was no milk left – although, thoughtfully, Jack had put the empty carton back in the fridge door.
She glanced up. Jack opened his mouth, still half-full of chocolate digestive, but before he could speak, Susie said, ‘I suggest that if you know what’s good for you, you’ll abandon what remains of your cereal-a-thon, get your butt down to the post office and get me some milk. Or else.’
‘Right you are,’ Jack said, pushing himself to his feet. At the back door he hesitated and patted the pockets of his jeans, then turned to speak. ‘I don’t suppose –’ he began.
Susie growled, ‘Don’t even think about it.’
‘Fair enough. Oh, and by the way,’ said Jack as he stepped outside, ‘Alice rang, she said would you ring her back ASAP if not sooner.’
‘Your sister?’
‘Do you know anyone else called Alice who’s that bossy?’
‘Did she say what she wanted?’
‘What makes you think she wanted anything?’
‘I gave birth to her, why else would she ring?’
‘You’re really not a morning person, are you?’ said Jack, and then, grinning, he ran down the path to avoid the empty milk carton winging its way towards him.
When he was gone Susie sat down at the table and rested her head on her hands. In the silence all she could think about was Robert, even though she tried very hard not to.
Robert. Robert Harrison, Robert David I-want-a-baby Harrison.
The idea of having another baby had played on her mind all night long. Even if it were possible would she want to do it? Would she want to go back to the beginning and start over? And would she really want to do it with Robert? It would be like going back in time, and she had no desire at all to go back there, not to the sleepless nights, the constant tiredness, the worry, the total responsibility. She realised that she had fondly imagined growing old with Robert, but long before senility set in, being carefree, eating out, travelling, going on long holidays, swapping Christmas with the family for Christmas in a beachside cabin in the Caribbean. Having a great time together, not sitting up half the night with a hot, miserable toddler in her arms as she soothed away measles or a sore throat.
It had been fine when she was in her twenties – she’d had years of being sensible and responsible, and the energy to do it – and although Andy hadn’t been the greatest husband in the world he was a natural as a father. But she didn’t want to do it now, not now when there were other fish to fry. On the other hand, the trouble was that not wanting another family, not being broody for Robert’s children, made her feel old. The face in the mirror that looked back at her was full of laughter lines, rich with experience and life and wry knowing smiles – but no, it didn’t matter how much she wanted to be with Robert, she’d had her fill of labour pains, teething and toddlers.
But because of Robert, far from giving her the sense of peace that knowing all this had given her for the last few years, it gave her a sense of time passing. Up until now Susie had been happy getting older if not wiser, had looked forward to more freedom, new adventures, new experiences; but now, thanks to Robert, she was slammed hard up against the fact that whether she liked it or not, realistically pregnancy and motherhood were behind her, that chapter of her life over – and while on one hand that was a wonderful relief there was also a sense of poignancy and loss. As the tears started to fall all over again they were for the children that she and Robert had never had, and now never would have.
God, surely she should be able to handle it better than this? Surely as you get older things ought to hurt less? At seventeen a broken heart feels like it might kill you, a missed phone call the end of the world, but now? Susie sniffed. Surely you should know more, you should be able to rationalise and understand and realise that even though it hurt now it would get better – sometime, eventually. Trouble was the way she felt at the moment the voice of reason wasn’t helping one iota, instead she felt sick.
Amongst the raw, bleeding stumps of rejection and hurt, humiliation twinkled and crackled like lightning; and there she was thinking Robert was about to go down on one knee, that he was her happy ever after. Susie felt her face redden. How the hell could she have got it so wrong? How come she hadn’t seen it coming?
Why hadn’t Robert mentioned the baby thing before? She had listened to his opinions on everything else; on foreigners, the government, education, immigration, the economy, Botox, cheap wine and middle-aged women wearing leather trousers. When she had mentioned going on holiday together in the autumn, he’d picked up a whole pile of brochures from town. If he’d gone broody why hadn’t he said, ‘Actually I was thinking more Mothercare than Montenegro.’ Bastard.
Susie reran memories of the last three years, trying to come up with anything, any conversation or comment that had brought them anywhere close to fatherhood, but came up dry. Although there was the time he’d said that if he had his time over again there were things he would have done differently. Susie remembered topping up their glasses and saying she was certain everyone felt the same; there was always stuff that you would like to change if you had the chance.
And he’d nodded and gone on to moan about the state of bread in this country, before moving on to include food generally, gastropubs and vegetarians, and especially the man who ran the corner shop in the village who had had an out-of-date vegetarian lasagne in the freezer. Susie sighed; in three years she’d never caught Robert peering longingly into prams, or cooing over commercials for Pampers. Three bloody years wasted.
She really needed a cup of tea. The cure for everything. Susie glanced at her reflection in the toaster – surely this was the time she should be having a life, having missed out on one first time around because she was bringing up Jack and Alice. She wanted to travel now and do things, stay up late, see the world, buy a sports car, wear wonderful, sophisticated clothes and swan around looking impossibly elegant with nicely cut hair, not be negotiating buggies up kerbs and in and out of shops, with a bottle, baby wipes and spare nappies in her handbag.
She’d already been there, done that. Susie squared her shoulders. She’d had Jack when she was barely twenty and Alice when she was twenty-one, stayed home, tended a garden and a dog, a cat, goldfish, various hamsters and a rabbit and regretted none of it. But that didn’t mean she wanted to do it all over again, especially not now.
How would she have felt if, when they first met, Robert had said, ‘Susie, I think you’re lovely. I want to have a family with you.’ Truth be told, if Robert had said that she would have said ‘thanks but no thanks’, and run away as fast as she could, safe in the knowledge that he had picked the wrong woman. She certainly wouldn’t have wasted the last three years of her life listening to him whine on about the state of Britain today, global warming, young people, refugees, dole scroungers and education. The more Susie thought about it the angrier she got. Robert had totally misled her. She’d spent all this time thinking they had some kind of future together, while all along he’d been busy thinking about raising a family with someone else.
When they had first met, Robert had told her that he liked gardening, foreign travel, long nights in and good nights out … There was nothing at all about wanting to burp small incontinent people and scrape puddles of puréed carrot off the front of his nicely pressed Boden rugby shirt – not a hint, not a bloody clue.
At which point the phone rang. Susie hesitated, wondering if she could really face talking to the big wide world without having had a mug of tea, if it was Robert, and why she hadn’t
