Page 78 of The Spark

I fought the urge to set my hand on my stomach. I’d suspected for a while that he would go back to London for the summer. I knew his dad would have tried to persuade him. But Jamie had been stalling, saying he hadn’t decided yet. Which was very unlike him. Dithering wasn’t in his DNA.

‘Yeah,’ Jamie continued. ‘Apparently, Heather’s boss had lunch with my dad and they sort of agreed I was coming back before they’d even spoken to me. I guess I just felt a bit... annoyed, you know. Like everyone was planning my summer for me.’

At that, I felt slightly conflicted. I didn’t want Jamie to go, obviously. But I still thought he should be thankful that another well-paid internship had apparently been conjured out of some upper-crust top hat by his dad.

‘Anyway, Heather started making out like I was being ungrateful, and I just... Well, it wasn’t exactly an argument. I just raised my voice a bit when I shouldn’t have, probably, because she kept talking over me.’

Already, I could see that Jamie’s version of the conversation differed massively from Lara’s. But I was inclined to believe him. Lara must have exaggerated. She was prone to doing that from time to time. I’d never seen Jamie thump a wall, or a table, or anything. He just wasn’t that type of guy.

I knew then that unless I told him my secret – our secret – I’d soon be kissing goodbye to him for another whole summer, while our baby grew inside me.

At the cinema, I drank a large lemonade, and we shared popcorn in lieu of a proper meal. My eating habits – not to mention just about everything else in my life – were going to have to change.

But, for some reason, even later that night, and for several nights afterwards, I simply couldn’t find the words to tell him.

Chapter 34.

Now

After Amsterdam, Ash and I go back and forth a bit over where we should live. Eventually, we decide that him moving into mine makes the most practical sense. We’re not ready to buy somewhere together, and there’s a part of me that would find it almost impossible to leave my house. It’s my sanctuary if I’m struggling, the place I escape to when I need to make sense of the world. My heart lies within its walls. Every day, I lavish love upon it. Only yesterday, I spent hours painstakingly oiling the kitchen worktops, and scrubbing the first copper tinges of autumn out of the back patio.

By contrast, Ash – though he loves his place – is able to contemplate moving on one day. Finding his forever home. ‘A wreck that needs doing up,’ he tells me one night, over spaghetti. ‘That would be the dream.’

‘I reckon you might be quite good at that,’ I say, privately thinking that I would, too.

He smiles, twirling pasta around his fork. ‘It’s getting hold of one that’s the tricky bit.’

‘You must have loads of contacts.’

‘Yeah. But you can’t get mates’ rates on old houses any more.’

I think about my mother’s house, the crimes against period charm she commits every day.

‘You’re crazy,’ Parveen says, when I tell her Ash is moving in.

‘You think it’s too soon?’

There is a part of me that does feel this is quick. That it’s exactly the sort of thing my mother would do – move in with someone because it feels romantic, not because it’s the sensible choice.

Parveen laughs, and says, ‘No, I mean you should buy a place together.’

‘It’s way too soon for that. And I’m too attached to mine, anyway.’

‘Do you know how long me and Maz were dating, before we decided to buy our place? Six weeks.’

‘You were not.’

‘We were. We just knew.’ She pauses, sips her coffee. ‘Plus, you know – I was pregnant.’

I manage a smile, even though after all these years, the word still has a habit of hitting me square in the stomach. ‘Well, exactly. We don’t have quite the same imperative as you did.’

She turns back to the 3D rendering she’s looking at. ‘I just think, when you know, you know. People get sneery about whirlwind romances, but only because they’re jealous.’

I think of my mother. To her, love isn’t love unless it feels storm-gauge. ‘Or sensible.’

‘God, wouldn’t life be so boring if we were all sensible, though?’ She shudders. ‘I’d choose the whirlwind any day.’

She reminds me so much of Lara, when she says things like that.

---