The Flower Arrangement (27 page)

“What's wrong?”

“I have something to tell you.”

“Are you . . .” The grin faded. “Is this where you break up with me?”

She stared out at the bare and chilly piazza. All the Christmas lights had been taken down. There was a circle of yellowy grass where the ice rink had been.

“I don't understand,” he said when she told him. “We only did it once.”

“Twice,” Becca said miserably. “And you didn't use anything the second time.”

“The bath.” He touched the tiny silver charm on her bracelet. “I remember.” He looked up at her. He was supposed to be angry. He was supposed to ask her how she could have been so stupid, if it was even his, if this had been her plan all along, if she wanted money for it; to tell her she was on her own. All the things that men said on TV and in films. But instead he was beaming at her.

“Oh no! Don't even go there!” she said fiercely. “I can't have this baby.”

“Why not?”

Because, she wanted to say, when you go to college you'll be surrounded by hundreds of middle-class girls who'll fancy you and will be prettier, more interesting and funnier than me—girls your mates and your family will approve of and who'll fit into your life the way someone like me and some kid never will. And, she thought, you'll hate me for that. But instead she said, “Gav, you're eighteen, I'm sixteen. We're supposed to have our whole lives ahead of us.”

“What are we going to do with our lives that's more important than making another person?” he said, which completely floored her. He was dead right, she knew, but he was also so wrong.

“Gavin, you don't get it. For starters, my mam will kick me out. I won't have anywhere to live.”

“I'll talk to my folks. They'll be cool with this, Becca. You can move in and I'll do my exams in June.” She could see him working it all out like he was organizing a skiing trip or something. “Then I'll take a year out, get a job and we'll have a place of our own by the time the baby comes.”

“You make it all sound so easy,” she said with tears in her eyes.

“That's because it is!”

“Your world might be like that”—she shook her head—“but the real world isn't.”

*   *   *

Josh began to cry, loud, shouty sobs of protest, as Becca hauled him past groups of bemused and disapproving parents. She snatched him up; he squirmed to try to get free but she clung to him and carried him through the marquee and into the kitchen.

“Did he fall?” a concerned woman in a cream dress asked her.

“He's fine!” Becca kept her head down as she hurried through the hall in her bare feet, carrying her shrieking son.

On the marble table by the door, beneath the huge vase of roses, she saw the amaryllis flowers she had brought still lying there wrapped in their cellophane, as if they weren't worth bothering about. The sight
of them abandoned there without water sparked her anger into a blaze. She snatched them up and turned to the waiter who was passing by.

“Can you get that, please?” she said abruptly, and nodded at the door.

“I. Want. To. Go. Back!” Josh roared as she carried him down the granite steps, past the sculpture, out through the gate and onto the street.

“You can't always go back.” She deposited him on the pavement outside the iron railings.

“I. Hate. You!” Josh glared up at her.

“Tough.” She rubbed her arms, which ached from his weight. “Because I'm all you've got.”

“I've got Dad!” he said.

Her heart was pounding against her ribs. “No,” she said softly, “you don't.”

It was all a lie. The dad she had invented for Josh who had lived with them when Josh was very little and who loved him more than anything but had gone to America to do an important job and would come back someday.

The whole story was like a beanstalk—a make-believe ladder to let him escape into the clouds from the harsh truth that existed below.

*   *   *

Becca had only seen Gavin twice again. The first time was when she came home from school and found him sitting between his parents on the brown leather sofa in her mam's tiny living room. He stared up at her helplessly.

The whole thing felt so surreal that all she could think was how horrible she must look to him in her brown school uniform.

“Rebecca!” The armchair was empty but her mother was standing, her lips white with anger, to stay calm for the sake of Mr. and Mrs. Summers. “Tell me this isn't happening.”

Fergus Summers, a small, dark-haired man, looked mortified and cleared his throat a lot but never said a word. Becca's mam and Rita Summers did all the talking. She was tall and blonde and wore an
expensive cream mac that she didn't take off and a determined expression that said that she didn't know how her son had gotten involved in all of this—meaning Becca, her mother, the house, the cheap leather sofa—but that she was here, behind enemy lines, to get him out.

None of it seemed real. It was as if they were discussing what to do about someone else they all vaguely knew—a neighbor from hell, a dodgy relative, someone that nobody liked. She kept trying to find Gavin's eyes but he was staring at the floor, not at her.

They were all reasonable people, Rita Summers said calmly, but they had found themselves in a difficult situation. There was a lot at stake. She was sure they could find a compromise that suited everybody. But she wanted to make a few things clear. Becca found herself nodding.

Gavin was being sent to boarding school to do his Leaving Cert—nobody looked at Gavin when she said this. If Gavin and Becca still wanted to be
involved
(she said the word as if it tasted of mold) after that, his parents would not stand in the way. But in the meantime, there was to be no contact whatsoever—no phone calls, no text messages, no meetings.

“This is just a cooling-off period,” Rita continued, becoming a bit more legal-sounding, “but Gavin is not evading his responsibilities. We are willing to help with any reasonable expenses Rebecca might incur in resolving this issue.”

“Meaning,” Becca's mam said, “if she has an abortion?”

“I didn't use that word,” Rita Summers said quickly. “Abortion is illegal in this country, but it's up to Rebecca.” She looked at Becca for the first time. Her expression, like her voice, was neutral and anger showed in her eyes. Becca felt herself shrinking under her gaze. “If that's what she wants, well . . .”

“It's not what either of us wants—” Gavin began.

“Gavin!” His mother cut across him. “Do not go back on your word. We've talked and we all agreed this was the only way forward.”

Becca stared at Gavin and saw a deep flush creep up his neck.

“I'm sorry!” he mouthed.

The last time Becca saw Gavin was outside the Mace across from her school, holding his bike in the rain. His gray uniform was even worse than hers, which she found oddly comforting, and his hair was plastered to his head.

“Jesus! State of him!” Jasmine snickered.

“Yeah!” Becca said. “Tosser.” She took Jasmine's arm and pulled her toward the bus stop.

“Did you get my texts?” he called across at her. Becca had blocked his number. If he had agreed to no contact, that was fine with her.

Gavin kept pace with them but on the other side of the street. “Please, I need to talk to you.”

“Do you know him?” Jasmine asked her.

“No!” Becca saw the bus turning onto Kylemore Road. She pulled her hood up, picked up speed and tried to lose him.

“Wait!”

Jasmine looked over her shoulder. “He's following us. You do know him, don't you?”

“No!”

“Becca!” He was wheeling the bike across the road through the traffic. “Becca!” he shouted above the car horns.

“Then how does he know your name?” Jasmine grabbed her sleeve. “What the fuck is going on, Becs?”

“Nothing!”

The bus pulled level with them. “You get it!” Becca pushed Jasmine forward. “I've got something to do.”

She waited till the doors had closed, then wheeled around to face Gavin.

“What are you doing here? I don't want to talk to you ever again.”

“I'm sorry about the day in your house. My mother freaked out. You saw what she's like. Look, I have to go to boarding school. I don't have any choice. But I'll be finished before the baby is born. She can't stop us being together then.”

“There isn't going to be a baby. I'm going to get rid of it, okay? My mam is going to book the flights to England.”

“You don't mean that!”

“It's over Gavin—o-v-e-r. What do I have to do to get it into that big, thick Southside head of yours?”

“Becca, please, listen.” He tried to take her arm but she pushed him away.

“Go away!”

“Okay!” He lifted his arms like a prisoner surrendering. Trickles of rain were running under the sleeves of his blazer. There were tears in his eyes and she had to look away because if she didn't she was afraid that she would start to cry too.

“I'll go,” he said, “but I'll call you. Please, don't do anything about the baby until I call you. I love you, Becca. We can make this work, I swear!”

She looked back once. He was cycling away through the teeming rain, his head down, his back wheel churning up water as he turned onto Kylemore Road. Then he was gone.

*   *   *

Gavin's bicycle was hit by a car that lost control on Arran Quay. The driver, a man with Alzheimer's who should not have been driving at all, survived. His wife died a week later, but Gavin was dead before the ambulance arrived.

Becca's mam had been sympathetic at first but then she had taken the hard line, as she always did. It wasn't her fault really; it was just the way she was. She told Becca that having the baby would just heap tragedy on top of tragedy. That she was being selfish. That a sixteen-year-old had nothing to teach a child about the world.

What she didn't tell Becca was that the first time she held her son, her heart, still full of grief for Gavin, would burst open like a piñata and all the sweetness that had been concentrated into the few short weeks that she had been with him would pour out.

It was true that she hadn't a clue how to look after a baby, but she was a fast learner. She knew before he opened his mouth to cry whether he needed feeding or changing or burping. She could hear a change in his breathing from her deepest sleep.

“You're on your own if you do this,” her mother had warned her. But she was wrong. Because once Becca had Josh, she was never on her own again.

When Josh was six months old, Becca got a letter sent on from her home address. It was just like her mam to forward a letter instead of calling around with it. It was from Gavin's father. She couldn't imagine his mother had had anything to do with writing it. Gavin's grandparents had left him money, he said, and they wanted it to go to his son for his education. There were no strings attached. There would be a place available at Gavin's old school when he was four. He would love Becca to take it up in memory of their son but he'd understand if she didn't feel that was right. The letter ended with an apology. The day they'd met must have been upsetting for her, especially in the light of what had happened afterward, but people said and did rash things in the heat of the moment. Maybe she would bring her son to visit his grandparents sometime?

Becca had decided to swallow her anger and take him up on the money but not on the invitation. Rita Summers had wanted no contact between Becca and her son. She did not deserve to see her grandson.

*   *   *

Josh walked three steps behind Becca all the way along Herbert Park, grizzling, but when they got to Morehampton Road, he stopped at the curb and took her hand.

“I'm sorry,” she said as they crossed over.

“The goodie bag had a lighty-up yo-yo,” he said sadly. “And a mini Frisbee. And a Mr. Potato Head with different kinds of eyes.”

She crouched down when they got to the other side so that they were eye to eye. “I meant that I'm sorry about your dad.”

“You told me lies.” He stared at the ground.

“They weren't all lies, Josh. Your dad didn't meet you but he did love you. He was so excited when I told him you were going to be born and he went to your school just like I told you.”

“But where did he live if he didn't live in America?” Josh looked up at her.

“Near here,” she said. “I'll show you sometime.”

“I want to see now.”

“What about your beanstalk seeds? Don't you want to go home and plant them?”

“I don't believe in beanstalks anymore,” he said, biting his lip.

Becca hadn't walked down Marlborough Road again since the night she went home with Gavin.

“Is it this house?” Josh kept asking, all the way down the road, until she began to regret ever mentioning it. “Is it this one? Is it this one?”

“It's this one,” she said softly when they finally got there. Just looking up at the redbrick facade gave her that shrinking feeling she'd had the first time she'd seen it, as if the house was looking down at her and whoever was inside it would look down at her too. “This is where your dad lived and this is where you were made.”

“Wow!” Josh gazed at the house beyond the tall hedge. “It's a big house for just one person, big enough for a giant.”

“He didn't live there on his own,” Becca said. “His mum and dad lived there too.”

“Do they still live there?”

“I think so.”

“Then why don't they come and see us?” He frowned.

“I don't think they're home.” She pulled him away before his eagle eyes spotted the light on in the basement window.

Josh walked beside her, unusually quiet, trying to figure all this new information out. Becca could almost hear the cogs turning in his head. Gavin and his mother must have walked along this road, she thought, when he was a little boy.