After the End(90)

“You were going to have an abortion.”

“No!”

“How could you do that to me again?”

Again.

We have been pretending, ever since Dylan died, that we are a couple. We have limped through our separate lives, never talking about how we feel, never talking about what happened, about why we did what we did. And all the time, underneath, resentment has festered.

I speak as calmly as I can, my voice low and tense. “I would never have terminated this baby.”

“Then why keep it a secret?”

“It’s too hard to explain.”

“Is it someone else’s? Is that it?”

“Don’t judge me by your own standards!” I think about kissing Lars, and fall quiet. Am I really any better than Max? “I was scared,” I say eventually. “Scared of losing another child, of getting close to this baby, only to have it taken away from me.” I see Max move as if planning to reach for me, then changing his mind, gripping the sides of his chair instead. “And it felt disloyal. I loved—I love—Dylan so much, and to simply replace him seemed—”

“It isn’t replacing him, Pip.”

“I’m not saying it made sense, I’m saying that’s how I felt.” Felt. Not feel.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. All this time—”

“You’re hardly in a position to judge me for keeping secrets, Max.”

“Hurting you was the last thing I wanted to do, Pip, you have to believe me.”

Round and round we go. I swing wildly between quiet acceptance and noisy, angry rage. Max is less erratic, steadfast in his apology, and insisting he never meant this to happen.

“But it did,” I say, for what seems like the millionth time, and he asks the question we’ve both been wondering since I read Max’s text.

“So what happens now?”

I don’t answer. I’m too scared to say it, to be the one who decides.

“I’ll tell Blair it’s over, I won’t see her again.”

“You can’t just stop loving her.”

“I can.” And this time he does reach for me, moving his chair so his knees are touching mine, and taking both my hands in his. “We can make this work, Pip. We’re having a baby.”

“That isn’t a reason to stay together.”

He squeezes my hands and rests his forehead against mine, his voice low and earnest. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” I start to cry. “But I don’t think that’s enough.”





forty-one





Max


   2017


When five-year-old Darcy opens the front door, she’s wearing a unicorn T-shirt and nothing else. I haven’t seen her in over a year—since I moved back to Chicago—and she eyes me suspiciously. Tom appears in the hall. He scoops up his daughter.

“That’s some dress code,” I say.

“Sweetheart, you mustn’t open the door till Daddy’s here.” He looks at me and grins. “Trousers are optional, in this house.”

“Ah, I remember those sort of parties . . .” Alistair’s standing in the doorway to the kitchen, a faux-wistful look on his face. “Before soft play and Frozen cupcakes took over.”

“You love it.” I shake his hand.

“How are you doing?”

I look between them, their faces near mirrors of concern. I bob my head to one side, then the other. So-so. “I saw Pip last night.”

“Ah.”

“It was . . . OK.” I check myself. “Sad, but OK.”

“Like Tom’s fashion sense?”

“Wee-wee!” Darcy announces. Tom springs into action, racing past us and into the downstairs loo. I follow Alistair into the kitchen.

“Toilet training?”

“We thought we’d give it another go. The consultant says it’ll just all click into place one day—toilet training, coordination, speech . . .” He shrugs. I search his face.

“Does it worry you?”

He pauses before he answers, holding my gaze. “She’s here. That’s all that matters.”

“False alarm,” Tom says, returning at a rather more sedate pace. “I think she just likes saying ‘wee-wee.’”

“Wee-wee!” Darcy proclaims, on cue.

“See?” Tom picks up a half-full coffee mug from the counter.

“Um, Tom?”

He looks at me, questioningly, a split second before the warmth around his waist gives him the answer. “Bloody hell, Darce.”

“You look well,” Alistair says, when we’re done laughing.

I give a self-deprecating grin. “Honest toil, I guess.” Climbing ladders all day has left me leaner; working outdoors has made me tan. My hands—once soft and manicured—are cracked and callused, but strong.

“Well, it suits you, whatever it is.”

When Tom and Darcy reappear, Tom’s in a fresh pair of pants; Darcy fully dressed. We sit on the sun-drenched sofa in the orangery off the kitchen, and watch Darcy totter about her pretend shop.

“So . . .” I take the plastic orange Darcy hands me, and pretend to eat it. “Pip’s met someone.” There’s a loaded silence, and I look up sharply. “You knew.”