All That Mullarkey Page 8

  Dora checked again that Meggie couldn’t hear. ‘Better!’ she beamed.

  Hesitation. ‘An affair?’

  ‘Better. It’s … it!’

  Eddie began to grizzle and Meggie, slowing, shouted, ‘Mummy! Off now.’ They trailed back to 11 Port Road to find Gav’s car parked outside. ‘I won’t disturb Gav just now.’ Dora hurriedly settled a squalling Eddie in his car seat as if frightened Cleo might frogmarch her in and force her to face Keith’s best friend.

  Meggie, drooping, began to whinge. ‘Mummy, Mummy …’

  ‘When I’ve strapped Eddie in,’ Dora soothed.

  On impulse, Cleo lifted Meggie up on her hip and felt the girl’s tired head nestle gratefully into her shoulder. Hot, moist arms looped Cleo’s neck and sandalled feet tapped her thigh. Meggie smelled of Milky Bars. Cleo found herself rocking gently as she wondered what kind of enormous changes were on their way into the child’s little life.

  Dora looked up, having finally succeeded in bending Eddie in the middle so that his straps could be fastened. ‘Now there’s something you don’t see every day. Cleo Callaway being maternal.’

  Cleo’s face caught fire. ‘She looked tired out.’ Was guilt written across her face like graffiti? Cleo might be up the duff. Justin + Gav were ’ere.

  Dora moved closer and Meggie instantly shifted her weight towards her mother’s waiting arms. Cleo’s side felt cool as Dora took Meggie up.

  Dropping a kiss on her daughter’s hair, Dora’s eyes flickered across Cleo’s face. ‘You don’t have to sound apologetic. It’s not a crime to feel affection for a child.’

  A child. A child? A child. Impulsively, Cleo asked, ‘How did it feel to be pregnant?’ And instantly wished she hadn’t.

  But Dora didn’t seem to see anything odd in the question. She hugged Meggie. ‘For me it was lovely. I’d been aching for a baby. My boobs got bigger, then my stomach. I used to love to feel the baby kicking, as if I was hugging a secret. When Meggie was born I actually missed the constant movement inside. But that’s just me – I’ve heard others say they felt invaded, couldn’t wait for it to be over, were sick for the entire nine months, got greasy hair and spots.’ She slid Meggie onto her booster seat and fastened the belt, stroking the little girl’s damp fringe where it hung over heavy eyes. ‘Pregnancy changes your life completely.’

  ‘Yes. I can see how that works.’

  As Cleo stood on the pavement and waved Dora off, Gav bounded from the house behind her. He kissed her lips, hard and briefly. ‘Hello and goodbye, I’m playing seven-a-side. Unless you want to come?’

  ‘I haven’t eaten or anything.’ She pressed an answering kiss to the corner of his mouth and stepped out from his arm. ‘Hope you score.’

  He slammed the tailgate of his car and looked at her oddly. ‘Not very likely, is it? As I’m goalie now?’

  She shook back her hair. How could she have forgotten? Gav downshifting to goalie had been a big enough deal at the time. He’d slowed up, he’d been told, and would no longer be picked as a forward. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d heard the word ‘gutted’. ‘I hope nobody from the other team scores, then.’ Just go. Drive away. I need to be alone.

  A final blown kiss and he slid into the car.

  Her legs, as she trod up the stairs to their bedroom, vibrated very slightly. Surely they couldn’t be shaking? Maybe she was just tired.

  The box. Blue and white. Cellophane. Instructions. She stared at the wand for a long time. Read about the ludicrous procedure of peeing on it and waiting to see how many blue lines appeared in the square window. The test could be done at any time of day.

  She was sure they knew what they were talking about, but maybe she’d do it in the morning. She was so tired now, weighed down by Dora’s confessions; too tired to face up to things.

  Carefully, she tucked the box back in the drawer.

  In the shower, she soaped. Her breasts felt funny. She cupped them – was there an unusual weightiness? They ached. Could be premenstrual, she suffered that way occasionally. And her stomach, surely, was rounder? But if she was pregnant shouldn’t she be feeling sick? Immediately, she did feel sick, nauseated at what she might have to deal with. She thought of Yvonne’s fainting fits. Was that why her own legs felt like jelly?

  She held her stomach, pressing hard as if she could squeeze a period out. Surely she couldn’t be pregnant. It couldn’t be her checking her pants every time she went to the loo. Going more often than usual – and hell, that was another sign, wasn’t it? She didn’t want children. Gav didn’t.

  She couldn’t begin to guess how Justin would feel about it.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Gav’s really odd.’ Cleo pulled her jacket more tightly around her and sipped her wine. If only the sun would come out and breathe a bit of colour into the summer flowers in the pub garden by the river, a little warmth into the air. ‘Ever since, y’know, he’s been strange.’

  Liza, the non-driver, drank deeply and topped her wine up generously. ‘In what way? He hasn’t taken up gardening has he?’

  Cleo glared. ‘I’m talking about this pyjama thing. Have you ever heard of couples voluntarily depriving themselves of sexual contact to enhance a “big bang” at some future date?’

  Liza’s busy eyes followed four men cycling past in black and rainbow lycra. ‘Yup. Channel 4 documentary. Men with impotence problems.’

  Cleo felt the urge to grasp her sister’s elfin face by the nose and yank her around to pay proper attention. ‘But if that’s his problem, why the big bulge in the pyjamas? All he ever wants is passionate hugs and intense kisses. But anyway, sod him, I don’t like pyjamas and I’ve gone back to sleeping in the nud. He can please himself.’

  The cyclists out of sight, Liza turned blue eyes on Cleo. ‘So you’re not having sex?’

  Cleo shook her head and shivered, wondering if she could persuade Liza to move indoors where it was warmer. The scenery in there was inarguably duller – Liza’s eyes had flicked now to two red kayaks skimming up the river towards them, powered by broad shoulders and flashing paddles.

  ‘Don’t you mind? No sex?’

  Cleo shrugged. ‘Guilt over Justin’s still interfering with my appetite, probably, and I’ve had other things to worry about.’ Like a pregnancy test that had somehow achieved bogeyman status, so scary that she’d mustered a string of excuses to avoid taking it. Because if she knew she was pregnant, then she’d have to face the tricky paternity question –

  Was becoming a total wuss a symptom of pregnancy? She sighed, blowing someone’s discarded paper napkin off the wooden table.

  Liza’s contemplative gaze swivelled her way. ‘I suppose you’re sure, by now, that you’re not going to be a mummy?’

  Cleo deliberately assumed her most withering expression. ‘Liza! I’m old enough to cope with life, you know.’

  So why hadn’t she taken the pregnancy test?

  Why was she doing nothing while her husband acted like a prat and her marriage became a shell? Why was she avoiding contact with the couples she’d long considered her friends? Why wasn’t she even confiding properly in Liza, Liza, with whom no subject had ever been sacred? Why wasn’t she sharing her fears with someone. Anyone?

  Perhaps with one of the men responsible, if a baby was on the cards?

  Stupid expression, ‘on the cards’, as if an embryo was balanced on a pack of Waddington’s. No, it’d be growing inside her body. Part of her. Taking sustenance, developing, moving. Inside her body. She cupped her hand furtively to her stomach. It was rounder, she was sure. She felt dull with fear and dumb with misery.

  Gav made the phone call. He’d put it off for too long. He found the number in the phone book and dialled it with the rubbery phone buttons. Something had to be done about him and Cleo. He listened to the automated instructions coming through the telephone, and sighed as he made arrangements. None of it seemed real. This couldn’t be happening to him, to them.

  He dialled agai
n, a familiar number this time. ‘Keith, fancy a drink, mate? I could do with a chat.’

  ‘I’m drooling over the one with the blue eyes and the bouncy chest,’ Drew decided, chin on hand, eyes, behind the stare-disguising shades, fixed on a tableful of females.

  Martin rubbed his chin while he deliberated. ‘OK, I’ll settle for the freckly one with the shiny green top. That leaves Justin with the curly one. All right, mate?’

  ‘What?’ Justin checked out the table of three girls that Martin and Drew had in their sights. It was a familiar enough scene, hitting on pretty women. But tonight it seemed an effort. He couldn’t even be bothered to go over and kiss a cheek or shake a hand. The last woman he’d kissed had been Cleo.

  The last woman in his bed. The last to lay her pretty hands on his body.

  He just didn’t feel like the chatting up, the drink buying and the bullshit. He stood up. ‘Sorry. I’m feeling a bit rough, I’d better have an early night.’

  Drew and Martin sent him astonished looks over their shades. ‘That married woman’s really fucked you up,’ observed Drew.

  Instead of going home, Justin drove to the lake and sat in his car, watching the water in the twilight; the evenings were getting shorter already. Where the moorhens bobbed now, he could see Cleo climbing on the jet-ski fully clothed, hear her whooping and squealing at the power and the freezing spray. Wading from the lake, picking bits of weed from her saturated clothes. Laughing herself breathless.

  Madwoman.

  Where was she now? He glanced at his watch. At home, with her husband? In bed? Maybe an early night? He imagined them turning gently to familiar exploration of the body next to them.

  Balls. His problem was that he hadn’t had time to get tired of her. She’d landed in his life and then whizzed off, taking him by surprise. That was it. She’d taken him by surprise.

  Any time now he’d get over it.

  He took his mobile from his pocket, pressed phone book and ‘C’. Cleo 077 … His thumb hovered over the green button. All he had to do. Press the button and she might answer. He thought of her voice.

  Then he thought about her in bed with her husband. He sighed.

  He ought to be glad that nothing he’d done had screwed up her marriage. He should respect her feelings more.

  He put the phone away and drove home.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘One moment, she’s here now.’ Francesca, a recent addition to the staff of Ntrain, waved her telephone handset as Cleo walked back to her desk. ‘Rockley Image for you, Cleo, can I put them through?’

  Cleo, fresh from yet another fruitless trip to the Ladies in search of her missing period and wishing she’d had the courage to take the pregnancy test already, hoped her nod was casual. Sliding into her chair, she grabbed a pen with suddenly slippery fingers and picked up the ringing phone. ‘Cleo Callaway.’

  During the two seconds’ silence at the other end before he spoke, she knew it was Justin. She had a sudden, blinding vision of that smile. ‘Are you free to talk?’

  She wrote Rockley Image on her pad, kept her voice carefully professional. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Yes, go ahead.’

  A sigh. ‘Perhaps a drink after work?’

  She drew a box around Rockley Image, super-aware of Nathan, at his desk, watching her through his red-framed glasses and listening. ‘I haven’t got the information with me, can I ring you back?’

  He laughed shortly. ‘What, to have another irritating half-conversation like this? Can you meet me at six thirty tonight? At The Almshouses?’

  She hesitated. Then, ‘I can do that. ’Bye.’ She scribbled down the time, tore the page from her pad and stuffed it in her pocket, returning to studying the big sheet of paper where she’d been roughing a presentation plan about measuring team performance. She paused, waiting for the pulse pounding in her temples to steady. Waiting for Nathan, always alert for further business or even, God forbid, complaints, to speak.

  ‘What’s up with Rockley, Cleo?’

  She made as if dragging her attention away from opening a new PowerPoint presentation on her computer. ‘It was just one of their staff. When I did the gig there we got talking over coffee about scuba diving. I said friends had taken a holiday with tuition, he’s asking if I could get the name of the tour operator.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Nathan picked up his headset, uninterested if the query wasn’t work-related.

  Francesca brought round coffee, never – bless her brown doe eyes – seeming to mind the chore. Cleo took the first hot and heady sips with her eyes closed against the steam. Heaven. Bliss. Opened her eyes. Of course, caffeine was definitely on the no-no list for mums-to-be. A booklet she’d picked up in Boots told her about following a healthy lifestyle before as well as during. She’d been flabbergasted to learn that the father should be prepared to contribute healthy sperm by eating a balanced diet, stopping smoking and cutting down on alcohol for three months before conception

  Who wrote that stuff?

  What planet were they on?

  Maybe it was sound advice for earnest couples pragmatically plotting an immense change in their lives, exchanging meaningful glances over the lettuce leaves and decaff. But for her? Too late, irrelevant and hugely annoying. Then she grinned, reluctantly, at the thought of what state of inebriation Justin’s ‘guys’ must’ve been in. Any baby produced would probably be born with a hangover. Unless the Aquavit had got that far.

  Justin was watching for her from a seat in the corner, facing the door. His black shirt was open at the neck.

  On her way over, Cleo bought a bottle of water from the bar. Once settled across the table from him, she raised her eyebrows, her voice tight. ‘So? What’s the problem?’ Dark strands of her hair fell across her eyes.

  ‘No problem. I just wanted to talk to you.’

  The water bottle chilled her fingers. She was aware of her own breathing, rapid, uneven. All day apprehension had pinched her belly with mean fingers. Don’t let this be more trouble! She had enough already.

  He smiled suddenly, lighting his golden eyes. ‘I didn’t want to leave things as they were. This is a sorry. Sorry I was foul to you outside Muggie’s, sorry I wound you up at the seminar. I’m a bit of a git sometimes.’ His smile looked like the Cheshire Cat’s. Wide, drawn into sharp points at the corners. For a bright instant she let herself wish that they were meeting as lovers. And that she was free to.

  Little muscles tugged at her top lip, drawing her mouth into a reluctant, answering grin.

  He touched her hand lightly. ‘Let’s forget all the crap, it’s a shame if that’s all that’s left from that weekend. Although I was really pissed at you.’

  ‘I noticed.’ She swallowed some of her drink.

  He slouched, extending his legs until she felt them brush hers. ‘Can you blame me?’

  ‘Not entirely.’ A sudden, vivid memory of the shop doorway; the liquid sensation of reaching out for more.

  ‘But it’s all behind us, we’re just two friends having a few drinks.’ He raised his glass to her.

  Heartbeat calming, she returned the salute. Everything was going to be fine. She glanced at her watch. ‘But I can’t stop long.’ It had been worth keeping the date now that she’d discovered everything was going to be OK; but Gav would be wondering where she was.

  ‘Oh, come on. It’s just a drink! I want it to be all right when we see each other.’ He folded his arms on the table, leaning towards her. ‘I like you, Cleo. I’m sorry I was an arse. You’ve obviously had your problems. Whatever happened between you and your old man was bad enough to send you my way. I shouldn’t have let pique get the better of me. I want to be on good terms.’

  It was ridiculous that his words should bring sudden tears stinging to her eyes. He wanted her company! She felt inexplicably touched. ‘But I’m still married,’ she pointed out. ‘There’s still Gav.’

  For the first time, he looked impatient. ‘And he di
ctates your every move, does he?’

  She flushed. ‘Of course not!’ It would sound wimpish and under the thumb to admit that Gav would absolutely hate her to have a male friend.

  ‘If I was a woman there wouldn’t be a problem. I’d say, “Have another drink, Cleo,” and you’d say, “Lovely, Justine!” Right? But just because I’m a bloke … Can’t you trust yourself that we’ll act like two civilised people? Or doesn’t your old man trust you?’

  She wanted to cry, ‘Both! Both!’ But instead she met his gaze coolly. ‘Fine. We’re out for a drink.’

  And as they talked, she emotionally repositioned herself, consigning him to the past as a lover. They compared films, countries they’d visited, favourite music, like two civilised people. He made her laugh.

  When her mobile bleated to signal an incoming text message, she was amazed to realise it was almost ten thirty. She read the screen. R u ok? Gav. She hesitated, locked eyes with Justin, and rang home. She imagined Gav stretched on the sofa as she heard his habitual, ‘Hello?’

  She cleared her throat. ‘Hi, I’m fine. Just having an after-work drink. I’ll be home soon.’

  And she was fine. They were talking. That was all.

  Justin walked her back to her car. ‘’Bye, then,’ he called, moving on as she slid into the driver’s seat. The door was still half open when he swung back.

  ‘Oh yeah.’ He crouched beside the car and laid one hand on her knee, a knee that jumped as if someone had done a reflex test on her. He lowered his voice. ‘I suppose by now you know that you’re not pregnant?’

  The heat from his hand beat through the fabric of her trousers. She succeeded, second go, in starting the car. His eyes were on her face in the evening shadows and she willed her features into nonchalance. ‘You’re not still panicking about that, are you?’ She smiled her most brilliant smile, then ended, teasingly, ‘Clear off. Time I was going.’

  When Cleo got home, Gav was lying full length on the sofa just as she’d imagined. He folded the paper onto the floor. ‘OK?’