Second Chances (18 page)

Jack
leapt out of bed, grabbing his trousers, pulling them back on as he followed her. Allegra took a deep breath and quickly gathered her clothes, getting dressed, finding her purse. Jack had run after Abi down the steps and along the street, trying to catch her, to talk to her. Allegra carefully shut the front door behind her, making sure it wasn’t locked as Jack had more than likely not taken either his or Abi’s keys with him.

Willing
herself not to cry or react in any way, she got into her car and started the engine. She suddenly had a flashback to her childhood, to a day when she was playing a game of catch in the garden with Nino and their cousin, Gary. She was about eight years old at the time. They had ganged up on her, and she thought she’d been clever by running up to the top of the slide. Then Nino started climbing the steps towards her, while Gary waited at the bottom of the slide.

Panicked,
realising she was trapped, Allegra did the only thing she could think of at the time. She jumped. It was a high slide, a good ten foot or so, and she’d landed awkwardly, hitting her chin on her knee and biting through the inside of her right cheek. She was lucky she hadn’t broken any bones, and the next morning she woke up with a huge, swollen abscess on the inside of her mouth. Too scared to tell her parents, she had suffered silently for two weeks until the wound healed.

Tonight
was worse than that. Allegra knew she’d broken far more than bones, that it would take far longer than two weeks for any wounds to heal. She put the car into gear, switched on the headlights and pulled away. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

Chapter Thirty-One

HUDDLED
TOGETHER IN the bathroom, Liz and Allegra stared at the white plastic stick in total shock and disbelief.

‘There must be some mistake,’ Liz said. ‘There has to be.’

‘Well, unless you peed wrong, I don’t think there can be a mistake, Liz,’ Allegra said, her hands trembling. ‘It’s there. The thin blue line.’

‘You mean… I’m pregnant? Actually pregnant?’

Liz’s
voice had a definite edge of hysteria now. ‘Oh God, Allegra! I can’t be pregnant! How can this be happening? Luke and I have always been careful, always used condoms; I made damn sure of that because of precisely something like this! I’m not ready to be a mother!’

‘Liz, calm down. You know that condoms don’t offer 100 per cent protection from pregnancy… He must have very determined sperm,’ Allegra said lamely, trying to make a joke of it. ‘And look, just because you’re pregnant doesn’t mean you have to have the baby…’

Her
voice trailed off. Terminating the pregnancy was an option, yes, but it broke her heart just to offer the idea to Liz as a possible way out of this situation.

‘No, it’s not an option, Allegra,’ Liz said, her voice starting to wobble now. ‘I haven’t had a period in three months. That would pretty much mean I got pregnant the first time Luke and I slept together, which makes this baby nearly four months along. Oh God, oh God, oh God…’

‘Why on earth did it take you this long to suspect something wasn’t right?’ Allegra asked, aghast. ‘And didn’t you even sense that your body was changing? When I got pregnant, all I wanted to do was sleep and eat curry, even for breakfast.’

‘Oh God, I haven’t been feeling very well, I know that, but I thought it was just stress, you know, after the whole Buckland thing and then we’ve been so busy at work since then,’ Liz said, tears flowing freely now. ‘What am I going to do? I’m not ready to be a mother!’

Allegra
chose her words with care. Liz was already teetering on the brink of total breakdown; she needed to find a way to keep her safely on this side of rationality and sanity. Liz had always professed she detested children, never wanted any of her own, and to now find out that she was pregnant to a guy she’d only been dating for a few months…

‘You have to tell Luke,’ she said, raising her hands to silence Liz as soon as she opened her mouth to protest. ‘Like it or not, Liz, he has as much right and responsibility to decide what to do now. He’s the father of your child.’

‘I can’t tell him, I can’t,’ Liz pleaded. ‘He’ll go mental, he’ll dump me, I’ll never see him again… and then I’ll be left bringing up this baby on my own and I can’t do that! You know I can’t do that! Remember that time I babysat for you? When Daisy was barely two years old? You came home to find her wearing one of your own t-shirts as a nappy because I couldn’t get my head around how those disposable diaper thingies work! I had to put it on her with sticky tape! I’ll be a crap mother!’

‘Liz… That wasn’t Daisy. We didn’t even know each other when my kids were babies,’ Allegra said, then immediately regretted pointing out Liz’s mistake when her friend burst into fresh tears.

‘You see? It was some other baby, someone else’s child, and I don’t even remember whose!’ she wept. ‘I can’t be a mother, I can’t be trusted with a small baby!’

‘Liz, you have to calm down, take some slow, deep breaths or something. The first thing we’re going to do, right now, is get you a cup of tea. Then you’re going to get on the phone to Luke and get him to come over this evening, and you’re going to tell him. If you want me to be here when you do, I will. Otherwise, I’ll go sit at the bar down the road, so if you call me, I can be here in three minutes flat. And that’s another thing: you can’t drink any more, sweetie. Sorry…’

‘I can’t drink? I can’t even have one single, lousy drink? At all? But I need a drink more right now than I’ve ever needed a drink in my entire life,’ Liz shrieked. ‘I can’t face this sober, never mind the next five months until the bloody thing is born! You’ve seen me sober! I’m not a nice person!’

‘Tough. You’re just going to have to call on some of that legendary Liz fighting spirit to get you through this,’ Allegra said. ‘You have no choice. It’s a simple as that.’

Liz
sank to the floor, head in hands, as Allegra set about making tea. She forced a phone into Liz’s hands, forced her to dial Luke’s number, stood over her to make sure that he was indeed coming over that evening, and then sat in the bathroom, holding Liz’s hand until it was time for her to leave.

‘I’ll be just down the road, a text message away,’ she said, kissing Liz’s tear-stained cheek. ‘Be brave. Be strong. Be a man.’

‘I wish I was a bloody man,’ Liz had snuffled. ‘Then I wouldn’t be in this bloody mess.’

She
waved Allegra off and collapsed onto the sofa, waiting for Luke. He arrived shortly afterwards, a look of definite concern in his eyes. Liz had never, ever called to ask him to meet her. He had always been the one to initiate contact for any of their dates. He smiled as she opened the door and felt a shock of fear when she moved away as he tried to kiss her.

Liz
wasted as much time as she could getting his beer as Luke wandered around the back garden, gathering his strength for whatever it was that she was so afraid to tell him. Finally, she reappeared, they sat down on a sofa outside. Tam leapt into her lap, almost protectively, Luke thought.

Then,
she told him, in a halting, faltering voice. She was pregnant. It was his baby. She didn’t know what to do, but she knew she would have to have it. She didn’t want to burden him, she knew he didn’t want to be tied down, so if he wanted to get up and leave and never see her again, she’d understand. Neither of them had asked to be in this mess, but she wasn’t going to force him to stick around if he didn’t want to be there. She looked at her feet, rubbing Tam’s head, and waited for the fall-out.

There
was no sound from Luke. The silence seemed to stretch on endlessly, until finally, Liz looked up, to check he had really been there all the time and hadn’t just been a mirage. To her amazement, he was grinning broadly. Her mouth fell open in astonishment.

‘Wha—‘ she began, and Luke leaned over and planted a huge kiss on her lips.

‘So you’re pregnant, are you?’ he asked, eyes shining. ‘And it’s my baby? That’s what you wanted to tell me? That’s what you were so scared to say? That’s what you got me crapping myself over?’

Liz
nodded dumbly. Maybe this was his way of hiding his anger and disgust. She knew that sometimes, when people were told bad news, like someone had died, they burst out laughing. It was a nervous reaction, shock.

‘Right, well, I guess this means I’m going to have to make an honest woman of you at last,’ he said.

‘You… you’re not angry?’ she asked, in disbelief.

‘Angry? Why would I be angry? This is amazing, incredible, wonderful news! I mean, when you called and asked me to come over, I thought you were going to break up with me. I thought you were going to tell me to bugger off and never darken your bedroom doorway again,’ he said, sliding along the sofa and putting his arms around her. ‘Liz, I love you. More than I thought I could.’

Then
he told her about Rachel, about his time in the desert with her, riding around in a beat-up old VW van, driving wherever fancy took them, living day to day because they didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. How he had watched the disease eat her away until she had finally faded and died in a hospital bed.

‘I thought I could never love anyone again,’ Luke said. ‘Even when I met you, I was determined not to love you. But you’re so damn contrary and you just have to have things your way, and you bloody well made sure I fell in love with you, didn’t you? And now, Liz, now we’re bringing new life into the world. A new life that is made up of both you and me.’

‘I don’t know what I did to deserve you, Luke, but whatever it was, I am so glad I did it,’ Liz sobbed. ‘I never thought I would ever find someone who could put up with me, never mind keep up with me. And this… most blokes wouldn’t stick around for something like this.’

‘I’m not most blokes,’ Luke said, laughing. ‘I’m me. And you’re you. And the baby is ours. Now, are you going to marry me or what?’

Liz
looked at him, flooded with relief and happiness and fear all at the same time. She knew she wasn’t the easiest person in the world to get along with, even as a friend. She marvelled every day that Allegra somehow not only overlooked all that, but seemed to genuinely love her despite it.

‘Luke, don’t take this the wrong way, but no, I will not marry you,’ she said, grasping his hands tightly. ‘It’s not because I don’t love you, because God knows I do, or because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with you and watch you get too old to wear those leather pants of yours anymore. No, I’m not going to marry you because… because I don’t have to, if that makes any sense at all. You see, I know you’ll always be around, you’ll always love me. And I don’t need some piece of paper to prove to me that this is all real.’

Luke
laughed. He’d never have imagined he would laugh if the girl he proposed to turned him down, but then, Liz wasn’t just any girl. She was Liz. It was as simple as that. She had refused to let him accept her on anything but her own terms, and he loved her.

‘Cool,’ he said. ‘Now we just need to think of baby names. And don’t even consider calling the poor thing “Sunflower” or “Moonbeam” or anything like that. I know all about your secret, New Age, hippy tendencies. Underneath that steely exterior of yours beats the heart of a true softie.’

‘And I don’t want you thinking of naming the kid after one of your bloody bikes,’ she said, smiling happily back at him. ‘No child of mine is going to grow up and be called “Ducati” or “Maserati” or “Honda” or whatever. He’d get the shit kicked out of him in the playground. And then we’d get hauled up by the headmaster for beating the crap out of the kids who beat him up. We’re going to be desperately bad role models for this baby, I hope you realise that.’

‘No, we aren’t. We’re going to be the most awesome mum and dad ever.’ He kissed her again. ‘Now, don’t you have to call Allegra? She’s probably having to beat the blokes off with a pointy stick, sitting all by herself in that bar down the road…’

Liz
looked at him in alarm; how had he known? Luke laughed. ‘Did you think for one second that I didn’t suspect you two would have had a contingency plan if our talk had gone horribly, horribly wrong?’ he asked, teasing. ‘I might only be a man, you know, but I do know something about girls.’

Chapter Thirty-Two

UNTIL THE TIME Abi crouched, doubled-over, on the bathroom floor, she had had no experience of the kind of rage that made you want to kill someone, not as a conscious thought, but as a long, piercing scream of fury that wracked your entire body.

That
was how Jack found her; it had been no more than a matter of minutes since she had walked in on him and Allegra and stormed back out. She’d been lucky enough to find a taxi as soon as she ran out of his place; Jack arrived at her flat in Mid-Levels some 10 minutes after her. She stumbled into her apartment, forgetting to shut the door behind her and locked herself in the bathroom. Moments before he arrived, she got to her feet, pulled open the cabinet and found her “happy pills”. She shook two into her palm, looked at them and shook out another two. She tipped them into her mouth and swallowed, then sank back to the floor.

‘Open
the door,’ Jack said, calmly at first, then increasingly loudly and, finally, when there had been no response from Abi, he had kicked the door in. It slammed open and crashed into the sink, barely missing her. He knelt by her side, saying nothing, and gently put his hand on her head, softly stroking her hair, massaging the back of her neck. She shivered uncontrollably.

‘Go
away.’ At first he didn’t hear her; thought it was a jumbled moan of pain. ‘Just… go away.’ He heard the words at last and fought an urge to smash something.

‘No.
I’m not going away. Not now. Not ever.’ His voice shook, his own guilt and pain adding a depth and hoarseness that it had never had before. He put his hands on her shoulders and tried to make her sit upright, but it was impossible.

‘Come
on. Come with me.’ He gripped her shoulders a little more firmly, and she suddenly went limp; all the fight had gone out of her. They stood up, her arms hanging limply by her sides, and he guided her out of the bathroom. He helped her onto her bed and lay down beside her. As she turned away from him, he slid closer; his knees bent into the crook of hers, his face pressed into her hair, his arm over her, holding her. She had no idea of any of this. As soon as she had closed her eyes, she had fallen asleep; her mind had simply shut her body down, as if realising that there was no immediate way to deal with the situation, so the best thing to do was to switch off.

Hearing
her breathing, broken every now and then by tiny sobs, Jack closed his own eyes, blamed himself for everything and hoped that sleep would take him, too. What he couldn’t know was the true reason for Abi’s rage. Sure, she was furious to see him in bed with Allegra, but what really gutted her knowing she’d lost the game. Jack had been a wonderful boyfriend, almost tragically in love with her, as Clive had pointed out; endlessly faithful despite all the girls who had so openly flirted with him, offered themselves to him on the quiet…

Meanwhile,
he had no idea that she had been going out with Clive; that while he thought she was being as faithful to him as he was to her, she was making the most of the occasional man who wanted to buy her gifts and treat her like a goddess in return for her company in bed. The arrangement had suited her perfectly; her parents were happy to see her with Jack, who might be a bit of a space cadet sometimes, but he had a knack of making people love him. Her parents were no exception and, believing that she had “settled down” at last, finally got off her back about what they had called her “wild carousing around”.

Now
he’d gone and fallen in love with that bitch, Clive had walked out on her and she’d have to start all over again.

Abi
woke with a start several hours later. It was still dark. Struggling to sit upright, she curled her legs beneath her and thought about getting some water to drink; maybe that would clear her head a bit. She didn’t notice that Jack had opened his eyes and was gazing at her, an odd look on his face.

‘Kiss me,’ he said. She blinked at him, trying to work out if she had imagined what he said. What is going on, she thought, struggling though the fog to remember what had happened that night. She’d taken some pills, she remembered that much. But why had she taken those pills? Now she couldn’t think clearly. She shook her head in frustration.

‘Did
you say something?’ she asked.

‘Kiss
me,’ he said again, and she began to laugh. Not that it was that funny, but there was something about the way he said it that seemed hysterically amusing to her. Wait, yes, something was coming back to her… Jack and… that girl. That conniving bitch.

‘What?
What’s so funny?’ he asked warily. He sat up and looked at her, she caught his eye, and for a split second, everything stopped. Then, as if in slow motion, he leaned forward and kissed her. Her eyes opened wide in surprise and alarm, and Abi instinctively pulled away, but he pulled her towards him again, eyes closed.

His
kiss was tentative, unsure, uncertain if she’d like it, if he’d made a mistake. Then he kissed her again, lips slightly apart this time. She was too fogged to think clearly; all she could feel was a dull anger, wanted him to keep kissing her and make everything the way it was again. Then the kiss lengthened, deepened, she could feel her body responding; she lifted her hands as if to touch his face and then stopped in mid-air.

Eyes
still shut, he put his arms around her and pulled her against him, the embrace strong and passionate; she wrapped her arms around him and forgot everything. Slowly, his hands began to move, first massaging her back, then her sides, then up to her throat, gradually moving down to her breasts. Her blouse unbuttoned, his hands were on her bare skin … she moved her hands over his shoulders, stroking his arms, not encouraging him, but not stopping him either.

Then
suddenly, he stopped. He grasped the top of her arms fiercely and said hoarsely, ‘I can’t do this, I’m sorry.’ He pulled away, couldn’t meet her eyes. She sat up, confused, and then it sank in. Somehow, she got to her feet and stumbled blindly, walking into the walls, crashing against the dresser until she finally got to the bathroom and shut the door behind her. She collapsed to the floor and knelt there, curled up, holding herself, almost breathless with pain and rage.

It
was crazy, it was crazy, it hadn’t been right, she knew that, she kept repeating the words over and over to herself in her mind, but it didn’t help. Despite herself, she began laughing. Pulling herself to her feet again, she left the bathroom and found Jack on the sofa in the sitting room, smoking.

‘How fucked up are we, Jack? We can’t even have break-up sex properly,’ she said bitterly, tears now breaking through her laughter. ‘Because that is what we’re doing tonight, isn’t it, Jack? Breaking up? It’s been a while coming, I must say, but I really never thought it would happen this way.’

Abi
turned away from him, went back to bed, where she curled up in a ball and promptly fell asleep again. The hours crept past silently, almost respectfully, as if not to disturb her. But the bliss of oblivion eluded Jack. He lay next to her, listening to her breathing, listening to her grinding her teeth as she slept. He had never regretted anything so much as he did those few minutes when he had risked everything he had not only with Abi, but with Allegra, too; risked it and lost. He closed his eyes and cursed himself. You fucking idiot, he thought, how could you be so bloody stupid?

His
relationship with Allegra had been uneasy from the start, because they had both silently acknowledged how complicated it was and, without ever discussing it, had agreed that nothing could ever happen while he was involved with Abi. He had known from the beginning how Allegra felt for him; she had never hidden it because that’s the way she was. If she loved someone, she loved them wholeheartedly and unreservedly, immediately and fully. She gave everything she had from the beginning.

But
she had always respected the boundaries that separated him from her. Now Jack had crossed the line, and had undoubtedly hurt her in a way he had always sworn to himself that he never would. Just as he had hurt Abi. Tormented by these thoughts, and by that of what he had destroyed, he finally drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

When
he opened his eyes hours later, it was just after dawn. Abi was no longer lying next to him. He sat upright abruptly and called out her name.

‘I’m
here.’ Her voice was low, flat, dead. She was sitting on a chair by the window, staring outside. She must have just stepped out of the shower because her hair was wet, dripping onto the towel she cradled on her lap. She’d quietly got out of bed while Jack slept, and had formulated her gameplan while hot water washed over her.

Her
flatmates had been apologised to for the ruckus of the previous night, and had discreetly left for work much earlier than they would have normally done, in order to allow her to sort things out with Jack. And so Abi decided that while she might have lost Clive, there was no way she was prepared to lose Jack. Lose a battle, win the war, that’s how it worked, wasn’t it? She’d invested too much in setting up her life to let it all slip away over some stupid girl he ended up in bed with.

Actually,
she had mused, rinsing shampoo out of her hair, this could work to her advantage. Jack’s guilt would be overwhelming.

‘Are
you okay?’ he asked, realising even as he spoke that it was a phenomenally stupid question.

‘Yes.
I’m fine.’ As she answered, her voice cracked and her eyes, still red and puffy, began to fill with tears. ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.’ She buried her face in the towel.

‘I’m
sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say. I … I’m just so sorry.’

She
almost laughed. ‘You’re sorry. Great. I’m sorry too. Fine, fabulous. Can we move on now, please? I believe we were last discussing our breaking up. In fact, there is nothing to discuss, I believe. We’re through, and you should go now.’

He
exploded, a defensive reaction to an indefensible position. ‘Don’t talk to me like that. Don’t talk to me like I’m shit on your shoe. I’m apologising. I feel like shit. And you can’t even treat me with respect when I’m saying I’m sorry.’

She
stared at him, her mouth moving wordlessly as she struggled to contain her own anger.

‘You
arsehole,’ she finally said. ‘It’s always about you, isn’t it? Everyone is always supposed to consider you, to know what you mean, to understand you and make excuses for you. Well, fuck you. You did this, you. Not me. So don’t you lose your temper with me; how dare you? You took everything that was good between us and flushed it down the toilet, and now you lose your temper with me? You put yourself in my place for one second, just one lousy second, and tell me what you feel.’

She
jumped up from the chair and threw the sodden towel at him. He caught it and leapt to his feet, moving as if to strike her. She didn’t move, just waited for him to hit her, tears running down her face. They stood there for some time, inches apart, angry, sorry, desperately wishing that none of it had ever happened. Then, he slowly raised one hand to touch her face gently.

‘I’m
so very, very sorry,’ he whispered, tears coursing down his face. ‘I wish… ’ He couldn’t go on.

She
put her arms around him, and they both cried. When finally the tears stopped, he whispered to her, still holding her tightly, as if afraid she might vanish, ‘please forgive me’, and she had whispered back, ‘yes’. Then they climbed back into bed, still holding each other.

While
Abi stared unmoving at the wall, Jack stared at the ceiling, watching the dancing colours reflecting off the light-catchers she had hung at the window because they were pretty. In one night, he had almost lost the woman he once thought he would love exclusively for the rest of his life. And he had lost the woman he now knew he would never get over.