out here was fresh and scented with blossom. Everything was so verdant. It was the start of summer and, if I could just let it, it could be the start of something else, too.

We passed Highgate Mental Hospital.

‘You see,’ said Joe, ‘you go mad with this pregnancy and it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to the local mental facility.’

‘Ha-ha, very funny,’ I said, while at the same time thinking, ‘Don’t joke, Joe.’ I hadn’t mentioned to him about the panic attacks, or the episode in Tim’s car, or the fact that since I’d found out I was pregnant again, scenes from the past – unwanted, intrusive scenes – kept coming at me like meteorites to earth. I didn’t want to. Joe had already been through enough recently without having to deal with my internal drama. No, this was now, and now was good, and that was all that mattered.

I had one eye on where we were going and one on the scan picture. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Joe craned his neck to look at it, too.

‘It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?’ he said. I watched him looking at the picture: holding it up this way and that, the way his eyes crinkled at the side, the half-smile of delight that played on his lips, and this little firework of hope exploded inside of me. I stopped.

‘It feels like a second chance, Joe,’ I said, and in that moment I believed it. I really did. ‘It feels like someone, somewhere, thought, “Actually, those two would make quite cool parents. Shall we give them another chance?”’

Joe lifted up his arms, as if to the heavens: ‘At last!’ he cried, dramatically, sillily. ‘At last the woman sees sense!’

‘Honestly. So rude,’ I said. He put his arm around me and we walked together in the sunshine.

Waterlow Park was blissfully peaceful: squares of manicured gardens, undulating pathways, and weeping willows falling into sun-dappled ponds. The sun shone through the lace pattern that the leaves of the trees made and, whenever you came to a clearing, it was so bright and still you could have traced the jagged skyline of London: the Barbican, the Gherkin, glowing orange like a rocket, and the sprawl beyond them. St Paul’s floated out on a limb, looking like it was from another world.

‘What time’s your train?’ I asked Joe.

‘Oh, I’ve got time.’

I don’t think either of us wanted the day to end.

We ended up going back to my flat, since it was only a short walk away. Joe said he’d have a cup of tea and then get off. I took us a different way, so we didn’t pass the Tube.

The streets were warm and the houses looked bleached, in that way they do after a long, hot day. We had our arms around each other and were dragging our feet, not really out of necessity, but because we wanted the journey to last longer, even though I was genuinely tired from all the walking. It didn’t take much these days to tire me out.

I looked over at Joe.

‘So, don’t you think this is kind of … odd?’ I said, at last. He frowned. He looked a bit hurt. ‘I don’t mean in a bad way.’

‘Explain yourself, King.’

‘Well, just, we’re having a
baby
! We’ve just been to the first scan of
our baby
and, yet, we haven’t seen one another properly for sixteen years, and the first time we do, I’m up the duff, and now here you are, and you’re still Joe, and yet a different Joe, and yet the same Joe … and …’ He was smirking at my ramblings. The unsaid, the main point, the events of the past, hung above us like a huge cloud, threatening rain. ‘Well, doesn’t it freak you out a bit?’

He had his sunglasses on so I couldn’t read his eyes.

‘Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘But then it’s nice, isn’t it? This has been a great day. You’re my friend.’

‘And you’re my friend, too,’ I said, somewhat overzealously. (I didn’t have to worry. He wasn’t expecting anything more.)

‘I really like you. I happen to think you’re rather clever and funny and interesting.’

‘Oh, Joe,’ I said.

‘I can think of worse people to have a baby with.’

‘Me too.’

‘It’s so nice, after everything, to have a new life to think about.’

‘It is,’ I thought, ‘it really is.’

It was like Eva was waiting for us. As soon as we approached her flat and were about to navigate the bin bags, she flung open the door.

‘
Oh
,’ she said, looking Joe up and down. Her greasy hair was clumped at the back, like she’d just got up. ‘Zis your man-friend, Mrs King?’

‘Actually, I’m her husband,’ said Joe, straight-faced. I’d told him about Eva, ‘touched’ on the bin-bag situation. Eva’s mouth made an ‘O’ and her eyebrows looked like they might sail right over her head, they went so high.

‘Don’t believe him, Eva,’ I said, shooting Joe a look, and taking his hand to guide him around the bin bags. Eva certainly didn’t need anyone to fuel her imaginings. God knows what story she’d concoct – whatever it was, it couldn’t be as good as the real one. I leaned against the bin bags, scrabbling in my bag for my keys, trying to get inside the flat as quickly as possible.

‘You moving?’ said Joe.

‘Nooo,’ said Eva, ‘not moving.’

‘She’s moving her bags soon, though, aren’t you, Eva?’ I said, opening the door.

‘She harass me all the time,’ she said, wagging her finger at me. ‘She lovely girl, but she so impatient.’

I took Joe’s coat, to hang it up in the hallway.

‘Has she always had those bags there?’ he asked.

‘Yep, and they just keep growing,’ I said, taking his bag from him, too. He’d brought a little rucksack with supplies, which was just so Joe.

‘Have you ever asked her to move them?’

‘Er, yes! Don’t get me started.’

‘Do you know how mad that is? To step over those every day. You’re as crazy as her.’

‘Joe, you have a lot to learn about me and my life, and my job, if you think that’s even close to crazy,’ I joked, gesturing for him to follow me into the kitchen.

I made tea, while Joe walked from room to room with slow, even footsteps. It was so quiet, I could hear his breathing. I strained the tea bag against the side of the mug for far too long, my stomach tense. It felt like I was selling and he was a prospective buyer.

Eventually, he appeared at the kitchen door. After the intensity of the day, I was extra aware of his gaze, his presence. Joe Sawyer was in my flat. He was in my home. I was carrying his baby … I don’t know whether it was the sheer absurdity of this, or the atmosphere – which had stretched so taut I thought something might snap – but I started laughing, and Joe joined in. Maybe he was thinking the same thing.

‘So this is chez Robbie?’ he said, when we’d stopped.

‘Yep, my humble abode.’ I was pleased someone had said something, anything.

‘It’s cute,’ he said, ‘but what’s that noise?’

I handed him his tea. ‘What noise?’ I said.

‘That one like we’re in an aeroplane and we’re about to take off.’

I listened, then felt my cheeks grow hot. It had gone on so long I barely noticed it any more.

‘Oh, now, that’ll be the dehumidifiers.’

‘The dehumidifiers?’

‘Yes.’

‘How many have you got?’

‘Um, four.’

‘
Four?
’ he said, loudly.

‘It is quite damp,’ I said, ‘riddled with it, unfortunately, but I am getting it sorted.’ I cringed. Suddenly, the dehumidifiers seemed to roar, drowning out our voices. ‘I promise you, I am!’

Joe sighed and cocked his head mock-sternly. ‘Now, Robyn King, you are carrying my child,’ he joked, even though I could see he wasn’t joking, not really, ‘and as of now, no child of mine, or any mother carrying my child, is going to live in a flat that smells of the inside of a tent and sounds like a wind tunnel.’

I made pasta and we played music – Led Zeppelin (naturally), but also Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stereophonics, stuff we’d listened to that year in our bedrooms and on crackly tapes in Joe’s rubbish Metro – the soundtrack of summer 1997. Joe had got excited telling me about such-and-such a band he’d heard or seen play in Manchester. I hadn’t heard of any of them.

‘What have you been doing for the last sixteen years?’

Thing is, I didn’t know. It felt like I’d been sleep-walking through a sixteen-year fog and, now Joe was here, I was remembering a little of what life used to feel like, during those golden three months, May to August 1997. Before Butler, the pregnancy and, losing Lily.

‘Well, I have spent probably more time than the average person in mental asylums,’ I said.

It wasn’t long before Joe gravitated, as people do, to the many photographs I had around the flat. I stood watching him, self-consciously, taking in the map of his profile – the same face as the one of sixteen years ago, but sharper, somehow; more defined. More Joe. I liked it more. I wondered what he was thinking, what he expected of all this, of us. I knew two things: I was loving him being here; but also, when I thought about being with him, as a couple again, my stomach tied in knots with the fear that the past would repeat itself, that I wouldn’t be able to finish what I’d started and that I’d hurt him all over again.

He shuffled his way around the flat, nose close to the photographs, making little noises of amusement at such-and-such a hair disaster, fashion disaster. I was thinking about that first time I ended it with Joe – his face then, how hurt he’d been …

‘I feel like we’re back in the museum,’ I said, Joe still looking at my photos. ‘All my Palaeozoic eras laid out for you to see. See what joys and pleasures you missed out on?’ I added, as he worked his way through the poodle perm and my vampy university days with the dark lips and the pale face – waaaay too much make-up. Around the millennium, there was a scary foray into a business image, as I tried to tell myself I’d be a lot happier, if I just got myself a job in recruitment, a boyfriend who worked in sales and was normal. Joe peered at the result, shaking his head: me in a pale grey suit, my curly hair straightened and highlighted blonde, and pulling a face. ‘I call those my “Karren Brady” years,’ I said. ‘Before I realized my true spiritual home was working with the clinically insane.’

He gave me a once-over. ‘I like you much more like this,’ he said. ‘Much, much more.’

He moved into the hallway, while I hid in the kitchen, but then I heard him say, ‘Oh,
God
,’ and rushed out to see what the fuss was about. ‘Was this the day …?’

I peered over his shoulder at the photo. Me, Beth and some other girls from school at Tania Richardson’s wedding. I was looking middle-aged in a beige linen trouser suit and straw hat, holding the hand of my beloved at the time: Brendan Lloyd Yeomans (he was known to introduce himself using his full title). After several years of feeling lost and off the rails, I had finally found ‘security’ in B.L.Y. when I worked in the university holidays at Clinton Cards and he was area manager.

Joe peered even more closely at the photo. ‘Is that …?’ he said again.

‘Yep.’

‘Is that that wedding where …?’

‘You told my boyfriend he was a prick with a ridiculous name then proceeded to throw up all over his shoes?’

Joe put a hand on my shoulder and gave it an apologetic pat. ‘I was just crushed with jealousy,’ he said, ‘and also, I’ve never forgiven myself.’

Then we said in unison, ‘Yeah, but he so was.’

The flat glowed buttery yellow, orange and pink with the setting sun, and nobody said anything about a train home to Manchester. I was glad. For the first time in weeks, I felt completely calm, like everything was going to be okay – that, whatever happened, today would be a good memory, and I definitely needed more of those.

We somehow ended up in my bedroom, looking at more old pictures of us: in fancy dress at a friend’s seventies party; lying on the school field, outside the caravan in Lyme Regis; that weird first holiday with Denise and her plethora of Lakeland Plastics gadgets, Joe gaunt, pasty and centre-parted, floppy-haired. ‘God, and I thought you were literally beautiful,’ I said. I did, too, but the truth was he was more beautiful now, more fully formed – dare I say it, a man! I’d said this to him that fated night in the barn, while hammered on Jack Daniel’s, and he’d laughed his head off at me, but it was true.

Afterwards, we lay on my bed. I felt like I could fall asleep. After a few seconds, Joe sighed, dramatically. ‘God, this is awful,’ he said. ‘Am I allowed to touch you?’

I sighed and wriggled closer to him. I guessed the ‘What about us?’ conversation had to come soon, I just wasn’t expecting it to be
so
soon and for Joe to be
so
blatant.

The room was almost dark, just his white-towelling socks glowing. He always did wear terrible white socks. I felt my chest tighten.

‘Joe?’ I said.

‘Mmm?’

‘You do know I can’t do it, don’t you?’

I had my head right next to his chest and swore I felt his heart thud. ‘Do what?’ he said.

‘Oh, not the baby,’ I said, realizing he might think I meant that. Even though I worried every day I couldn’t do the baby, or rather the baby wouldn’t do me. ‘I mean, a relationship, a proper one. The physical side of things?’

He was quiet. What had I said?

‘I know I pounced on you at your mum’s funeral, and I know I must have given that impression, but now this has happened …’

‘You realize now the shit has hit the fan that you don’t feel that way about me?’

He didn’t say it in a wounded way, just as a statement of fact, but he sounded disappointed.

‘No. Yes,’ I said, then, ‘I just can’t Joe, I’m sorry.’

He gave a long sigh. I felt suddenly so empty, hollow. Why did life have to be so complicated? Then he said, ‘It’s okay. I had the brush-off outside the museum. I get the picture.’

‘Oh, Joe,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right, you’ll come round,’ he said. He made it sound like a joke but I knew it wasn’t.

‘There’s just too much that’s gone on with us,’ I continued. ‘Losing Lily …’

It was the first time I had said her name out loud and he went very quiet, just shifted his head on the pillow, but it was enough to tell me that those feelings were still close to the surface. ‘We’ve been through too much …’