Behaving Like Adults (25 page)

I nodded. There had to be a point to this.

‘And I see it at the parties too. The
mums
. Some of them, they've created monsters, and do they see it? No. Their kids are nasty bastards and these women think they're angels.'

He stopped. I made a there-you-go face. Nick sighed. It was like all the air was crushed out of him, starting from his toes. ‘I never thought about it. But now. I think,
my
mother wasn't like that. She had none of the joy that pregnant woman had. No cradling her stomach, proudly showing round this scan picture of a grainy blob, no taking special vitamins, playing
Swan Lake
to her lump. This woman was doing all that, Hol. Mine didn't. She must have
hated
me being in there, hoped for a miscarriage. Carried on smoking, drinking, what did she care? Bo's mate, she was talking about her morning sickness like it was a badge of honour. Said in this smug way, “I don't mind, it's for a good cause.” My mother. If I'd made her sick, it would have made her hate me even more—'

‘Nick, she didn't hate you.'

‘Don't be ridiculous!' This was snapped, furious. ‘You don't throw away your own fucking child if you don't hate it!'

‘Nick, you don't know the circumstances, maybe she had no ch—'

‘Of course she had a choice! There are no circumstances, Holly,
no
circumstances in which I would accept that she was justified in throwing me away! Can you imagine
your
mum, throwing you away because, what, she was eighteen and she was going to have to cut down on fags for the next few years?'

In all honesty, I couldn't.

‘It's crap! Any excuse, it's fucking bullshit. This is a welfare state, she could have managed.
She
made a choice. I hope I fucking ripped her coming out.'

I winced. ‘Nick, that's horrible, you don't mean that.'

‘Yes, I do.' He looked at me through narrowed eyes, then burst out, ‘Why shouldn't I hurt her? She hurt me!'

‘Oh Nick, I can see that, but, you know, maybe she did the best thing for you she could in the circ—I mean, look at who y—'

‘No, you look.' Said in a hiss. ‘While all the
other
mothers were hugging their new-born babies to their breasts, feeding them, bonding . . . You know, those first few minutes, hours, days of bonding are crucial to a baby's development – every touch, every look, every whisper, I've not worked with mothers and kids all this time and not picked up stuff. It
means
something –
you
had it, Claudia did, Issy did, Manjit, Nige, don't know about Bo –
I
didn't have it. She probably never even held me once. It must have been: get this thing out, now take it away, I don't want it. For the first weeks of my life I was fed cows' milk from bottles—'

‘Nicky, sweetheart, no one fed you
cows
' milk—'

‘No, Holly, that's what formula milk is! I was fed cheap milk from bottles by nursing staff. Strangers. And clothed in a scratchy regulation babygrow handed out to rejects by the NHS. And shipped off in the back of a van by authorities to some scuzzy adoption agency. To be
bought
. My very first experience as a human being on this earth was rejection. Rejected by my own parents. And, I look about me, see everyone else's doting mummies and daddies. No one else rejected but me. I looked at myself in the mirror before and I felt I didn't know who I was looking at. How do you think I feel?'

I hesitated. ‘I don't think I'm qualified to say, Nick. It must be incredibly painful.' I wondered how long I should pause before saying ‘but'. A while.

Nick's shoulders heaved. He looked utterly deflated. I couldn't help myself.

‘Nick. This is a terrible, terrible thing for you to learn. I can see how it rearranges your whole world. It's a loss for you, a great loss.'

He nodded.

‘No one can understand what you're going through. And what you will go through. It will take a very long time to accept. And adjust. You have a right to feel sorry for yourself.'

Was there a less insulting word than ‘but'?

‘Although. Be careful. You don't want to make this harder than it already is. It's hard enough. Maybe it's not wise to let your imagination run wild. It won't do you any good to recreate the first weeks of your life in the worst way possible. I'll bet you were a gorgeous baby. I'll bet you weren't even scaly. I bet the nurses loved you. I truly, and, Nick, I say this from my heart, I truly believe that your mother was sad to give you up. But – and of course you'll wonder about her and your dad – but it's important to remember that you
do
have what I and Issy and Claw have – you
do
have doting parents. My God, do they adore you. I'll bet the first time they saw you you took their breath away—'

‘Oh bullshit, they probably chose me over the kid in the next bed called Winifred who had a pointed head!'

‘Nick. I really don't think it happened like that. Your, your
now
parents wanted you. You were a gift. It must have been amazing. The most precious moments of their lives. I'll bet when they first held you, they felt a
snap
inside their chest, a physical sensation of falling in love—'

‘Stop it now.' Tears streamed down his face. He wiped them away fast with the back of his hands, and more fell. Maybe it wasn't wise to try to minimise his trauma. I felt this was probably a good time for me to go.

Immersing myself in Nick's problems removed me, a little way, from my own. Made me feel normal. Call me shallow but the first thing I did the next morning was to ring my own parents and invite myself to stay that weekend. Cue, boundless joy. Issy was coming down on Friday night with Eden! They'd have a full house! The more the merrier!

I also thought it would do Nick and me good to have a few days off from each other. Thursday and Friday, he rang me three times, and two of those calls lasted several hours. He spat fury, and had sore knuckles from punching Bo's flowery walls. I'd realised he wasn't ready to look on the bright side so I just shut up about it and listened. There
was
no making it right, so it was selfish of me to try. When he wanted to, he expressed himself beautifully. The words poured out of him. I applauded Bo for having an itemised phone bill.

He hadn't told anyone else, not even Manjit. ‘I'd like to,' he explained, ‘but Bo makes him tell her
everything
. He'd try and keep it secret but she'd prise it out of him. She says a hundred per cent honesty is crucial in a relationship. Christ, doesn't the witch know anything?'

I enjoyed those conversations, even though I knew I shouldn't. It was exhilarating, Nick inviting me in to share his feelings. He hadn't done it for so long, I'd forgotten how much I'd missed it. I felt privileged, close to him.
This
was how we should have operated as a couple. Instead, we'd got lazy, shutting ourselves off. I don't mean to sound pompous, but there can be no intimacy without self-disclosure. It can't be that most of us dry up of things to say about ourselves and the world, but we act like it.

I always feel sad when I see a couple in a café or restaurant and the woman just sits there and the man is having an animated conversation on his mobile phone. Or vice versa. It's so disrespectful. Nick and I never got to that stage but only, I suspect, because I tend to turn off my mobile in restaurants – I can do without the glaring hatred of the person at the next table – and Nick's friends are
expert at the six-second chat. (Manjit is the exception, but he's been trained to ask if this is a convenient time to speak.)

Now, Nick was awash with eloquence. And, surprisingly, amid the gush, he asked my opinions. I stopped being nervous of saying the wrong thing because if Nick disagreed, he'd say so straight out. For the first time in years, our conversations were no longer a duel. In the light of new knowledge, he'd revised history. His easy relationship with his fake parents (as he called them) was harshly reinterpreted. They hadn't spoiled him because they loved him, but because they felt guilty about
not
loving him.

I think he wanted me to argue with him. I did. ‘In one way,' I said, ‘our parents – no, sorry, Nick, I refuse to call the Mortimers your fake parents – are identical. They're proud of us, they adore us, no strings attached. Your parents treat you like a box of jewels. They look at you, I've seen them do it, and it's like they can't believe their luck. The love shines off their faces. They're not demonstrative people. But they can't help it with you. Remember that summer when we . . .'

We talked freely about everything but Wednesday's sex.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON, I
rang my parents to check that they were still expecting me. I needed to be babied. But I also needed to speak to them about being Stuart's clients. Jesus. That man had a reach like a fucking octopus. He really did manage to spoil everything.

‘Tell Em and Dee I'm coming too,' said Claudia gloomily, from behind a copy of
What Car?
‘In fact, I may move to Penge. There's nothing for me here.'

I sighed. Even Nige was subdued. Filming of his advert had been a ‘disaster'. He refused to divulge the number of takes. Secretly, I found it hard to believe that such an outfit would permit more than three, even if the actor was as wooden as the nest of tables he was supposed to be selling. Nor did I take seriously Nige's announcement that he had ‘died a death'. I knew he was a good actor. It was false modesty, designed to elicit reassurance and praise.

I couldn't be bothered. I was sick of everyone.

Nick, still ringing me on the hour, was refusing to speak to Michael and Lavinia and torturing himself with thoughts that he hadn't been kissed until he was six weeks old and that his real name was Percy.

This was all very well but
I
was torturing myself with the fact that I'd slept with Nick. One minute I loved him, the next minute I felt disgust and loathing for both of us in equal measure. Now
he
shared the blame for how I felt. I no longer saw my body as sexual, I wanted to cut myself off from all that messiness and be
pure
, a born-again virgin. Sleeping with Nick had been a potential route to
redemption. But no, it was yet another blind alley.

It seemed as if I wasn't the only one with – God, what an ineffectual phrase – ‘
man
problems'. I noted that Frank wasn't joining Issy and Eden in Penge at the weekend. And, in a suspicious coincidence, Rachel was avoiding me. I hadn't heard from her since my birthday dinner, the entirety of which she'd spent baiting Nige. I hadn't the energy to quiz her on the identity of her mystery man. If it
was
Frank, what would I do? Rachel preferred to dally with other women's men. She'd once told me, ‘I am phenomenally bad at the task of making the other person feel good in a relationship'.

Presumably, this was why she felt safer in a threesome.

I caught myself condemning one of my best friends and felt a twinge of shame. Here was I, committing the very crime I despise in others: presuming a person guilty until proven innocent. Then again, so what? It's true, isn't it? If people have a tiny chance to think the worst of you, they will. This made me relieved that I hadn't told Nick about Stuart. I don't think I could have stood it, if he hadn't believed me.

After what Rachel said, I realised that a lot of people don't think women are trustworthy. Even other women. Their theory is you feel bad because you were an easy lay and the man never called. You're a victim of torture and they think you're telling them something distasteful about your sex life! I thought that, and then I thought, yes, but these torture victims are
other
women who are properly attacked in less comfortable venues than their own kitchen. I felt defensive for them, but didn't include myself in this bracket. What enraged me was that everything everywhere, conscious or unconscious, asleep or awake, seemed to boil down to sex.

I needed to be in a sex-free zone. My parents' house.

‘Claudia,' I said. ‘I think we should leave for Penge now to beat the traffic. Can you call Issy and see if she wants a lift?'

‘Holly, I don't know why you bother sending Issy, you
know
she always comes back with a load of cr—shi—uninteresting foods. Wait here.
I'll
go.'

I creaked the handbrake, while Claw dashed into the petrol station. It was true, Evian and liquorice was not what either of us had in mind for the car journey to Penge. Even Eden looked unimpressed.

Claw returned with four bags of cheese and onion Monster Munch, four packets of Hula Hoops, four tubes of fruit-flavoured Toffos – ‘You should have got plain,' I said, ‘they all taste foul apart from the banana flavour' – four bottles of full-fat Coke, a packet of Magdalenas fairy cakes, a packet of milk bottle chews, one tube of Wine Gums, a packet of all-over chocolate Jaffa Cakes, and four packets of milk chocolate Aero. ‘And don't complain, Issy, the air bubbles stop them from being fattening.'

Issy glared. ‘Claudia, are you worried there's going to be a famine? You do know what sugar and E numbers do to Eden? Were you under the misapprehension that we were driving to Italy? It takes an hour and fifteen minutes. There is food in Penge. This is ridiculous.'

‘No one with a brain could ever mistake Penge for Italy. You don't have to eat everything, Isabella. I wanted there to be a choice. I thought Eden might like a fairy cake instead of the usual wheatmeal cr—sh—stuff you feed her.'

‘As you are childless, Claudia, I'll thank you not to tell me how to raise my own daughter.'

(All said in a light, breezy tone so that Eden would be less likely to pick up on the animosity. As if. That child is as sharp as a box of hedgehogs.)