Page 11 of The Life She Could Have Lived

YES

While Anna played with Thomas, she was watching the clock. She’d planned a lunch with Nia, and was excited about it. A childfree weekend lunch was such a luxury these days.

‘What are you boys going to do while I’m gone?’ she asked while she was hunting around for her sunglasses and her purse. It felt like a long time since she’d taken her handbag out rather than the changing bag.

Edward shrugged. ‘What do you think, buddy?’

‘Thomas!’ Thomas shouted.

He was obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine. He thought it was named after him. All he wanted to do was watch episodes of the programme and then try to recreate elements of them with his own track and engines. Anna found it soul-destroying, but Edward quite liked it.

‘You heard the boy. We’re playing Thomas. Now go, and have fun.’ Edward pulled Anna in for a quick hug. He put his hand up and she touched it with hers.

She took the Tube to Soho, revelling in her freedom.

She’d put a book in her bag but she just spent the journey looking around, watching people, like a tourist in her own city.

And when she emerged into the clear day, she put her sunglasses on and walked up and down the narrow streets, looking for the place Nia had suggested.

She was first to arrive, and she took a seat in the small, busy restaurant, feeling like, by being here alone in the middle of the day, she was managing the impossible.

And just then, Nia burst through the door, all colour and light.

‘Anna!’ She descended on her friend, hugging her. ‘You haven’t been here long, right?’

Anna put two fingers on her glass to measure how much she’d drunk. ‘Only this long.’

Nia sat and shrugged off her cardigan. ‘It’s kind of hot in here, isn’t it?’ She reached for the glass of water Anna had poured her from the jug in the centre of the table and chinked her glass against Anna’s in a half-hearted cheers. ‘So what’s the emergency?’

Anna took a deep breath. Where to begin? With the facts, she decided. With the beginning. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.

Nia looked straight at her, unflustered. ‘Okay, and is that a good thing?’

‘It should be, right? Having another baby was my idea. But all I’ve felt since I’ve known is panic.’

Again, Nia didn’t react strongly, and Anna loved her for it.

This was why she could tell Nia almost anything, always had been able to.

Nia had always known the black corners of her heart.

How she’d kicked Julia King during a hockey match when they were at secondary school and then sworn it was an accident with the hockey stick, after Julia had kissed the boy Anna longed for.

How she’d felt more than a little relief mixed in with her grief when her elderly grandmother had died after a long descent into dementia.

How she’d wondered what the hell she’d done after Thomas was born; how she still did, sometimes.

‘Do you know why?’ Nia asked gently. ‘You always seemed disappointed when you told me you’d got your period, that it hadn’t happened again.’

Anna put her head in her hands. Just then, a waiter came over.

‘Everything okay over here?’ he asked.

Nia nodded. ‘Have you looked at the menu? Shall we just get the sharing platter and then dessert?’

‘Yes,’ Anna agreed.

‘Could I have a glass of Riesling and can we have the sharing platter, please? And then we definitely want to see the dessert menu, even if we say we don’t later.’

Anna laughed. ‘I won’t say that.’

‘Are you feeling sick?’ Nia asked, once the waiter was gone.

‘A bit, but nothing I can’t handle. I just have to keep eating.

But, I don’t know, I just keep lying awake at night, thinking about being at home with two of them, about leaving work again and then going back, never progressing, and I just feel scared, and sad.

It’s partly about work, I think. Ellie, the girl who joined as a publicist at the same time as me, is Deborah’s favourite.

And it sounds so braggy, but I know I am better at the job than she is.

But she’s the safer bet, because I’m part-time and sometimes I get called away, if Thomas is ill or whatever.

It’s like you choose – kids or career. Still, in the twenty-first century! ’

‘What does Edward say?’

It was a reasonable question. She and Edward were in this together, of course.

Except that they weren’t, not yet, because she hadn’t told him.

In fact, when he’d asked when her period was due a few days ago, she’d said that it had started that morning, and he’d pulled that face he always did, and said that maybe it was time for them to talk to a doctor about it.

‘I haven’t told him,’ Anna said.

She expected even Nia to blanche at that, but she didn’t. She just nodded. ‘Because you’re not sure what you want to do?’

Anna didn’t need to consider that for long. No, she had no plans to end the pregnancy. She just wasn’t quite ready to face his uncomplicated joy at the news that had so thrown her.

‘No, I’ll tell him. I’m just not quite ready.’

There was silence, and Anna took a sip of her drink.

‘Is there something wrong with me?’ she asked.

‘I mean, Edward’s great and he looks after us, and I have Thomas, and he’s wonderful and exhausting and all those things a toddler should be, and we’ve been trying for a year to have another one, and this should be the best news I could possibly get, and yet… ’

‘It isn’t,’ Nia finished helpfully.

‘I mean, it might be. I just don’t feel quite how I expected to.’

‘Maybe you just don’t feel how you expected to yet,’ Nia said. ‘And you shouldn’t feel bad about it. How you feel is how you feel.’

She always knew, Nia, how to say just the right thing. Anna wondered whether it was a skill she had with everyone, or whether it just worked with Anna because they knew one another so well.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘God, for everything. There’s no one else I could admit all this to, you know? Also for not asking the waiter whether any of the staff are called Joe or John.’

Nia laughed, reached out a hand and put it on top of Anna’s, on the table. ‘There’s a time and a place,’ she said. ‘Even I know that.’ Then her voice turned serious when she spoke again. ‘I love you. And we’ll work this out.’

And after days of worry, Anna believed they would.

The food arrived then, and they began to eat.

‘Try the prawns,’ Nia said, pushing the dish a little closer to Anna.

Anna took one. ‘So good,’ she said. And then she was crying without knowing she was going to.

‘Anna,’ Nia said. ‘Anna, come here, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.’

Anna moved across to sit next to Nia and let herself be wrapped up in Nia’s arms. She was vaguely aware of the waiter coming over and then backing away again when he saw they were having a moment.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ Anna said.

‘Do you? I’m so tired every minute. I’m either working and feeling guilty about Thomas being at nursery or I’m with Thomas and feeling guilty for not enjoying it enough.

It’s like I’m trying to do everything and not getting anything quite right.

It was so important to me to have a career, and now I’m in my early thirties and I’m still just a publicist and?—’

‘Stop,’ Nia said.

Anna did. She took some deep breaths and brushed away the tears with the cuff of her cardigan.

‘You’re not “just” anything,’ Nia said. ‘Let’s get that straight, for a start.

Your job is not you. Yes, you’re a publicist, but you’re also a bloody good mum, a loving wife, a fabulous best friend.

You’re good and kind and funny and about a thousand other things that so many people aren’t.

So don’t do that. Don’t put yourself down. ’

Anna smiled shakily. ‘Thank you.’

‘Tell Edward,’ Nia said. ‘Talk to him. Work it out.’

That evening, Anna thought, she would do as Nia had advised.

She would tell Edward. What was she going to do, she reasoned, just keep it to herself as the baby grew inside her?

Edward was the father. He had to know. But all the time they were bathing Thomas, reading his story, brushing his tiny teeth, Anna was struggling to find the words.

‘One more story?’ Thomas asked.

Times like this, when he was sleepy and sweet and wanted to cuddle, she could imagine doing it all again. But there were so many other times that weren’t like that at all.

‘One more,’ she said.

Edward leaned over and kissed Thomas. ‘Night, buddy,’ he said. Then to Anna, ‘I’ll go down and make a start on dinner.’

Anna read a story about snow bears, and when Thomas asked for one more, she laughed and shook her head. ‘But in the morning, when the sunshine on your clock comes up, you can come in our bed for cuddles, okay?’

He laid his head down, and she turned out his main light, put on his nightlight, kissed him. She went downstairs to the kitchen.

Edward was standing in front of the hob, giving a sizzling pan a quick shake. Fajitas. ‘Okay?’ he asked.

He meant with Thomas, she knew, but it was as good an opportunity as she was going to get to say something. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’

Edward’s face dropped, and Anna saw at once that he was expecting something different from the news she was about to impart. What was it?

‘Okay,’ he said, his face drained of all colour .

‘Do you know what it’s about?’ Anna asked, unsure where this was heading.

‘Is it about Fran?’ He reached over and turned off the hob ring, and the room suddenly seemed eerily quiet.

Fran? Fran was a woman Edward worked with. Anna had met her at a couple of work events. She was a few years younger than them, pretty in a birdlike way. Anna had never once considered her a threat.

‘You tell me,’ she said, and suddenly the conversation wasn’t about the baby any more and Anna wasn’t sure it would move back in that direction.

‘Oh fuck,’ Edward said. ‘It wasn’t that, was it? It’s just, I saw a receipt I’d left in my pocket on the bathroom windowsill the other day and I’ve been waiting for you to bring it up…’

Receipt? Bathroom windowsill? Anna cast her mind back. When she did the washing, she always checked all the pockets, and took out anything she found. She did remember taking some paper out of Edward’s trouser pocket but she hadn’t looked at it. She must have forgotten to put it in the bin.

‘What was it a receipt for?’ she asked, putting everything she had into keeping her voice steady.

‘A dinner. I took her for dinner, Anna. That night last week when I said I was having drinks with Rav. I don’t know why, but I…’

‘But what?’

Anna felt like she’d walked into the wrong house, like she was at the centre of someone else’s marriage drama.

This wasn’t how she’d expected the evening to go at all.

By now, she had thought they’d be caught in a little celebration.

Her biggest worry had been faking her own enthusiasm, not her husband admitting to dinner with another woman.

‘Anna,’ Edward said, stepping in front of her and taking both her hands in his, ‘I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.

Things have been a bit strained lately, haven’t they?

I feel like all we are is parents sometimes.

I feel like we’ve lost our own relationship in the middle of it all.

It’s such a cliché. And Fran was flirting with me and it just seemed so easy, and I lost my mind. I temporarily lost my mind.’

‘Do you think I never think about other men?’ Anna asked, and out of nowhere, she pictured Steve. ‘Do you think I don’t notice people, that men don’t sometimes flirt with me? The reason I don’t act on any of those things is because we promised to stay together and we have a child.’

Edward was nodding, as if to show that he agreed and understood. But as she finished speaking, he stopped. ‘You don’t cheat on me because we promised not to? Not because you want to be with me?’

‘Don’t you dare turn this around on me! You are the one who did this. And what did you do, exactly? Did you sleep with her?’

Edward looked at her, his eyes never leaving hers. ‘We kissed. I promise that’s all. I told her I couldn’t do it.’

Anna made a sound that was half laugh, half groan.

Tears threatened, but she didn’t want him to see them.

She wanted to wait until she was behind a locked door.

She went upstairs to the bathroom and shut him out.

She ran the bath so hot it scalded her when she stepped into it.

And then she lay there, her skin reddening and her face flushed, her hair piled on top of her head.

When she looked down at her stomach, she imagined she could see a little protrusion.

Life was growing. How the hell had it turned out like this?

When she’d been lying there for half an hour or more, there was a soft knock on the door.

‘Anna?’ Edward asked. ‘I don’t know what you wanted to talk to me about, but I’m ready to listen, when you come out, okay? And dinner’s ready whenever you want it.’

Anna didn’t answer him. She thought about the connection they’d always had, physically.

Her skin had always felt like fire the second he touched her.

Was that just a gift he had? Did he make every woman feel that way?

She had thought it was chemistry, that it was something between the two of them, that they were just the right fit.

But perhaps she’d been foolish. She pictured Fran, her long, wavy hair that looked effortless but which Anna knew must take a lot of upkeep.

Her tiny frame. She closed her eyes and imagined Edward putting his arms around her, kissing her.

When she was dry and in her pyjamas, she went downstairs. She couldn’t face eating anything, so she left the food he’d prepared on the kitchen side and wandered into the lounge, where he was eating. She picked up the remote control and muted the TV.

‘I was going to tell you that I’m pregnant,’ she said.

And then she turned and left the room, went up to bed. In a moment, Edward was beside her, his hands on her body, on her stomach, tears running down his cheeks.

‘I’m so sorry, Anna. Please tell me I haven’t broken this. I’m so very sorry. I love you, Anna. I love our family. You’ve made me so happy. Please forgive me.’

‘I think you should leave,’ she said.