One Thing Led to Another

The plan is perfect: DVDs, toast and a full on hibernation fest for the rest of the day.

Gina puts her arm around me as we walk along the Essex Road.

‘You scared me then,’ she says. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me to shut up?’

‘Easier said than done,’ I say.

‘True,’ she says, ‘sorry about that.’

It’s a miserable grey sludge of a day, one of those that never quite gets going. In the last eight days, since the row in Frankie’s, the only contact I’ve had with Jim has been three stilted phone conversations. We can usually yabber on for England on the phone, me and Jim. We once spent an hour debating whether Davina McCall had married out of her league when she married that fit bloke off Pet Rescue. Jim has been known to wander off mid-conversation then forget I am there, leaving me on the end of the phone, listening to him fart. We are so comfortable with one another it’s ridiculous. But not this week. This week for the first time ever I’ve sat in bed having small talk with Jim Ashcroft.

But now, I don’t know whether it’s because I don’t feel quite so sick anymore, or because I feel bonded to Gina, comforted that she’s here with me, after that ordeal, but for the first time in ages I feel the tentative fingers of something like calm feather my senses.

It’s still elusive. Like an under-developed Polaroid, but it’s there alright and it feels good. It’s as if everything that was hurled in the air, an emotional tornado, is suddenly floating gently back down to earth, to resume its rightful place.

I’d feel almost good now if it weren’t for the big secret hammering away in my brain, chipping away, trying to get out. Maybe I should tell her? Tell her now whilst we’re bonded in our respective misfortunes.

We turn into Blockbusters, pick up some shamelessly girly films, essential Sunday supplies, and carry on along the Essex Road that we’ve pounded so many times it’s imprinted on the soles of our shoes, our well charted territory.

By the time we make it home, the bottoms of our jeans are soaking wet and it feels like we’ll never get warm. I go and change whilst Gina puts the kettle on, turns up the central heating and arranges our supplies in little bowls.

‘Does poorly patient want a cup of tea?’ she shouts from the bottom of the stairs, as I root around in my wardrobe for something to wear.

‘Yes please nurse,’ I shout back, smiling to myself. Is this TLC I am experiencing? Is this me, Tess Jarvis being looked after by Gina Marshall for a change? And she doesn’t even know.

I pull on some old tracksuit bottoms and my netball sweatshirt. ‘Officially better,’ I announce, as Gina hands me a steaming mug at the bottom of the stairs.

I want to tell her. I’m burning to tell her so I won’t have to handle this alone and yet, I want to savour this moment, hold it for ever. Never again, when I’ve told her, will we stand in this kitchen as two, single, childless friends with nothing but ourselves and the rain battering the roof for company.

We move into the lounge and collapse on the sofa. Now’s your moment, ‘Do it now,’ I urge myself. ‘Find the words, come on!’

‘Gina,’ I say. My heart throws a punch at my rib.

She leaps to her feet. Shit, this is it!

‘I know, we’d better get on with it. Which one shall we watch?’ she says, marching over to the bag of the DVDs.

She takes out Lost in Translation, shows it me, I nod, weakly. She crawls over to the TV, bends down, her back to me, muttering something about Bill Murray, putting it in the machine.

I think about my promise to Jim, how we said we’d wait until after the scan to tell anyone…but the words are too big, they don’t fit in my mouth anymore, out they topple like I’ve got Tourette’s.

‘Gina,’ I say, ‘I’m pregnant. I’m having a baby.’

If I thought Gina was going to take this well, I was mistaken, sorely mistaken. I’m not prepared for the look on her face when she turns around. Shock is not the word. Something like disgust would be more fitting. She doesn’t say anything for what seems like ages. She just sits there, DVD in hand, and glares at me.

‘What?’ she says, through gritted teeth. It’s barely audible, a whisper.

‘I’m pregnant.’

‘Whose…?’

‘It’s Jim’s,’ I say, staring at the floor.

She looks at me through a gap in her fingers.

‘How pregnant are you?’

‘Eight and a half weeks,’

‘And you didn’t tell me?!’

‘Well can you blame me?’ I say. ‘Look at your reaction.’

‘But Tess, you’re not even with Jim, you don’t even love him like that. You’re not in love, either of you!’

The words sting. Didn’t she think I already knew that? And didn’t she think I wished it was different?

‘I do know that,’ I say, quietly. ‘But it’s happened now, and we’ve decided we’re keeping the baby.’

‘What?’ says Gina, half laughing, half crying. I retreat further back into the sofa.

‘But you can’t,’ she says, ‘that’s ridiculous; you can’t have that baby, not like this.’

‘Who says?’ I say, crying now. ‘Why is that so wrong? We’re both adults, this is not some teenage pregnancy. If I was to opt out of having this baby then I’d be opting out of life, choosing the easy way out, can’t you see?’

Gina wipes her face, which is suddenly filled with steely determination.

‘Look,’ she says, coming to sit beside me. ‘We have options (we!?); let’s think about this. Because this isn’t about Jim, or the baby – it’s not even a baby yet, Tess, that’s what Mark told me when I had my abortion and he was right, it was just a cluster of cells – the only person this is about is you. You have to be selfish.’

‘But I am being selfish, I want to keep it.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘I do!’

I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I know this is a shock and that I’m an idiot for letting it happen but what happened to my friend just giving me a hug, asking all those questions you’re meant to ask when someone tells you they’re pregnant?

‘I’ll come with you to the doctor’s tomorrow,’ says Gina, decisively. ‘I’ll call in sick, we’ll sort this out. I’ve been through it too remember, so I know how it feels, I’ll know what to say…’

‘No,’ I say, standing up. And it feels like I’ve never meant anything more in my life. ‘No! You don’t know what to say. I’m not going to the doctor’s, I’ve already been and that was to get my due date. December 14th if you’re interested, put it in your diary. I’m not having an abortion, Gina, I’m keeping the baby, we’re keeping the baby.’

I walk out. I slam the door shut.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘I thought the love would just be there. That I would look into my baby’s eyes and we would have an instant understanding. But when Poppy was born, I just felt terrified, like I’d been handed someone else’s baby to look after. It took seven months for me to honestly say I loved her. Obviously now, I know I was ill, but I still feel guilty.’

Sam, 36, Didsbury

I am lying next to Jim, my belly against the curve of his back, the faint whirr of a dawn flight outside. After the row with Gina yesterday, the atmosphere in the house was frosty to say the least so that evening I got on a bus and came here, to Jim’s place, a cosy Victorian flat in East Dulwich.

It had been over a week since the row in Frankie’s and I was worried how I might be received.

I needn’t have been.

When Jim opened the door, wearing his mustard dressing gown (the result of a dye disaster with a beach towel) I have never felt so welcome, or wanted to hug him so much in my life. I stood on the doorstep, a forlorn figure under the glare of the street lamp.

‘Hello you,’ he said, arms crossed, head leaning against the doorframe as if he was expecting me. ‘Come on in.’

He led me through his narrow, bright hallway, the only thing adorning the wall a framed photo of an Americana sign:

Warning: Water on Road During Rain

Lifts my mood every time.

Jim’s downstairs is open plan. The lounge is cosy in its make-do-ness. Two stripy sofas covered with dark grey throws, a huge black and white circular rug and a bobbly green swivel chair that he always does his marking on. His telly’s crap – you can only get three channels if you balance the aerial on a mug – and today (like most days) there’s a huge pile of marking on the sofa that he’s obviously just put to one side. He moved it, putting it on the Ikea coffee table along with the remote control, the remains of a Muller Light and a note-filled copy of Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Then he pressed down on my shoulders, sitting me on the sofa, and went into the kitchen to make tea.

It’s a boy’s kitchen – a dazzling array of unnecessary gadgets, juicer, pasta maker, ice-cream maker, blood-red DeLonghi coffee maker that weighs a tonne – the shine of which is diminished only by a subtle layer of grime.

On the shelves above the sink are Jamie Oliver cookbooks and a few suspect ones called things like Nose to Tail Eating that contain nothing but recipes for offal and pig trotter. (Jim likes to think he’s a fearless cook – i.e. you have to be fearless to eat whatever he cooks.) Next to a pint glass of pennies is a herb garden that he actually keeps alive, unlike me who buys one every time I go to Tesco’s only to find it desiccated on top of the fridge three months later.

‘Henry IV eh?’ I said, picking up the book, thinking a bit of idle chat might do me good. ‘Sorry, but I never could get excited about Shakespeare.’

‘You blaspheme!’ spluttered Jim. ‘It’s one of the funniest, rudest books ever written.

‘How can you not fall in love with such a top bloke as Hal, or a total piss-head like Falstaff? You of all people.’

‘Oi,’ I said. ‘What are you suggesting?’

Jim handed me a cup of tea. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what owes me this pleasure?’

That was it, I was off. I poured out all the details of the showdown with Gina and the more I said it aloud the more unbelievable it felt.

‘I’m sorry for being such a cow last week,’ I said, sheepishly, when I’d off loaded. ‘Not to mention blabbing to Gina. You must hate me.’

‘Yeah, can’t stand you, hate your guts,’ Jim said, totally dead pan. ‘You were a bitch from hell but we’ll blame it on the hormones, shall we?’

‘That will be my epitaph at this rate.’

It must have been one a.m. before we went to bed. I was still pretty shook up about Gina and Jim was as confused as I was. ‘Are you sure that’s what she said?’ he said. ‘I know Gina can be unpredictable but that’s just weird.’

‘I know, I don’t understand it either. It was like me being pregnant was a personal attack. Like something I’d done wrong. I mean, I know I can’t get drunk like we used to, but I’m still me, aren’t I? I’m still the person she’s been friends with for more than a decade.’

Jim gave me a hug. It felt like he could squeeze the air right out of me.

‘It will be alright, you know, all this,’ he said, staring straight ahead, with that prophetic certainty he has about everything. ‘I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but it will.’

‘And Gina?’ I asked tentatively, as we walked up the stairs to bed.

‘She’ll come round.’ Jim yawned. ‘And if she doesn’t, we’ll kick her ass.’

I smiled but at the back of my mind I was still worried. How could I confide in her about anything now? And what if everyone, even Vicky, reacted as badly? What if I was utterly deluded and keeping this baby was the worst, most irresponsible idea in the world?

‘All a baby needs is love,’ Jim said. I play those words in my head again and again. ‘All a child needs is to feel wanted.’ And I want this baby. If I don’t, why do I wake up, my heart in my mouth with every twinge, petrified this is the start of losing it? The fact is, I think to myself as I lay here, if I was to lose this baby now, we couldn’t try for another. Not like real couples.

It is one thing to have an accident and make the best of a less than ideal situation but quite another to make something happen again that should never have happened in the first place.

This unborn child that already has fingers and toes and maybe my curviness and Jim’s long legs (Eva Herzigova eat your heart out!) is a fluke, it slipped through the net. And so if fate decided it wasn’t meant to be then it would be heartbreaking, but we’d have to accept it. Why did the thought of this terrify me so much?

Jim is sleeping but I can’t, my mind won’t let me. I know it must be almost morning because I can just about make out shapes in his familiar room in the emerging light and the photograph on his bedside table, the one in the red frame that’s never meant much before, is staring right back at me now, making my mind race.

Me, Jim, Gina and Vicks sitting under the awning of our caravan, that camping trip in Norfolk last summer. Jim and I had been hopping into each other’s bed when the fancy took us for three months by then. How many times have I looked at this picture? And it has never stirred much more than nostalgia before. But now suddenly the body language says it all: Gina and Vicky leaning against each other, laughing into the camera which we’ve got balanced on a beer crate. Me, reclining on a deckchair, feet tucked up by my bum, my head on Jim’s shoulder but what’s he doing? Ruffling my hair. Not a spark of sexual tension between us.

That didn’t stop me getting carried away though. It didn’t stop me thinking that I might even be falling in love with Jim, that he might, even, be falling for me.

I still cringe when I think of what happened a few hours after that photo was taken. We’d been to the pub that night, then walked home through windy country lanes, arm in arm. When we got back to the campsite, Jim went straight to his tent, pitched next to the caravan, and I crawled in next to him.

‘Jim, we’ve been doing this weird on/off thing for some time now,’ I said, staring at the canvas, my heart pounding. ‘Maybe we should, you know, make a go of it. Go out with each other, like, properly.’ After a long pause in which I wondered whether he might be about to express his undying love for me he just turned over the other way.

‘Tess, you’re drunk,’ he said, flatly. ‘We’re soul-mates, something special, something really good. Let’s not spoil it.’

What a twat. What an absolute wanker! So I open myself up, put myself on the line and he makes me feel so small I could have disappeared up his arse, along with his own head. Well sod you, I thought. But I didn’t say anything, I was too mortified. I just made thoroughly mature V-signs up at the roof of the tent.

But he was right of course. Thank God somebody saw sense. Looking at us, sitting under that awning now, I cannot believe I did that. I didn’t fancy Jim as much as he didn’t fancy me – not really, not in the right way. It was all just wishful thinking.

And the hard fact to swallow is, if I hadn’t screwed it up with Laurence, I would probably never have even been in that tent, I would never have made an arse of myself, I would never have carried on having ‘no-strings’ sex with Jim and I certainly wouldn’t be pregnant with his baby!

Under Jim’s tartan duvet, I can feel that he’s had got an erection. A James Ashcroft Morning Glory. Ordinarily, that’s to say pre-baby, this would have meant one thing to me: a quickie, sleepy, hungover shag that would have left me with the smug feeling that I really was a thoroughly modern girl. I occasionally slept with my male best friend and we were cool with it.

Today though, it’s an unwelcome pressure and I feel my body stiffen as he eases closer. He takes a sleepy breath in and as he breathes out, he kneads the inside of my thigh with his knee, trying to gently prize me open. I resist. I can’t do this. My head’s too muddled and weighed down. Where sex before was like an added extra, now it is loaded with meaning. It is as if the lightness had been shot out of it, leaving it withering to the floor like a deflated balloon.

Jim puts his arm around me.

‘Morning,’ he murmurs, then kisses my head, then slips his hand between my legs.

I gently remove it.

‘Jim,’ I say, pushing him gently off me, trying not to sound too annoyed, ‘Jim, look…I can’t, I’m sorry.’

He rolls onto his back and for what seems like for ever, he doesn’t say anything.

When he speaks again, he sounds almost sad.

‘It’s different now, isn’t it?’ he says.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I guess it is.’

He reaches for my hand, strokes it for a second or two and then turns onto his side. ‘Come on,’ he says, pressing his warm, long body against mine. ‘Let’s just have a cuddle.’

We must have eventually drifted off, because when I wake up again, it’s 7.10 a.m. and Jim isn’t in the bed. I sit up and hear the shower going, so I plump up the pillows and pick up the Bundle of Joy book.

I like waking up in Jim’s flat. Like everything in his life – his car, his beloved books, his friends, he got it a long time ago, nurtured it, tended it lovingly and it’s served him well in return.

Jim has always had to look after things, because he’s never known when anything new or better will come along. He was fifteen when his alky waster of a dad walked out, leaving only his mum’s income from her part-time job as a school nurse to support the family, and so he and his sister Dawn never got much. As a result, the bookshelf in his bedroom, made from red bricks and planks of wood, is full of childhood books that he’s looked after for twenty odd years. There are records that he’s had since the eighties, too, and all manner of retro chic – a leather chair, an orange seventies phone – none of it bought in trendy design bric-a-brac shops, but just things he’s kept all this time.

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