Dan called her ‘Mrs Tiggywinkle’. She was the girl in halls who kept a row of basil plants alive in the shared kitchen.
Loud-whispering ‘keep the change,’ to the driver, she ducked under the thick canopy of clematis that hung over the tiled porch, grabbing blindly for her keys in the depths of her handbag, and once again thought: we need a light out here.
She’d been infatuated with this solid bay-fronted Edwardian semi from the first viewing, and knackered their chances of driving a hard bargain by walking around with the estate agent gibbering on about how much she adored it. They bought at the top of what they could afford at the time, and in Laurie’s opinion it was worth every cent.
Their front room, she liked to point out, was the spit of the one on the sleeve of Oasis’ Definitely Maybe, right down to the stained glass, potted palm and half-drunk red wines usually strewn around.
There was a honey-yellow glow from under the blinds, so either Dan had left the lamp on for her or he was having another bout of insomnia, passed out on the sofa in front of BBC News 24 with the sound on low, feet twitching.
Laurie felt a small rush of love for him, and hoped he was up. As much as it was authentic, she knew it was also in some part due to spending a trying evening surrounded by strangers, feeling homesick and out of place. Not belonging.
As a ‘person of ethnic origin’ who grew up in Hebden Bridge, she didn’t care to revisit that feeling often. Even in a cosmopolitan city she got the OH I LOVE YOUR ACCENT? EE BAH GUM jokes. ‘You don’t often hear a black girl sound that northern, except for that one out of the Spice Girls,’ a forthright client had said to her once.
She thought Dan might have waited up for her, but the moment she saw him, she knew something was badly off. He was still dressed, sat on the sofa, feet apart, head bowed, hands clasped. The TV screen was a blank and there wasn’t any music on, no detritus of a takeaway.
‘Hi,’ he said, in an unnatural voice, as Laurie entered the room.
Laurie was an empathetic person. When she was small she once told her mum she thought she might be telepathic, and her amused mother had explained that she was just very intuitive about emotions. Laurie was, as her dad said, born aged forty. Better than being born aged nineteen and staying there, she never said in reply.
The air was thick with a Terrible Unsaid and her antennae picked it up easily enough to feel completely nauseous.
Laurie clutched the jangle of her keys to her chest, with their silly fob of Bagpuss, and said: ‘Oh God, what? Which of our parents is it? Please say it now. Say it quickly.’
‘What?’
‘I know it’s bad news. Please don’t do any build up whatsoever.’
Laurie was about six or seven drinks in the hole and yet in an instant, completely, pin-sharp sober with adrenaline.
Dan looked perturbed. ‘Nothing has happened to anyone?’
‘Oh? Oh! Fuck, you scared me.’
In relief, Laurie flumped down onto the sofa, arms flung out by her sides like a kid.
She looked at Dan as her heart rate slowed to normal. He was regarding her with a strange expression.
Not for the first time, she felt appreciation, a bump of pride in ownership, admiring how much early middle age suited him. He’d been a kind of jolly-looking chubby lad in their youth, puppyish cute but not handsome, as her gran had helpfully noted. And with a slight lisp that he hated, but oddly enough, always had women swooning. Laurie always loved it, right from the first moment he had spoken to her. Now he had a few lines and silver threaded in his light brown hair, the bones of his face had sharpened, he’d grown into himself. He was what the girls at work called a Hot Dad. Or, he would be.
‘You couldn’t sleep again?’ she asked. His insomnia was a recent thing, due to him being made head of department. Three a.m. night sweat terrors.
‘No,’ he said, and she didn’t know if he was saying no, I couldn’t sleep or no, that’s not it.
Laurie peered at him. ‘You alright?’
‘About you coming off the pill next month. I’ve been thinking about it. It’s made me think about a lot of things.’
‘Has it …?’ Laurie suppressed a knowing smile. The atmosphere and anxiety now made sense. Here we go, she thought. This was a clichéd moment in the passage to parenthood. It belonged in a scripted drama, shortly after a couple had seen two blue lines on the wee stick.
Should he trade in the car for something bigger? Would he be a good father? Would they still be the same?
1. Nah. There’s no room out there to park a people carrier anyway.
2. Of course! He could try to be less sulky, perhaps, but that was about it. Kids had a way of automatically curing excess self-pity, from what Laurie could tell. At least for the initial five years.
3. Yes. The same, but better! (Actually, Laurie had no idea about the last answer. If they procreated, it would be the best part of two decades before this household belonged to the two of them again, and inviting a tyrannically needy midget intruder to disturb their privacy and contented status quo was scary.)
But the done thing in a couple was to pretend to be sure about the imponderable things, whenever the other person needed comfort. If necessary, deploy outright lying. Dan could pay her back when she asked tearfully after returning from a failed shopping trip, whether her body would ever look like it did before.
‘I don’t know how to say any of this. I’ve been sitting here since you left trying to think of the right words and I still can’t.’
This was hyperbole, because Laurie left him having a shower with the Roberts radio broadcasting the football game, but she didn’t say so.
‘Look,’ Dan said. ‘I’ve realised. I don’t want kids. At all. Ever.’
The silence lengthened.
Laurie sat up, with some effort, given her foolish shoes – strappy silver slingbacks she fell for in Selfridges, that ‘look good with plum toenails’ according to the sales girl – weren’t anchoring her to the floor very steadily.
‘Dan,’ she said gently. ‘This doubt is totally normal, you know. I feel the same. It’s frightening, when it’s about to become real. But we can do it. We’ve got this. With having a kid, you hold hands, and jump.’
She smiled at him, hoping he’d snap out of it soon. It felt like a role reversal, him demanding a deep talk, her wanting to do enough to make him feel taken seriously so she could go to bed. Dan was flexing his fingers, steepled in his lap, not looking at her.
‘And it’s me who has to push it out,’ Laurie added. ‘Don’t think I haven’t googled “third-degree tearing”.’
He wouldn’t be easily joked out of this, she realised, looking at the depth of his frown lines.
She felt them running at different speeds, her carrying the noise and trivia of the night out with her like a swarm of bees, him evidently having spent a pensive period staring at the shadows in the sombre Edward Hopper
