The Baby Group (44 page)

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 womaniser.'

‘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 realisation 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 pay-off and maybe it should have been. But I let myself think it was more than that, something I
never
usually do. When I realised 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 spanner in the works.'

‘Must have been a bit of a sod,' 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 a sort of unhealthy co-dependency 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.'

‘It's not your fault,' Jack said slowly. ‘I understand completely why you didn't tell me about him. It's probably a better reason than mine for not telling you about my cancer. While I was behaving like a coward, you were acting like a hero. I was scared but more than that,' Jack took a deep breath, ‘I was embarrassed.'

‘Embarrassed?' Natalie asked him, with some confusion.

‘Yes.' Jack looked abashed. ‘I still am a bit, to be honest, even though I've come to terms with it now. But when I met you I was just about to have a ball cut off. And I didn't like talking about it. In fact, it was my general reluctance to discuss my testes with beautiful ladies that nearly got me killed. My GP is a woman. I waited and waited to ask her about the lump. I was really lucky they caught it in time.'

‘I see,' Natalie said slowly, although she clearly didn't.

‘Yes, I know you think I'm an idiot but I wasn't especially rational at the time. I was worried that after the operation I'd feel emasculated, or that I'd repulse you or any woman. I thought, who'd want a one-balled man?'

Natalie tried to stop herself smiling, but she couldn't.

‘I don't know how to break this to you,' she said, her mood briefly lightened. ‘But a pair of testicles is not the most important requirement in a lady's list of must-haves when it comes to a prospective partner.'

‘Isn't it?' Jack asked her, with a wry smile. ‘Anyway, I didn't know where I'd be after the surgery and the treatment. I felt for a while that the disease would castrate me, that I'd have no sex drive. I felt weak and pathetic and I . . . I cried a lot. I realise now that I didn't know you at all, Natalie, but I did know that I didn't want you to see me that way.' He paused. ‘Maybe if,
if
you had come and told me about Freddie, if I'd known that you were having my baby, things might have been different. Except the fact that we had a child wouldn't have really changed anything else, would it? We would still have been virtual strangers, still not knowing anything about each other. It still would have been one of the worst and most irrational ways to start a relationship.'

The smile that had started on Natalie's lips faded.

‘That's true,' she said. For a moment neither of them could look at the other.

‘I don't know what you think about me, Natalie,' Jack went on. ‘But one of the things I have been for most of my adult life is a coward. I run away from things that scare me. Like the final exams in my biochemistry degree. I studied for three years, aced paper after paper but the thought of the exams did my head in, so I didn't take them. I never passed my degree. And women, it's not that I was afraid of commitment, it was more that I was afraid of making a commitment to a woman and then realising a few months or years down the line that she was the wrong one. I thought it was better to be careful. So I didn't really get very involved with anybody until . . . well, I suppose I can't really say I got involved with you.'

Jack sighed and shook his head as if attempting to dislodge a particularly unhelpful thought. ‘Then there was the cancer. I ran away from that for a long time too. Didn't get it checked out for months, waited and waited for the bloody thing to go away on its own, and once I had the diagnosis, I ran away again – with you that time. And then from you; from you and how the cancer might make you see me. So you see, I am a terrible coward. I'm weak, I'm not the kind of man who could be a good father. Or at least I haven't been.' He moistened his lips. ‘I've thought about nothing except you and the baby since the night you told me about him, and I realised – I've got my life back now and I don't want to live it like a coward, Natalie. I want to be brave, I want to face life and live it – the good and the bad.' Jack suddenly looked very young. ‘It's just that being brave is a bit scary.'

Natalie watched him, this man she had thought of as so strong and even dashing, so dangerous to know and a real heart-breaker, and found with some amazement that it wasn't that constructed version of him that she was drawn to after all. It couldn't be, because all the feelings she had had for that distant and shadowy man of mystery were still present for this utterly vulnerable stranger. The more he told her the more she admired him, the more at last she really understood him. He was an ordinary man who'd been badly beaten and buffeted by life, and was still in recovery. He wasn't what she had thought he was at all, and yet Jack was exactly the man for her, because in the end it had been none of those artifices that she had fallen for in Venice. It had been the core of him, the heart, and that was still there.

Jack looked at Freddie, who catching his eye bounced up and down on Natalie's knee excitedly. Jack was the one adult who hadn't instantly poured smiles and attention all over him, and he was trying his best to rectify the situation by being especially charming.

‘It seems to me,' Jack went on, ‘that little fellow is here in the world now and he is part of me, and if you'll let me I do want to be part of his life. I don't want to run away from my son. I might not be very good at it but I'm going to try my best to be his father, the best one I can be.'

As he spoke, his words caught in his throat and he dipped his head for a moment, until the threat of tears had subsided.

‘Sorry,' he said with a shrug. ‘You see, once I got past the whole running for the hills impulse I realised that it is sort of like a miracle. I didn't know if I'd be able to father children after treatment. I was trying to get used to the idea of never being a father and then suddenly –' He gestured at Freddie.

Natalie smiled at him, wishing more than anything that she could just go and put her arms around him.

‘Can I . . . could I have a go at holding him?' Jack asked, interrupting her thoughts. ‘Can I hold Freddie?'

For a second Natalie felt her arms tighten reflexively around Freddie's tummy and then she relaxed her fingers.

‘Of course you can,' she told him gently.

Jack looked nervous.

‘I need to support its, I mean his head, right?' he said, looking at Freddie like he was a bundle of particularly unstable dynamite.

‘Well, no, he can do that on his own now,' Natalie said, looking down at her son who was leaning forward in her lap, his arms outstretched to Jack. ‘But it's usually best not to dangle him by his legs or anything like that.'

Jack's mouth twitched with the promise of a smile. ‘I remember I liked your sense of humour.' He paused. ‘You were joking, weren't you?'

Natalie laughed despite herself.

‘Yes, I was, Jack,' she said. She was confused. She had never felt so happy and yet so sad at the same time before. It was a difficult mix of emotions to control and she felt that she might burst in the attempt.

‘You know what,' she said. ‘I think you are actually quite a nice man.'

‘Am I?' Jack said. ‘Really? Is that good?'

‘It's good for Freddie,' Natalie said. She and Jack stood up together and then, finally, she transferred her son into his father's arms.

Once there Freddie's features became still as he looked up at Jack with a solemn but curious expression.

Jack looked down at Freddie in exactly the same way.

‘He actually does look like me,' Jack said in amazement. ‘Isn't that weird? I mean, friends and family with babies are always going on about how they are the dead spit of somebody or other and I've looked at them, these babies, and I've thought – nope, they all look the same to me. Fat, pink and squashy. But I look at him and I can see myself in him, and you too. It's the weirdest feeling. It's . . . God, it's amazing, Natalie.'

As Jack smiled down at the baby at last, Freddie's face erupted into a returning grin, and expression of pure delight.

‘He smiles!' Jack exclaimed happily. ‘Look, he smiles and he's a baby – does that make him advanced? What else does he do? Does he crawl yet, or talk?'

Natalie couldn't help but be warmed by his interest in her, in
their
son.

‘He cries, a lot, mainly at night,' she told him. ‘He poos a
lot
and he likes to try to wee in your face. He's due to start solids soon, he's desperate to crawl but hasn't quite got it yet, he can only go backwards if he wriggles about on his tummy. He smiles at people he likes and he's the loveliest, most amazing baby in the whole wide world.'

Jack nodded. ‘Just as I thought. A child genius.' He took one or two experimental steps with him, and discovering that he did not drop the baby, paced the room a couple of times. Natalie sat down and watched them.

‘Do you think it will be OK,' he asked her, ‘you and me and him? Will it work after everything that's happened?'

Natalie looked at Jack holding their baby and she wished more than anything in the world that she could put her arms around them both and kiss them.

‘We will find a way,' she said, determinedly. It had begun to feel as if things had changed between them again, asif now they had passed into a new phase where Freddie was the most important thing between them. And perhaps that was simply the way it had to be. Her old friend fate had put two huge great obstacles right in the middle of the part where they should have been just starting out, dating, having candlelit dinners, taking long walks in the park, spending all afternoon in bed, talking and laughing and doing all those soppy things that somehow Natalie had never managed to do. At least, not with the same person.

That part had been robbed from them both by circumstance. And now it had to be more important than ever that Jack should move on with his life, as far as possible away from the shadow of his illness. Away from that time when their lives might have been different.

‘We'll be fine,' Natalie answered Jack's question, feeling her heart compress. ‘I'm sure of it.'

A little while later Jack walked them back to the edge of Oxford Street, where they parted. He was catching the Tube down to his offices to meet his new colleagues, and Natalie planned to risk the wrath of Alice and take Freddie into work.

‘Thank you,' Jack said.

He leant forward and brushed his lips against her cheek, sending a jolt of longing surging right through Natalie that nearly knocked her off her feet. It was hard to believe that something so physical, so tangible could only be felt by her and not Jack. But she had to believe it, because there was not a flicker of anything in his face that might betray that he was feeling the same way.

Natalie wondered how long it would take for these feelings to gradually fade away. She hoped she would be over it by the time Freddie took his A levels, with a little bit of luck.

‘I'll see you in a few days then?' she said. She and Jack had already planned his first proper visit with Freddie on Saturday. She was to teach him all the things he needed to know to be able to look after Freddie.