Page 3

Pete

Pete is running late even though he left site early, and even though he promised Natalie he would be on time to meet her for dinner.

He had wanted to go to that fancy new Italian restaurant on the other side of town, but she wanted to go to their usual place, despite the fact they’ve eaten everything on the menu and she and Eve lunch there all the time.

Natalie gets her way tonight, which is no surprise to Pete, even though the old place is further away from work for him.

Nevertheless, Pete is feeling chipper.

Natalie called and asked him to dinner, saying she’s got something to tell him, and he’s got a feeling in his bones that it might be about that promotion she was talking about.

If she gets it, it means they’ll have enough money to cover Emily’s rent at uni for the first year without dipping into their savings.

He’s got something to tell her, too, and as he gets out of the car, he taps his jacket pocket, checking the envelope is still there.

‘Sorry I’m late.’ Natalie twists away slightly, offering up a cheek as Pete arrives at the table, reaching down to kiss her.

‘I got heldup.’

‘Of course you did.’ Natalie rolls her eyes, but her tone is good-natured, which Pete takes as a sign that she’s probably got good news for him.

She smiles as he sits down opposite her, but her face is pale and tired, and Pete feels a tiny flicker of concern.

He knows he’s been working long hours on the new contract, but finally it’s starting to pay off.

Natalie has been working and taking care of the kids on her own, and he knows she’s already struggling with the idea of Emily going away to university after her A levels, because he came home late one evening about a month ago and she was asleep, clutching a tiny pair of Emily’s baby bootees.

‘I ordered for you,’ she says.

‘I’m starving.’

‘Well, I’m here now, and I’ve got something for you.’

Pete pulls out the slim envelope.

He can’t wait to see her face when she opens it.

‘This is the reason I was late.’

Natalie takes it with a curious smile, pulling the slim cardboard wallet from the envelope.

‘Pete …’ Her eyes widen and her hand goes to her mouth, and Pete feels a thrill run through him.

He knew she’d be pleased.

‘Four tickets to Oz,’ he grins.

He’s waited years for this, ever since his parents decided to emigrate when he left for university, back to New South Wales where his mum grew up.

Pete had grown up in West Marsham hearing stories of barbecues on the beach, surfing the best waves and blisteringly hot summer days, but when his parents had made the announcement, he’d just got into his dream university.

He’d made the difficult decision to stay while his parents and younger brother packed up and moved their lives halfway across the world.

‘I went to the travel agent and booked it straight from work. I know I could have booked it online, but there’s something a bit more special about going into the shop and booking with a real person, isn’t there?’

‘When are these for?’ Natalie raises her eyes to his, before she looks back down at the tickets.

‘Christmas. Well, the seventeenth of December, actually. I thought we could do three weeks. We can stay with Mum and Dad, spend some time with the rest of the family. The girls can finally meet their cousins. They’ll have to miss the first week back at school, but Emily will only have revision at sixth form, and I can get away for that long – the site will be closed until the beginning of January at the earliest. The girls are going to love it.

It’s just a small town, but Mum and Dad are only a ten-minute walk from the beach, there’s a nature reserve nearby, and if we want to go to the city, Newcastle is only 20 kilometres away.

And there’s this, too …’

On a roll now, Pete pulls out another envelope from his jacket pocket.

This is the one he’s really excited about.

‘What is this?’

‘It’s a plot of land.’

Pete unfolds the page he’s printed from the internet, and smooths it out so Natalie can read it.

‘It’s about ten minutes from my parents – further inland, but still close to the sea.’

Pete’s parents live in the same town his mother grew up in, two streets back from the ocean in Fern Bay, New South Wales.

Pete has always felt that a part of him belongs in Australia, despite only visiting once when he was a child.

He had spent most of that holiday in the ocean with his cousins, or poking around looking for insects that may or may not be deadly, the heat scorching his scalp as his mother shouted at him to wear a hat.

He’s never felt heat like it since – a dusty, dry warmth that filtered deep down into his lungs.

‘There’s an old house on there at the moment, but Dad looked into it and there’s permission to knock it down and rebuild.’

Pete can hardly contain his excitement.

‘Just think, Nat, we could finally do it. We could finally live the dream. I could build the house, and we could move out there once the girls are grown up. If we’re sensible we could keep our house, and build this one and split our time between here and Australia, like we always talked about.’

‘Like you always talked about,’ Natalie says quietly, the smile long gone from her face.

The waiter places their food in front of them – spaghetti aglio e olio for Natalie, a spicy pepperoni pizza for Pete – but Pete has lost his appetite.

‘I thought that’s what you wanted, too?’

Pete feels a flicker of something bigger than annoyance, but not quite anger.

‘Let’s go out there and see Mum and Dad for Christmas – you know Mum hasn’t been right since she had that fall in February.

We can look at the plot and you can see how you feel.

We don’t have to make a decision right now.’

Although Pete knows his dad will look at it for them and put in an offer on their behalf if he asks him to.

‘I can’t go to Australia, Pete.’

Natalie shoves the paperwork back at him.

‘What? Don’t be daft.

I’ll speak to your boss if you want, explain the situation.

You can take unpaid leave if you don’t have enough holiday.

We can afford it.’

‘ No , Pete. I’m telling you I can’t go to Australia.

Not in December.’ Natalie takes a deep breath, her face turning crimson as she tries not to cry.

‘I’m … I’m pregnant.

Fourteen weeks.’

Pete feels as though Natalie has punched him in the gut.

‘What? Are you joking?’

Natalie shakes her head.

‘No, I’m not joking.

Why would I joke about something like that?’

‘Well …’ Pete blusters, not sure what to say or how to say it.

‘This is … unexpected. But it’s not the end of the world, right?’

Natalie looks up at him and opens her mouth, but Pete carries on before she can speak.

‘I mean, we’re not going to keep it, are we?

We can’t.’

‘What do you mean we can’t ?’

Natalie hisses across the table at him.

‘It’s not …’ Pete doesn’t know how to articulate what he wants to say.

He wants to say, this isn’t what we want.

‘I mean, we’re just getting ourselves on our feet.

You’re going for that promotion at work.’

Natalie snorts. ‘The business is doing well, and I’ve just won this huge contract which means we can finally afford to go and visit my parents.

We can finally afford to look at doing what we always dreamt of.

The girls are getting bigger.

We’re so close to …’ He trails off.

We’re so close to getting our lives back , is what he wants to say.

‘Bloody hell, Pete, I can’t believe you’re saying this.’

Natalie chokes the words out, her voice full of muted fury.

‘What am I supposed to say? You’re pregnant – fourteen weeks .’

Pete feels his own blood start to rise.

‘When did you find out?’

‘A couple of weeks ago.’ Natalie won’t look at him as she stirs her fork through her rapidly cooling spaghetti.

‘A couple of weeks ? Sorry if I’m shocked, Nat, but you’ve had a couple of weeks to get used to it.

Wait . So you only did a test at twelve weeks?

Didn’t you … I don’t know, feel different or anything before?’

Now he thinks about it, she has been going to bed early, and she has looked a bit peaky in the mornings.

‘I thought it was just a bug.’ Natalie shifts in her chair.

‘I thought that’s why I was so tired.

Listen, Pete, I’ve been thinking about it.’

‘Clearly.’

Natalie glares at him, and Pete gets the impression that if looks could kill, he would have been vaporised.

‘I can’t …’ She leans in, lowering her voice as the waiter hovers nearby.

‘I can’t do it, Pete.

I can’t get an abortion.’

‘Don’t you think we should talk about it?

Think it through?’

‘Don’t you think I have been?

All I’ve done is think about it!’

Natalie’s voice breaks on the last word and her eyes fill.

Pete reaches for her hand – an automatic response, despite the way he feels right now – and she lets him link his fingers through hers.

‘It’s all I’ve thought about since I did the test. Worrying about the girls and how it’s going to affect them.

Worrying about you, and what it’s going to do to us.

But I just don’t think I could live with myself if I …

you know. Got rid of it.’

Her hand goes to her belly in an unconscious movement.

‘How much time do we have before we need to make a final decision?’

Natalie slides her hand away, her features hardening.

‘I don’t think you understand, Pete.

I’ve made the final decision.

It’s my body, and I’m telling you I can’t do it.

I can’t get rid of this baby.

In fact, I can’t believe you could just throw away a life we’ve made together so easily.’

‘Hey, come on. That’s not fair.’

Pete shakes his head.

She always does this.

Finds a way to make him feel like absolute shit every time his opinion is different from hers.

‘It’s not that – it’s going to be a massive upheaval in our lives.

Of course I’d rather this hadn’t happened, but if you’ve decided you want to keep it, then I don’t really have much choice, do I?’

‘No, you don’t.’ Natalie scrapes her chair back and Pete scoops the tickets and paperwork for the plot of land off the table, throwing a few banknotes down to cover the uneaten meal.

They walk back to Pete’s car (God, if he’d known, he would have swung by the house and picked her up instead of telling her to get a cab) and ride home in silence.

Pete is relieved to see the downstairs lights are off when they arrive back at the house, meaning Zadie is in bed and Emily will be holed up in her room, noise-cancelling headphones drowning out the sound of their arrival.

He doesn’t want to see the girls tonight, knowing their world is about to be turned upside down.

In the kitchen Natalie makes herself a cup of tea, and as she moves past him towards the stairs he reaches out and grasps her by the arm, pulling her towards him.

She resists for a moment, but softens as he puts his arms around her, resting his chin on her hair.

‘I love you, you know that?’ he says, feeling her nod against his chest. ‘It’s just a surprise, that’s all.

You knocked me off my feet, again.’

Natalie lets out a little burst of laughter.

They’d met crossing the square at university; Natalie had been carrying a stack of books higher than she could see over, and she had literally knocked him flying.

Pete has spent twenty years telling people she swept him off his feet.

‘It’s going to be tough, but we’ll make it work.

We did it before, didn’t we?’

Natalie lifts her face and Pete kisses her mouth, tasting chamomile on her breath.

‘I love you, Pete.’

‘It’ll all be OK.

Go on, get up to bed.

Get some rest.’ He swats her on the bum as she turns to leave, waiting until he hears the bedroom door close and the soft creak of the bed as she climbs in before he pulls the envelope from his pocket.

Gutted. That’s how he feels.

As though Natalie has reached inside him and scooped out all the hopes and dreams he’s held close for years, leaving a gaping hole.

It’s not just about the house, though – it’s his parents, too.

They came over when Zadie was born, and he’s not seen them in person since.

They FaceTime every week, and his mum is always sending him silly emails and text messages, but it’s not the same.

Even though they live on separate continents, Pete is still close to his parents, and the thought of them being ten minutes down the road instead of eleven time zones away made him feel lighter somehow.

He knows Natalie will never understand that, given her relationship – or lack of – with her own parents.

Sliding the paper with the plot details from the envelope, Pete makes a mental note to go into the travel agents’ tomorrow and see if he can get a refund on the tickets, before he tears the plot information slowly and deliberately into confetti-sized pieces.

He stares out of the kitchen window, out into the thick darkness of the woods beyond the back gate.

Tonight was meant to be a celebration, he thinks, watching the trees sway in the wind.

He was meant to be having a glass of champagne with Natalie, celebrating their freedom, making plans for their future, for a new life in Australia, and instead …

Instead, they’re going back to the beginning.

Outside, an owl hoots, sending a shiver down Pete’s spine.

I’m going to be a father again .

And as much as he hates to admit it, the thought makes him nauseous.