Lucy Gordon - The Pregnancy Bond

He grinned reluctantly. ‘You’re the most maddening woman!’

‘Tonight was a mistake,’ she admitted. ‘Why don’t you suggest going out for a drink?’

‘Great idea. Leave it to me.’

Carl, coming to find Kelly, was firmly detained in the doorway by Jake’s hand. ‘We’re all going out for a drink,’ he announced. ‘I’m shut up here far too much. It’ll do me good to get out.’

Olympia agreed to this with relief. Jake helped her on with her coat and had reached into the wardrobe’s for Kelly’s jacket before he realised that she was no longer with him.

Investigation revealed her to be still in the kitchen with Carl, deep in argument.

‘No, no, you’ve got it all wrong,’ Carl was saying. ‘I keep telling you this in class but you never believe me. The pyramids-’

Jake coughed from the doorway. ‘Are you two coming?’ he asked coldly.

‘Sure.’ Carl beamed goodwill. ‘You know, this wife of yours has gotten a bee in her bonnet-’

‘She’s not my wife,’ Jake declared in a flat voice.

Carl beamed at Kelly. ‘That’s right, you’re not,’ he said, with such a pleased inflection that Jake nearly knocked him down on the spot.

‘Sorry,’ Kelly said. ‘When we get arguing we never know when to stop.’

‘How delightful,’ Olympia said, appearing beside Jake. ‘How you must enjoy your talks! Why don’t we go on ahead? You can join us when you’ve decided about the pyramids.’

‘What a good idea!’ Kelly exclaimed, with more eagerness than Jake thought was proper.

‘Better if we all go together,’ he tried to insist.

‘But I’m not ready, and Carl wants a cup of tea first. You go on. We’ll catch up.’

‘We’ll be in the Red Lion,’ he growled.

He opened the door to Olympia with a gallant flourish and stood back to let her pass. He glanced back at Kelly and Carl, who were already sitting together on the sofa, riffling through a book. Nothing could have been more innocent, and nothing could have annoyed him more.

The Red Lion was a small pub two streets away. It was cheerful but slightly shabby, and not at all what Olympia was used to. Jake managed to find them a table in the corner, not too close to the piped music, which made her wince.

‘Do you realise this is the first time we’ve been together outside that apartment?’ she asked meltingly.

‘What was that?’ Jake cupped his ear.

She repeated the words, but at a volume that robbed them of their cooing quality and made them sound like a nag.

‘What a delightful place this is,’ she tried again. ‘Not sophisticated but-full of character.’

‘I never was sophisticated,’ Jake said. ‘In some of the places I’ve knocked around this would be luxury. It suits me.’

‘But don’t you remember Paris-the night we had dinner together at that restaurant in the Eiffel Tower? That was a special time, wasn’t it?’

He felt awkward. He’d felt awkward then, he remembered.

‘And afterwards you came to my room,’ she reminded him.

‘And got too drunk to go through with it.’

‘But I honoured you for that. You were a married man, and you took it seriously. But now-’ She touched his hand and smiled into his eyes. ‘Now it’s different.’

‘Yes, a lot of things are different,’ he agreed sombrely, taking a surreptitious look at his watch. Where was Kelly?

A burst of loud music made Olympia wince. ‘Do we have to stay here?’ she said, looking around her with distaste. ‘I’m sure there are nicer places.’

‘I told Kelly we’d be here,’ Jake said stubbornly. ‘I don’t want her to turn up and find us gone.’

‘Oh, darling,’ Olympia squeezed his hand. ‘You don’t really think they’re coming, do you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well-people can get very deeply involved in discussing-the pyramids. And let’s face it, there’s a lot they can’t say with you around.’

‘But it was Kelly who-’ he stopped.

‘Kelly who suggested the drink, and then backed out when you were committed?’ Olympia asked quizzically.

‘Yes, dammit!’ he snapped.

‘You can’t really blame her. She’s in a very equivocal position between you and Carl.’

‘What do you mean, equivocal?’

‘Well, why isn’t she living with him? They’re obviously very close, and you say he’s the father-’

‘I said he might be.’

‘Are there any other candidates?’

Without warning a pit had appeared at his feet. Hell would freeze over before he admitted to Olympia that after backing away from her bed he’d slept with his ex-wife, possibly fathered her child, but didn’t know because she was keeping him emotionally at arm’s length.

‘I told you once to leave this,’ he said firmly. ‘Kelly and I are like brother and sister. There are questions I don’t ask her because the answers are none of my business.’

Like, did she fool me into going out so that she could be alone with Carl? A husband could ask, but how can I?

The conversation limped along for another half an hour before he could decently put her into a cab and bid her goodnight. Olympia kissed him tenderly, as if to say that she understood. He only wished he understood it himself.

The lights were on when he reached the apartment, but there was no sign of life. Then Jake heard the murmur of voices coming from behind Kelly’s closed bedroom door. Kelly murmuring, Carl in response, then a soft, feminine laugh that made the hair stand up on the back of Jake’s neck.

‘That’s lovely,’ he heard her say. ‘Oh, yes, I like that.’

Then Carl, ‘As long as you’re pleased, Kelly. That’s the main thing. This is half the fun of parenthood.’

Jake stood very still, hoping for something more that would explain what he’d heard, but the voices dropped to murmurs. He waited there for a long while, before a sense that his behaviour was undignified drove him to bed. He lay listening for Carl’s departure until, despite his determination not to, he fell asleep.

JAKE didn’t know what made him awaken, but one moment he was asleep, and the next he was sitting up in bed, fully alert. Opening his door, he found the apartment silent and dark. Kelly’s door was ajar and he ventured to push it gently and look in. The glow from the window showed him that the room was empty.

Flicking the light on he discovered that the bed hadn’t been slept in. Spread over the duvet were books of nursery wallpaper, and pages of scrawled notes. But there was no sign of Kelly.

Some instinct made him go to the window. It overlooked the front, and the little park where they had talked the other night. There were still some park lights on, and he could just make out the tiny children’s playground, with a couple of swings and one plain wooden carousel, aimlessly turning. After a moment he identified the person sitting on it. She had a forlorn aspect, huddled in a thick jacket, arms crossed over her chest against the night air, turning and turning aimlessly. In a minute Jake had thrown on some clothes and was hurrying downstairs.

By the time he neared the carousel it was moving very slowly, bringing Kelly face to face with him, then carrying her gently away again. She didn’t seem surprised by his sudden appearance, and he wondered if she was even aware of him. He climbed on next to her. Kelly didn’t speak, but she smiled and tucked her hand into the crook of his arm.

‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘did the two of you decide?’

‘Decide?’

‘How to decorate the baby’s room. That’s what you were mulling over, wasn’t it?’

She gave a brief laugh. ‘Yes. We can’t decide between fluffy penguins and fluffy bears.’

He considered. ‘I prefer fluffy tigers myself.’

‘Uh-uh! Carl’s determined on penguins.’

Jake made a face. ‘Well, if that’s what Carl wants… Is he planning to do the decorating as well?’

‘He did mention it.’

‘There’s no need. I’m strong enough for a bit of painting.’

‘No way,’ she said at once. ‘You’re going to be on the sick list for a while yet. Leave it to Carl. Anyway, it can wait. There are still important matters to be agreed. If I give in about penguins on the walls I expect to choose the stencils on the furniture.’

If he’d really been her brother he could have asked which room she was planning to turn over to the baby. Probably the small one, where she was now sleeping. But that left her nowhere to go, except his room. Which meant that she was looking ahead to his departure.

Jake tried phrasing the question several ways before abandoning the attempt.

He pushed the ground with his foot, to speed up the carousel.

‘There was one of these where we used to live,’ he said after a while. ‘Just after we were married.’

‘I remember,’ she said softly. ‘I used to think I’d take our baby on it one day.’

He reached for her hand in his arm and gave it a squeeze.

Turn, turn…the park was gliding gradually around them.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there,’ he said quietly.

He wondered if he should explain that he meant when she’d lost the baby, but she immediately picked up his thought.

‘It wasn’t your fault. You got that freelance assignment. You’d worked so hard to make them give it to you and nobody else-’

‘Jobs had been a bit thin on the ground,’ he recalled. ‘We’d gone through your mother’s money and I had nothing to show for it. I felt so ashamed of that, I’d have done anything to earn money. I didn’t like going abroad on that job, but you seemed fine when I left-’

‘Nobody could have guessed it was going to happen,’ she said quickly. ‘I was actually feeling very well that day, and then suddenly-’

‘Go on,’ he said after a moment.

‘No, it doesn’t matter.’

Her refusal was like a door slammed in his face, hurting with unexpected force. ‘Why won’t you tell me?’

‘You always said there was no point in brooding about things,’ she explained without rancour. ‘You said we’d talk about it later, when I was pregnant again and talking wouldn’t hurt.’