The telephone started to ring. Stevie ignored it. After six rings, Lara’s clear, cheerful voice boomed through the answering machine. She was at JFK. She’d be back in the morning.
FORTY- TWO
Æ
“i thought you’d died or something,” said lara,
pulling her key from the front door.
Stevie hugged her tightly, silently. Lara extricated herself from the hug and stood back and struck a pose, left hip tilting forward, smile lusciously wide. “Do I look different?”
Stevie nodded. Lara did look different, plumper, with a Jayne Mansfield décolletage. She was still wearing jeans, but with flat thongs, as opposed to her usual heels.
“I do, don’t I? Check out these tits.” “Pornographic.”
The flat looked complete with Lara back in it, thought Stevie, pulling her bathrobe tight around her waist and sitting down on a wicker-backed chair in the kitchen, a little unsure of how the con- versation should begin, aware that there was A Conversation to have. “Well,” she said awkwardly, recalling her and Sam’s revela- tions on Port Meadow, feeling terrible about them now she was confronted with the fleshed-out abstraction of her best friend. “You must be tired.”
Lara waved her hands dismissively, as if a small hop over the At- lantic was nothing more than a city-to-suburb commute. “I feel great, actually. A bit sick at times in the evening, but otherwise great. I needed to come over to see the folks.” She patted her tummy. “A bit of explaining to do.”
“Sure.” She’d never seen Lara like this, so fleshy, ripe, and breezy. It was unsettling. She didn’t know how to celebrate, if celebration was appropriate at all. “It’s quite a lot to take in, Lara.”
“I know, I know.” Lara passed her a steaming cup of Earl Grey and sat down. “The condom slipped off,” she said matter-of-factly. “I be- gan to feel a bit funny about a few days later—light-headed, dizzy, crap, really—and so I got myself checked out, you know, at a crap clinic, thinking I might have caught a nasty. And I found out then.”
“What a shock.”
“Jesus. It was like being told that the world is flat.” Lara cradled her head in her hand and cocked it to one side contentedly, eyes wider and bluer than ever, her cheeks milkmaid-rosy, as if preg- nancy had lent a kind of pastoral innocence to her features. “But you know the weirdest thing? Pretty soon after—and I know this sounds strange—I felt like, oh, of course. That it was
meant
to be somehow. Now it feels like the most natural thing in the world. It doesn’t make sense, does it?”
“You always knew you’d keep it?”
“Absolutely. From the moment . . .” Lara’s voice choked up. “Sorry, it’s the hormones. God, it’s the weirdest thing, Stevie. I didn’t want babies before, not at all, you know that. But now . . .” She blew out a mouthful of air. “I crave it, this thing, growing in- side. I think, perhaps, the pregnancy hormones have made me broody. And if I hadn’t got pregnant, I would never have wanted a baby. It’s a weird one.”
The significance of what had happened to Lara finally hit. Stevie felt a bubble of joy rise up her own chest, crack her throat. “I’m happy for you,” she said and meant it.
“But . . . Sam . . .” Lara faltered, drawing invisible doodles on the glass tabletop with a finger. “Sam . . .”
Stevie froze, her fingers clamping tight around her mug. “Yes?” “Sam doesn’t know,” said Lara, quietly. “He’s over for the week-
end. I’m here to see him, too. But I can’t face it.” “It’ll be okay,” she said uncertainly.
“It’s . . .” Lara looked solemn. “It’s
not
Sam’s baby.”
Stevie’s fingers lost their claw grip on the mug. She realized she’d been holding her breath.
“I’ve been a bad girl, Stevie.” “How bad?”
“Do you remember you put Seb and me in touch?” “I do.” Stevie grinned.
“Yes, we met up and, well, one thing led to another. He told me he’d split with Katy.”
“I should tell you now,” Stevie interrupted. “Katy came by last night, said she’d found a pregnancy test. Yours. I wasn’t sure whether to believe her.”
Lara’s beautiful face crumpled and winced. “You
are
joking? Oh, fuck. Fuck.
Fuck
. That’s bad. That’s really bad.” She put her head in her hands. “I left it at Seb’s office. He wanted evidence, you see.”
“Nice.”
“Well. It was unfortunate.” Lara winced. “It was just sex, to be fair. You know, I think he actually wanted to get back with Katy? Then I got pregnant.” She shook her head. “It’s a bit of a mess. Are you angry with me?”
“Angry with you? Why?” Then a terrible black thought clouded her relief. “But . . . if you don’t mind me asking . . . how do you know it is
not
Sam’s?”
“Oh, Sam and I never slept together,” Lara announced breezily, sipping her tea.
“What?”
“It just never happened, I’m afraid. He never seemed that into it. And . . . well . . . I didn’t push things. It was kind of sweet, courtly. I thought if I held out—all that dating Rules stuff—that it would have a better chance of not turning into the usual crash-and- burn. And . . . I suppose . . .”
“Go on.”
“I
wanted
it to work. I liked the
idea
of a functional relationship. I wanted to prove—to you, my mother, and everyone else—that I
could
have a proper relationship with a nice presentable guy, not just unsuitable love rats. But the chemistry wasn’t there.”
Stevie huffed back in her chair. “I had no idea.”
Lara raised an eyebrow archly. “I think he’s hung up on you any- how.”
“Me?” Stevie laughed uneasily, swiftly changed the subject. Lara grinned. “You’ve gone scarlet!”
Stevie shifted uncomfortably, not ready to start exchanging notes. “But what are you going to do, Lara? On a practical level, I mean.”
Lara smiled knowingly, letting her friend off the hook. “Stay in New York. Casey is over the moon. We’re going to bring the baby up . . .”
“You and Casey?”
“Why not? She’s happy for me to stay on at the apartment. She will be Aunt Casey and New York godmother.” Lara sounded strong, empowered. “You’ll be the London one, I hope.”
“I’d be honored.”
Lara grinned mischievously. “All I need now is a white picket fence.”
“What about Seb?”
“Well, I don’t think we’ll be together, that’s pretty clear. But he’ll be involved. He’s taken it on the chin.”
Stevie looked at her beaming, radiant friend and laughed. “Gosh, you do look happy.”
“I am.” Lara took a sip of tea. “I tell you, this is weird shit. But I really am happy.”
Stevie looked out of the window and saw a streak of mackerel- shaped red clouds, like a stack of arrows pointing west.
FORTY-THREE
Æ
katy hung up on seb, the receiver making a satis-
fyingly final click. Had she just rejected him? Was that her voice saying, “No, too late,” when he’d asked her to forgive him and marry him. A shiver of triumph goose-bumped her forearms. She tugged on a tattered denim miniskirt, a vintage silk blouse, and woven leather flip-flops, her feet immediately luxuriating in the flat soles. After years of Seb-pleasing, corn-rubbing heels, she felt the flats to be symbolic of a new kind of freedom.
In her bathroom, Katy patted in her moisturizer and reached for her makeup. She took the cap off the Touche Éclat, clicked it to press out the thick pink paste, and brought it to the snooker-hole dip of her eye socket. But something stopped her drawing it on in the usual crescent. She didn’t look too bad. Not so bad for thirty- six years old. She put the wand down. No, today, she wouldn’t do it. She’d declare a makeup amnesty. For some reason, it mattered that Jez see her without war paint. The battle was over.
She checked her watch. Okay, it was time. With a courageous in- halation, she picked up her fertility test and stared at the plastic
white stick, a kind of parody of a pregnancy test. She sat down on the toilet and pulled the stick from beneath her. Thirty minutes, she had to wait. It was the longest thirty minutes of her life. She paced around the flat, drank Diet Coke, ate pretzels, and tapped her fingers furiously on the kitchen table, wondering if her life was about to dissect into a clear binary: the prelude; the sequel. Perhaps nothing would ever be the same again.
And then thirty minutes were up. She knew the score: one line in the reference box meant she was okay; two lines, the second lighter than the first, was also a reprieve; two lines, the second the same or darker than the first, would be disastrous and should come with directions to the nearest IVF clinic. She took a deep breath and picked the stick up from the mantelpiece, looking but not see- ing. The plastic felt warm in her fingers, as if brewing a secret. Fo- cusing with one eye only, she crumpled down the wall, anxiety hissing out of her like air from a balloon. Then she punched the air.
it was still hot
when she left the flat, the sun fake-tan orange, slipping beneath the tops of the elms and oaks of Hyde Park. As she walked up one of the graveled paths that looped and cut across the park like ribbons, she could just see Jez, waiting, as she’d asked, in long yellow-tipped grass, facing the river. Her heart quickened.
Sensing Katy before he heard her, Jez turned and watched her picking her way across the long grass, like a woman from a fancy shampoo ad.
“I’m here,” she announced solemnly, her face rouged with exhil- aration.
“You’re here.” Jez squeezed her hand.
Katy kicked off her shoes and unfolded her legs, stretching them taut and brown into the clumps of dry summer grass. Jez stroked their waxed moisturized lengths tentatively from ankle to knee, hardly able to comprehend that they were his for the touching. “You’re so fucking beautiful, Katy.” He looked at her face again. “I prefer you without makeup. Your face suits you.”
Katy beamed with pleasure. “I don’t look a hundred years old?” “Twenty-seven, tops.”
To her horror, Katy burst into tears. But rather than finding this saline explosion a repellent signal of a needy woman, Jez cradled her in his arms. In those warm, pale, freckled slabs of flesh, she felt safe, a little girl again. “I’m not done yet,” she said suddenly, un- able to stop herself.
“What?” Jez looked puzzled.
Katy realized he’d have no idea what she was talking about. “Oh, shit, I mean . . .” He’d seen her without concealer and mascara, the man could probably take it. She swallowed. “I know this sounds a bit sad . . .”
“What, sweetheart?”
“I did a fertility test, one of these home kits that tell you if your ovaries have puckered like old fruit.”
Jez looked stricken. “It doesn’t matter, Katy. Don’t cry, baby. I honestly don’t mind. I just want you. That’s all, just you, twenty- seven or sixty-seven. It doesn’t matter.” At that moment, Jez meant every word.
Katy smiled gratefully through her tears, a rainbow of happiness arching over her body. It occurred to her that perhaps
this
was all she had striven for. Not marriage. Not babies. But a man who didn’t back off from a future. “I don’t know why I’m crying. The test was fine. I’m okay. It doesn’t matter. It’s all a bit overwhelming.”
“Ah, you can have my babies, then.” Jez grinned wolfishly. “What?” Katy basked in Jez’s words, wanting him to repeat
them again and again.
Jez shook his head, muttered to himself, “Fuck me, I feel like I’m in one of those old movies.”
Katy giggled and dug her bare toes into the tickling grass, sum- moning courage. “But there’s something I should tell you.” She planted a kiss on Jez’s stubbly pink cheek, her heart pounding. “Please forgive me. I can hardly bear to tell you. But no secrets?”
Jez shook his head. “No secrets.”
“Do you promise you’ll still want me afterward?” “Fuck yes.”
Katy shifted uncomfortably on the grass. “I’ve never told anyone this... Christ.” She pushed a hand against her mouth. “This is hard.”
“Take your time, babe. Is it about me being married?” “Er . . .”
“Because we’ll divorce. It’ll be a simple quickie. Stevie has made that quite clear . . .”
“No, no.”
“Is it Mum? Please don’t worry about her. She left the flat this morning, said she was finally ready to go home and face the house.” He smiled, scratched his tummy. “
And
she laughed yesterday for the first time since Dad died. My jokes aren’t too bad, you see.”
“No, Jez. It’s to do with . . .” She gulped. “. . . genes.” Jez’s brow furrowed.
“
If
we have kids . . .”
“You’ve got some genetic disorder?” Jez broadened with resolve. “It’s okay, we’ll deal with it.”
Katy shook her head. “No. It’s just that I don’t want to mislead you.” She cleared her throat. “It’s my nose, Jez.”
“Your nose? What about your nose?”
“My kids won’t get
this
nose.” She closed her eyes, unable to face his reaction, still unsure how much her assumed-to-be-natural looks were part of the romantic transaction, wanting, for the first time in her life, to put all her cards on the table. “My real nose is a shark fin.” She swallowed. “I’ve had a nose job.”
There was a terrible pause in which Katy realized that this ro- mantic arrangement, so precarious in its infancy, could be over be- fore it began. A few painfully long moments passed. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, steeling herself for rejection. Then Jez leaned forward and kissed her tiny surgically enhanced nose.
FORTY-FOUR
Æ
stevie checked her watch. she was running late.
Twenty-five minutes late. Poppy hated lateness, didn’t understand it, having forgotten what it was like to rely on badly ventilated trains in tunnels meters below the ground. Stevie ran out of Queen’s Park Tube and down Salusbury Road. There was Poppy sitting on a wooden bench outside a local café, in her favorite empire-waisted blue sundress, Tommy nuzzling her neck. She waved. She didn’t look pissed off.
“Sorry, sorry I’m late.” Stevie huffed, sitting down, feeling like a summery sweaty mess next to her pristine sister. “Friday. Eleventh- hour changes by editor. Chaos.”
Poppy shrugged and stirred her cappuccino. “Oh, don’t worry.” “Now, what was so important? What wouldn’t you tell me over