Vince and Joy (44 page)

‘God knows,’ slurred Emma, ‘but I tell you what. Next time she comes into your life, you’d better do the right thing or frankly you deserve to end up alone and unloved.’

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence as it dawned on the group that this was a little insensitive in the light of Vince’s current circumstances.

‘Oh, shit,’ said Emma, ‘I’m sorry, Vince. I didn’t mean to…’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘Really, it’s fine.’

‘So,’ Natalie glanced briefly at Emma, and began cautiously, ‘what happened? With you and Jess? Why did you split up?’

Vince smiled. It was blatantly obvious that the girls had spent hours speculating about the abrupt end of his marriage to Jess and had only found the courage to ask him about it at the bottom of a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.

‘I mean, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to… ‘ she added, taking his silence as a sign of discomfort.

‘No,’ he said, ‘really, it’s fine. I don’t mind talking about it. It all started going wrong when Lara was six months old…’

Lara May Mellon-James was delivered in Jess’s mother’s living room in the very small hours of a windy February night, to the sounds of Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Vince had loaded 100 of his and Jess’s favourite songs of all time on to his MP3 player, and left them playing on a loop throughout the labour. The idea was that whatever song was playing when the baby was delivered would be his or her theme tune for the rest of his or her life.

Lara had failed to arrive during ‘We Have All the Time in the World’ or ‘Perfect Day’ or ‘Golden Brown’ or ‘Dancing Queen’ or ‘Nobody Does It Better’, and had emerged instead just as Kurt Cobain started screaming, ‘Here we are now, entertain us.’

Neither Jess nor her mother, nor even the midwife, had been aware of which song was playing in the excitement of the moment. It was only a few days later that Jess asked Vince if he’d noticed. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘I think it was “Wonderful World”.’ He’d tell her one day, maybe when Lara was a teenage rebel with body piercings, but in the midst of the existential perfection of having a newborn baby in their lives he didn’t feel she needed to know.

Lara’s birth marked the end of a nine-month period of ongoing tension between Vince and Jess. Jon was still living at Jess’s when she was nearly eight months’
pregnant, and Jess refused to enter into any serious discussions on the subject of their long-term living arrangements. Jon moved out suddenly and messily one afternoon, after a row that Jess refused to elaborate on, adding even more fuel to Vince’s loitering suspicion that he might have had something to do with Jess’s pregnancy. In the days leading up to Lara’s birth Vince had seriously entertained the prospect of finishing things with Jess and becoming a part-time father.

But the days and weeks following the birth of Lara May Mellon-James turned out to be the happiest of Vince’s life. He and Jess floated around in a big pink bubble of delight and amazement, completely oblivious to the world around them. And any lingering doubts he might have had about the paternity of his child were extinguished the minute he first saw her face. It was like looking at a miniature version of himself.

‘It’s a genetic trick,’ said Jess. ‘Nature makes a newborn baby look just like its father so that he knows it’s his and doesn’t mind going out and spearing a few wild boar for the mother. Clever, isn’t it?’

Lara May had thick yellow hair and legs like a chicken’s, and was covered all over in a soft layer of white down. ‘She looks just like a baby duck,’ said Kirsty when she saw her for the first time.

Lara and Jess took to breastfeeding like a pair of pros, and Vince would watch in amazement as his tiny daughter attached herself so confidently to the lifeline of her mother’s body. Kirsty hadn’t breastfed any of her children and this was the first time that Vince had watched the process at such close quarters. He’d seen women
feeding their babies from a distance, in restaurants and parks, but always averted his gaze, as he would if he saw two people kissing passionately or a man urinating against a wall. But watching Lara and Jess nestled silently together against a cloud of cushions, Vince decided that it was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen in his Ufe.

If Vince had been a bit on the soft side before Lara was born, he transmogrified into a human marshmallow the moment she arrived. Everything Lara did filled him with amazement and awe. He bathed her every night in lavender-scented bubbles and gently patted her dry with a soft towel, which he snatched from the radiator at the very last minute to prevent it from losing even a degree of heat. He paraded proudly around Enfield Town with Lara strapped to his chest in a sling and showed pictures of her to all his students, whether they expressed an interest or not.

Fatherhood had lived up to all his expectations, and more. He felt complete for the first time in his life. Jess was the most incredible mother, and the two of them had never been happier together. Seeing her with Lara, so gentle and loving, so strong and nurturing, reminded him of exactly why he’d fallen in love with her in the first place. The subject of their living arrangements hadn’t ever been formalized, but 80 per cent of his possessions now lived at Jess’s, so it was as near as dammit.

For the first six months of Lara’s life, everything was perfect. It wasn’t until one sunny Sunday the following summer that everything started to go wrong.

*

It was the end of Jess’s maternity leave and rather than get involved in the time-consuming business of expressing milk for Lara to have during the day, Jess decided it would be easier to stop breastfeeding completely. She phased out Lara’s feeds, one by one, until she was entirely bottle-feeding her.

Once she was free of the restrictions of being her child’s only source of milk, she asked Vince to look after Lara for the day. She was starting back at work the following week and needed a day to herself. Vince didn’t hesitate in saying yes. He loved spending time with Lara, especially now he could feed her himself.

‘I’m going into town,’ she said, applying mascara for the first time in six months. ‘I need some new clothes for work. None of my pre-pregnancy ones fit me any more.’ She cupped her still rounded belly. ‘And I want to have a pedicure. Look –’ She showed him her feet. They looked fine to Vince, but were, apparently, ‘minging’. ‘And then I’m meeting Jon in Regent’s Park, for a picnic…’

‘Jon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jon
Jon?’

‘Yes,’ she hissed, ‘
Jon
Jon.’

‘But, I thought you two had fallen out.’

‘No,’ she looked at him as if he was slightly retarded. ‘Where on earth did you get that from?’

‘From the fact that you haven’t seen him since he moved out…’

‘Of course I’ve seen him.’

‘What?’

‘I see him at least once a week. He comes over here or we go to see him in his new place.’ ‘But when?’

‘God, I don’t know,’ she muttered, stuffing keys into her handbag. ‘During the day, while you’re at work.’

‘But I don’t understand. The last I heard, you two had had a row, he stormed off and you’ve not mentioned him since.’

‘Good grief, Vince. Did you honestly think that Jon and I would let a stupid little argument kill off our friendship?’

‘Christ, I don’t know. I just
assumed…
’

‘What – and not let him see Lara?’

‘So when did you two make it up?’

‘When he got back from the States.’

‘He went to the States?’

‘Yes, just after he moved out of here. And he phoned the minute he got back and came straight round to see Lara.’

‘But why didn’t you mention it?’

‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged, and leaned down to pick Lara up from where she’d been sitting on the sofa watching her parents argue. ‘It just didn’t seem important. You don’t tell me everything you do every day…’

‘That’s because I don’t do anything worth telling you about. I teach people to drive, then I come home.’

‘Yes. But you don’t talk about your students or what you talk about or where you have your lunch.’

‘But what about
me?
’ he said. ‘I really like Jon. I’d like to see him, too. Show him my daughter. Show off a bit, you know. Why do you have to see him on your own?’

She smoothed down Lara’s tufty hair and stroked her cheek. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘it’s no big deal. I’ll invite him over next weekend. We’ll have lunch. Just chill out, my angel boy. Why do you always have to get so worked up about things?’ She put her hand to his face and cupped his cheek tenderly.

The feel of her hand against his skin softened him immediately. ‘I’m not getting worked up.’ He kissed the palm of her hand. ‘It’s just, I really like Jon…’

‘I know you do, my angel.’

‘And I want us to do things as a
family,
you know.’

‘I know you do.’

‘And I’m so proud of you both, of
us.
’

‘Aww…’ She pulled him towards her and they engaged in a family hug. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I promise. I’ll talk to Jon today. Arrange something for next weekend.’ She handed Lara over to him, looped her handbag over her shoulder and left the flat with a cheery ‘See you later.’

Vince and Lara had a lovely day together. After her morning nap, he put her in the car and drove round to see Chris and his mum. Vince’s grandmother was there and it was a beautiful sunny day, so they all sat out in the garden watching Chris light the barbecue.

‘So where’s Jess off to today?’ said Kirsty, rubbing sun cream into her knees.

‘Into town,’ said Vince, bouncing Lara on his lap. ‘Said she needed some new clothes for when she goes back to work tomorrow.’

‘Aw,’ said Gran, ‘is this the first time she’s left the little one?’

‘For a whole day, yeah,’ said Vince. ‘She’s left her with me for the occasional hour or so before, but she’s been breastfeeding so she hasn’t been able to go out for too long.’

‘Bet she’s missing her,’ said Kirsty. ‘Has she been phoning you every five minutes?’

‘No,’ said Vince. ‘Well, not yet, anyway’

‘Oh, I’m sure she will,’ smiled Gran. ‘No mother can resist checking up.’

Jess didn’t phone once the whole time Vince was at his mum’s.

‘Oh, that’s a good sign,’ said Kirsty. ‘Means she’s really relaxing.’

At four o’clock, just before Lara woke up from her afternoon nap, he sent her a text message.

Everything OK here. Lara sleeping. Had 250 ml at lunch and a strawberry yoghurt. What time you home?

He watched the phone for a while, but nothing happened. She still hadn’t replied to his text message by the time he got home that afternoon, and he tried his hardest not to be bothered about it. His mum was right. It was good that Jess was really taking some time out. She’d been a completely devoted mother for the past six months, put her life on hold entirely to give Lara the best possible start in life. She deserved to let her hair down. He resisted the temptation to phone her and got on with getting Lara ready for bed, but when Jess still wasn’t home at seven-thirty that evening, and still hadn’t called,
Vince decided he couldn’t be cool for another minute and phoned Jess on her mobile.

As he waited for her to answer, he heard her ring tone coming from the bedroom and followed it to the pocket of her jeans hanging on the back of a chair. He pulled out her phone and sighed heavily.

Jess had gone out without her mobile. The first time she’d left Lara for a full day and she hadn’t even thought to ensure that she had some form of emergency contact with him. It was flattering in one way that she had such confidence in Vince’s abilities as a substitute mother – but frightening in another that she was able to sever the umbilical cord so fully and completely. Vince made sure he had his phone fully charged and about his person everywhere he went these days. He hated the idea of being out of contact with his family for even a minute.

He went to bed at eleven o’clock, fully expecting to hear her key in the lock as he drifted off to sleep, but when Lara woke up briefly an hour later and he realized that she still wasn’t home he finally lost his cool.

He stormed into the living room and snatched Jess’s phone off the coffee table, scrolled through her phonebook until he got to Jon’s number and dialled.

His jaw was set tight with the effort of containing the words he wanted to spit out to whoever answered the phone. Jon’s phone rang four times and went through to voice mail. Vince snapped the phone closed and threw it across the room. His insides were bubbling up into a molten, volcanic rage. He didn’t object to Jess taking off for the day and sharing a romantic picnic with her ex-boyfriend on a beautiful sunny bank holiday, and he
didn’t object to being left to look after their daughter for a whole day and night. What he objected to, more than anything, was the fact that she hadn’t felt the need or the desire to speak to either of them once all day to find out how they were doing.

He sighed and rubbed the palms of his hands down his face. It was 12.15 a.m. Lara could well be awake and ready for a bottle in six hours. He should get back to bed, get some sleep.