much sense, but she didn’t care. ‘If you’re feeling trapped, believe me, you’re not alone.’
‘I never said I was feeling trapped.’
‘Oh, please.’ She was angry, not at him but at the world. ‘Well, I do. I haven’t even left home and guess what—now I probably won’t be able to. I’ll end up renting the flat out. Mum can babysit while I work.’ She could feel the walls closing in, she absolutely could see the walls closing in as she envisaged the future.
‘You don’t think I’d support you.’
That just made her crosser.
‘Oh, yes, that’s right, you’re so Mr PC that you’ll send a lovely cheque for his schooling and we’ll fly over to you once year or you’ll come here and we’ll be all civil—’
‘Alison,’ he interrupted, ‘did it never enter your head that I’d stay, that we could do this together?’ And that just made her crosser still because, yes, of course it had entered her head, and now he was suggesting it, it just made it harder because she didn’t want it to be that way, didn’t want to force his hand, didn’t want the man who had come here for fun and to find himself, a man who so clearly didn’t want to settle down, to be forced to.
‘You’ll resent me,’ she said, shuddered it out, the most horrible of all her horrible thoughts. ‘You might never say it, you might never show it, but I’ll know. I’ll always know that if it wasn’t for the baby…’
‘Alison—’
She didn’t let him finish. ‘Please, do us both a favour, go on your adventure, have your trip, have your fun, and if you have an epiphany somewhere in Nepal—’
‘Nepal?’ For the first time he bordered on sounding cross. ‘Are we talking about your dream holiday or mine? Alison, I’m not going to just get on a plane—’
‘Please do!’ She struggled not to shout. ‘And if fatherhood and babies and maternity bras and nappies suddenly appeal, I’ll still be here, getting bigger and fatter, and we can sort something out. Or you can head back to London and we can sort something out from there, but right now I want space, I want time, I want to work out my future, so please go and live yours.’
‘You really want space.’
‘Yes.’ Could she make it any clearer? ‘I want to get my head around this myself, and I can’t do that with you.’
HE GAVE her space and she loathed him for it.
He spoke politely at work, and he didn’t text, or ring, or email.
There was one room left to do in the flat and she couldn’t face it.
Could not go in and again picture a cot, so she opened up her laptop on the disgusting green carpet and logged in as Ellie again and tortured herself with his latest postings.
He was back to earn more money, apparently.
And one of the many that jarred was a response to a question from Gillian.
Bangkok here I come!
‘It’s me and you,’ she said to the slight curve on her stomach—and she slapped paint on her baby’s wall and refused to wait for Nick’s epiphany to come. She would keep on keeping on.
But when she had her first ever ring on her own doorbell, she didn’t feel so sure.
He was blond and unshaven and looking just a bit fed up with his lot.
‘Just how much space do you need, Alison?’ he asked. ‘Because this is driving me crazy. You can’t just ignore it.’
‘I’m not ignoring it.’
‘No one knows—I saw you lifting a patient, all the X-rays in Resus…’
‘I go out,’ Alison said. ‘I wear a lead gown.’
‘Does your mum know?’
‘Not yet. I’m not keeping it from her,’ Alison said. ‘Well, I am, but she’s going on holiday, I don’t want to ruin it.’ And she burst into tears. ‘Like I ruined yours.’
‘You haven’t ruined anything,’ Nick said, and she couldn’t even begin to believe him. ‘I’m crazy about you. I have been since that bus ride.’
‘Oh, please…’ And out it came then, all the pent-up insecurity, all the doubts, all the things she’d stored up and tried to pretend didn’t matter.
‘You’re single online,’ she flung it at him. ‘Off out, having fun—’ she tossed that word up at him ‘—delivering babies up mountains, climbing bridges, and not a single mention of me…’
‘Alison…’ He was trying not to smile, and it incensed her. ‘You’re single, I can see that in the small part of the profile you allow to be visible, and you won’t even be my friend…’ He nudged her, tried to pull her from her tears as if they were in the school playground.
‘No!’ She was furious, close, dangerously close, to painting a gloss ochre strip on his suit with the paintbrush she pointed at him. ‘I don’t go on there.’ Well, she did, all the time lately, but she wasn’t actively on there was what she would say if challenged, but she was on a roll now. ‘You say you’re crazy about me, that you can’t stop thinking about me, but you’re on there every night, and I seem to slip your mind every time.’ And then she burst into hears as she recited his latest posting. ‘Bangkok here I come!’
He laughed.
He had the audacity to laugh, but not at her, Alison realised, because in the middle of hell she actually laughed too, a laugh that was laced with tears but a laugh anyway. ‘You’re such a bastard.’
‘But I’m not.’ He shook his head. He rued his words and the pain he had caused her, but he knew at least that he could put that bit right. ‘I’m not a bastard, Alison, I’m not even a good backpacker, I’m the worst backpacker. That person you’re reading about…’ And she watched him struggle to explain it. ‘Do you know how hard it was to justify taking a year off? Do you know how hard it was to end a very good relationship, for no good reason?’
And she did, she did.
‘It seemed incredibly important to…’ He raked his hand through his hair. ‘To cram everything in, to have a ball, to validate…’ Then he was completely serious. ‘And I’ve loved doing all those things, but the bit I’ve loved most is the photos, is the afterwards, is sitting on the balcony with you. I can’t tell her I’m no longer single on a computer, that’s a face to face, or a difficult phone call at the very least, and I wouldn’t do that to Gillian. I honestly didn’t know you were looking, or I’d have explained…’ She shook her head, sick of his smooth talk, not wanting to be a woman who just believed because it was safer. It annoyed him, she could tell, so much so that he opened his laptop and she ignored him, carried on painting the wall as he logged
