Mommy by Mistake (28 page)

Robert got up and walked around the table. Once again he knelt at Meg’s feet, but this time he simply picked up one of her hands. She forced herself to be unresponsive.

“I’ll do anything, Megan,” he said. “I’ll do anything to make things right between us, I promise. I don’t want to lose you, or my children…I love you all so much, Megan, I really do.” And Meg watched as he bent his head and wept.

It surprised her that she didn’t just fling her arms around him and reassure him then and there that everything would be all right, and she knew he would be stunned, too. It seemed that she was stronger than she thought.

“I have to think about it more,” she said.

Robert looked up at her, clearly disbelieving that Meg wasn’t as moved as he was.

“Really?”

Meg nodded. “How many months was it you were seeing her?” She asked him. “Six at least, wasn’t it?” Robert nodded regretfully. “Well, then, I think I deserve at least as long, if I want it, to decide what happens next.”

She turned her head away from him. “You can go now, Robert,” she said.

And it wasn’t until she heard him pull the front door shut behind him that she sank onto the floor and buried her face in Gripper’s fur and wept.

S
andy was still asleep the following morning.

She had slept right through the afternoon, although she must have been waking up periodically, Natalie thought, as she had got through two thirds of the two-liter bottle of water Natalie had left for her with a glass next to the bed.

Natalie didn’t know how to feel about the state her mother was in.

She thought back, trying to dredge up some of the hazy and ill-formed memories of her childhood. It did seem that Sandy had always had a drink in her hand, that was true. And she had always acted as if she were a little tipsy, but as Natalie grew older she had decided that was just an affectation, a pretense designed to make her more appealing. Still, although while Natalie had lived with her, Sandy had always been distracted and preoccupied by almost everything apart from her daughter, Natalie was fairly sure she hadn’t been an out-and-out drunk.

Natalie had never seen Sandy this way before and she didn’t know how to handle her. She didn’t actually want to handle her at all. It seemed unfair that her mother, who’d done such a hamfisted job of looking after her, now might require some serious looking after herself.

Although her mother presented a bizarre figure in her usual getup of inch-thick makeup and tight-fitting clothes, at least
that
Sandy was happy with herself. The woman who had lain sprawled by the loo yesterday was a self-loathing wreck and Natalie didn’t want to see her that way again. She wanted her back the way she’d always been, even if it
was
desperately embarrassing, because in the end she did care about what happened to her.

So, after she had put her to bed, with an acute sense of unreality Natalie had taken two further bottles of whisky out of her mother’s suitcase, took all the wine she had been unable to drink for so long out of the wine rack, gathered up the beer, vodka, and even the cooking sherry, and poured it all down the sink. She kept only the good wine, which she’d bought herself and couldn’t bear to waste.

“We’re going somewhere important today,” Natalie told Freddie. “We’re going to go and see your daddy. Now, I must warn you. You might not like him and he might not like you, but I think it’s important to be brave and give it go, don’t you? It’s now or never, kiddo.”

Freddie had taken the news with his usual cheerful indifference, which made Natalie feel better. At least she could tell him when he was older that she had tried her best with his father. Whatever happened after that would not be her fault.

Natalie arrived at the end of Willoughby Street at nine a.m. She looked at the blue-painted front door that was set into the side of the Georgian building. There were three bells. Minnie’s flat was
the top one. Natalie thought she saw a figure move across the window up there. Someone was in, then. A sudden wave of fear enveloped her and it took a great deal of willpower to keep her feet rooted to the spot instead of running in the opposite direction.

A million thoughts rattled through her fatigued brain. What if Jack had already gone and the figure she saw was Minnie? Or worse, much worse, what if Jack had someone else in there, another woman? What if the minute she had left him on Sunday night he’d gone right out and met the next potential love of his life standing at a bus stop?

He was good at that, after all.

Natalie stood on the corner for several minutes looking at the door, frozen with fear and indecision, wondering and waiting. The bus stop she needed to return home was just down the road, and better still at this time of day there were taxis aplenty driving right by her, their friendly amber lights offering the promise of refuge and the shortest route to safety.

And then her thoughts were interrupted by a familiar voice.

“Hello,” Jack said warily. He had a large cup of coffee in one hand and a paper in the other. It might have been some kind of pastry that was in the paper bag tucked under his arm.

Natalie wondered if she looked as inexplicably guilty as she felt at being caught on the corner of his street. She was going to have to talk to him now. It was unavoidable. It would be much harder to try to sort things out with him without the use of actual words, especially considering that she was always the very worst person at playing Charades.

“I’m not stalking you,” she managed to say. Her voice sounded strange in her ears, like she was listening to a recorded version of it. “I just came to try to talk to you and then I got here and wasn’t sure if I should anymore.” She looked up at his flat. If Jack was here, then who was the figure she saw in the window?

Jack looked uncertainly at Natalie and then glanced down at the buggy very quickly.

“But if you’ve got company,” she added uncertainly, looking back up at the window.

“Company?” Jack repeated the word as if he didn’t know what it meant. He was looking at Natalie with that same puzzled expression again. He must be wondering why on earth I don’t just go away, she thought, feeling almost sorry for him.

“A guest,” Natalie prompted him, hoping to stop him looking at her in that way.

“Oh!” Jack shook his head. “No, that’s Mishka, she’s not a guest, she’s Minnie’s cleaner. She’s actually a concert harpist, but Minnie employs her to keep her going between jobs.” A flicker of something like curiosity passed over his face. “Did you think I had another conquest up there?” he asked.

Natalie shook her head. “None of my business,” she said with a shrug.

They stood there for a moment or two longer and Natalie wondered if they had now spent more time like this, miserable and ill at ease, than they had lying happily in each other’s arms.

“You brought the baby with you,” Jack said, finally acknowledging what couldn’t be ignored. He looked pale, Natalie thought, and she wondered if it was because of the sight of her and his progeny or if he really didn’t feel well. She found herself hoping it was because of her.

“I thought you should have a chance to meet him,” she said, holding the buggy’s handles so tightly she could see the whites of her knuckles. “If you wanted to.”

“I see,” Jack said, biting at his lip.

Natalie took a deep breath. “Jack, I think I behaved badly the last time we met and I hoped you might…let us come in and that we could try to…resolve things, somehow.” She smiled ten
tatively at him. “I don’t want to leave things the way that we did. It didn’t seem like the right ending for us.”

Jack hesitated before nodding at last. “I thought that, too. I’m glad you came back with…the…you know—baby.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a key on a piece of parcel string. “Mishka should be on her way out any minute, so you go in,” he said, handing Natalie the key. “I’ll get you a coffee. Are you allowed coffee—if you’re…ahem…you know, feeding him yourself?”

Natalie nodded, repressing the urge to smile. “I let myself have one real cup a day,” she said.

“Fine,” Jack went on. “Well, you go in and I’ll be in in a minute.” He indicated the buggy. “You can leave that in the downstairs hallway.” He took a couple of steps before turning back. “I meant the buggy, not the baby. You can bring the baby upstairs if you like.”

Natalie nodded again, fighting the irresistible urge to giggle that only the hysterically tired and emotionally confused can truly know. She held the keys tightly in her fist, so that she could feel the metal digging into the flesh of her palm, hoping it would somehow focus her mind. At least Jack was letting them in. And he had said she could bring Freddie upstairs. It was going well so far.

Mishka was indeed on the other side of the door as Natalie unlocked it. She seemed utterly unsurprised to find a strange woman with a baby on Jack’s doorstep, and Natalie couldn’t decide if that was a good or a bad thing. The young woman had paused for a moment to admire Freddie so that by the time she left, Natalie quite liked her, even though she was tall, slender, blond, talented, and Russian. Natalie found that she liked anyone who liked her son.

Minnie’s flat looked even nicer in the bright sunshine of the
spring morning. It had long sash windows that Natalie hadn’t noticed before, and from the tiny galley kitchen a direct view of the museum. Minnie had to be fairly minted, Natalie thought, to own such a prime piece of property. Or perhaps she had inherited it and lived in it all her life. The place did have that feel about it. An antiquated Formica kitchen had one of those squat cream enameled 1950s cookers, and as Natalie nosily pushed opened the bedroom door she saw dark wooden 1930s Art Deco furniture that looked as good as new. The book-lined living room looked as bright and breezy by day as it had seemed warm and friendly by firelight.

Natalie sat down with Freddie in her arms in the wingback chair by the now cold fire grate. Freddie was wide awake, as if he knew something important was afoot, his huge black eyes as bright as buttons as he took everything in.

Then Natalie heard the door shut downstairs and Jack’s footfall on the stairs.

She braced herself. She was here to tell him that despite everything, if he wanted to be in Freddie’s life, she would welcome it. Whatever he might say in return she needed to know that she had given this her very best shot at success, and that for once in her life she hadn’t let complacency or fear ruin everything.

“So,” Jack said, as he appeared in the room, filling it up with his presence. He sort of leaned around the baby, giving him a wide berth as he handed Natalie her coffee. “Is that all right?” he asked her, looking at Freddie. “To have a hot drink right next to him?”

Natalie shifted Freddie over onto her right knee and held her coffee in her left hand, desperate for it to cool so she could mainline the caffeine. Her mind felt fuzzy and muddled and her skin tingled with tiredness. She felt like she used to when she had been out clubbing all night, only without the booze and carefree fun. She blinked a couple of times to focus her vision and wondered if
coming to see Jack after so little sleep had been the best idea. But if not now, then when?

Jack sat down opposite her on the settle, took two custard tarts out of the paper bag he had been carrying, and put them on two plates on a tiny table which he positioned between them. And then without touching either one he leaned forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees again, and looked at Natalie.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

“You are?” Natalie asked, feeing a swell of hope rise in her chest.

“Yes,” Jack said emphatically. “Like you, I was feeling bad about what happened between us that night. It was all so intense and difficult to take in. We found out so much about each other in such a short time. I behaved badly, thoughtlessly. I didn’t appreciate how my news might affect you.” He dropped his head briefly. “I’ve thought about that evening a lot since then and I want you to know I’m sorry. I suppose I must have had this idea that you were sort of in suspended animation while I was away, that your life wouldn’t have changed at all. But it has.” He nodded at Freddie, who was staring at him in total fascination, just waiting for Jack to smile at him, when he would return the expression automatically with his wide, all-embracing grin that seemed to invite the whole world to be his friend.

But Jack did not smile.

“Your life has changed a lot,” he went on. “And so have you. I should have realized that because I’ve changed, too.”

Natalie felt the bubble of hope that had risen in her chest pop and melt away.

“Have you?” she asked, not really wanting an answer.

“During my illness, I thought a lot about that weekend. I built up this imaginary version of you that isn’t real at all.” Jack’s voice was tinged with sadness. “Do you understand what I mean?”

Natalie nodded, forcing herself to look him in the face. “Yes,” she said with a wry smile. “I do. I thought about you, too, except I couldn’t decide if you were the lost love of my life or an evil womanizer.”

“And now?” Jack asked her, with an edge to his voice that she could not interpret.

“Now.” She looked at him thoughtfully, his lean, taut features so familiar and yet so strange. This was her opportunity to be completely honest with both herself and him. Did she love him? Did she want him? Was it truly this man that she longed to be with?

The answer her heart gave her was not the one she had been hoping for, and when it came to it, she found it was not the one she could share with Jack.

“I don’t know,” she said instead, because it was easier. “I can’t know, can I? Like you said, we’re practically strangers.”

Both of them were quiet as they let the moment pass into history.

For the first time since they had met, Natalie allowed herself the thought that perhaps all Jack and she were ever meant to be to each other were ships that had passed in the night. It was a realization that made her feel suddenly terribly sad, as a long, unspoken, but closely held hope was finally extinguished.

All she could do now was to try to make the best of things for her son.

“Jack,” she said, careful to keep her voice steady. “I want to explain why I behaved the way I did. I was upset when you didn’t call me after Venice. I was so sure that you would. It was a real blow to my ego and to my heart, I suppose, when you just…vanished. When you didn’t call I thought that you hadn’t liked me at all, I thought you’d used me, or maybe you thought that the expensive hotel and trip to Venice should have been enough of a
payoff, and maybe it should have been. But I let myself think it was more than that, something I
never
usually do. When I realized I was wrong, I felt like an idiot.” Natalie laughed, despite how she was feeling inside. “I had planned to get over you and forget you entirely within about eight weeks, only after six weeks I knew I was pregnant, which did throw a massive wrench in the works.”

“Must have been a bit of a shock,” Jack said, pressing his lips into a thin, serious line.

Natalie nodded.

“It was a
bit
,” she said. “But I wasn’t angry or upset about the pregnancy; I was happy, amazingly happy. I had everything in my life I needed to cope: money, a home, work, friends.” She tipped her head to one side. “And a mother who I sort of need in an unhealthy codependency way—but that’s another story. Anyway, I knew I wanted my baby, come what may. I thought it didn’t matter who his father was. I thought if I never saw you again that he and I would be absolutely fine. Only I did see you again. And I won’t try to just cut you out of his life. Not if you want to be part of it.”