Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel (32 page)

“Could we have a chat?” I asked him, suddenly unsure if this was a good idea or whether I should have listened to my pride.

He flinched, then lowered his line of sight to the ground. “About what?” he asked eventually.

I blinked at him, surprised. When in twenty-nine years had I needed a reason to talk to him? “I need a reason to speak to you now?”

He gave a half-shrug without raising his eyes.

“OK,
Malvolio
,” I said, folding my arms across my chest, resting my weight on one hip. “You’re my best friend in the world, so I have to tell you about this problem I’m having. I’m pregnant. Don’t worry, it was planned and I love the father very much. But now the father has told me to get rid of it. I don’t know what to do because he won’t talk to me, and I suspect he might change his mind. So, I was wondering, as my best friend in the whole world, if you wouldn’t mind facilitating his mind-changing process by going round and beating some sense into him for me?”

Was that a small smile that played across his lips? It must have been, because he said, “Let’s go for a coffee at Carlitto’s.”

“I really need a glass of wine,” I said.

“Wine? You can’t drink,” he said.

“Why?”

He frowned. “Well, you’re …” His voice trailed away, his mouth twisting as though angry at having been so easily caught out.

“Coffee it is, I guess,” I said.

I turned in the direction of Carlitto’s, an Italian café bar we often went to when I met him for lunch.

“So, how’ve you been?” he asked after we’d walked a few paces, side by side in a strained, unsettling silence.

“How do you think?”

He looked pained for a second, his eyes flickering to focus on the mid-distance—away emotionally from me—before coming back to the present.

“How have you been?” I asked when it became clear he wasn’t going to reply to my non-rhetorical question.

“Fine,” he said. “We’re planning a holiday. We were thinking of camping in the south of France. Maybe going over on the ferry and driving down.”

Was he talking casually about holidays when inside me grew his child? I began to glance sideways at him, wondering who he was. He even looked a little different: the bump on the bridge of his nose slightly more exaggerated, making his face seem off-balance. His eyes seemed closer together, narrower, meaner. His once soft, wide mouth seemed to have hardened into a thinner line.

“Steph might be able to get three weeks off work, but she’s not sure yet. She’s been covering for the owner whilst she’s on an extended break. Steph loves it. It’s been really good for her, having that extra responsibility. It’s shown her she can do it. Hopefully, the owner will give her the time off when she comes back. I’ve got holiday carried over from last year.”

“I thought you said neither of you could handle the extra
responsibility,” I said. “That’s why you didn’t want this baby anymore.”

“I wasn’t lying,” he said, his defenses instantly bolting into place around him. “And there’s a world of difference between running a shop and looking after a baby.”

We arrived at Carlitto’s to find the pavement outside cleared of tables and chairs, the blind pulled down over the glass door, the metal grills bolted over the windows. We should have known, few cafés stayed open late—this time was the preserve of restaurants and bars.

“I suppose we’ve got to go to the pub now,” I said. “I’ll just have an orange juice or something.”

The look of discomfort tinged with irritation flitted across his face again as he raised his wrist, looked at his watch. His father’s watch. He never told anyone that, not even Stephanie, I’d guess. “I have to get going,” Mal said. “We’re going to a friend’s place for dinner.”

“Don’t you think this is more important?” I said. Why was he being so cold? In anyone else, it would have been upsetting; in Mal, it was devastating.

“Nova, I don’t know what you expect from me. I’ve told you our decision. I don’t know what else there is to say.”

“How about why?” I asked him loudly. A few heads turned toward us and I lowered my voice, took a few steps closer to him.

“I’ve told you why,” he said.

“No, you haven’t. I know you, you’ve never been scared of responsibility in your life. You live with it every day. I don’t believe that you can’t handle the responsibility of a baby,” I replied.

“Did you ever think that’s why? Because I’ve had responsibility, I’ve been looking after people my whole life, and I can’t do it again?”

“No, I didn’t ever think that because it’s bollocks and you know it. Is this Stephanie’s doing?”

He stared at me, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

“It is, isn’t it? It’s Stephanie. I should have known. She’d been so weird in the last few weeks, her energy was all over the place, giving off unsettling vibes—”

“Ahh, don’t start all that bollocks,” he cut in. “Do you really think that I’d let her dictate something like this?”

“Yeah, I do,” I replied. “I know you, this isn’t something you’d do. It has to be her.”

“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do,” he said simply.

Old pain doesn’t completely die. Time may soothe it, stroke over it until it looks like it has healed, but it never dies properly. It stays with you, it lives in the cracks of your soul, waiting for moments when you feel true pain. Other people had hurt me several times over the years. I’d cried, I’d ached, I’d grieved with varying degrees of intensity. And I’d always known, after what had happened when I tried to tell Mal I loved him, that it only hurt enough to leave a scar when the person mattered. When the person had managed to open up a path to the center of your being. Few people had managed that. I never realized that the next person who would cause me as much pain as Mal had all those years ago, who would cause all that old pain to resurface with just a few words, would be Mal.

“Mal, this isn’t you talking.”

“It is, you know.”

“What am I supposed to do about this?” I pressed my hand on my stomach, forcing him to look at me. Look at the space he could hardly keep his hands off the last few months. He fixed his gaze on that spot, and I knew, I
knew
that he didn’t want to do this. I seized on that, stepped forward, reached for his hand
to put it on my stomach. He didn’t resist, allowed me to move his hand across the gap between us—then suddenly he snatched his arm back before his fingers came into contact.

“Nova,” he said quietly, looking some way over my head, “please don’t do this. We’re not going to change our minds. That’s the truth of it. We shouldn’t have done this, and I can only apologize.”

“You can only apologize? I’m pregnant. It’s not like you’ve accidentally smashed my favorite vase, I’m having your baby. I’m doing it for you.”

“You don’t have to have it. Not anymore,” he said.

“OK,” I said, fighting the urge to break down. “If I do
that
, then you have to come with me. If you want me to go through with it, then you have to come and watch me do it.”

“I can’t,” he said, still staring over my shoulder.

“You see, you see?” I replied. “You can’t face the idea of me doing it. You still want this baby.”

“No, Nova. If I come with you, you’ll be thinking right up until the last moment that I’m going to stop you. And that’s not going to be healthy for you. You’ll need to be preparing yourself, not hoping that I’ll come riding in on a white charger to save you. Because I won’t. I can’t.”

I disintegrated. All strength in me crumbling away. “Please don’t do this, Malvolio. Please. Please,” I sobbed, tears tumbling down my cheeks. “Please.” I bent forward, folding my arms over the pain that was expanding inside me. “Please, Mal. Please.”

I heard his briefcase clatter to the ground, seconds before his arms met around me, pulling me upright and close. “Please don’t cry,” he said. “I can’t stand to see you cry.”

“I’m scared. I’m so scared. I can’t do this on my own. Please don’t make me. Please.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered against my hair. Then he kissed the top of my head, and then he was gone. He picked up his briefcase and walked away, left me crying in the street without so much as a backward glance.

I saw him four times after that. I knew that if I could just let him see what this was doing to me, what the thought of not seeing him again was doing to me, if I could just talk to him enough, then he would change his mind. He would accept that he couldn’t ask me to have an abortion. To not have his child. When it had taken so much for me to do this in the first place, he couldn’t expect me to do that.

Each time—three or four days apart—I met him at work. Either at lunch, or after work. Each time he was a little more distant, a little more irritated, a little less moved by my pain. Until the final time, when he left his building, saw me standing on the edge of the wide pavement, waiting for him, and turned around and went back inside. I waited an hour and he didn’t reappear. When I got home, he had left a message on my answering machine: “Nova, please stop coming to see me.” He was cold, detached, hard. “I have nothing else to say to you. I’m not going to say anything you want to hear. Leave me alone.”

O
nce she was out of our lives, I thought I’d find it easy. Easier. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t simply about Nova, was it?

It was also about our baby.

I hadn’t only been buying clothes and books. I’d bought a couple of rattles, three teddy bears, a musical mobile for over the crib. And a diaper bag, which was square and white, covered in pink, blue, yellow and green daisies. It was so gorgeous I used to take it out and open it up, imagine filling it with diapers and wipes and diaper rash cream and a toy to keep the baby occupied while I did the deed.

I had kept everything in the second bedroom, the one that would have become the baby’s room, and now I had to pack it all away.

I could have given them away, but I didn’t want to. They were meant for
my
baby. I held each romper in my arms, imagining them filled with my baby’s plump limbs, stretching and contracting at the chest with the gentle in and out of his breathing. He was a he, I was sure of it.

After I held each one, I folded them into the diaper bag until there was no more room. Then I got out my designer weekend bag. It was the most expensive thing I had ever owned—it cost even more than my car—and I had saved up for years to own that little piece of design history.

I put everything else in that. It seemed fitting, memories of the most precious thing I would never have, kept in the most expensive thing I would ever own.

Afterwards I braved the scary attic and tucked them out of sight. Not out of mind, of course.

Never
out of mind.

I
ended up in Brighton.

I had to come away because I couldn’t do it in London.

Not in the city where I lived. I couldn’t imagine having to walk past it every day, knowing. Or even looking on a street map, a train planner or a tube map and seeing the name of the place. The area of London where … where I did this thing.

I’d had two pregnancy scares in my life, both times because of a split condom and both times I’d known without a doubt what I’d do if I got pregnant. The thought was difficult, but I knew both times I wouldn’t be able to cope with being a mother. I couldn’t go through with it. Both times had turned out to be just that: scares.

This time was different in many ways, not least of all because I was pregnant.

I’d booked the hotel a few weeks after I got … got into this thing. I’d needed a few days to myself. Every year—even when I’d been with Keith—I went away on my own, to somewhere near the sea. Some days it was more spontaneous: I would wake up in the morning and would need to get away. Would need to not be in London, and I would get dressed, get on a train, destination: Brighton. I would walk on the beach, inhaling the salty air, loving the rush of the sea in my ears, the feel of the pebbles under my feet. On the way back at night, I’d feel calmer and in
control. As though I’d had the chance to step out of my life for a while.

And now I was using this six-day break for …

I’d had the initial appointment after I got here, and in two days, it would be done. Afterwards, after it had been done, all I’d want to do would be to sit and stare at the sea. More than anything, I’d need to lose my mind in the motion of the sea afterwards. It would take me out of myself and I would be able to get my head together, reassemble the pieces of my mind before I went back to London, back to work, back to my flat, back to “normal.”

The hotel—four stars, no less—was horrible. The pictures the travel agent had shown me were of a pristine, elegant establishment resplendent with old-world charm and antique fittings. The room I was shown to had wallpaper that bubbled away from the walls, peeling in some places. The original sash windows sat in frames that had been rotted, cracked and peeled by the sea air, and the wind whistled relentlessly through the gap between the new double-glazing on the inside. The shower had no temperature control; the television would only find three channels or encourage the viewer to pay for porn; the red, patterned carpet was worn in places, dirty gray in others.

Everything wrong with the room was tempered by the unhindered view of the sea. I lay on top of the bed, ignoring the suspicious stains on the duvet cover, and stared out of the window, watching the waves rollicking and rolling. Mal always thought he’d die at night in the sea, I remembered suddenly. He never had a reason to think it, nor could he explain why he’d be on or in the sea at night, but he believed it with an unshakeable, fervent certainty. It wasn’t something he had to convince himself to believe, he just knew it to be so. And despite all the times
he’d dismissed my interests, my knowledge, my beliefs, he still held on to that one.

I watched an old man sitting on the bench beside a green-blue bus stop shelter with sea-salt-smeared glass. The wind was howling around him, tugging, pulling, tearing at his pink skin, white hair and beige zip-up jacket. But he sat rock-still. His hands, bunched into fists, rested on his thighs, and he stared straight ahead. Unbothered and untouched by the battering elements.