As Good As It Gets? (29 page)

‘You mean,’ I say hesitantly, ‘you thought I didn’t go through with it?’

He nods. His lips are pressed together. It’s as if he doesn’t trust himself to speak.

‘You thought I had an abortion?’

‘Yes.’ His voice is soft, gravelly. He picks up a sugar cube and grinds its rough surface with a thumbnail. ‘That’s what Mum said – that you’d phoned and told her and said you never wanted to see me again.’

I feel as if I have been kicked, very sharply, in the stomach. ‘Jesus.’

‘I know. I don’t know what to say.’ He looks utterly distraught.

‘Well,’ I say, my voice wavering, ‘that didn’t happen. I had Rosie and she’s sixteen now …’

His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. ‘But it said in the magazine that she was fifteen—’

‘Yes, they got that wrong. The journalist was a bit slapdash.’

‘God, Charlotte. When I saw the two of you I just assumed you must have met someone else and got pregnant pretty quickly …’

I shake my head. ‘Rosie’s yours, Fraser. I mean …’ I shrug. ‘In the biological sense.’

‘I really don’t know what to say …’

‘… And I never phoned your mum. I’ve never spoken to her in my life. Didn’t you think it was odd when your phone number changed?’

‘Christ, I don’t know – she did that a couple of times. Said we’d been getting nuisance calls … what was that about bird seed again?’

I roll a piece of croissant between my fingers. ‘Um … I wrote to you saying something about wanting to be a pigeon so I could crap on your head.’

‘Oh,’ he says hollowly, dropping the sugar cube into his coffee. ‘D’you feel like that now?’

‘What, that I want to be a pigeon?’

‘I mean angry. Let down. I don’t know …’ I look at him, this handsome man who looks barely a day older than the last time I saw him, when I’d hugged him goodbye at Euston station.
It’ll be okay
, he’d said, kissing me.
We’ll be together and make it work. I love you.
All these years, I’ve held a version of events in my head. And that’s not what happened at all. How might things have turned out if his mother had never interfered?
No, I
can’t
think that way. I must go home, right now, and be a good mother and wife.
I
scramble
up from my seat and throw my bag over my shoulder.

‘What are you doing?’ Fraser asks, alarmed.

‘I need to go home. I shouldn’t be here with you …’

‘Charlotte, please.’ He jumps up and grasps at my arm. ‘Please don’t go. Look, I don’t really see Mum anymore. Haven’t spoken to her properly for years. She and Dad have separated—’

‘Well,’ I blurt out, ‘if you do speak to her you can tell that, when Rosie was a toddler, one of our favourite things was to feed the birds in the park. You wouldn’t believe how tame they were. We used to always take bread but then I found the packet of seeds in a drawer so we took that. So her present came in useful after all …’ I turn away, horrified that everything’s gone blurry – the staff behind the counter, the shuffling queue and the rows of muffins in their paper cases.

‘Charlotte, wait!’ Fraser says, hurrying after me towards the door. ‘Don’t rush off like this …’ And now my tears are spilling over. I charge out of Caffè Nero with Fraser in pursuit, remembering when Ollie put the plug in the washbasin and left the taps running to prove that our overflow system worked effectively. Only now there’s no overflow. Just my face, which is completely wet as I spin back towards Fraser and say, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t talk about this anymore.’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

‘Turned out it wasn’t just the patio,’ Will announces on his return home, ‘but a bird table as well. Trust my bloody sister. She’d ordered Mum this ridiculous table with platforms at different levels, and a little house on top – a sort of Swiss chalet – but of course it was flatpack and she needed me to build the damn thing.’

I force out a laugh. Although he’s in unusually good humour – perhaps it’s perked him up, feeling needed and useful – I’m finding it hard to focus on multi-tiered bird tables and how his mum made him deep-clean her patio with some awful environment-ruining stinky stuff after he’d scraped off the moss.

All I can think is:
Fraser didn’t know he had a child. He never deserted us after all. How would things be today if we’d made it work and brought up our baby together?
I keep replaying that morning, when we’d watched the sky lighten from Brighton seafront, and peered at the positive pregnancy test over and over, hardly able to believe it bore a thin blue line. We’d made a baby! The hormones in my pee that I’d peed onto this little stick told us so! And I think about all the times Fraser said he loved me. Maybe it wasn’t all lies.

I feel chilled to my bones, even though the afternoon has turned oppressively muggy. Pottering around the kitchen, I try to find something useful to do.

‘I mean,’ Will goes on, ‘do birds actually care what their table looks like?’

‘No, I guess not …’

‘… As long as there’s bird seed on it?’

Agh no. Do not talk about bird seed. ‘Well, it sounds quite impressive,’ I say. ‘I might have to go round for a look.’

Will chuckles as I start to set the table for dinner. ‘If I’d known you’d be that interested, I’d have taken a picture on my phone.’

‘I would have liked that,’ I say, with a small laugh.

‘Charlotte?’

I fix on a bright smile. ‘Yes?’

‘Are you …
okay
?’

‘Yes, I’m fine! Why d’you ask?’

He peers at my face. I can feel the deceit radiating out of my every pore. I’m trying to be normal, fetching chilli sauce and orange juice from the fridge, while still reeling in shock over what I learned today; that Fraser didn’t bother to find out when the baby was born because he didn’t know she
was
born. I’d be no more shocked to have discovered that Dad wasn’t really my dad, and that my actual father was one of those obscure members of the Luxembourg royal family that you see in
Hello!
magazine.

‘You just seem a bit weird,’ Will remarks.

I glide across the kitchen to fetch glasses. ‘In what way?’

‘Um … you’re talking strangely, as if English wasn’t your first language and you’re trying to get to grips with the tenses.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I bluster.

He throws me another quizzical look. ‘Actually, you sound like a prim telephone operator from the 1950s …’

‘Stop analysing me,’ I say hotly as the front door opens. Rosie bursts in, all smiles and flushed cheeks. I have never been so delighted to see her.

‘Guess what!’ she announces. ‘They want me for the billboard campaign. Can you believe it?’

‘That’s fantastic,’ I exclaim, hugging her. ‘I didn’t think you’d hear so soon.’

‘Neither did I,’ she says, snatching an apple from the bowl and crunching into it, ‘but they called Laurie as soon as they’d seen me and it’s happening! I’m going to be on billboards all over the South East!’ She throws her arms around Will, then me – again – and even Ollie as he bowls in, tired and sunny-faced after his day out. Rosie hasn’t mentioned meeting Fraser again, since our heated exchange after Zach’s gig. Maybe this big ad campaign will take her mind off things, until I decide what the heck to do now.

‘Have fun at the climbing wall, Ollie?’ Will asks.

‘Yeah, it was great,’ our son enthuses. As we tuck into Will’s delicious Thai stir fry, I try to convince myself that my own ‘day out’ wasn’t a big deal really. We didn’t even make plans to meet again.

So why haven’t I told Will? We don’t keep secrets from each other generally. At least, I don’t – not to sound like some paragon of virtue, but because I genuinely haven’t got up to anything even remotely devious in all the years we’ve been together. And … well, now I have. And I haven’t the faintest idea of what to do next. One thing I
do
know, though, is that I’m definitely not allowed to be angry about leather trouser night anymore.

*

I meet Liza next morning to tell her how Arlene Johnson effectively erased Rosie and me from her son’s life. ‘I can’t believe she did that,’ she exclaims, clutching her glass of green juice.

‘Neither can I,’ I say. ‘It’s inhuman, really. That was his child! And her
grandchild.
What’s she’s basically done is denied Rosie any sort of relationship with Fraser—’

‘I’d want to get on a train right now and confront her … where does she live again?’

‘Not sure. They used to be just outside Manchester, but Fraser said he’s not really in touch with her anymore.’

Liza exhales loudly. She’s teaching classes today but I’ve managed to grab her for a quick chat in the yoga studio café. We are surrounded by beautiful, slender beings who appear to be so utterly at peace with themselves, I can’t imagine any of them has ever done anything at all deceptive. ‘Well,’ Liza adds, ‘I’d want to point out that she completely altered the course of your life,
and
denied her own son the chance of being a dad—’ She stops short. ‘I don’t mean, you know, that Will hasn’t been a
brilliant
father …’

I nod.

‘And maybe,’ she goes on, ‘this is how things were meant to happen. I mean, if she hadn’t interfered …’

‘
Everything
would have been different.’ I, too, have ordered a juice, only mine isn’t green, but a violent purplish colour to match my hair.

Liza looks at me. ‘You don’t regret the way things have turned out, do you?’

‘Of course not,’ I say, with more certainty than I feel.

‘Does Fraser have any other children?’

‘No idea. I don’t know anything about him apart from the fact that he works in London – something financial – and has a place in Cheshire too. We didn’t talk about anything other than the Rosie situation …’ I take another sip of my juice. It involves beetroot and tastes rather soily; I’d hoped it might help to purify my thoughts but it seems to be failing on that count.

‘So what are you going to do?’ Liza asks.

‘I’ll tell Will, but I need to pick my moment. You know how he is these days.’

She nods. ‘Did you ever find out what went on at Sabrina’s that night? After I’d left, I mean?’

‘No.’ I drop my voice to a murmur. ‘He’s adamant that nothing was going on with any woman, and I must’ve imagined it all, hallucinated maybe …’ I pause.

‘What’s going on with him, d’you think?’

I shrug. ‘A mid-life thing, maybe? I’ve no idea. I mean,
ecstasy,
Liza. Will’s never even smoked a ciggie, let alone a joint. That’s one of the things I loved about him, when we met – that he seemed like such a proper, sorted grown-up who enjoyed a few beers or glasses of wine but could handle
life
, you know?’

She nods. ‘Unlike Fraser.’

‘Well, yes, I mean, I thought he’d just run away.’

‘He still did really,’ she points out. ‘He just accepted his mum’s version of events and never called you to see if you were okay, or to try and help in any way. He just slunk away, like his mum wanted him to.’

‘You’re right.’ I check my watch. ‘God, sorry, I’ve taken up all your break—’

She pulls a regretful face. ‘It’s fine, but I’d better go …’ I leave her to take her next class.

‘The thing to remember,’ I hear another instructor saying as I pass one of the studios, ‘is that it’s all about the breath. Calm, steady breathing. In … and out. In … and out …’ If only it were that simple.

*

When I arrive home, Will is huddled over his laptop at the kitchen table. ‘Any luck?’ I say, without thinking.

‘What with?’ Will’s gaze remains fixed on the screen. Looks like some environmental thing. Aware that it’s highly annoying to peer over someone’s shoulder, I move away.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Just … stuff.’

‘No,’ he says wearily, ‘I
don’t
have any news about jobs yet.’ He picks up his laptop and disappears to the garden with it. Well, fine.

I hang out with Ollie – Rosie is out on another casting – and we find ourselves making cookies together, which I’d have assumed he’d grown out of long ago. Pleasingly, though, he seems to enjoy messing about in the kitchen with me, and insists that we make a batch of crisp cookies – ‘like you did for the party’ – as well as his previously favoured chocolate chip variety. Then Saul shows up, and the two of them rush off to the park, with handfuls of still-warm cookies.

Alone now, I head upstairs and click on my own laptop in our bedroom. Satisfied that all is quiet in the house, I check my emails.

All junk, apart from one from Fraser.

Can’t stop thinking about what we talked about yesterday. Need to see you again. Would that be okay? Can I call you?

F x

How can I say no, after what he told me?
Yes,
I reply,
we definitely need to talk. Here’s my number …

It takes me three attempts to type it correctly.
I press send, my heart hammering like a caffeinated thing, knowing that no amount of yoga-type breathing could calm me now.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I’d felt bad about not booking more time off work to coincide with the summer holidays. However, now I’m on my way to the office, on a breezy Wednesday morning, it’s something of a relief. It’s excruciating being around Will, trying to figure out the best way to tell him about my meeting with Fraser.

I know I’m being cowardly, and that I should have told him everything as soon as Fraser and I arranged to have coffee. Maybe I would have, if this had happened long ago, when I felt close to Will and we kept each other abreast of the minutiae of each other’s lives. But we don’t anymore. It’s the eggshell thing: never knowing quite how he’ll react. Not that I’m making excuses. This is no longer just about Rosie, I’ve realised, remembering how my heart started thumping alarmingly when Fraser walked into Caffè Nero: strikingly handsome in a blond, blue-eyed way, a little hesitant, and just as I’d remembered him. Even now, my stomach does a little spin at the thought. I take a moment to sit in my car in Archie’s car park, before forcing myself to banish all Fraser-related thoughts and head in to work, where I shall try to behave like a normal person.