One Thing Led to Another (10 page)

And then I hear the words that make me suddenly, unexpectedly well up inside. The words that make this real.

‘There we are. There’s your baby,’ says the nurse, pointing to the screen. And low and behold, there it is. A tiny being spinning in an air-tight orbit in the middle of me. Totally unaware of any of this.

Beside me, I hear Jim’s smile. ‘My God,’ he says, as he draws his chair closer, looks at the screen and then at the nurse. ‘Is that its heart, beating there? Is that our baby’s heart?’ And for the first time since I found out, I suddenly feel like this just might be the start of something good. Something unexpected, but something really good.

When we step, well, when Jim limps (it turns out he’s broken his toe) out of hospital, late that afternoon, the trees along Tottenham Court Road are thick with pink blossom and there’s the first hint of summer in the air.

‘By the time mine and Toby’s marriage fell apart I was thirty-nine, a total workaholic, childless and had convinced myself that’s how I liked it. Then I went to Cuba and all hell broke loose. Three years later and I’m head over heels in love with a Cuban drummer of all things! having the baby I now realize I’ve longed for all my life.’

Cecile, 42, Warwick

‘So what are your favourite memories? What really makes you smile when you think of Jamie?’

I glance at the Dictaphone on the spotless glass coffee table, checking the Record button is still shining red.

Danielle sits down on the sunken sofa next to me and hands me a mug of coffee that says ‘World’s Best Dad’.

‘There’s too many.’ She’s wearing eyeshadow the colour of sea shells. ‘He was the kind of person who made every day special.’

‘Wow,’ I say, genuinely wowed. ‘Lucky girl. So what – if you had to pinpoint one – was the best day you ever spent with him?’

I love my job. I love the spectrum of people I get to meet –
from psychos who put poo in their husband’s pies to people who choose to share their home with grown pigs. But sometimes, I hear stories that do not have a funny side, which are not ‘triumph over tragedy’, they’re just tragedy. And then I hate this bit: having to tease out the heartbreaking specifics. Danielle has told me every raw detail of her nightmare: the last time she saw her boyfriend leave the house, as he did every Saturday, to buy a Lottery ticket; the flat whine of his dead phone; the scraping at the door, the horror of what she found behind it: Jamie, legs sprawled, hands clawing the wood as blood spewed from his chest, stabbed for nothing but his i-Pod. If this were up to me, I’d stop now and give her a big hug. But I know that Judith will go ballistic if I don’t get those details and send me back here to Danielle, which is just unthinkable.

There’s echoey footsteps in the corridor outside, Danielle looks over at her son, Kyle, who’s glued to
The Lion King.
‘We didn’t get to go many places, I suppose, Jamie always having to work weekends. But there was one day last November, well it was nothing special…’

‘Go on, I bet it was…’

‘We went to Greenwich Park. It was really sunny, you know, one of those crisp autumn days? I was pushing the buggy, Jamie had Kyle on his shoulders, running thorough these huge piles of leaves – they almost came up to his thighs there were so many of them.’

‘Sounds great fun.’

‘I went off to queue for some drinks and when I came back about fifteen minutes later…’

Her eyes fill with tears and she has to pause to gather herself.

‘I remember his face. The happiest I’ve ever seen him. He didn’t know I was watching him, but Kyle had fallen asleep in his buggy by that point and Jamie was laying down on the grass, all sweaty from the running. He had one hand on Kyle’s leg, his eyes closed and this huge smile from ear to
ear. He looked so content, you know? The happiest man alive. He was just so content with his lot.’

She pauses. The tape whirrs.

‘You alright to go on?’

‘Yep.’ A tear escapes and she wipes it away. ‘And he adored his football, too, was all I was going to say.’

‘You’re telling me,’ I say, looking at the photographs crammed onto the mantelpiece: Jamie and Kyle in matching football kits next to the Christmas tree, Jamie in what looks like the football clubhouse, shower fresh, one hand on hip, the other around Danielle. Proud and vital as anything.

‘He loved to take me and Kyle to matches. Or we’d invite a few people over when there was a big match on and I’d make sausage sandwiches for all the boys.’

‘Sounds like you had a brilliant time together.’

‘We did. He was a gorgeous person, my best friend, the best dad in the world.’

I am aware of the warmth of the mug in my hand and an orange-sized lump in my throat.

‘But it’s not really the days out, it’s the tiny things I miss the most,’ she says, tears are streaming down her face now but she doesn’t bother wiping them away. ‘He used to call me every afternoon to tell me what he’d had for his lunch, now, sometimes, the phone doesn’t ring all day. And he was so excitable, like a Labrador puppy my mum used to say. When the football was on, and Palace scored, he would throw himself in front of the telly on his knees, then run round the house till he found me, and snog me till I could hardly breathe!’ she laughs. ‘Absolutely barmy, he was.’

She walks over to the mantelpiece, picks up a photo in a silver frame and brings it to me. It’s of Jamie on the sofa, Kyle fast asleep, his head lolling onto his dad’s.

‘He adored Kyle,’ she says. ‘I know what people say about teenage dads but he was nothing like that. Every morning,
before he went to work he would get Kyle up, put
The Jungle Book
tape on and get him dressed singing ‘Bare Necessities’ at the top of his voice. It used to do my head in. Now I’d do anything to get woken up by that sound.’

Kyle turns round to see that his mummy is crying and toddles up to her side, leaning his fuzzy blonde head in her lap. I put my hand on Danielle’s hand and the orange-sized lump in my throat now grates like new shoes on a blister.

‘I suppose the hardest thing,’ Danielle goes on, ‘is that I didn’t choose this, this was not my decision. Most people who are single choose to be single, don’t they? To be or not be with someone, to get divorced or whatever. But I didn’t choose to be without Jamie. He was taken from me when we had our whole future ahead of us.’

‘You have those wonderful memories,’ I offer, thinking, ‘yeah, good one Tess. As if that’s any compensation for losing the love of your life and father of your child at nineteen.’ But what she says next surprises me.

‘I know. In fact d’you know what keeps me going when it gets really hard?’ she says. ‘It’s the fact that despite what I’ve been through, if I could turn back time, I wouldn’t change anything. Because some people never find The One, do they? But I did, even if it couldn’t be for ever. So I’m lucky.’ She smiles. ‘I’m one of the lucky ones.’

I stand in the corridor outside Danielle’s flat. It smells of rubbish bins and fried chicken.

‘You will remember to put the website at the bottom of the article, won’t you?’ says Danielle. Kyle pokes his head around his mum’s legs. ‘It’s www.droptheknives.co.uk.’

‘I’ve got it,’ I say, thinking please God don’t let the subs say we haven’t got space on the page.

Ten seconds later, I’m running down the fire escape from her immaculate rabbit hutch of a flat, bawling my eyes out like a baby.

‘I’d always wanted to be a mum, but like everything in my life it was a case of “How?” How will I change a nappy? How will I keep them safe? But when I fell pregnant with my son, I was overjoyed. It’s been tough though. I imagine what my children look like by tracing their features, but it makes me sad I’ll never see their faces.’

Monica, 39, Henley-on-Thames

‘Life stripped bare’ is my bread and butter I suppose. People open up to me, they tell me the intimate details of their lives: the day their babies were swapped at birth, the day the family pet saved their life, the fact their husband never goes down on them, the way they feel about their breasts. Sometimes it’s heartbreaking, sometimes it’s cruel; often it’s really hilarious. But my job is never to help, it is just to listen and to record the facts. And so most of the time I am able to distance myself from what I am hearing.

Most of the time.

This time, God, I don’t know what happened. Judith would freak if she could see me.

‘First rule of tear-jerker journalism,’ she always says, when
she’s doing one of her prowls around the office, ‘for fuck’s sake, don’t get emotionally involved.’ (Judith’s partial to a bit of gratuitous swearing.) ‘We’re not counsellors. Or a pissing charity.’

I stand on the platform of New Cross station and close my eyes to a gentle sun. ‘If I could turn back time, I wouldn’t change a thing.’

Wow. That’s got to be true love, hasn’t it? To choose all that pain and hell for just three years with the love of your life, over long-lived blissful ignorance and probably a very adequate second best? Have I ever felt like that about anyone? About Laurence? Does Vicky feel that about Rich? Mum about dad? I’ve no idea. What I do know, is that love like that is surely gold dust. What Danielle has lost does not bear thinking about. But what she does have, the certainty of her feelings, it blew my mind.

A train pulls up and I get in, sit opposite a rhino-sized man dressed in swathes of grey jersey, bobbing his head to something tinny on his Nano. We creak off towards London Bridge. The high rises of South London flick by like a thumbed deck of cards.

I close my eyes, the tune of ‘Bare Necessities’ rings in my head and all I can see is Jamie gently easing a T-shirt over his son’s blond head, unaware that by the end of the day he’ll be dead. Three futures wiped out.

How many sad interviews have I done before and I’ve never lost it like this? But the water works are turned on full pelt now. I’ve surrendered myself, I’m almost enjoying my tragedy-fest when the siren-like wail of my crap phone startles me from my misery.

‘Hello.’

Whoever it is is laughing. ‘Jesus, you sound like someone died.’

Laurence.

I’m disturbed by how quickly the sickened pit of my stomach is filled with tiny airborne feathers. I hastily wipe the tears from my face.

‘Do I? No. Nobody died,’ I say, forcing the corners of my mouth to curl upwards.

‘Are you ill then? You sound like you’re dying from a cold.’

Typical Laurence. He only had to sniffle and he’d think he was at death’s door, his mum force feeding him some North African concoction or other.

‘No, no I’m not ill. I’m just on a train that’s all. I’ve been interviewing someone in New Cross.’

I’m suddenly embarrassed at my blatant lack of professionalism. I bet Jeremy Paxman doesn’t go wailing back to the office after a particularly harrowing interview.

‘Right, that’s good. That’s very good actually, because I was hoping we could meet up.’

‘When?’ It comes out as ‘Wed?’

‘This lunchtime, at Borough Market. I’ve got something I really want to show you.’

That feeling, a heaviness in the pit of my stomach, it’s there again telling me I shouldn’t go. One lunch, that’s OK, that could just be for old time’s sake. I would have my baby, life would be OK, life would be
great
, even, and I’d move on. But two meetings? Two’s getting into something.

But Danielle’s words are there again. Was she really lucky? Or did she make her own luck?

And what if Laurence is The One. What if he’s my Jamie and we just screwed it up the first time around. What if this is my second chance?

‘OK, why not,’ I say, eventually. ‘I can pretend my interview ran over. I deserve a lunch break anyway.’

‘Good girl,’ says Laurence. ‘Do you know the bit where the cash-points are at the opening to Borough Market? I’ll meet you there, say one p.m.?’

Despite my best efforts in the Body Shop at London Bridge station, applying some powder compact thingy and trowels of blusher, I don’t get away with it.

‘Shit. What happened to your face?’ Laurence never was one to stand on ceremony.

‘You look a tad…’

‘Blotchy? It’s a long story,’ I say, slightly deflated.

Laurence makes a face that says, ‘You said it not me.’

We both laugh shyly, then look away. We stand there like a pair of idiots for a few seconds, me taking in Laurence’s face. The straight, jet-black eyebrows like blackbirds in flight, the caramel-coloured lips with their permanent mischievous curve, the sleepy lids that make him look stoned, even when he’s wide awake. With a day or two of stubble, he looks better than ever. I see his eyes drift down towards my midriff and I physically flinch, then cover my belly with my bag. I suddenly panic that I’m showing through my top and wondering whether I should be here at all when he says, ‘So, shall we?’ And he gestures into the crowds. ‘You can tell me all about the blotchy face when we sit down. I’m all ears, I promise you.’

June shines blue through the Victorian arches over Borough Market. A gastronomic greenhouse. Food paradise. I am walking in front, Laurence steers me gently from behind. I have no clue where he’s taking me, in amongst this sprawling maze of cobbled pathways and yellow and red canopied stalls but I don’t care, I’m just savouring the moment.

We pass stalls of olives, fruit and jam, skinned rabbits, gigantic hams hanging from the ceiling, a mountain of huge cheeses, like ancient hat boxes. Drifts of roasted coffee and just-baked bread envelop me. I can feel the warmth of the sun on my hair and every pad of Laurence’s fingers on my back.

‘Where are you taking me?’ I shout over my shoulder.

‘That’s for me to know and you to find out. Now, turn
round.’ I do as I’m told and he stuffs a chocolate truffle in my mouth. ‘Good?’ He leans over my shoulder and I catch a whiff of his aftershave – complex, musky, confidently sweet. It’s potent with memories. ‘God, amazing,’ I mumble, through chocolatey teeth.

We turn a sharp corner and come to a fish stall, oysters piled on frills of crushed ice, enormous sea breams with eyes like marbles. Then Laurence slips in front of me, he gestures for my hand.

‘Here we are,’ he says, nodding towards a tiny door nestled in the side of a railway arch. ‘This is the infamous Bedales. You’re gonna love this.’

This place is seriously cool. The ceiling is low and curved, the walls are white-washed exposed brick, endless bottles of serious looking wine stacked high against them. In the middle of the room sit food connoisseur types – probably wine writers and suchlike – at benches, grazing over tasting plates and goblets of wine.

‘This is brilliant,’ I say. ‘Beats the usual Pret sarnie anyway.’ But I’m also aware that something’s not quite right. It’s the smell: pungent, sweaty, kind of
piggy.
And then I notice that the food on everyone’s plates seems to be of the same, very limited kind: various types of pate and various oozing cheeses.

‘Run a bloody marathon if you like, have wild and passionate sex because it won’t harm the baby!’ laughed Dr Cork. ‘But avoid un-pasturized cheese, pate and large amounts of alcohol like the plague.’ I’m starting to panic.

‘Isn’t it wicked?’ says Laurence. He’s standing, eyeing up the shelves of wine, his hands in his pockets, his tanned, toned forearms on show. ‘Which one would you buy if you could?’

‘God knows,’ I say. ‘As long as it’s alcoholic.’

‘Oh come on you philistine, you must know what sort of grape you like?’

‘Who are you all of a sudden?’ I laugh, ‘Oz bloody Clarke?’

‘No,’ he says, flatly. I worry I might have offended him. ‘But I am French, and I do manage a bar, so actually Miss Jarvis –’ he unconsciously pulls up his T-shirt and strokes his belly. I catch the ripple of muscle like water-worn sand ‘– I do know the odd thing about wine.’

I scour the shelves for the one wine I know. ‘OK,’ I say, ‘I know what I’d choose, it’s called Tan something, followed by a long word that sounds like hermit.’

‘Tain L’Hermitage?’ He says it with a proper French accent like it’s the most natural thing in the world. ‘Yeah,’ I say impressed. ‘How did you know?’

‘I just know,’ he says. ‘Bon choix mademoiselle.’

Laurence looks around the room, briefly glancing at his reflection in the mirror opposite, then sits down and clears his throat.

‘So. Are you going to tell me about the blotchy face?’

‘You really wanna know?’

‘I really wanna know.’

And so I go through the whole story. How Danielle and Jamie met at school when they were fifteen, how much they loved each other, how much they doted on their kid, how Jamie was stabbed, lay dying in his girlfriend’s arms, the last thing he said to her, the music they played at his funeral.

‘And do you know the thing that kills me most of all?’ Laurence shakes his head. ‘She said she’d rather go through all that pain and grief and still have known him, than never to have known him at all, isn’t that amazing?’

It’s only when I stop talking, that I realize I’m almost crying and that Laurence is staring at me, like I’m stark raving mad.

‘Wow, it really does get to you,’ he says, frowning and half laughing at the same time. ‘Or is it the time of the month?’

‘No!’

(Fat chance of that.)

Laurence leans forward and holds my gaze. I smile nervously and look away.

‘Well, if you must know,’ he says, resting his chin on his hands. ‘I think it’s really sweet. I think you look gorgeous when you cry.’

‘Sir, would you like to try the wine?’ We spring apart like parents caught out having sex. A rubenesque waitress is suddenly at our table with…Oh
God.
A bottle of Tain L’Hermitage.

‘Laurence!’ I gasp. ‘That cost a bomb!’

‘I’m allowed to spoil you aren’t I? Anyway, I want to say sorry.’

Laurence tastes the wine and nods his approval. ‘And two of the tasting plates,’ he says without asking me. The waitress shuffles off.

Shit.
How do I blag myself out of this one?

We make nervous small talk about the clientele, the menu on the board, the couple across from us. Then, Laurence takes a deep breath. ‘Listen,’ he says, filling my glass. I watch forlornly, wracking my head for good excuses.

‘When I saw you on the London Eye last week, I didn’t really tell you the truth about Chloe. The thing is…we’re not together.’

‘Oh! Really?’ I can’t stop the ridiculous level of enthusiasm in my voice.

‘Well, we are, but by the skin of our teeth. Man,’ he takes a sip of wine, ‘she’s a nightmare, so fucking high maintenance.’ I have to bite my lip to stop myself from smiling.

‘The reason I’m living at my mate’s house in Islington is not because I’m flat-sitting like I told you but because I moved out, I’d had about as much as I could take. We haven’t been getting on at all.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I lie.

‘Don’t be,’ he shrugs. ‘I think the relationship’s just run its course.’

I swill the wine around my glass.

‘Eh, voilà!’ The waitress is back with the tasting plates. I look down at the beautifully arranged morsels of pate and cheese, none of which I can eat, and think I feel Laurence watching me. We eat, in silence for a minute or two, me nibbling on a gherkin, going through my options.

Laurence chews slowly. Then, he puts the bread he’s holding down on the side of the plate and smiles at me. ‘It was a laugh the other day, on the London Eye, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah. Best lunchtime I’ve ever had.’

‘I meant what I said, Tess. I was a total shit for finishing with you like I did.’

‘Forget it, honestly, it’s in the past now.’

‘No hear me out,’ he says. ‘I was lonely back home when you went travelling. When Chloe came along I just succumbed. It was a moment of weakness that just,’ he clasps his head, ‘somehow turned into five fucking years!’

‘Well,’ I say, trying to lighten things. ‘Stuff happens, I guess. Life just throws things up, doesn’t it? We can’t be in control of our destinies all of the time.’

Laurence stares at me intensely. ‘No, you’re right.’

You bet I am.

‘But I want to sort my life out, Tess, I want to – what is it they say in
Trainspotting
? I want to choose life!’ He’s laughing now and I laugh too, with a mixture of surprise and pleasure. ‘I want to get married, get the house, the kids. The whole shebang.’

‘Bloody hell,’ I say, trying to sound casual and detached when really, inside, my heart’s on a rollercoaster. ‘Am I hearing this right? Is Laurence Cane finally growing up?’

‘Yeah, I guess so,’ he says, drawing his chair nearer, full of boyish enthusiasm. ‘I’m sick of flailing about with the
wrong woman, in a shit job – I mean, I’m a glorified barman, really, that’s what it boils down to. I want to start a new career – I might even resurrect the film thing!’

I’m not sure how to react. I’m not sure what he’s getting at, I mean does this, could this, whole new future include me?

‘Oh no,’ says Laurence suddenly. ‘Look, you haven’t touched your food.
Or
your wine. Sorry, I’ve been on a total monologue. Listen, I’m going to go to the toilet.’ He stands up, he wipes his mouth with his napkin and winks at me. ‘And whilst I’m gone, take that stunned look off your face. You’re scaring me.’

I look down at my untouched plate and very full glass of wine and realize I have to act fast, this is Operation Foetus First.

First up, cheese and pate: I could probably get away with nibbling a bit but in my pregnant mind, I have convinced myself it is riddled with listeria. I don’t hesitate, I grab some napkins, wrap it up and stuff it at the bottom of my bag, covering it with a book and my make-up bag to disguise the smell. Now, wine. I look around for a pot-plant, reasoning clichés are clichés for a reason. There’s nothing near by but I spot an urn filled with a fake lemon tree just outside the door. I saunter over, glass in hand, to discover it’s choked with fag butts so I figure a bit of 1992 Tain L’Hermitage isn’t going to do any harm. I stand at the door, pretending to drink in the market atmosphere, dripping bits of the wine, into the urn.