The Good Neighbour (39 page)

Rees gives me a creepy wink.

‘Can’t stand Valentine’s,’ says Huw. ‘Commercial shite.’

‘Rees agrees with you,’ Ceri says. ‘Thinks giving flowers is playing into the hands of The Man.’

‘Rip-off, yeah?’ Rees does his Woody Woodpecker laugh. ‘They double the prices on February fourteenth.’

‘I’d be happy getting flowers on the fifteenth,’ says Ceri.

‘White, red or fizzy, Laura?’ Paul says. Thank God, I thought he’d never ask. I’m not drinking but I really need something to get through this.

‘Paul!’ Jenny cries, miming an enormous stomach. ‘She’s pregnant!’

‘I can have half a glass.’

Jenny shakes her head at Paul, and he pours me some water.

‘Better safe than sorry, right?’ Jenny’s one of those fascist Americans, the sort that tells complete strangers to stop smoking or eating brie if they happen to be pregnant. Ceri makes a sympathetic face at me. I make one back; she needs it more than I do. She’s the one dating Rees.

‘Nice decorations, Jenny,’ I say.

Ceri gives me a tiny smirk.

‘Are you all right?’ Jenny mouths across the table at me, touching her head. This time it’s about my forehead. I suppose the mark’s started to show through the foundation, damn it.

‘Fine.’ Nothing a glass of wine wouldn’t help. Cow. ‘Slipped.’

‘Oh, walked into a door, yeah?’ Rees laughs, moronically.

‘No,’ I say, just as Huw blurts, ‘She was literally banging her head against the wardrobe.’ He’s already drunk a few while watching the football. ‘So pissed off about nothing fitting. Said to her, “Well,
cariad,
if you will insist on getting up the duff …”’

People laugh nervously.

‘Huw! Just ignore him.’ I smile.
I’ll kill you later, you bastard.
‘I slipped and banged it on the edge of the sink. Centre of gravity’s shot to shit, you know.’

All right, so I did hit my head against the wardrobe. You’re thinking I’m a psycho, but I’m not. It wasn’t about nothing fitting. Huw knows that. It was about everything. Valentine’s Day. He never even buys a card. Him snogging that girl. Him not wanting the baby. And, yes, about feeling fat as well. I really want this baby – you’ve no idea how much – but it doesn’t mean I’m totally cool about my weight. I’m not one of those wanky hippy chicks who don’t care what they look like. Anyway. That’s a pretty long list of upsetting things. Some venting is normal, isn’t it?

Jenny, sitting next to me, turns and breathes Rioja into my face. ‘Changing the subject slightly, we were trying to work out the gap between Evie and the new baby.’

‘Well, Evie’s eleven.’

‘Twelve by the time the baby comes,’ says Ceri, grinning at Jenny. The look they give each other makes me realise our arrival has interrupted a delightfully bitchy conversation about us.

‘You
are
brave,’ says Jenny, holding out her glass for Paul to refill. ‘It’s like having two only children, really.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ I say, watching the lovely red wine glug into the glass. ‘I can concentrate on the new baby, and Evie will help.’

‘But such a big gap will be very challenging. They’re in two completely different places,’ says Evil Jenny.

‘Ours are the opposite extreme,’ says Paul. ‘Only eighteen months apart.’

‘They play together so well, don’t they, Paulie? We were lucky, though. Not everyone can have babies when they want to, can they? Paulie only has to look at me, and bam!’

Rees says, ‘Good on yer, mate!’

Ceri discreetly makes a puking face that only I see.

Jenny now completely oversteps the mark, not that she hasn’t already. Leaning her head to one side to indicate deep understanding, she drops into a counsellor-type voice. ‘I know you’ve had some fertility problems, haven’t you?’

‘Who’d like coffee?’ says Paul.

I catch Huw’s eye, willing him to rescue me, and the bastard just looks right through me before draining his glass. I hate Huw, but I hate Evil Jenny more.

I picture Jenny in a documentary called
Women Who Live A Lie
. She’s being interviewed by a thin, blonde, faux-sympathetic journalist. Jenny is wearing her horrible stained flowery blouse.

Faux-sympathetic Interviewer
: Why did you pretend you were happy?

Jenny
(weeping)
: I wanted everyone to envy me. I’m so ashamed. Everyone thought Paul was such a stud. No one knew he was gay and went out every night as a male escort.
(Sobs louder.)

F-s Int
: And the children …

Jenny
(wiping her eyes, suddenly looking evil)
: Mail order from Thailand. Little brats. Wish I could send them back like I’d send back this hideous M&S blouse, if only I hadn’t spilled tiramisu down it.

Ceri says, ‘Just because you have them close together doesn’t mean they’ll be friends. Look at my step-kids. Two years apart, fight all the time.’

‘So do Huw’s boys,’ I say gratefully. Now, finally, he looks at me, and raises his glass in a sardonic toast. I toast him back with Jenny’s wine glass and take a long, deep, lovely drink before she says, ‘Erm, I think that’s mine.’

‘Yes, we’ve had a minor fertility problem,’ I say. ‘Couple of miscarriages, nothing unusual.’

‘Did anyone say they wanted coffee?’ says Paul, louder than before.

‘Well, darling,’ says Huw, and I think, no, don’t say it, don’t tell them there were five miscarriages, don’t tell them we’d agreed not to try again, don’t tell them I changed my mind without consulting you. If you say any of that in front of these horrible people, I will walk out of here and I will walk out on you and never come back.

‘Well, darling,’ he says, ‘at the very least, it was a happy accident, wasn’t it?’

He smiles, and Paul relaxes, and Ceri asks if they have decaf, and I unclench my arse because now I don’t have to cause a scene. The rest of the evening passes off boringly with a long anecdote from Rees about the personnel department at Welsh Water, during which he twice flicks out his tongue at me in a manner which some fool – not Ceri, I hope – has told him is sexy.

I drive us home. We’re both under-fed, and Huw’s over-wined.

‘Well,’ he says, ‘that was a predictably shitty evening.’

‘Yes, it was.’ I’m glad we can agree on something.

‘I hate those people. Let’s never do this again.’

‘We’re sort of committed to this monthly dinner thing. And Ceri likes us there for moral support. Jenny-and-Paul’s loved-up scene intimidates her.’

‘Well, now she’s got the fascinating Rees.’

‘She won’t be able to stand him for long.’

‘No, boyo, then it’ll be a sad day down the Llandudno Junction branch of Welsh Water, yeah?’ Huw takes off Rees’s voice perfectly.

The house is quiet. Evie’s asleep and Paige is still in front of the telly. She looks as if she hasn’t moved at all, but the chocolate digestives have disappeared from the plate in the kitchen. I pay her and she gets up slowly.

‘Come on, Paige,’ says Huw, ‘I’ll drop you off.’

‘I’ll take her; you’re way over the limit.’

‘Worried I’ll embarrass her outside the Halls of Residence?’

‘Huw, you’re only embarrassing yourself. Why don’t you get some coffee? I’m terribly sorry, Paige, he’s had too much to drink.’

Paige, wakened briefly by this outburst, clambers into the car and gazes at me with spaced-out eyes. ‘Dr Ellis isn’t normally like that in lectures.’

‘Yes, well I should hope not. He doesn’t drink at work. I don’t think.’

‘Do you know if you’re having a boy or girl?’

‘Not yet. Evie wants me to have a girl.’

Big lie. Evie doesn’t want me to have anything. I lapse into silence, thinking how separate Huw, Evie and I are right now. We were such a strong unit when Evie was little.

As she levers herself out of the car, Dopey Paige says, ‘Oh, there was a phone call for you. Your mother, I think. She said can you call back no matter how late?’ She wanders off in her vague studenty way. I go through my bag for the mobile phone before remembering I ran out of credit yesterday.

Back home, Huw’s sprawled on the sofa watching telly, a glass in his hand.

‘Oh, good idea, more alcohol.’

‘Piss off.’

I ring Mama, but when she picks up the phone I can’t hear her. I say, ‘Hello, hello?’ like an old-fashioned telephonist until finally I realise she’s crying.

‘Can’t hear you properly, Mama. Shit! I’ll come down straight away. Tomorrow. Try to get some sleep. No, well some rest, then.’

I hang up, and Huw looks at me questioningly.

‘Michael’s been rushed to hospital. Heart attack.’

‘God, I’m sorry,
cariad
.’

My make-up has been gently melting all evening, and in the living-room mirror I look like a worried clown. Huw puts his arms round me. I move my head so I can’t smell the alcohol on his breath. I used to find this smell a turn-on but now it just makes me nauseous. The pregnancy-enhanced sense of smell, I suppose.

‘Poor Olivia, how is she? She must be in a right state.’

‘I could barely make out a word. Poor Michael, too. He’s not all that old. Sixty-five. God, though. Mama will completely fall apart if he, you know.’

‘I’m sure it won’t come to that.’ He strokes my back and says, ‘Would you mind terribly if I didn’t come with you tomorrow?’

I walk to the mirror, start rubbing at the mascara under my eyes. ‘Luckily, half-term starts on Monday, so I can get Evie out of your hair, too.’

‘Oh, Laura, that isn’t what I meant.’ He tries to touch me, but I sidestep away. ‘Of course, I’ll come if you really want, like a shot, just say the word. But I’ll be in the way. Your mum needs you. You can focus on her and your stepdad.’

It’s just another little let-down from Huw. I’m getting used to them. My mind races through lists of what I need to organise. It helps to make lists. It’s better than thinking about Michael, frail in hospital, Mama distraught at his side.

‘I’m just saying it would be handy if I didn’t have to cancel that devolution group meeting thing on Tuesday.’

‘Can’t have you missing a meeting. Must get our priorities right.’

‘It’s not a meeting, it’s
the
meeting, the one I’ve been working towards for months.’

Is he still talking?

‘I already said, you don’t have to come.’ I’m working out what clothes Evie will need, and whether we can share a holdall, when I think of something else, something bigger, and sit down abruptly on the floor with an ‘Oh!’

Huw kneels next to me. ‘What is it,
cariad
?’

I go dizzy for a moment; the room tilts and bleaches out. I bend my head forward. Huw puts his arm round me, saying, ‘Hey, hey, hey,’ in a soft voice. It takes me a minute to recover, then I sit up slowly and look into his worried face.

‘I was just thinking,’ I say, ‘that if Michael’s really bad, they’ll send for…’

I haven’t said their names for a very long time, and can’t seem to bring myself to say them now.

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Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,
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Copyright © Beth Miller 2015

Beth Miller has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

First published by Ebury Press in 2015

www.eburypublishing.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780091956332