December EIGHT YEARS BEFORE

December

E IGHT YEARS BEFORE

12.15 P . M .

Madeleine stirred her tea and took a bite of the fat croissant. She was hungry, her sickness gone, replaced by a much bigger worry. She looked out over the street from her vantage point on the banquette in the front booth of The Copper Kettle, happy to be in the warm café where she had idled in her teens, when funds allowed. This very booth where they had laughed and made life plans, all seemingly redundant now. This very booth where she had once got up and walked out without paying for her coffee, thinking Trina had settled the bill. An oversight rectified by the leaving of large tips here ever since. Her friend still teased her about it.

People rushed by, some loaded up with bags – evidence of Christmas shopping; others were holding hands with loved ones, and a disproportionate number of them were pregnant or pushing prams or pushchairs. Everywhere she looked she saw distended tums, smiling toddlers, cute babies nestling inside papooses. A man bustled past carrying a bulk supply of nappies. It felt like the world was conspiring to normalise her predicament, although she doubted anything about this would ever feel ‘normal’.

It was a curious situation. She had seen the screen herself, knew for a fact that she was pregnant, and yet it didn’t feel real. Armed with her new knowledge, she recalled that her boobs had been quite sensitive, but no more or less than when she was expecting her period. Maybe her waistbands were a smidge tighter, but she had been lax about exercising in recent weeks and was possibly indulging in more snacks than usual. She took another bite of the croissant.

The door opened and in ran her buddy – her best friend since childhood and the only person she had wanted to reach out to. It was a surprise how her tears again threatened. This was not like Madeleine. Not at all. It was a relief her mate had got there so quickly, evidently dropping whatever she was up to and heading where she was needed most.

Trina slipped into the booth and took both of Madeleine’s hands into her own. ‘Look at you, slumming it back over in East London!’

She nodded and bit her trembling bottom lip. It was as if she’d been holding it together but the sight of her friend meant she could let it all out.

‘What on earth’s wrong? I’ve never seen you like this.’ Trina lowered her head and looked into her face. ‘Is it Marnie or Dougie? Has something happened?’

‘No.’ She sniffed.

‘Have you lost your job? Got dumped? Damaged your knock-off Gucci handbag?’

Shaking her head, she allowed herself a small smile. She did love that handbag.

‘How many more guesses have I got?’

Trina referred to the game of What Am I? that they liked to play in their youth – the more random the subject, the better.

Taking a deep breath, she freed herself from Trina’s hands, sat back against the leatherette seat of the upright booth and swallowed. ‘I’m pregnant.’

‘Oh my God! Pregnant?’

‘Yep.’ Saying it out loud didn’t make it feel any less ludicrous.

‘Have you done a test? Are ... are you sure?’

‘Yes, I did a test. The worst minute of my life. I sat there, and the result came and my whole world imploded.’

‘Pregnant?’ Trina studied her face as if looking for clues.

‘Yes. In fact’ – she wiped her nose on her napkin – ‘I am very pregnant. Like, seven months pregnant.’

It was a scary thought, and equally as scary was the prospect of having to admit who the father of the baby was.

‘Seven months!’ Her friend’s wide-eyed repetition said it all.

‘Yep.’

‘Mads! Oh my God! That’s wonderful! Is it wonderful? I ... I don’t know what to say!’

Her friend spoke for both of them.

‘No, it’s not wonderful. Not for me. I only just found out – I had no idea. I can’t believe it. It doesn’t seem real.’

‘Shit.’

She couldn’t have put it better herself.

‘Yes, shit.’

‘Well ...’ Trina took her time. ‘I don’t know if it’s okay to mention this, but I’m guessing your options are limited this far into your pregnancy?’

‘You could say that.’

‘My God, this is ... a lot!’

‘It really is.’

‘In that case, Mads, you have to think of it in a positive light. This could be absolutely brilliant. It might just be the best thing that has ever happened to you. You might not have planned it, but ...’

She shook her head and raised her hand to stop her friend from talking. To hear the dribble of clichéd claptrap did nothing to help her.

‘No, no. I mean, I know I’m in shock, but I can tell you without hesitation that it is most definitely not the best thing that has ever happened to me, it’s the worst. The very worst. A child?’ She closed her eyes and breathed through her nose. ‘You know this is how I’ve always felt. Nothing has changed. I don’t want, and never have wanted, kids.’

‘I thought you’d change your mind.’

Trina’s forthright and automatic response was galling.

‘Why do people always say that? As if they really, really hope that this might be the case, because any woman who decides she doesn’t want to be a mother must have a screw loose, right? Or must be strangely wired or just doesn’t get it! Whereas I think it’s everyone else desperate to jump on the baby train that just doesn’t get it! I’ve never wanted to be trapped like that, never wanted the bloody responsibility, the burden of it.’

Trina held her gaze and again reached for her hand. ‘You won’t be thinking straight, Mads. You need time.’

‘You’re right, I’m not thinking straight, but you know me, Trina! You know this is how I’ve always felt!’

‘I know it’s what you’ve always said, but ...’ Her friend’s tone of disbelief was jarring.

‘There is no but. It’s a life for someone else! Not me! I can’t stand the thought of it! I’ve lived around these women my whole life, women whose existences are small, women who are made old in months. You’ve seen them too.’ She pointed out of the window, knowing several examples to prove her point would walk by at any given moment. ‘Pushing their babies around in second-hand prams, meeting other mums on the bench by the swings, swapping tales of mediocrity just to have a break in their groundhog day. We only have this one life, Trina – this one life! I’m not going to waste a second of it.’

‘Maybe they don’t think they are wasting it – have you ever thought that they might like that life? That maybe they’re happy, maybe—’ her friend began.

‘No, they don’t! They can’t! They read magazines and wonder what it would be like to look like the model smiling back at them, just for a day. They cry over soppy tunes on the radio because it takes them back to happy, carefree nights when they had choices and the life that lay ahead for them held fabulous possibilities. They plan for holidays they can’t afford, fixated by the red ring on the calendar pinned up on the damp kitchen wall, living for that week when they get to escape the monotony and head to the seaside to stay in a shitty caravan and eat chips in the rain and dance at the on-site social club because it’s the greatest bloody week of their lives! A week they will think about while they save up to go again. And I want more! I want a different life. I always have! I have so many plans!’

‘You sound so certain, Mads, but perhaps they don’t feel limited like that. Maybe, to be a parent, to make a home, to climb into bed every night and snuggle close to someone they love and who loves them back, to feel content, eat nice food, knowing they get to spend every average day wrapped in love?’

‘No! No way! Why are you romanticising the shiteness of it all?’ She hadn’t meant to raise her voice.

‘And why are you shitting on the niceness of it all?’

‘What are you talking about?’ It bothered her that Trina didn’t get it. This was her best friend – they agreed on ninety-nine per cent of everything, except which member of 1D they were going to marry, but even that was probably a good thing; no one wanted you and your best mate to be in love with the same boy.

‘What I’m talking about is your bloody attitude. It sucks! You sound so superior. You’re never satisfied, and you’ve been that way since you left school – always desperate to look around the next corner because you think that’s where the good stuff lurks. Never standing still, not for a single second, stopping to enjoy the view, but always with your mind on what comes next and what comes next ... It means you’ll never arrive! It means you’ll never be happy! And for your information, that small existence that you hold in such scorn is exactly what I aspire to. What you describe, making a home and feeling content, is a life I’d like – a life I’d love!’

‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ Madeleine’s voice was loud, her tone incredulous. She wasn’t sure she’d ever sworn at Trina like this. Her heart flexed and her skin itched with the pain of it all.

‘No, I’m not. I’m deadly serious. I look at someone like Jimmy who is kind and sweet and placid and I think I’d love to wake up to him each day, love to cook him nice food and go for walks and—’

‘J-Jimmy?’ Madeleine stuttered, Trina now making it clear that when it came to the boy in question, the candle she had held for him during their school days did in fact still burn brightly. She felt sick at the prospect of coming clean about their fling, admitting to the few months they’d met up secretly for sex and vodka and vodka and sex. ‘Jimmy was just a school crush for you, wasn’t he? One minute you fancied him, the next you were off to Southend for the day with Mark Henderson!’ She tried to make light of it, tried to defuse the verbal bomb that ticked on her tongue.

‘I would rather have been in Southend with Jimmy. Yes, Jimmy! And how dare you laugh? He might not be the high-earning ambitious type that you’ve got your sights on, someone who can buy you designer shoes and posh dinners, but I happen to think that kindness and patience are worth more than anything.’

‘All right, Mother Teresa! It wasn’t so long ago that I was pulling you off flat-nosed bruisers in dodgy pubs who were snogging the face off you and trying to shove their bitten fingernails inside your bra! So don’t come at me with “all I want is kindness”!’

‘Don’t be such a cow. It’s not all I want, Mads, and you know it! I just want someone who is going to show up, someone who instinctively knows what I want and when I need it, and who just shows up! And yes, kindness. And I’m sorry if that doesn’t fit with your vision of a perfect man!’

She and Trina stared at each other, neither wanting to be the first to look away. When they finally averted their eyes, it was at the same time. And when they looked back up, they found themselves on either side of a widening chasm – a deep, treacherous pass with no bridge, no rope ladder, and no hope of crossing. Madeleine knew she could reach out her hands, call to her friend, beg her to find a way to jump across, but that it was futile. They now, having for most of their lives been joined at the hip, found themselves in very, very different places.

Heartbreakingly, it felt like the beginning of the end.

This would forever be the time when the friendship that had sustained her through her teens and provided her with more joy than any other relationship in her life so far began to falter. There was no fresh argument, no intensification of their row, no fight or further cross words. And actually such a rupture, a more violent occurrence, might have made things easier to accept, because deep down Madeleine knew that in the quiet moments and dark nights when she felt the ache of loss and wished she could call her sister, her beloved Trina, this was the moment that she would recall; the dull thud, thud as the ties that bound them fell away.

Two women, no longer kids, who at this crossroads in their lives, chose very different paths.

‘Well, whatever you decide, whatever happens, you know that your mum and dad will always be there for you.’ Trina swallowed, her eyes misting.

Madeleine breathed deeply as their words settled around them like a toxic dust. Her friend’s implication was clear, her mum and dad would be there, but she may not ...

Trina was hurt and Madeleine knew that what came next would be the final cut; their fate about to be sealed with six words.

Three spoken by each.

Equal in magnitude.

She was sure that the effect for Trina was the same as it was for her. Words which hit her body like fire-flaming rocks that burned through her skin and bone and came to rest in her chest where she was confident they would be lodged for a lifetime. Equally sure was she that in the future, it would take only the merest breeze of memory to fan them and the fire would roar again as surely as if she had heard them for the first time.

Six words that changed everything.

‘It’s Jimmy’s baby,’ she whispered.

‘That’s fucking perfect,’ Trina had replied.