Hello stranger, p.21
Hello, Stranger, page 21
‘I’m sorry, but your booking was for forty-five minutes ago. We no longer have the table.’
‘We got lost,’ I say, feeling flustered and aware my forehead is covered in a layer of sweat. ‘Are there no other tables?’
‘I’m sorry, sir, but no. This is the most popular restaurant in Bruges. We don’t have spare tables and we have to stick to a strict schedule.’
I know how popular it is. That’s why I booked it a bloody month and a half ago. ‘But it’s her birthday,’ I say a little desperately and Lucy glares at me, clearly mortified.
The young girl shifts from foot to foot. ‘I’m really sorry. There is nothing I can do.’ She turns to Lucy. ‘Happy birthday, madam.’ Then she walks away to close down any further begging on my part.
Once we’re outside, Lucy goes and sits on a nearby post and I wander over, shoulders slumped. ‘I’m sorry I messed up your birthday.’
Lucy looks up. ‘You didn’t mess up my birthday. I’m in Bruges with you, I wouldn’t exactly call that messed up.’
‘It was an understandable mistake to make, wasn’t it? St Jacob’s Street and St Jacob’s Avenue. It’s a bit silly having two nearly identical-sounding roads two miles apart in the same city, don’t you think?’
Lucy smiles. ‘No. I still think you’re stupid. But I love you anyway.’
‘I love you too.’
‘And thank you for booking the most popular restaurant in Bruges for me, even if we didn’t end up eating there. It can’t have been easy getting a table.’
‘I booked it a month and a half ago.’ I let my head fall.
Lucy stands up and puts her hands on my cheeks, lifting my face up to look at her. ‘Thank you. Now come on, let’s find somewhere else to eat before I collapse.’
We head back in the direction of the B&B, hoping we find somewhere to eat on the way, and luckily we spot an ‘all you can eat’ ribs place, which is buzzing, but manages to squeeze us in.
‘Is it seriously all you can eat?’ Lucy asks, her eyes gleaming.
‘Seems that way. I guess there’s only so many racks of ribs you can manage in one night. It’s probably quite a clever sales concept.’
‘Until I came along. I’ll be able to keep going all night.’
I laugh. ‘Looks like I found the perfect place for you after all.’
Lucy looks around. ‘You really did. This is perfect. Thank you. I bet the other place would’ve been pretty-pictures-on-a-plate sort of food anyway. And ten times the price.’
The waiter brings over the beers we ordered – huge, boot-shaped glasses full to the top.
‘Wow, you really did mean large,’ I say and the barman laughs.
‘Wait until you see the ribs,’ he jokes and then he leaves and Lucy and I just about manage to lift our glasses long enough to clink them together.
‘Happy birthday to my gorgeous fiancée.’
She smiles. ‘Still sounds funny but I like it.’
‘Me too.’
We eat and drink until we are so full we both have to unbutton our jeans and then stumble back to the B&B, getting lost again but this time we don’t care, enjoying the elongated tour of Bruges’ beautiful streets. When we’re nearly back, we stop on one of the many bridges and hold hands, looking out over the canal.
‘You know, you were right. This no-kids life’s not half bad.’
Lucy leans up and kisses me. ‘And this is only the beginning.’
Lucy
It’s Valentine’s Day, and Jamie is supposed to be taking me out for dinner in an hour. But as I stand in the shower, I feel like I might faint and find myself starting to cry – the tears mingling in with the water plummeting from the showerhead. I’ve been feeling awful for the past couple of weeks, pretty much since we got back from Bruges, and, me being me, have put myself six feet under. Because life couldn’t possibly just be this wonderful, could it? I’m too happy therefore I must be dying. I wondered for a while if it was some sort of residual aftermath of the sickness bug I had at New Year, but I’ve felt fine in between, and when I started googling symptoms I decided it had to be some sort of cancer, probably ovarian as some kind of bitter punishment for never having children. I haven’t mentioned anything to Jamie because I don’t want to worry him, but at the same time keeping it a secret makes me feel horribly distant from him.
I really don’t want to let him down tonight, as I’m fairly sure from the secretive way he’s been acting that he’s booked somewhere special, but at the same time the thought of eating a big meal is making my stomach churn. I just about manage to finish my shower, get out and look in the wardrobe for something nice to wear but soon find I have to sit down on the bed.
Whilst I’m sitting there, trying to force myself to get back up, Jamie appears at the door having just got back from work.
‘You OK?’
I try to look as well as I can. ‘Yeah, just trying to decide what to wear.’
‘You look exhausted. You know, I can always cancel the reservation if you’re not feeling up to it.’
‘I look like crap, don’t I?’
Jamie sits down on the bed beside me. ‘Never.’
I feel another wave of nausea coming over me.
‘You know how much I appreciate you booking somewhere special for tonight, don’t you?’
‘But you’d rather not go? Sorry, I did wonder whether you’d be on board with the whole Valentine’s Day thing or see it as a load of commercial nonsense.’
I shake my head but quickly stop when it makes me feel even sicker. ‘I promise it’s not that. I’m just not feeling great.’
‘Shall I go and cook you something instead? Something light like a chicken salad?’
‘I’m not really hungry. I might just have a little lie-down. I’m sorry. First I ruined New Year and now Valentine’s Day. I’m a terrible fiancée.’
What if I never make it to the wedding? What if I’ve got something terminal?
‘Don’t worry about tonight. But do you think perhaps you should go to the doctor? You’ve been off your food for quite a while and that’s definitely not like you.’ He’s treading gently, neither of us wanting to voice our fears.
‘Yeah, I’ll book an appointment tomorrow.’
‘Hopefully they can give you something to help.’
I nod. ‘Feel free to go ahead and eat. If you leave me some, I’m sure I’ll feel more like it after a little nap.’
‘It’s OK. I’ll wait for you. It is Valentine’s Day after all. I don’t want to sit down there on my own.’ He picks up my book from the bedside table. ‘Do you want me to read to you for a bit? Help you sleep?’
God, he really is too good to be true. I must be dying.
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I know I don’t have to. I want to. Find out what rubbish it is you’re filling your head with.’
I force a smile. ‘Better than that crap you normally read.’
I shuffle up the bed and lay my head on the pillow and he opens the book and tucks the bookmark into the back. Then he starts reading and I close my eyes, letting the rhythm of his voice soothe me until I fall asleep.
‘So you had a sickness bug at New Year?’
‘Yeah, I thought maybe it was just something I’d eaten but it hasn’t really gone away. Well, it did for a while. I felt fine for about a month. But the past couple of weeks the nausea seems to have come back. I’ve lost my appetite and normally I have a huge appetite.’ I pause and laugh, but the doctor just looks at me with a serious expression and I worry he’s preparing to tell me I only have weeks to live.
‘Any other symptoms? Pain? Diarrhoea? Headaches? Problems urinating?’
‘I’ve had headaches and I’ve been feeling really exhausted and quite bloated. None of the others.’
He nods, taking notes on his computer. ‘Normal periods?’
‘Well, I’m on the pill – Lybrel – so I don’t get periods.’
‘Oh right, OK.’ He reaches into his drawer and hands me a urine specimen pot. ‘Do you think you could squeeze me out a sample?’
‘Yeah, sure, I’ll try.’ I smile again. I get the sense he’s not the type of doctor you can have a joke with, but maybe it’s just because he knows he’s soon going to have to impart devastating news.
I take the pot and go to the toilets, producing a sample and then wrapping the bottle in tissue, ridiculously, to disguise my wee. Then I wash my hands and take it back to him.
He takes it, removes the tissue and places it in the bin and then he opens the lid and puts various test sticks into my urine, removing them and laying them down on a little tray. ‘It’s probably worth us doing some blood tests as well if this doesn’t show anything up.’
‘OK,’ I say, feeling nervous at how seriously he’s taking it. I was hoping he was going to say I was just being silly and send me packing.
He looks again at the test strips. ‘So you’re on Lybrel? Do you ever miss a pill?’
I shake my head. ‘I’m religious about it. Take it at the same time each day.’ It’s always the first thing I do when I wake up, as soon as the alarm goes off. Even at the weekends, it’s like my body clock automatically wakes me, the fear of delaying my pill by even a few hours causing me to stir.
‘When you were sick, did you have diarrhoea too? Was it very violent?’
‘Yes, I don’t think there was a lot left inside by the end. Why?’
He holds up the test stick showing a dark red line next to a more faded one. ‘You’re pregnant. My guess would be you conceived around the time of your sickness bug, which would make you roughly eight weeks.’
Suddenly, the memory of Jamie and me having sex on the new rug in my writing room hits me, and I feel sick, even sicker than I was feeling when I came in. I’ve always been so careful. Why hadn’t I thought this could happen?
‘When you’re very violently ill, you can expel all of the pill,’ the doctor continues. ‘So if you have sex close to that time, it can result in pregnancy.’
I nod, my voice lost somewhere.
‘Forgive me if I’m reading the situation wrong, but I’m guessing this pregnancy isn’t a particularly positive surprise?’
‘I was on the pill, wasn’t I?’ He looks a little taken aback by my bluntness so I add, ‘Sorry, no. I don’t want children.’
He nods slowly. ‘Well, there are plenty of options to consider. Abortion. Adoption. Is the father in the picture?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, maybe book another appointment when you leave. We can discuss things further once you’ve had a chance to talk to him about it.’
‘Thank you.’
He smiles, but it feels like it’s laced with pity and I imagine how stupid he must think I am. ‘No problem.’
I take a detour on the way home, driving around the countryside just to give myself some breathing space, to avoid having to go back to the house and see Jamie. I know he’ll be full of questions about my appointment and I just don’t feel ready to tell him about the pregnancy, knowing he’ll want to accompany me to the abortion clinic, to hold my hand, all the while thinking I’m a monster. I’ve always wondered whether, if I did somehow accidentally fall pregnant, I’d feel any sort of bond with the being growing inside of me, whether it would change my perspective on things. But it doesn’t feel real. Even feeling so poorly doesn’t fill me with any sense of reality. If anything, I just want to remove it, to go back to feeling normal again. Part of me wonders if it’d be easier to just drive to the clinic now, beg someone to get it over and done with. Does Jamie really have to know? Wouldn’t it just hurt him?
I drive around for a little longer, my music blaring out of the car speakers. For a while, I imagine I’m eighteen again, cruising around in my first car singing at the top of my voice and feeling on top of the world with my new-found freedom. But then it dawns on me that I can’t avoid going home forever – Jamie will be getting worried. So I turn the car round, stopping off at a Tesco Metro to buy a cheap pregnancy test, just to be sure, hoping beyond hope that the result in the doctor’s office was a false positive. It must happen sometimes. Nothing is one hundred percent accurate. At the checkout, I hide the box under a loaf of bread in case anyone I know sees me, and then throw it in the car before removing all the packaging and shoving one of the tests in my pocket, hiding the other one in the glove compartment.
Jamie is already home when I get there and when I appear in the kitchen, I can see he’s trying to play it cool but that he’s desperate to know how it went at the doctor’s. I decide to put him out of his misery before he asks.
‘Some kind of strange bacteria in my stomach, it turns out. He told me the proper name for it but I can’t remember. Anyway, he’s given me antibiotics.’ I can’t look him in the eye so instead I dump the loaf of bread on the worktop and focus on pouring myself a glass of water.
‘Oh, that’s great. I mean, not that you’ve got an infection, but that it’s an easy solution. Do you need me to go to the pharmacy for you and get your prescription?’
‘Oh no, I left it in the car. I’ll grab it later. Have to space them out every twelve hours so might as well wait until bedtime to take one now.’
Jamie comes up beside me, puts his arms around my waist and kisses my cheek. ‘I’m so glad. I’ve been worried about you.’
‘Yeah, me too.’ I down the water, hoping to fill my bladder again so that I can do another test. ‘I’m just going to go and have a shower actually. I’ve been a bit hot at work today.’
Jamie furrows his eyebrows. ‘It’s been raining all day. It’s freezing out there.’
‘I think it must be the infection giving me a bit of a temperature or something.’
‘Yeah, probably,’ Jamie says, but I can tell that he knows something’s not right with me. That’s the problem when you become as close as we have. The other person can sense the little shifts in your mood, when you’re preoccupied, or not quite present.
‘Do you want me to cook anything for dinner or are you still not feeling up to it?’
I’ve got this strange mix of starvation and nausea in my throat, but I’m really not sure what I could stomach. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll come and make something in a bit. I’ll probably just have a little snack, so feel free to get yourself something.’
‘OK. Will do.’
I leave Jamie and go upstairs to our en suite, turning the shower on and then taking the pregnancy test out of my pocket, opening it and sitting on the toilet. Thankfully, the glass of water enables me to squeeze out enough wee to cover the stick for the suggested ten seconds, then I put the cap on and place it on the side. I’m not really going to have a shower. Jamie’s right. I’ve been shivering all bloody day. I just wanted to buy myself enough time to do the test and be alone for a bit.
The pack says it can take about five minutes for a result to appear but my second line is there in seconds, blazing up at me. And it makes me surprisingly angry. I’ve taken my pill religiously since the day I started having sex. I’ve often used condoms as well, like putting a brick wall up against the sperm. A big fat ‘no entry’ sign. How could this have happened? That stupid bloody stomach bug.
I turn off the shower, open the en-suite door to check Jamie isn’t in the bedroom and then sneak the pregnancy test into my bedside table drawer, hiding it under all the other crap I keep in there. Then I pretend to be drying off and getting dressed (instead I stare at the wall in despair) before heading downstairs to make myself some cheese on toast, the only thing that doesn’t turn my stomach when I think of eating it.
Jamie
I reckon Lucy is either dying or having an affair. I’m not sure which would be worse. I know that maybe I’m a bit sick in the head that her dying isn’t automatically the worst outcome I can imagine, but at least that way it wouldn’t be a betrayal. I could go through life knowing that I wasn’t a total fool for believing that she loved me as much as I loved her. If she’s having an affair then everything I’m basing my life on is a lie.
Evidence that she’s dying: she feels poorly all the time, she looks exhausted and is constantly sleeping, I’ve seen no evidence of the antibiotics she supposedly got from the doctor last week and she doesn’t seem to be getting any better.
Evidence that she’s having an affair: showering when she got back from the ‘doctor’ with the terrible excuse that she’d been hot on what was probably the coldest day of the year. She never has a shower as soon as she gets home, even when she’s been to an exercise class and is dripping with sweat. She waits until before she goes to bed as she says it’s pointless putting clean clothes on when it’s near the end of the day. Also, she can’t look me in the eye, and I think if she really was dying, she’d break down and want me to comfort her, whereas she just seems to be avoiding my affection at all costs.
Like now. A Sunday morning and she’s gone out for a ‘walk’ on her own. She never goes out for a walk on her own. She never goes out on a Sunday morning full stop. Sunday mornings are our time to lounge in bed, me bringing her breakfast, drifting in and out of sleep. Sometimes we’ll have sex or she’ll do some writing on her laptop and I’ll surf random articles on the web. But today she was off like a shot at about nine o’clock, saying she thought the fresh air would help with her recovery, and when I offered to join her, she added the excuse that she needed the time to try to solve a tricky plot point in her novel.
So, like a terrible jealous and possessive boyfriend, I am searching the house for some kind of clue, some evidence for why Lucy’s suddenly undergone a personality transplant, why the person I felt so very close to has become so painfully distant. I take her car keys off the hook and go out to her car, searching in the door pockets and under the seats, but there are only cereal bar wrappers, receipts and a random mass of biros. I’m not sure what I think I’m going to find, what would serve as incriminating evidence, but I’m just hoping for something. Anything. I’m just about to admit defeat when, I’m not sure why, but a word on one of the receipts jumps out at me and I feel sick to my stomach. I pick it up and read the two items, a loaf of bread and a pack of two pregnancy tests. The night she came back from the doctor, she’d had a loaf of bread in her hands. I check the date on the receipt, and sure enough, it’s the date of her appointment. I look in the glove compartment, wondering if she might have hidden something in there, and there it is, the pregnancy test box. Inside, there’s one unused test and the empty packet of another.
