Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts (6 page)

Twelve months, now, it had been since they’d ‘stopped trying not to get pregnant’. The longest twelve months of his life.

Still, Johnny thought, it was really important to Natalie, having a baby. And to him. Obviously. It was important to them both, because whatever made her happy, made him happy. But if it came to it, Johnny secretly thought that if it was just him and Natalie for the rest of their lives, he’d be happy enough.

‘A Virgin Mary? Eeh, cocktails? At the Fox?’ he said instead. ‘Think I’ll join you in that. Give Ray some sophistimacation practice for those fine dining yuppies he wants to bring in.’

Natalie looked up and smiled gratefully, and he loved her a little bit more.

Twenty minutes later, Natalie drained the tomato juice dregs and shouldered her bag.

‘I’d better be off,’ she said, with an apologetic smile. ‘I know, party pooper. Sorry.’

‘So early?’ Bill looked disappointed. ‘Does this mean we’re getting old? It’s not even a school night. Mr Hodge is still here, look!’

Natalie gripped the shoulder strap. ‘No, I’ve just . . . I’ve just got some reports I need to write up before the weekend kicks in. I hate leaving it till Sunday night. Rather get it done while it’s all fresh in my mind.’

Johnny started to reach for his jacket, but she shook her head. ‘No, honestly, hon, you stay here and finish your drink. It’s fine.’

‘We’ll share a cab,’ offered Bill. ‘Won’t make it too late.’

‘Before midnight’s fine.’ Natalie smiled. ‘He turns back into a frog after that. See you later!’

She walked out of the pub into the night air, which had taken on an even sharper chill in the last few days. No sign of spring yet, she thought, clutching her hooded parka tighter as she blipped the central locking on their Mini Cooper and slid inside.

Natalie loved her Mini Cooper. Johnny got the bus into school most mornings, so this was really her car, for driving to the business park on the outskirts of town where she worked, and for the endless marketing strategy meetings she had to schlep all over the place for. Every time she ran her hands over the leather steering wheel Natalie felt good about her life. It was a new car, and a bit of a luxury, but it had been their big treat to themselves, her and Johnny, since they didn’t have anyone to spend their money on but themselves, not like their brothers and sisters who spent every available penny on their kids.

She’d ticked the ISOFIX child seat fittings option, just in case, when Johnny was faffing around deciding on what type of alloys they should get. It was sensible anyway, for secondhand values. A rational decision. Not just because Natalie often imagined a chunky little Maclaren child seat there, in her rear-view mirror. With a chunky little Hodge inside.

As she pulled carefully out of the pub car park and onto the main road, there was a tight knot of moodiness in her chest, and she probed it ruthlessly. Since she and Johnny had officially started trying to conceive – Natalie hated the twee TTC phrases but found herself using them anyway – she’d tuned into her body like it was a kind of radio transmitter. Every twinge and mood swing and break-out registered in some part of her brain.

Was it the pub? Did she resent not being allowed to drink on her baby diet? Not really. She missed the coffee more. God, she thought, you’d never believe women managed to get pregnant in the past, what with smoking and drinking and rare meat and what have you.

Was it Bill? Not really. She didn’t mind hanging out, the three of them. Bill and Johnny were friends from college, and he was like an extra brother.

Was it work? The knot tightened and she knew she couldn’t ignore it.

Yes, work was getting to her. The credit crunch had clamped its jaws around the multi-national food company she worked for, as a marketing executive in a new organics sector, and her boss, Selina, was sharpening her claws on her team every day. What had really set Natalie’s nerves jangling was the way she already
knew
today’s monthly strategy meeting hadn’t gone well; Natalie was smart enough to see that other people’s budgets were being cut, leaving even less room for them, but there wasn’t much she could do about it, short of bailing out the World Bank.

With a sharper flick on the indicator than was strictly necessary, she indicated to turn onto the road up to the estate where she and Johnny lived.

But if she was being honest – and Natalie always tried to be honest – it was a guilty, less noble niggle passed down that chain of more reasonable work-related irritations that had caused the knot in her chest.

That morning, when Kay Lambert, the third pregnant woman in a twenty metre radius of her desk, had made her big announcement via the office email, something had burst inside Natalie, something hot and jealous and stinging. Kay was really nice, but she was thirty-seven and she already had two children. This one was ‘a happy surprise!’ She hadn’t even been trying. She hadn’t been on IVF or anything, just ‘a rather naughty wedding anniversary in Bath!’ It was so
unfair
.

Natalie’s knuckles went white on the wheel. She hadn’t let it show. She hadn’t wanted to spoil Kay’s moment, because she was happy for her, happy for
anyone
who was expecting a baby. In fact, she’d been the one to organise the collection and had bought the adorable sling she’d added to her own secret Mothercare wishlist.

So how come it’s not
me
, howled the voice in her head, her mouth twisting with the effort of not crying. I’m only thirty, I don’t smoke or drink, I love my husband, we have sex at the right times, I take folic acid every morning, I don’t even drink bloody coffee any more! What’s
wrong
with me?

Nothing, according to the doctors. Apart from impatience.

‘Mother Nature doesn’t like timetables,’ the doctor (Dr Carthy, not Bill) had told her when she went to ask for some tests. He’d been rather dismissive, as if she was one of those pushy women who try to schedule their designer kids around their new kitchens.

It wasn’t a to-do list tick for Natalie: it was a rush of yearning that shocked her, that longing to hold her and Johnny’s baby in her arms. She felt as if the one thing missing now was their child, a melancholy ghost in their home. Natalie felt it so strongly she was almost embarrassed at how needy it made her sound.

She hadn’t always been so broody. Up until her twenty-ninth birthday, she would have completely freaked out if the test had gone blue, but at some silent point something had clicked inside like a timed safe opening, and the yearning had rushed out, knocking her feet from under her with its irrationality. Now whenever she walked into Starbucks her heart flipped at the sight of the buggies and tiny feet in tiny socks. When the babies smiled up at Johnny – which they did, he just seemed to charm them somehow – Natalie’s stomach churned with broodiness and fear and frustration that those women had managed something she couldn’t. Might not be able to.

Calm down, she told herself. Remember all the fantastic things you have to be grateful for: nice car, nice home, independence, holidays, eight hours’ sleep a night.

Natalie drove past the first few houses on their loop, drives parked up with Zafiras and CR-Vs, the yellow ‘Little Angel on Board’ shining smugly in her headlights, and she ached. She could remember what her dad had said at the wedding, seven years ago that June: she and Johnny were a happy family waiting to happen. Both of them loved kids. Between them she and Johnny had five godchildren – everyone, it seemed, had babies these days, apart from them.

Natalie reversed up their drive and parked. With anyone else but Johnny this would be a million times worse. He’d been so sensitive, right from the beginning, so optimistic and relaxed. At first, yeah, who wouldn’t complain about being dragged into the bedroom every thirty-six hours, but lately, when she’d started tensing up when they missed a ‘green day’ because of family visits or having a cold, he’d managed to keep a sense of humour about it all. If it wasn’t for Johnny, she thought, the whole process would be about as romantic as something from a vet programme.

They’d tried minibreaks, and yoga positions. Natalie had signed up for acupuncture and thrown away Johnny’s favourite old pants. And yet nothing. Each month, when her temperature fell and the inevitable period came, there would be a bunch of flowers at work, or a special meal cooked in the evening, and Johnny’s anxious eyes checking her crestfallen face, when he thought she wasn’t looking. And she’d have to pretend that she didn’t mind, because she didn’t want him to think it was anyone’s fault, least of all his.

It had been over a year. The next thing would be more tests. In case it really was someone’s fault. Natalie didn’t want it to get that far.

What if it
was
her fault? What if she couldn’t give him the two point four children he deserved? What then for their marriage that everyone thought was so perfect?

Natalie got out of the car and grabbed her briefcase and laptop bag from the boot.

Inside their house that smelled of hyacinths and uncluttered adult space, she took a pink shopping bag out of her briefcase and went upstairs to change out of her suit into her loose yoga trousers. When she’d brushed her hair into a ponytail, she hesitated, then took the new silky nightie out of the bag and slid it under the pillow, ready for later. She’d never worn nighties, until sex had stopped being recreational and become procreational instead. Now she had to dress it up, to compensate.

Then, before she forgot, she put her basal body temperature thermometer within easy reach of her bedside table, under a paperback where Johnny wouldn’t see it. She didn’t want him to know.

Natalie stared at the bed for a moment – the perfect bed, brass-framed, white pillows, very Mills and Boon – and sighed. The pillows now went under her bottom immediately it was all over, to ‘help’ the swimmers into her uncooperative tubes, as she hooked her toes over the brass rails to nudge gravity along. Funny how the most romantic details got lost.

Then she turned on her bare heel and went downstairs to blitz her reports so she could put them out of her mind and be seductive when Johnny got back from the pub.

4

Zoe Graham gazed in wonder at her tidy front room and wished she could spray it with Elnett so it would stand a chance of still looking like this in an hour’s time.

The house hadn’t been this tidy since they’d moved in. The cushions were plumped in the corners of the un-squashed sofa, the Wii was in the big plastic trunk along with all the controllers and leads and games that usually littered the rugs, and everything smelled of fresh Hoovering. Even the beanbag where Spencer and Leo spent most of their time eating, drinking and squabbling in front of the telly was ketchup-free and inviting.

Zoe stood back and put her hands on her hips, and enjoyed the weird silence filling her home.

When it’s tidy, it’s a really nice house, she thought, almost surprised. When you got rid of the junk that went with two lads under eight, it almost looked like the house from the estate agent’s original details: feature fireplace, big bay windows, period mouldings. What made it feel like home, though, were the masses of framed photos of her and Spencer and Leo on the royal blue walls, and the shelves where their toys and DVDs were stacked up next to her own CDs and the paintings they’d done together. A family house. That’s why they’d bought it, for that family atmosphere, not that it had lasted very long.

Zoe shoved away that thought. It wasn’t the house’s fault that David had walked out; it was his colleague, Jennifer’s. And David’s, of course – it took two to tango off to pretend weekend workshops in Solihull. It was still a family home, she reminded herself, but that family was her and Spencer and Leo now.

Zoe pulled out her phone from the back pocket of her jeans, stepped into the doorway and took a photo of the unfamiliar show home she’d created, and texted it to her mum. Then she saved it as her wallpaper.

All done.

It was eerily quiet without CBeebies or simulated gunfire or the sound of squabbling, and Zoe found her brain was making up a fresh to-do list to distract herself from the nibbling curiosity about how much fun Spencer and Leo would be having with their dad. She knew she shouldn’t sink to that level, but it was hard not to. The first few weekends had been miserable for everyone – tears when they left, tears when they came back – but now they were starting to look forward to ‘Dad’s’ Friday nights.

But then, who wouldn’t, she thought, tidying away the remote control car Spencer had come back with last time. It was like they both now had twenty birthdays a year.

According to the access they’d thrashed out after the divorce, nearly a year ago, David had them every other weekend, plus half the school holidays, Christmas Eve, birthdays and bank holidays. Zoe’s solicitor had warned her that she was being a pushover, agreeing to David’s demands, but she’d wanted to make it as easy as possible for the boys, caught in the middle of what had turned into a nasty split. That was her way of trying to ease it for them. David’s way was to throw money at them. Money and the Haribo that she’d almost weaned them off.

Maybe I should scrub out the fridge, like Mum’s always telling me to.

Zoe stared at her dishevelled reflection in the mirror over the fireplace. Her hair was even madder than usual: brown corkscrew curls tightening up with the effort of cleaning. ‘Hello? What’s wrong with you?’ she said aloud. ‘Cleaning, on your day off?’