Lifesaver (44 page)

I gazed at a framed cross-stitched alphabet on the wall by Lil’s fridge, but it was so blurred that I couldn’t make out any of the letters. I missed Max with a pain almost physical. Lil handed me a tissue and I blew my nose, thinking, well, if I’m giving birth to his half-brother or sister, I’ll have to be able to see him, won’t I? So much for saying I could never have this baby. I’d never felt so confused.

‘That day that Max was ill’, I said slowly, ‘was when I really realized how much they both meant—mean—to me. I’d so wanted to be part of their family; and then at the beginning when Adam was attracted to me, I couldn’t resist. It all seemed so perfect…lthough I didn’t expect to fall in love with him the way I did. And I wanted to be near Max, to look after him, somehow.’

‘There’s a proverb, isn’t there—that once you save someone’s life, you become responsible for them? Is that how you felt?’

‘Yes. It’s an old Chinese saying. I did wonder about that before - and I suppose it was, although not consciously. Max felt—feels—a lot like my own son.’

‘And what about Ken? He really has no idea?’

‘I don’t think so, no. Or else he’s been having an affair too, and it’s suited him that I’ve been away, and we haven’t really talked about what we get up to when the other isn’t there.’

Lil frowned at me. ‘That would be convenient for you, wouldn’t it. Do you really think he’s got someone else?’

I paused, and shook my head sheepishly: ‘No.’

‘How on earth did you manage to fit these two men in, between filming your soap opera?’

I gazed at the floor. Here goes, I thought. I took a deep breath. For some reason, it was almost harder to confess than the adultery:

‘There is no soap opera. I made the job up. When Ken thought I was filming, I was with Adam. And vice versa.’

I saw the surprise, and censure, in her eyes, and it made me want to slide under the breakfast bar and huddle there, crouched over with shame, as I had done on occasion as a small child. There was a long, long silence.

‘How will Adam react to the news of your pregnancy?’

I thought of Adam’s bright blue eyes, imagining how, if I’d only found out two weeks earlier, before Marilyn had returned, those eyes would have opened wide with delight at the news that we were going to have a baby. For a second, my own heart jumped with the news, too. I was pregnant! Maybe this time it was meant to be, and this one would stay…/p>

Two weeks earlier it would have been the kick up the backside to make me leave Ken and start a new life, with my new family, of which I’d have become a legitimate part and not a hanger-on anymore…ut then I remembered that I’d still have had to tell Adam that I’d cheated on him. Perhaps knowledge of our baby might have made him more forgiving; perhaps not. It didn’t matter now anyway.

‘Oh Lil, please help me,’ I begged, not answering her question because I didn’t know how to. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

‘First you have to find a way to tell Ken.’

‘I know. But it’ll ruin his life. He’ll never forgive me.’

‘He might. It won’t ruin his life, though, so don’t think like that. I suppose you just have to decide whether you’re telling him in order to ask his forgiveness and move on, or to simply explain why it has to be over between you.’

‘Yes,’ I said weakly. ‘But I’ve treated him so badly; him, and Adam...’ My voice began to crack. ‘All I wanted was to be part of a family.’

Lil rubbed my arm sympathetically, and stroked my hair.

‘It would take time, of course, for both of you. You couldn’t expect Ken to adjust overnight. But you could have counselling, perhaps?’

‘To help him come to terms with bringing up another man’s baby? That’s so not Ken. He’d never do it. No, I have to tell him, so that he can divorce me.’

Lil’s phone rang. We both listened as the machine picked up the call, and a quavery old lady left a very long and self-conscious message about the flower arranging rota in the church. She appeared to be reading out the entire rota over the telephone. Lil tutted, and spoke over the top of it.

‘Dear Edith. She always does that. I feel like telling her to simply post it to me but she clearly thinks I can’t contain my excitement and absolutely must know which dates everyone’s doing, the minute the rota is printed. Some of these poor old dears have such empty lives.’

I managed a weak smile. It was quite nice to pause for a moment, a commercial break in the tortuous drama of my own life—which, at that moment, I
wished
was empty enough to care so much about flower-arranging in the church. Edith carried on creakily reciting dates and old-fashioned Christian names such as Ivy and Doris and Marjorie, until the tape ran out and her voice stopped, mid-word.

‘Thank heavens,’ said Lil, before coming back to the question I’d left unanswered earlier. ‘And what about Adam - when
are
you going to tell him about the baby? Do you think your news will make him alter his decision to stay with his wife?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’ve hurt him too much. And besides, it isn’t fair on Max, or any of them. She’s Max’s mother…o, I’m not going to tell him, at least not yet. I’ll have to at some point, but I don’t want Adam thinking I’m using the baby to make him choose me.’

I’ve done so many selfish things, I thought. Surely I could manage this one unselfish one. Max needed his mum. I thought of a song about mothers which he had once sung to me. He’d learned it at school, and I’d felt annoyed with his blond, baby-faced teacher—not much more than a child herself - for her lack of sensitivity. She must have known that Marilyn wasn’t around.

The song, sung in Max’s off-key childish voice, went:
‘There are hundreds of stars in the sky/ There are hundreds of fish in the sea/ There are hundreds of people the whole world over/ But on-ly one muvver for me / But on-ly one muvver for meeee.’

He’d beamed with self-satisfaction at his word-perfect rendition, but then a frown had clouded his face. ‘Where
is
mummy?’ he’d asked me, in a ‘where did I leave her?’ kind of way; as if Marilyn had been a lost pair of swimming goggles, or a once-favoured now barely remembered toy which had scudded out of sight under the sofa.

‘I don’t know exactly, honey,’ I’d replied, stroking his hair back from his face. ‘But I’m here. And I love you.’

I shouldn’t have said that; I had no right. There
was
only one ‘muvver’ for Max, and it wasn’t me.

‘Would you consider having an abortion, to save your marriage?’

An abortion. Even the word made me cringe. Lil certainly wasn’t mincing her words—more like slapping them on the table like raw steaks.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I absolutely would not have an abortion.’

However much of a mess this was, I thought, it was imperative that I divested myself of all the secrets and came clean. An abortion would have been the worst secret of all. Besides, I could never have voluntarily got rid of a baby, no way. The idea was abhorrent to me—all those years, desperate for a child, and I’d just thrown away the chance? Not to mention hypocritical, after the hard time I’d given Vicky for considering the same thing.

‘I’m glad,’ said Lil. ‘But Adam does have a right to know.’

‘Yes. I will tell him. Only once I’m past three months, though, and maybe even not until the baby’s born…ust in case.’ There would be no point in dropping that kind of a bombshell on Adam and Marilyn, were this pregnancy to end like three out of my four other ones had. And it would give them time to work on their own relationship, without the spectre of me hovering over them.

‘But you will tell Ken before then, won’t you?’

I sighed, dread already collecting at the pit of my stomach. ‘Yes. I have to get it over with. I can’t stand keeping anything a secret for a minute longer than I have to.’ It was true. After months of seemingly effortless deception, I now felt toxic with deceit. I wanted to be clean for my baby, not choked up and rancid. I wanted to know my fate.

‘When he throws me out, could I come and stay with you?’

Lil put her arm around me. ‘He might not. But of course you may, if he does.’

‘Even if I did want to stay with him, he would never bring up another man’s child.’

‘So you said before. But it does happen.’

‘Does it?’

‘Yes. My friend Betty from the Choral Society, well, she died in ’89, but her husband still idolises her, even all these years later; and it turned out that he knew all along that their youngest son wasn’t his. She’d been having an affair for years. The natural father was the boy’s godfather.’

‘What, he knew even before the baby was born?’

‘Apparently so. So you see, it does happen, if the relationship is strong enough to start with.’

‘That doesn’t make sense, not in my case, Lil—if my relationship had been strong enough to start with, none of this would have happened.’

‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’

It felt quite odd, discussing my sordid personal relationships with Lil, but I knew that she was more objective than, say, Vicky would have been. I would obviously have to tell Vicky at some point, but not until I knew my fate as far as Ken was concerned, I decided. I couldn’t handle another person’s input.

Lil busied herself watering a miniature rose plant on the kitchen windowsill. She used a small, immaculately-polished brass watering can with a long slim spout, and I could see her reflection in the side of it. It reminded me of when Adam and I first got together, seeing our distorted chrome faces in the kettle and realizing how complete I felt.

‘I’ll be praying for you, darling. I’m sure it’ll be all right,’ Lil said briskly, but she didn’t know that I was watching her expression reflected on the watering can and, despite her words, she looked every bit as desperate as I felt.

‘Thank you. I hope so.’

Ken scrutinized the photograph of Adam, Max and I, and, not for the first time, I regretted the decision to use ‘props’. It felt far too much like evidence being passed around a censorious jury; that wordless studied consideration.

I had to keep reminding myself to breathe. There was something unbelievably surreal about the whole experience. I wished Lil was there with me, but of course she couldn’t be; this was something I had to do by myself. Over the past two days I’d wondered, many times, if I would still have confessed without the incriminating evidence of the baby. I knew I couldn’t have lived with all the lies anymore—although perhaps I was still being selfish, by confessing. Perhaps Ken would have rather not known at all.

So far, he had remained very calm, although at the sight of the photograph his brown face took on a grey, ashen appearance; almost a texture, as if one good puff would disperse it, dust to dust, into the atmosphere. It frightened me more than if he’d been contorted with rage, screaming at me.

He handed the photo back, although my hand was trembling almost too much to hold it. There was no disguising the way in which Adam and I had been looking at one another in the picture.

‘So,’ he said. ‘That’s the boy?’

‘Max.’

‘And does his dad have his arm around you for any particular reason?’

I gulped. I’d thought sarcasm wouldn’t be far away - Ken was using the voice I imagined he used when firing employees who raided the CD cupboard.

I dropped the photo, reached back in the box, and passed him Spesh, Max’s battered tiger. Ken took it by one ear, with an expression of distaste which I found offensive, even under the circumstances.

‘What’s that?’

‘He—it—is called Spesh. He was Max’s most treasured possession. He was in hospital with Max the whole two years he was there. It’s why he’s so knackered-looking.’

For a second, alarm flitted across Ken’s face, and I loved him for it. Even in the midst of all this, he was concerned about Max’s recovery. ‘So why have you got it? Max hasn’t—’

‘Max is fine. I’ve got Spesh because...’ The tightness in my throat compressed my voice down to a croak, ‘...Max gave him to me. He told me that I was so special, he wanted me to have what he loved the most. And that was Spesh.’

‘Because you saved his life.’

I gazed into Ken’s dark brown eyes. ‘No. He didn’t know that I’d saved his life. Nor did Adam, his dad; although he does now.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Ken handed Spesh back to me.

‘They didn’t even know my real name. They thought I was Anna Valentine… just wanted to meet him, so badly,’ I began.

I had the weird sensation of a dam beginning to crack and burst; the initial drip drip of information about to become a flood. Here I go, I thought. The point of no return. Like when my waters had broken.

When my waters broke, I’d only been about ten feet away from where we sat now. The world had changed that day, not just for Ken and I, but for everyone: Holly was born on September 11th 2001.

I’d woken from a post-lunch nap, with a sensation like someone had tied an outsize elastic band around my huge middle and was twanging it, nastily. Ken was away at a meeting in Brussels—I hadn’t been happy about him travelling so late in my pregnancy, but I actually hadn’t been due for further ten days.

I’d waddled downstairs in the dressing gown whose cord-ends almost didn’t even tie up any more, made myself a cup of tea and turned on the television. Holly pinched the lining of my womb with her little soft fingers.

‘Ow,’ I said. It finally occurred to me that I might actually be in labour, although my waters hadn’t broken. So it was her, twanging away in there. I hadn’t yet known that she would turn out to be female, but the thought crossed my mind that only a girl knew how to pinch like that.

Then I stared at the buildings which had materialised on the screen in front of my face, part of the iconography of the world’s most famous city. One was in flames. A plane was flying in fuzzy slo-mo straight into the side of the second one, over and over, as if on a loop. I had to sit down - very heavily - on the sofa.

I wondered if Ken knew yet. He was bound to, I thought. Probably no need to ring his mobile and tell him…Then I realised that, somewhat more urgently for us, he might have been more interested to hear that I’d gone into labour. Lest I forgot, Holly reminded me with another less gentle squeeze. I needed to phone Lil too, get her over, and the other midwife. And Vicky.