16 June
Laurie
‘I’ve bought a pregnancy test.’
‘Have you done it yet?’ It’s five in the evening here and two in the morning in Perth, but Sarah’s wide awake. I’m an unheard of four days late now, and she was the first person I told.
I dump my keys and bag on the hall table, my mobile tucked under my ear. ‘No. I’m too scared of what it might say.’ What I don’t tell her is that I think I’d be more scared if it were to say yes.
‘Oscar’s not home yet then?’
I sigh in the empty flat. ‘He should be back in a couple of hours.’
‘Hang on,’ she says, muffled. I can hear her moving around, and then she’s back and clear again. ‘Sorry, just getting out of bed. Right, I have wine and I’m not going anywhere. Get the test out, Lu.’
‘What, now?’ My voice is unnaturally high.
‘Yes, now. Or would you rather leave it until Oscar’s home?’
She’s right, of course. Given the way we are just now, it’d be much better if I do it with her and know for sure one way or the other before he comes in.
‘Okay,’ I whisper, shaking the test out of the chemist’s paper bag.
I turn the box over and scan it, reading the by now familiar instructions aloud as I kick off my shoes and lock myself in the loo. Why, I don’t know, seeing as I’m the only one home. ‘I’m in the bathroom.’
‘Good. Open the test.’
I struggle as always with the fiddly packaging, finally releasing the white plastic stick from its foil seal. ‘There. Got it.’
I look at the stick and then at the loo, and then I sigh and get on with it.
‘I can hear you peeing,’ Sarah’s voice floats out of my phone on the floor.
‘Just be glad we’re not on Facetime,’ I mutter, wrangling the stick into the right place, managing to pee on my own fingers in the process. ‘Why do they make these things so bloody difficult?’
‘Don’t drench it!’ she shouts, unhelpfully.
I sigh as I extract the stick. Straight away I can see something happening in the windows, so I snap the lid on quick smart and put the stick on the edge of the sink.
‘Start the clock,’ I say, washing my hands.
‘Done.’
I sit down on the floor and lean my back against the wall, my legs stretched in front of me, the phone against my ear again.
I close my eyes. ‘Tell me something about your life there, Sar. Distract me.’
‘Okay. Well, I’m at the kitchen table. It’s supposed to be winter but we’re having a heat wave, and our air-con is a lazy bastard. I’m mopping up my sweat as I talk to you.’ I can almost see her; they live in a gorgeous low-slung beach house. She sent me the particulars when they went to view it and I needed to go and lie down in a dark room to get over my envy. It looks like something out of a seventies House Beautiful magazine, all sunken seating areas and double-height ceilings. She pauses, and then says, ‘Oh, and I proposed to Luke.’
‘What? Oh my God! Sarah!’ I shriek, properly shocked. It’s so Sarah not to wait around when she knows what she wants. ‘When? What did you say? And what did he say?’
‘He said yes, of course,’ she laughs. ‘And he cried like a baby.’
I laugh too. I can believe it; Luke’s a big softie.
‘Time’s up, Lu,’ she says, quiet and serious again. ‘Three minutes.’
I hold the stick in my hands, the cap still in place. ‘I’m scared, Sar,’ I whisper.
‘Don’t be. Whatever happens, you’ll be okay, I promise.’
I don’t reply, just stare at the stick. I don’t know if I can do this.
‘For God’s sake, Laurie, take the fucking cap off!’
So I do. I pull it off fast and hold my breath as I stare at it.
‘Well?’
‘One blue line.’ I gasp down a huge lungful of air, shaking. ‘Just one. That means I’m not pregnant, doesn’t it?’
‘Oh, Lu, I’m sorry,’ she says, gentle now. ‘It’ll happen soon, I’m sure it will.’
I dash my hands across my eyes and put the stick down on the floor. ‘Yeah, I know.’
When Oscar comes home just after eight, I’m in my pyjamas drinking a glass of wine at the kitchen table. He eyes the wine, then raises his eyebrows. ‘Is that wise?’
The coolness to his tone suggests he’s still in the same frame of mind as when he left on Sunday.
I shake my head. ‘I thought I might be pregnant, but I’m not. I did a test. I must just be late, it happens.’
His expression softens as his eyes search mine. ‘Are you okay?’
I’m not sure how to best answer his question truthfully. ‘I don’t think I am, no.’
I wait while he pours himself a glass of wine and sits down at the table. He looks done in; I wish I could just make him some dinner and offer to run him a bath, but my heart won’t let me back out of the decisions I reached on the bathroom floor after Sarah rang off.
‘Did you accept the job?’
He stares into his wine glass. ‘You always knew I was going to.’
‘Yes.’ I nod slowly. ‘It was the right thing for you.’
‘But not for you?’ he asks. He doesn’t sound angry or cool any more. I think he’s starting to realize that this conversation has the potential to devastate us both.
I sigh, and a tear slides down my face. ‘No.’ I swallow hard, hating everything about this situation. ‘I’ve spent the last couple of days thinking I might be pregnant, and trying to work out what to do if I was.’
He watches me, silent.
‘And then I did the test, and I wasn’t pregnant, and all I could think was thank God. Thank God I haven’t had all of my choices taken away from me.’
I’ve shocked him. I hate the words falling from my mouth, but honesty is all I have. ‘I don’t want to move to Belgium, Oscar.’
He’s scanning my face, as if he’s looking for traces of the woman he loves. He hadn’t truly considered saying no to the job before this conversation, I realize. He’s banked on me falling into step in the end.
‘We can’t love each other from different countries, and what happens if I do fall pregnant? I don’t want to be here on my own with a baby five nights out of seven.’
‘It could work.’ He drags his chair round the table until his knees touch mine. ‘I know it’s not ideal but we can make it okay, Laurie.’
‘Oscar, it isn’t just about the job, it’s about so much more than geography,’ I say, being as gentle as I know how to be. I look at his beloved face, and I can’t quite believe we’re falling apart like this. He’s been my safe harbour for a long time. ‘God, you’re such a lovely man. I’ve never met anyone like you and I know I never will again.’
‘We made vows,’ he says, frustrated. ‘For better, for worse. We promised each other.’
‘Our lives are headed in two different directions,’ I say, holding his hands in mine. ‘Yours is leading you along a path I can’t follow, Oscar. And that isn’t your fault or mine.’
‘But I love you,’ he says, as if it’s a magic phrase that trumps any other.
I don’t know how to express myself without hurting him more. ‘Oscar, you’re the best husband anyone could wish for. You’re kind and you’re funny and you’ve given me so much more than I can ever give you back.’
‘I never expected you to.’
‘No. But you do expect me to move to Belgium, or else live here on my own most of the time,’ I say.
Consternation furrows his brow. ‘I hoped you’d realize it’s for the best,’ he says. ‘I thought I’d come home tonight and you’d have come round.’
I sigh, because I know he hasn’t even entertained the idea of saying no to the job. It’s a done deal, and all of the decisions are now mine.
‘I’m not going to come round,’ I say. ‘I’m not just being obstinate. I don’t want to move to Brussels.’
‘But you know that turning the job down isn’t an option for me,’ he says, and a part of me is glad. I don’t want him to offer to give up the promotion he’s earned. Not that he’s offering, and in a way that makes the next thing I need to say a little easier.
‘I didn’t realize how unhappy I’ve become until I looked at that blue line,’ I say, bereft. ‘I didn’t know.’
He’s got his face in his hands, and I feel like the most stupid, wretched, ungrateful woman in the world.
‘So that’s it? You won’t come and I can’t stay?’
‘Or I can’t come and you won’t stay,’ I say, challenging his blinkered viewpoint even though I know he’ll never try to see it my way. His life is firmly on track and that track now leads to Brussels, with or without me. He finds it utterly unfathomable that I’m not cock-a-hoop to jump aboard the train, and it serves only to make me even more certain that we’ve come to the end of the line. No more living life at half-mast; the lights have gone out on our marriage. Back in Koh Lipe, our love blossomed beneath a string of flickering fairy lights wrapped around the railings of the beach shack. Here in London, the life has been slowly choked out of it under the glare of Lucille’s oh-so-sophisticated lamps and the relentless weekly monotony of Heathrow’s runway lights. I realize now that Oscar hasn’t changed at all. He was always this man, but Thailand, and me, for a while maybe, made him feel like he could be someone else. He tried a different life on for size, but in the end he’s gone full circle, because this life, the one he’s living right now, is the one that fits him best.
‘I’m so sorry, Oscar, I really am.’
‘Me too,’ he whispers. ‘I’m sorry too, Starfish.’
I look away, upset because I know that’s the last time I’ll ever hear him call me that.
A sigh racks his body, as if it’s wrenched from him. ‘If you’d been pregnant, do you think you might have come with me?’
I genuinely don’t know what to tell him. Perhaps that I’d have felt trapped into it and forced to give it a go. I don’t say it; it’s too bleak.
I lean forward and hold his head in my hands, my lips pressed to his hair. He wraps his arms round me too, and the familiar smell of him makes me cry uncontrollably; the cologne he’s always worn, the shampoo he uses, the scent of his days and my nights and our love.