After the End(89)

“Fine, sorry. A white wine, was it? And Pringles?” I put her snacks on her tray table, and pass her husband—complete with matching panda eyes—the beer and pretzels he asks for. I pin a smile to my face and continue moving slowly down the aisle. Orange juice, no problem. I’m afraid we’re out of diet. Would you like ice with that? As I chat to passengers I wonder what Max is doing now. Whether he’s still working out what to say to me, or whether he has his explanation—his excuses—all ready.

I turned off my phone, in the end. Sent a one-line text—We’ll talk when I’m back—and put it in my bag.

When I switch it on in my car, in case I need it on the drive home, there’s just one message from him.


Safe trip. I love you xxx



I stare at the message, unable to feel anything other than anger. Three kisses. Once so important; now so meaningless.

The roads are clear, and by nine thirty I’m pulling into our street. I should sleep after a night shift, but I’m off for three days, which means staying up so I can go to bed this evening at a normal time, in an effort to reset my clock. Johannesburg has got to be my last trip—I can’t hide this pregnancy for much longer. I will call HR tomorrow. I ignore the tiny voice in my head that says it’ll be easier to avoid Lars if I’m grounded.

I pause by the front door, my key in the lock, feeling like a stranger at someone else’s house. In the hall it’s almost a shock to find everything the same—Max’s shoes by the mat, his coat on the rack—when it feels as though everything has changed.

Max is sitting at the kitchen table. Neither of us speaks. Beside him are several empty glasses and mugs, and a dirty knife resting on a plate covered with bread crumbs. His hair is unbrushed, and dark circles ring his eyes. He looks as though he’s been sitting in that exact spot since he got back from Chicago.

“Who is she?” I say quietly.

He winces as though the words are physically painful, and I’m glad, because the very thought of them is hurting me.

Max addresses the empty plate. “Her name is Blair. She used to live next door . . . she went to the same swim club when we were kids. She found me on Facebook, and we . . .” He pauses. “We hung out in Chicago.”

“You ‘hung out’?” I make quotation marks with my fingers. “What is that? Some kind of euphemism for fucking?”

Max stands, so abruptly his chair topples backwards and crashes onto the tiled floor. He comes to stand in front of me and grips my arms fiercely, and I’m shocked to see that he’s crying. “I’m so sorry, Pip, I never meant to hurt you. I never meant for any of this to happen, but you were so distant and—”

I shake him off. “Don’t you dare put this on me!” But my anger is fuelled by the fear—the knowledge—that he’s right, that I’ve slowly pushed him further away. Instinctively, my hand creeps to my stomach, to the secret that wasn’t only mine to keep.

“No, no, of course not—that’s not what I’m saying. Of course it’s my fault, I’m just trying to explain that I needed—” He gives a sharp sigh of frustration, holding up his hands as if physically searching for the words, and as quickly as it came, the anger in me burns out. Exhaustion sweeps over me. I walk across the room and set right the toppled chair, then sit beside it. “You needed to be normal with someone,” I say quietly.

Max nods slowly. “Yes.” He hesitates, then joins me at the table. We look at each other for the longest time, and I think of everything we’ve shared together, all the things no one else could possibly understand.

“How long have you been seeing her?” I don’t want the answer, and yet I can’t not know.

“Five, six months?” His voice adds a question mark, as though he needs me to confirm it. I’m winded. I’d expected weeks, not months. She—Blair—is in Chicago, Max is in the UK, this is not about sex, at least not only about sex. This is long-distance calls, and messages and Skype, and missing you . . . I count five, six months backwards in my head. April. May. When Max started talking about having another child. Is that what this is about?

“Do you love her?”

He rubs his face vigorously. He looks at me—wretched, miserable. “I love you.”

“But do you love her?” I challenge him to meet my eyes, to have the decency to look at me as he tells me the truth. The pause lasts forever.

“Yes.”

I nod. And then, because things can’t get any worse, I tell him about the baby. I see a shooting star of joy cross his face, before it’s tempered by what’s happened, by the fact I am only now telling him. He looks at me as though seeing me for the first time, taking in the changes pregnancy has brought.

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I’m telling you now.”

“How far gone are you?”

“I don’t know exactly, I haven’t seen anyone. Around sixteen, seventeen weeks—”

He widens his eyes in surprise, then looks confused. “You haven’t seen anyone? Shouldn’t you have had a scan by now? We had one at twelve weeks with . . . before.” Dylan’s absence hangs between us, heavy and painful, before Max speaks again. “What if there’s something wrong with the baby?”

I don’t answer. What could I say? That in the beginning I didn’t care how the baby was? That at first I didn’t even acknowledge I was pregnant? He must see something in my face because the colour drains from his, and he drags out the words as if each one stings.