Twenty Something (11 page)

Yeuch. Prudence — lucky escape. I was also consoled by the fact that she had to do the walk of shame in her schoolgirl outfit the entire way back to Clapham.

A very boring week at work. My continuing campaign to undermine the system from within is the only thing that's kept me going.

The attrition war is mounting. On Monday I put my bin on my desk and fastened the word ‘In-tray' to it with sticky-backed
plastic. No one batted an eyelid. On Wednesday I changed my voicemail to ‘Please leave a message for me to ignore'. No one rang me. On Thursday I changed my email footer. It now reads:

Jack Lancaster
Managing Director
Tantric Love Ltd
0898 69 69 69

No one commented.

Today I brought in a postcard from home and glued it to my monitor. It was a free card handed out by the Unison trade union: ‘Work me to the bone, pay me a pittance, never let me go home.'

Mr Cox swung by my desk.

‘Jack,
salve
. Not to mention greetings. Are you quite well? You're quite well, I trust.'

‘Yes, Mr Cox, I am very well indeed.'

‘That is not unpleasing to hear, Jack — far from unpleasing at all. So you are quite
compos mentis
, then? It's just that the picture postcard that you are displaying on your monitor might suggest otherwise.'

‘Oh really, Mr Cox? I'm merely identifying with the struggle of the proletariat. The workers of the world are uniting. We have nothing to lose but our network log-ins.'

‘No, Jack. That's a
non sequitur
. The workers of the world are revolting, and you are more revolting than most. Now take that postcard down and put it in your “In-tray”.'

‘Yes, Mr Cox.'

Mr Cox will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

On the plus side, I have now given up on going to the gym — that temple to inadequacy and despair, vain aggression and
directionless virility. I am bored of competing subconsciously with people twice my size (almost certain to lose) or against the machines themselves (absolutely certain to lose). The treadmill's power supply will always last longer than mine. The step machine might not be able to carry on stepping without my help, but at least it won't be lying on the floor retching its guts out.

Gym-philes have two illusions: one, that they will get more action in the bedroom; two, that physical prowess will translate into wider success. These fantasies aren't helped by the fitness fanatics currently occupying some of the most powerful positions in international politics.

Well, I'm under neither of these illusions. Welcome back, my lovely beer keg. All is forgiven.

The irony of the little Buddy 'n' Leila sideshow is that Leila and I have made up and become really good friends again. Now that I'm no longer seen as a sexual threat, she's even more open with me than before. And now that she's no longer on my direct target list, I am much more at ease around her. Our lunches have started again. And Buddy works such long hours that Leila and I have regularly gone drinking
à deux
in the evenings. She even knows that I'm having a quarter-life crisis and am trying to get sacked (although I've kept the testicle bit to myself — cancer isn't much of a turn-on, I'm told).

We might have turned into genuine friends, but I still like the fact that I can see beyond her obvious charms. Others might think she's fit; I think she's beautiful. And somehow she manages to be bubbly and shy, giggly and serious, compassionate and ironic, modern and old-fashioned, ambitious and homely, in all the right measures.

And, as for her, I think she looks up to me in a bemused — if depressingly asexual — sort of way. I might not be Buddy
with his cocksure American ambition, but I do at least make her laugh. I think she admires my silly give-a-damn attitude. She is straight out of university. This job is a dream come true for her. She lacks my cynical nature.

‘I'm not a cynic,' I tell her. ‘I'm just a lapsed idealist.'

‘Same difference,' she giggles. ‘Now just tell me again why my favourite lapsed idealist would like to leave a job with such lovely colleagues and a six-figure salary.'

That's the problem. Some of the colleagues are just that little bit too lovely; the rest are subhuman/shagging the lovely ones.

In some ways I've grown to see her in a new light. She's no longer a very fit girl who happens to be a nice person. She's now a very good friend who just happens to be attractive.

Well done, me. But it doesn't mean that I've stopped fantasising about her. She ticks every box and I'm madly in love with her.

Lucy rang up to say that she was pregnant.

Lucy refused to give any more details on the phone yesterday, arranging only to meet up on the Bank Holiday tomorrow to talk properly. Until then I am left in a living hell of unanswerable questions. Is she sure she's pregnant? Isn't she on the pill? Is she going to terminate it? And who the hell is the father — Rick, me or someone else?

I try to take my mind off this by buying a newspaper, but the advert on the front page is for baby bonds — ‘investing in your child's future'. A glance at the TV guide tells me that there is a documentary in the evening on unwanted pregnancies. I turn on the TV in the morning and there is a nappies advert. I try to escape the flat and the first thing I see on the Underground is a three-metre poster for pregnancy-test kits. I go into Boots to buy some painkillers for my pounding headache and the girl in front of me is crying and asking for the morning-after pill.

My own subconscious is stalking me and there's nothing I can do about it. Why the fuck did she ring and hang up like that? I try to phone her back, but her phone diverts straight to answering machine.

I don't even know what I want her to say. I think I'll make a great father one day, but not now.
Now
it would ruin my life. My parents would kill me. I'd probably end up marrying Lucy out of a perverse sense of guilt. My mum's delight that the two of us were back together would be outweighed by her anguish at having a semi-bastard grandchild.

But could I face Rick having a baby with my ex-girlfriend of three years? I'm not sure I could. Especially if it's ginger

Blur sang about bank holidays. It was a happy song about barbecues and six-packs of beer. It didn't mention anything about discussing pregnancies with your ex-girlfriend.

We met up in the same bar in Covent Garden where Lucy had made up the news about pulling Rick back in January. I think the barman recognised me as the madman who'd stormed out crying.

‘So?' I said.

Poor Lucy, she looked tired and withdrawn.

‘So. Here we are.'

‘Yes, here we are.'

‘Did you know that today is our anniversary?' she asked, somewhat surprisingly.

Of course I didn't know. I've never quite understood anniversaries. Do you start counting from when you first meet? Or when you first pull? Or when you first introduce them as your girlfriend to someone?

‘Oh yes,' I mumbled, correctly guessing that now wasn't the time to share these thoughts.

‘Jack,' she said, cutting to the chase, ‘I am a hundred and ten per cent sure that I am pregnant.'

I winced at the maths. You don't have to be a banker to understand that that's pretty certain.

‘I wasn't sure at first,' she went on. ‘I took the pill for over three years while going out with you, and I stopped it recently to give my body a rest. As you know, the pill regulates your periods.'

Lucy Poett, BSc Biology
.

‘So when I missed my first period at the end of February I didn't worry too much. Then I missed my second period and then my third. I did my own pregnancy test and it was positive. I went to the doctor on Saturday and she confirmed it.'

‘And are you going to keep it?'

‘Well, at first I didn't want to. But I'm now eleven weeks pregnant.'

Eleven weeks? It's exactly eleven weeks since Rick slept with her on Valentine's Day. Ten weeks and four days since I bent her over the kitchen table.

‘You can use an abortion pill up to nine weeks, but after that they have to do a vacuum aspiration. I just can't face hoovering up our baby.'

‘Our baby?' I was trying to be gentle with her, but I must have shouted the words. People started looking at me weirdly.

‘Yes, baby. Our baby,' she said in a soothing voice. ‘Who else's is it going to be?'

‘Well, you slept with Rick three days before me, didn't you? Isn't it just conceivable (bad choice of word) that his sperm had a head start on mine? They can't swim that slowly.'

‘I'm sure his sperm are Olympian athletes. But they couldn't get very far inside a condom, could they?'

‘Rick used a condom?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you slept with me without a condom after you'd stopped taking the pill.'

‘Yes.'

‘Why? You didn't tell me that you'd stopped taking the pill.'

‘Because I love you, Jack. Because you're The One. Because I'll never stop loving you. And I know that you feel the same way about me. You're just too scared to admit it. You're too afraid of commitment.'

‘You love me so much that you'd trick me into making you pregnant? You'd make a fool out of me to dupe me into coming back to you?'

She gave me a long and emotional answer which boiled down to one word: yes. Women never use one word when a thousand will do just as well.

‘I can't handle this. I need time to think,' I said.

I got out enough money to cover our drinks and left calmly, too numb to show any emotion. I didn't walk back to the tube. I stood still and the road moved in slow motion under me like a movie. Happy extras floated past me. I was the star in my own tragicomedy. This was the kind of thing that happened to other people. Not to me.

And now that I've thought about it long and hard, I cannot imagine a worse situation.

I wanted to ring Leila to explain everything to her, but I was worried that she'd take a pretty dim view of me sleeping with my ex-girlfriend. So I rang my dad and he was a sympathetic listener, but there wasn't much he could say to help.

I'm going to have to sort it out for myself, but I just don't know what to do. I don't want this. I don't want her, I don't want a baby and I certainly don't want a baby with
her
. This is a living nightmare and I have absolutely no idea what to do about it.

I try to lay my thoughts out logically:

(1) Babies

Babies are good things. They chuckle and call you ‘Dada', and one day you can teach them to play football for England and they'll buy you a nice big house in Cheshire. It's good for the human race to procreate. I have above-average genes and I'd like to see them passed on. More than anything else, I want to be a good father one day. Being a family man would make me very happy.

But babies are also bad things. They cry and they stink, and they cost a lot of money. They require a great deal of attention. They deserve a responsible father, and not someone who's too scared to go to the GP about his testicular lump/steals trees/shags random slags dressed as schoolgirls/wants to get sacked from work.

I don't want a baby.

(2) Lucy

Lucy is a nice girl. She makes me laugh. She's also very attractive. We have good sex together, especially when we're not actually together. Having a baby with Lucy might jolt me into sorting out the rest of my life. It might teach me to put others first and to stop being such a whingeing hypochondriac.

Lucy, on the other hand, is vain, petty and snobby. She's also a freak. She tried to pull my best friend to make me jealous. Then she slept with him on Valentine's Day. Then she tricked me into having unprotected sex with her three days later. Her lovely closure letter on 16th March was merely a pack of lies while she waited to see if she'd trapped me into becoming a father. Hell, I trust her so little that I can't even be sure if her pregnancy story is true. There is no way I am going back to her.

I don't want Lucy.

(3) Abortions

I don't like the idea of abortions. I don't like the idea of killing anything. And how could I kill my own son/daughter? A quick bit of research on Google tells me that an unborn baby's heart begins to beat between the eighteenth and the twenty-fifth day. Electrical brain waves have been recorded as early as forty days. Lucy has been pregnant for at least seventy-three days.

But then I don't think it's fair to bring an unwanted child into this world to satisfy the whim of a mad girl who's trying to lure her boyfriend back.

I want an abortion.

And so I plan to call Lucy's bluff. If she wants to go ahead and have the baby anyway, I'll work it out as it comes. And I also
really
have to talk to Rick — who's chosen a very bad time to go away on holiday.

Mr Cox dragged me into the office again.

‘Jack, I could not help noticing, that is to say I did notice, as I walked past your desk yesterday, that you were not there, that is to say you were
in absentia
. Perhaps you would not mind explaining why.'

‘Mr Cox, yesterday was a bank holiday.'

‘Yes, Jack, I am not unaware of that fact. That fact is, in fact, irrefutable. But what possible relevance do you imagine that irrefutable fact has on your position here?'

‘I'm not sure I understand, Mr Cox.'

‘OK, dear boy. Let's start
ab initio
. What do you do for a living, Jack?'

‘I'm not sure, sir.'

‘No, Jack, neither am I.
Nil desperandum
. Back to first principles. Where do you work?'

‘In a bank, Mr Cox.'