The Memory Book (31 page)

‘Not exactly.’ He grinned. ‘Mum’s faith meant a lot to her, and some of it’s rubbed off on me. I mean, I prefer to think that there is something out there rather than nothing, don’t you?’

‘No,’ I said simply. ‘I don’t want there to be something that decided to make my mum, or yours, so sick just on a whim. I’d rather it was all random, horrible chance. Otherwise it’s impossible to understand.’

‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘I felt like that when she died. We all felt like that. We didn’t know how much she held the three
of us together until she was gone. Dad was so angry; I was so angry. I lost him, too, for a while. We went our separate ways for almost four years. I’d hear about him getting thrown out of the pub that Mum used to work in, spending the night in the cells. He’d hear about me bouncing from one hovel to the next, waking up tired and confused.’

‘And then you found Jesus?’ I asked him a little mischievously.

‘And then I gave my dad a second chance, and he gave me one too, because we both worked out, before it was too late, that Mum would be so upset to see how we’d reacted to losing her. It would be like everything she’d done when she was alive was for nothing. So me and my dad made friends again. It was a slow business – it took a long time – but we needed each other. We sorted each other out. He’s my family, and I love him.’

‘And that’s why you think I need to give Paul another chance?’ I asked him.

‘I think so,’ Zach said. ‘I don’t think you should ever turn your back on any human relationship when there is still even a shred of hope.’

‘I have a family already, though,’ I said. ‘Most of them will be heading this way first thing in the morning. And I don’t want to force my way into someone’s life. Not even if he is my biological dad.’

‘You,’ Zach said quietly, looking right into my eyes in that popstar way of his, ‘you will never have to force yourself
into anyone’s life. Anyone with half a brain can see that you are … something wonderful.’

‘I must have met a lot of people who are brainless, then,’ I said to deflect the moment, which seemed like too much for two people who were just hanging out.

‘That,’ Zach said, leaning back against the headboard and crossing his arms, ‘is entirely possible.’

A little while later, when I was almost asleep, his voice woke me. ‘What are you going to call your baby?’ he asked me. It was the first time since I’d told him I was pregnant that he’d asked me any direct questions about it.

‘I have no idea,’ I said sleepily. ‘Maybe Moon Unit, or Satchel. Maybe Apple, if it’s a girl.’

‘And what about the father, what does he think?’ He asked me ever so carefully, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t mentioned him yet. For all Zach knew, he could be waiting at home for me now.

‘He doesn’t know yet,’ I say. ‘We split up, and then he thought I’d got rid of it. But I will tell him. I have to because, well, look at me. A textbook case of history repeating itself. I have to make sure this little one doesn’t do that.’

‘Good,’ he said simply. ‘You should tell him.’

I don’t know when we fell asleep, or who fell asleep first, but it was probably me. All I remember was that one moment we were talking about the true meaning of
The Shining
, and the next I woke up with my back pressed against his, and we were the opposite of spooning, curled away
from each other … and yet I felt somehow fully embraced.

I do wish I hadn’t fallen asleep in my clothes, although I suppose it is marginally better than falling asleep without them.

Now I wonder about having a shower, but it feels wrong, being naked with him next door, and so instead I brush my teeth, take off my make-up and wash my hair, leaning over the bath so that the rivulets of warm soapy water defy gravity to run up my elbows, soaking my shirt. I wrap a towel around my head and look in the mirror. I look stupid, so I take it off again and attempt to towel-dry my hair as much as I can, until it is hanging in damp ringlets. I look slightly less ridiculous. I walk back into the bedroom, and he is still asleep, still curled up on his side. He looks so … ridiculously beautiful that I have to remind myself that beautiful boys with lots of friends don’t fall for pregnant girls with stupid hair and very sick mothers. Oh, but how wonderful it would be to think that they might.

I sit on the edge of the bed and touch his arm. He really is flat out – clearly a very deep sleeper. Shaking him gently, I watch as his eyes finally flutter open and focus on me. He smiles. It’s such a sweet, happy, sleepy smile that I want to kiss him. But I don’t.

‘It’s morning,’ I say. ‘Just gone eight.’

‘I stayed the night!’ He sits up and stretches. ‘I’d better go home and get changed – I’ve got work.’

We sit looking at each other for another moment.

‘I don’t want you to leave Manchester without saying goodbye to me,’ he says.

‘OK, I won’t,’ I promise. ‘I don’t want to leave without saying goodbye to you, either.’

I watch him get out of bed, pick up his things, run his fingers through his hair until it’s slightly less crazy, and then I stand up as he walks to the door.

‘I’m going to hug you,’ he warns me. I nod my assent, and we embrace, my arms around his neck, his arms around my waist. We stand chest to chest, and I rest my head in the curve of his neck. He squeezes me ever so gently.

‘Take care, both of you,’ he says, as he lets himself out of the door.

And I realise that, apart from Mum, he is the first person to talk to my baby like it’s a person in its own right. And that makes me happy.

‘Rosie!’ Mum squeals when she sees me, running over to me with her arms outstretched. ‘Rosie McMosie! We are going to have a blast!’

She kisses me on the cheek and rocks me from side to side as we hug.

‘The first thing we need to do is to give the oldies the slip, and then we’ll hit the town, yeah? Know any good bars round here?’ Mum looks expectantly at me.

‘Um …’ Esther, who looks sleepy and confused after the long drive, screws her fists into her eyes and blinks, scrambling
down from Gran’s arms as I come into focus. ‘Caitlin!’ She shouts my name with about the same level of enthusiasm as Mum had called out this Rosie’s. ‘Yay!’

I pick her up and kiss her.

‘This is my kid sister,’ Mum tells me. ‘She’s not too annoying most of the time.’

‘Mummy’s playing pretend,’ Esther tells me sagely.

‘Hello, darling.’ Gran kisses me on the cheek, and Mum rolls her eyes at me, waggling her eyebrows like we have some sort of shared joke about mums, which makes me laugh – my mum, joking with me about mums. ‘Claire,’ Gran says. ‘We are in Manchester. We’ve come to see Caitlin, to help her talk to Paul Sumner?’

‘Oh, him.’ Mum grins like … well, like me, I suppose, this morning. ‘I think he fancies me.’ She winks at me. ‘Is he here? Oh, my God, what am I going to wear?’

‘Claire,’ Gran says again, taking Mum’s hand and looking her in the eye. ‘This is Caitlin, your daughter. She’s twenty years old, remember? And having a baby, just like you did at her age.’

‘I’m not getting pregnant at twenty,’ Mum says, appalled. ‘Who would be stupid enough to get knocked up at twenty?’

‘You, dear,’ Gran says. ‘And Caitlin is about to make you a granny.’

Mum looks at me. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘You aren’t Rosie at all, are you?’

‘No, Mum,’ I say, holding out my arms to her.

‘Oh, hello, darling.’ She kisses me on the cheek and holds me again, differently this time, like a mother should. ‘I’ve missed you. Now, let’s hatch a plan to make your father see sense.’

Dear Paul
,

I’m sorry that I am not there, that I just went the way I did, without leaving you a note or telling you where I was going, or why. It must seem like I had a very big secret, running away like that. But it’s not about you, or anything you’ve done wrong.

I suppose you guessed that I came back to my mum’s. You call every evening, and she says I am not here, because I’ve begged her to. But she thinks I am wrong. She thinks I should talk to you. I think you will stop calling soon. I think you are probably most annoyed that I just went without telling you why, not that I have gone. You might not think that is the way you feel, but if you concentrate really hard on why you want to talk to me, I bet that’s it, isn’t it?

Is that wrong? We talked a lot about being in love, didn’t we? About being together, but … something happened
,
something that means we have to be serious about all the things we said. We have to really mean them. And how can we really mean anything when we haven’t finished growing up yet? I still don’t eat broccoli, and you have to listen to a radio at night to be able to sleep. I thought about it, and decided it was just better to take the worry away, to separate us now, when it will be clean and certain.

I keep saying to Mum: this is the nineties, and a woman doesn’t have to be defined by the man she is with, or the choices she makes. A woman can do things her way. There aren’t any pigeonholes any more: we can do anything. Mum looks at me, and I know she used to believe that, but she doesn’t any more.

I’m trying to tell you that … It seems so strange, so funny. To write it – to say it out loud. To know that it is true. But it really is, and I am smiling when I write this.

Paul, I’m pregnant. I had a scan, I’m eighteen weeks pregnant. I know that logic says I shouldn’t have the baby – that I should ‘take care’ of it, and go back to college, and start again, and pretend that this hasn’t happened. But I can’t do that. I love this child already, from the instant I knew it was there, more than anything I’ve ever loved. The way I feel about this baby, the love I’m feeling, is how I know that I don’t really love you. I mean, I do love you, but not enough to make us being together right.

And I know that if you read this, you will come and find me, and you will try to make us work, because you want
to be that kind of person, and that is the thing about you I will always love. But it wouldn’t make it right, Paul. So I am sorry. I’m not going to send you this letter.

I’m sorry,

Claire.

Not for the first time since we set off from my hotel, leaving Gran and Esther planning a trip to the cinema, I have serious second thoughts. It’s hard to know why we are doing this. I mean, I know the practical reasons, and I even know the emotional reasons, I suppose. Yet still, even knowing all of that, it’s hard to feel that it makes sense to go and turn my life, and Paul’s and his family’s life, upside down. And for what? We know nothing of each other, we’re strangers. Zach says I owe Paul a chance to get to know me, and Mum has an idea that having Paul in my life will replace what I am losing in losing her. And I can see why she would think that, but the truth is that nothing can ever replace my mother. Not anything. Especially not a man who, until recently, I thought had rejected me, and for whom I have not even been a nebulous idea.

And yet Mum and I are going to Paul’s house to tell him the truth, whether he likes it or not.

This wasn’t how I planned it, but when I saw Mum, and saw that somehow, in the very short time since I last saw her, she has faded a little more, I knew I didn’t want to take her on to campus, where it would be crowded and confusing. I have to protect her as much as I can from the world outside her head.

Watching her float between this world and hers, I realise it’s as though she’s become free of gravity, and slowly, slowly, she is floating away. The tether that connects her to this reality is gossamer thin, and spinning ever finer. Soon she will be gone, but I don’t think the world she is going to will be any less real for her, and that comforts me somehow.

So as Mum, Gran and Esther checked into their room, I called Zach and asked him if there was a way of finding out where Paul lives. He called me back within half an hour, and it turns out that he knew someone who knew someone who was studying under Paul. As fate would have it, my father has a barbeque at his home every summer for his students, so this girl knew exactly where he lives. Strange how easy it is to find the home of my father, and now the man who has been worlds away from me for my whole life is just minutes away. And all the way over there, I kept having second thoughts … third and fourth ones, too.

Turning up at his home, where his wife and children will be, doesn’t seem fair, and I worry about him, and his family. Gran said it didn’t have to be dramatic, though. She said there doesn’t have to be a scene. All we have to do is ask for a quiet
word, and when he sees Mum, he will agree to a meeting somewhere else, maybe at the hotel, to talk things through.

That’s all this is: an introduction of sorts. So I put away all my doubts and take a breath, glancing at Mum, wondering where in time she is at the moment. She was with me when we got in the car, but we both stopped talking as we neared Paul’s house. There’s a new dreamy quality to her now, a little like when she first met Greg and I’d find her standing perfectly still, gazing out of a window daydreaming about him.

We pull up outside Paul’s house. It’s a nice detached Victorian house, maybe three storeys, with a gravel drive and a garden. There are small conical trees in pots standing either side of the door, and the grass is very green and very neatly trimmed, just like the privet hedge. The light from the front room shines out into the world, and as we go to the front door, up three stone steps, I can just about see into the basement kitchen where Paul’s young children are eating their dinner.

‘We don’t have to do this.’ I stop Mum, who smoothes down her hair. She is holding her memory book, in which the letter that she showed me for the first time this morning is neatly stuck. The letter, written in her own hand, so familiar – always disorganised, looping madly, leaning forwards and then backwards again, as if she’s never really decided who she is. There is something more careful than usual about the way this letter is written, though – as if it had been rehearsed – and when I read it, I realised that must have been true. The letter that she folded inside the memory book is probably a
much-honed version, and I understand finally what she was trying to tell him and me. Mum always knew that Paul wasn’t the love of her life, and she knew that to try to make their relationship something it wasn’t, purely because of me, would be a mistake. Twenty-one years ago, when Mum discovered she was pregnant by her first proper boyfriend, she decided that she wanted me more than she wanted him: she chose me. And not everything she decided since then has been perfect, but neither has she once wavered from that first decision. Even in deciding not to tell him about me, even then, Mum chose me; and now I am choosing
my
baby, and our future together.