Alice found the plant behind Finn’s bed. It was quite large, but severely pot-bound and badly in need of water. The wilting green leaves were instantly recognisable, and Alice sighed. This was all she needed.
She tackled Finn when he got home from school.
“About your plant,” she said, trying to keep her voice even.
“What plant?” Finn was foraging in the fridge. “Is there any cheese?”
“How many plants have you got? The one behind your bed, of course.”
“Oh, that plant.”
“Yes. That plant.”
“Quite pretty, isn’t it?” Finn looked shifty.
“No, Finn, it’s not especially pretty. And since when have you been interested in plants?”
“Biology project?” said Finn, but without much hope.
“I doubt very much that you’d be asked to grow cannabis as a biology project.”
“Oh! Is that what it is?”
“Stop playing games with me, Finn. I haven’t got the energy.”
“Okay.” Finn put down the knife he was holding and folded his arms. “I’m looking after it for someone.”
“Kenny?”
“No, not Kenny.”
“Who, then?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You have to tell me.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“Finn, please. I need to know. Like it or not, you’re my responsibility. And that includes knowing who gave you that plant.”
“If I tell you, do you promise not to get cross?”
“It depends.”
“In that case —”
“Okay. I won’t get cross. But you must tell me, Finn.”
“Right, then. It’s Trot’s.”
“Trot’s?”
“Yeah. He’s gone away for a few days and didn’t like to leave it.”
“It’s not a pet! What can he be thinking of?”
Finn shrugged. “He might be away a bit longer. He wasn’t sure.”
“How dare he! How dare he do something like this, which he knows full well could get you into trouble!”
“You said you wouldn’t get cross,” said Finn, picking up his knife again.
“Maybe. But this really is the last straw!”
“Well, don’t blame me.” Finn began cutting slices from a lump of cheese. “It wasn’t my idea.”
“You could have said no.”
But Alice knew that this was unfair. Of course Finn couldn’t have said no. Apart from anything else, she imagined that in the world occupied by her son, being asked to look after your father’s cannabis plant would be considered incredibly cool. Refusal would hardly be an option.
“He’s just experimenting,” Finn said. “He’s only got the one. You can’t do much with one, can you?”
“I’ve no idea. But I do know that if it’s found on our premises, you’ll be in trouble.”
“Who’s going to find it?” asked Finn through a mouthful of sandwich.
“That’s not the point.”
“Well, what is the point?”
“The point is that you’ve got a stupid, irresponsible father, who ought to know better.”
And to think, Alice thought later on when she’d cooled down a bit, that she had, if only for a few seconds, considered marrying this man. She must have been out of her mind.
That evening, when Finn had gone out (and despite vigorous protest on his part, the plant had been consigned to the dustbin), Alice rang Trot on his mobile.
“Where are you?” she demanded.
“In Ireland. Why? What’s up?”
“What are you doing in Ireland?”
“Fishing. Not that it’s any concern of yours.”
“It is my concern if you decide to leave your — your pet plant with our son!”
“Oops.”
“Yes. Oops.”
“Oh, come on, Alice. There’s no need to overreact. It’s just a plant.”
“It is not just a plant! You are growing an illegal substance, and bringing Finn into it is just not on.”
“Blah, blah, blah.” Trot had obviously been drinking. “Oh, Alice, you take life so seriously. Where’s your sense of humour?”
“I’m trying to bring up a teenager. Your son. On my own. I can’t always afford to have a sense of humour.”
“What have you done with it?”
“Done with what?”
“My plant.”
“I’ve thrown it away, of course.”
“You can’t do that!”
“I just have.”
“I grew that plant from seed!”
“Well, you could say that you grew Finn from seed, and you don’t seem to worry too much about what happens to him.”
“Very funny.”
“Believe me, Trot, I’m in no mood to be funny.”
“But my plant,” Trot wailed. “I wasn’t going to use it. It’s just that I’ve become kind of fond of it.”
“Well, that’s tough,” said Alice, and rang off.
She was furious. This was typical of Trot, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if he had done it just to annoy her. Trot and a single cannabis plant hardly constituted the basis for a drug cartel, but it was probably another of his little demonstrations to show her how young at heart and open-minded he was — another ruse to gain Finn’s admiration. The sympathy and kindness he had shown her so recently were apparently forgotten, and Trot had returned to his previous preoccupations. He hadn’t even asked her how she was (although to be fair, she hadn’t given him much chance).
Alice got out the remains of a bottle of wine and poured herself a large glass. This was one of the occasions when it would have been nice to be able to phone Jay — to talk about Finn and Trot and their revolting plant, and gain herself a little sympathy. But Jay was probably still at the hospital, or maybe at home with Angela, cosily watching television; or, worse, looking through baby catalogues and choosing nursery furniture. Alice knew very little about Angela, but she imagined her to be the kind of woman who would have a pretty-pretty nursery, with matching everything and tinkly mobiles and a Peter Rabbit frieze.
It would all be very different from when she had had Finn. She had been living in a studio flat — the kind that was ideal for a single career woman, but almost impossible for a mother with a young baby — and while her parents had offered her a bedroom at home, it was too far from work and Alice was too independent. So she and Finn had coped as best they could, Finn sleeping in his very second-hand cot in the corner while Alice typed her articles between feeds. By the time he was crawling, things were becoming difficult, and when he could not only reach the door handle but manage to let himself out onto the landing, life became impossible. Before Alice bought her first tiny house, Finn had contrived to escape and fall down the stairs three times, and the neighbours were threatening to complain to the authorities.
While Alice tried to keep off the subject of the baby when she and Jay were together, Angela was constantly on her mind. Ever since her bout of weeping when she was with Mavis and Gabs, she had been consumed with jealousy. It was as though the green-eyed monster had been let out of the bag, and now there was no getting it back in again. Never hitherto a jealous person, she had been both astonished and ashamed at the strength of her feelings. She had never especially wanted marriage, and she certainly hadn’t considered the possibility of more children, but the thought of that baby — that collection of Jay’s cells — growing inside another woman was intolerable. Suddenly, the streets were full of women with babies, pregnant women, women pushing buggies. She even found herself wandering into the nursery department of a large store and fingering tiny sleepsuits, miniature shoes, and frilly little dresses.
She told herself to get a grip, that this was ridiculous. She wasn’t a particularly maternal person, and while she would always be glad that she had had Finn, she wouldn’t have felt incomplete if she’d never had a child. But this was different. This was about Jay, about the man she loved. And it was, quite simply, unbearable.
Would she feel better when the baby was born? When that little bit of Jay had finally exited Angela’s body? Alice had no idea. But she wouldn’t have that long to wait, since, as Angela had initially put her condition down to the menopause, the pregnancy had been diagnosed relatively late, and there were now only five months to go.
Two nights later she met up with Jay in one of their regular haunts — a rather shoddy pub in the middle of nowhere, with so few customers that it was a miracle that it hadn’t closed down altogether. As often happened, Jay was late — some crisis at the hospital had required his attention — and Alice was kept waiting. And while she knew he couldn’t help it, she couldn’t help resenting the fact that as far as Jay’s priorities were concerned, she always seemed to come last.
As soon as he arrived, they made their way over to “their” table (one with a good view of the door, against the unlikely event of the arrival of anyone they knew), and Jay fetched drinks from the near-deserted bar.
“What’s up with you?” Alice asked him as he sat down beside her.
“What do you mean, what’s up with me?”
“You seem — I don’t know — more cheerful than usual,” Alice said.
“Well, we’ve been trying out a new drug on a couple of patients, and so far the results are really promising. They’re so young, these two. Only kids, really. It would be wonderful if this could work for them.”
“Yes. That’s great. Of course it is. But there’s something else. I can tell.”
“Well…”
“Go on.”
“It’s the baby. This morning I — I felt it move.”
Alice took a very slow, very careful sip of her drink, then replaced it on its stained beer mat.
“How — how nice for you,” she said. Someone had written a telephone number on the beer mat in red biro. There was a name beside it. Brett? Ben? Something like that.
“I wasn’t going to mention it. After all, what was the point?” Jay said. “But you did ask.”
“Yes, I did ask.”
“It’s hard keeping things from you,” Jay said. “I’m afraid you know me too well.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Alice! Please don’t let this upset you. It has nothing to do with you — with us.”
“Well, how do you want me to react? You can hardly expect me to be over the moon, can you?”
“Of course not. I know that would be asking too much.”
“Quite.” Alice wiped her hands on her skirt. “Anyway, I’d have thought that being a doctor, you’d be more matter-of-fact about — how would you put it? — foetal movements.”
“I’ve never had much to do with babies or pregnancy. Not since my training, anyway. Besides, it’s different when — when it’s…”
“Your own?”
“Well, yes.”
Fighting back her tears, Alice remembered Finn’s first fragile flutterings — the tiny movements that were only of interest to her, because of course there had been no one else to share them with. Then she thought of Angela — smug, lucky Angela — with Jay’s hands on her belly, with Jay to tell her how wonderful it all was, and, no doubt, how clever she was, too.
“It’s no good,” she said. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Can’t what?” Jay asked her.
“Can’t be pleased, generous, nice — whatever it is you want me to be. I simply can’t bear it, Jay!”
“Oh, darling! I’m so sorry.” Jay took her hand. “So, so sorry.”
“No, you’re not. Nor should you be.” Alice searched in her bag for a tissue. “Having a baby is — wonderful. Of course it is. But at the moment, it’s simply too much to bear.” Her throat ached with holding back the tears. “I — I don’t know what to do.”
“Darling, you don’t have to do anything. Just be yourself, and we’ll go on seeing each other as we’ve always done. I’ve told you and told you; this makes no difference to us. None at all.”
“But it makes a difference to me,” Alice whispered. “Can’t you see? Your life’s going to change, and I’m going to be even more on the outside.”
“You’ve always been on the outside of my marriage. You’ve said so yourself. But you’ll never be on the outside of my life. You’re the woman I love, the person I think about, want to be with, need.”
“Yes. But now you’ll be a family. A proper family. I’ve never been — been a family.”
“Of course you have. You are. You and Finn are a family, aren’t you?”
“In a way. But it’s not the same.”
“Drink up, and we’ll go and talk in the car,” Jay said, downing his beer. “We can’t talk properly here.”
“You mean I can’t cry properly in here,” Alice said.
“That too.”
In the car, Alice wept and wept. It seemed that nowadays, she spent much of her time weeping, and while she knew it was unfair to inflict her grief on Jay, a part of her felt that he owed her something to atone for the misery his situation was causing her.
“I can’t see a way out,” she said when the tears had abated.
“There doesn’t have to be a way out. No one’s going anywhere. Nothing’s going to finish.”
“Are you sure? Are you sure you’re still going to want me when you’ve got the baby?”
“Darling Alice, I’ll always want you. You may give up on me, but I’ll never let you go. Not if I can help it. I’d give anything — anything — for this to be happening to us. For this to be our baby.”
“Would you? Would you really?”
“Of course I would! If things had been different and if you’d wanted it, I’d love to have had a baby with you. I can’t think of anything more wonderful.”
“So — you’ve thought about this before? About us and babies?”
“Oh, Alice, what do you think? I was in what I thought was a childless marriage, with a woman I didn’t — well, with Angela. And then you came into my life, and if things had been different, there would still have been time for us to have a family. Of course I thought about it. I thought about it more than you’ll ever know.”
“Then why didn’t you say something?”
“What would’ve been the point? We agreed from the beginning that I couldn’t leave Angela. So it would have been selfish of me to — to taunt you with what might have been. With what we could never have.” He stroked damp strands of hair back from her face and kissed her. “I do love you, you know. So, so much. I wish I could prove to you how much I love you.”
Alice rested her head on Jay’s shoulder, and for a while they sat in silence, watching the light fading behind the trees and a swirl of rooks cawing their way home across a sky pricked with the first pale stars. Alice felt empty and sad and utterly hopeless. Was her future always going to be like this? Sitting on the edge of Jay’s life, listening to him talking (or almost worse, trying not to talk) about his child, waiting, always waiting. And waiting for what? Jay would never leave Angela now, and while Alice had never really expected him to, there had always been that tiny chance that one day, perhaps, Angela and Jay would drift apart naturally, or Angela might even find someone else. But now, whatever happened, the two of them would always be connected by this child.
Scrabbling in her bag for more tissues, she wiped sooty streaks of mascara from her cheeks. She looked a mess, but in the dusk, Jay could barely see her, and Finn probably wouldn’t even notice. Besides, he still hadn’t forgiven her for “killing” Trot’s plant.
“I had a proposal recently,” she said.
“What?”
“Yes. Trot proposed.”
“You never told me! You didn’t say yes, did you?”
“Of course I didn’t, and I don’t think he really meant it, but it would have been a solution, wouldn’t it? And you’d be off the hook.” She looked at Jay. “Why? Would you have minded?”
“Actually, yes, I would have. Which isn’t really fair under the circumstances, is it? But I don’t think I could bear it if you… well, if you…”
“If I belonged to someone else?”
“Yes. I’m ashamed to say it, but yes. I know it’s not what I deserve, but I don’t want anyone else to have you.”
“I know what you mean.”
Jay rubbed his chin and then ran his fingers through his hair, a characteristic gesture when something was troubling him (although Jay himself was probably quite unaware of it). How well I know this man, Alice thought. I can read his moods as though they were my own; I can frequently anticipate what he’s going to say next; I know his likes and his dislikes; I know the feel of him and the smell of him. She wondered whether Angela knew him as well as she did, and while she thought that this must inevitably be the case — after all, they had been married for some years — she very much hoped that it was not. If she were to have any crumbs of comfort at all from this painful situation, she would like to be the one who knew Jay better.
Jay turned to her.
“Alice, we need a night away.”
“Just how are we going to manage that?”
“I’ve got a conference coming up. A big oncology do, with consultants from all over the country. It’ll mean a night in Birmingham. Could you come with me?”
Alice considered.
“I suppose I might.”
“It’s the week after next. The room’s sure to be a double — they always are — and it’s booked anyway. It won’t make any difference to the hotel if you join me.”
“Won’t other people notice?”
“Not if we get there before the others. It’ll mean you’ll have to stay in the room, and you can’t really come down for meals — I’ll have to bring you something — but you won’t mind that, will you?”
Alice sighed.
“Yes, Jay, I will mind that. I don’t want to be hidden away, using back staircases, avoiding people. I know we’ve done it before, and it didn’t seem so bad then, but I suppose I’m getting past that kind of thing. It feels so — so shabby, somehow.”
But in the early days, it hadn’t seemed so bad. Unable to get enough of each other, they had grabbed even the smallest of opportunities to be together and to make love. Those occasions had been few enough but, at the time, had seemed heaven-sent. A hotel bedroom with a big, comfortable bed; the luxury not only of sleeping together but of waking up together. On the first occasion, Alice had thought that she could ask for nothing more, and the subterfuge and the lengths they had had to go to to make sure that she kept out of the way of Jay’s colleagues had only added to the excitement.
“Then we’ll do our usual, shall we?” Jay said.
“I suppose we’ll have to.”
Nowadays, on the rare occasions when they could have a few hours together, they had resorted to booking a room in some small B&B “for a night.” They would usually reach their destination soon after lunch, and then in the early evening, they would pretend that they had received news of some emergency at home, necessitating their immediate departure. Although no one ever appeared to suspect them of any subterfuge — why should they? — Alice invariably felt embarrassed, guiltily aware of rumpled sheets and damp towels in the bathroom. And of course they had to pay for the full night as arranged, not to mention breakfast, so it was a costly exercise. But as things were, it was the best they could manage.
This was only a little less sleazy than the conference scenario, but at least both of them were in it together and on an equal basis. No one was being left hiding in a bedroom, being brought sandwiches like some kind of hostage, or being let out when the coast was clear. The only problem was that they were beginning to run out of venues and were having to travel ever farther afield in search of new ones.
And then of course there were the lies she had to tell Finn. Alice hated lying to anyone, particularly her son, but it seemed that lies were another part of the adultery package; it was impossible to conduct an affair such as hers without lies.
When she got home later on, Finn was sprawled on the living-room floor watching television.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked. “I’m ravenous.”
“Editorial meeting. I told you.” Alice took off her jacket. “And I left you something in the fridge.”
“I had that hours ago. By the way, Trot rang.”
“Oh yes?”
“He was asking about his plant. Said could you ring him.”
“Trot knows about his bloody plant! And no, I won’t ring him. I’ve got better things to do than run around after Trot.”
“That’s what I told him.” Finn got up and stretched. “Cup of tea?”
“Please.”
Finn always ended his sulks with offers of tea, and Alice was grateful. At least one of her relationships was back on track.
“Did you know,” said Finn as he dropped teabags into mugs, “that the only thing that stops us from going rotten is being alive?”
“Well, fancy that,” said Alice. And she actually laughed.