Page 86 of The Spark

‘I’m not. You’re doing that all by yourself.’

Behind us, the lift rumbles, indicating the arrival of a neighbour, or delivery person. I have mere moments left.

‘I’m not mad,’ I insist, looking him right in the eye, a final attempt to weaken the barrier he has put up. Or, to be more accurate, the one I have created between us.

But he doesn’t say anything else. He just gently but very firmly closes the door in my face.

Chapter 37.

Then

Just seven days after I discovered I was pregnant, Jamie’s parents came to Norwich for the weekend.

I still hadn’t told Jamie about the baby.

They’d made reservations at an uber-expensive restaurant on Upper St Giles – one that offered tasting menus and paired wine. I wondered if they’d done that partly to try to intimidate me – to prove I didn’t belong in their world, and, by extension, Jamie’s.

I wasn’t intimidated, but I was apprehensive. I didn’t often see Chris and Debra, and I was worried they might be able to guess I was pregnant. What would they say? What would they do? Would they expose my secret in the middle of the restaurant, a hushed and intimate space, where people booked tables months in advance for special occasions? I couldn’t bear to be struck by the ugly brunt of Chris’s rage in such an elegant, civilised setting.

I knew I should have told Jamie by then. But the mention of Heather the previous week had thrown me. As had the idea that, unless I did something about it, Jamie might be heading to London again for the summer.

My hesitance had turned into anxiety, withdrawal. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I would push Jamie away at night, and he’d ask if I was okay. But I couldn’t tell him. Somewhere inside me, a kernel of doubt had taken root and was growing.

None of my misgivings were to do with becoming a mum, though. I pictured it obsessively: giving birth rosy-cheeked on a damp-misted day in January. Surviving night feeds and dirty nappies and lack of sleep with cheerful, full-hearted optimism, muddling through till we graduated in June. Finding somewhere to live, the three of us. Securing another part-time internship, maybe, then working as an interior designer while Jamie completed his architecture training and we both rode the juggernaut of early parenthood. It would be a messy and chaotic but exhilarating blur.

But what if, I thought, Jamie’s parents got to him before all that? What if they persuaded him the whole thing was just too huge, too soon? That becoming a dad would be unbearably tough?

I tried to imagine my life if we couldn’t make it work. Without him waking me each morning with a kiss and cup of tea. Without his messages filling my phone – jokes and funny anecdotes and ridiculous gifs. Without the hearts he would draw for me on the steamed-up shower screen. Without him catching me whenever he came home, pressing me gently to the wall with a kiss. Without meeting his gaze and enjoying the pleasant voltage of our shared smile, knowing he was mine.

But most of all, I couldn’t imagine losing the certainty of loving him. A future with Jamie had always felt sure as the sunrise to me, a flare of orange-skied warmth in my mind. Nor could I picture parenting alone. I didn’t want to do it without him. Our baby was half him, his cells mingled with mine. I imagined the baby as a silkworm inside me, spinning a new life for the three of us, intricate and breathtaking. And all we had to do for that miracle to unfold was wait.

Alone was a prospect I simply couldn’t contemplate.

At the restaurant, Jamie’s dad was being especially obnoxious. We’d barely passed the menus back to the waiter before he started harping on about Jamie’s future.

‘You should really consider doing your masters in London,’ he said, his voice abrupt, his expression expectant. ‘I’m serious about this, Jamie.’

He and Jamie were wearing matching designer shirts that night. His was white, Jamie’s dark grey. I’d been trying to decide if I thought that was sweet or a bit absurd. Still, Jamie was on good form, which helped to distract me from the hornets’ nest in my head. He looked so handsome, and had layered on the Tom Ford Noir. I was wearing the tiny black dress he liked, though I could feel his parents’ disapproval of it the moment I removed my coat.

‘Yeah, I know,’ Jamie said, in reply to Chris, sipping his water without looking my way.

I wished Jamie would assert himself. But I understood why he felt he couldn’t. His father was implacable when he was in this kind of mood.

‘And you, Neve?’ Chris’s pick-axe gaze swivelled onto me. ‘What is your plan, for life after graduation?’

I wished I’d thought to have an answer ready for this question. Because I could hardly say, Well, that really depends on how things go with your first grandchild, Chris.

The wine arrived. I put my hand over my glass as the waiter made to fill it. ‘Hayfever,’ I said. (This bit I had practised.) ‘I’m on antihistamines.’

Jamie touched my arm in sympathy, not seeming to realise I wasn’t presenting with a single symptom of hayfever, nor had I mentioned it before now. As he did so, his designer watch caught my eye, the one Chris had given to him the previous Christmas. It was so expensive, he’d pretended when I asked that he didn’t know how much Chris had paid for it. But I Googled it the same night and felt faintly appalled. It had cost as much as a small car.

‘Ah, well,’ Chris said briskly to me, as if hayfever was a personality defect. He was probably the type of guy who didn’t believe in depression, or menstrual cramps. ‘All the more for us.’

I could feel Jamie’s mum staring at me then, for just a second longer than felt comfortable. But shortly after that, the conversation moved on, and she looked away.

She caught me outside the toilets a couple of hours later, just after Jamie’s dad had ordered coffees for everyone without asking if we wanted them first.

‘Neve.’ Debra’s voice was hushed, but her eyes were urgent. She was wearing a slash of lipstick in a violent shade of red I suspected to have been an ill-judged gift from Chris. ‘I know we don’t know each other very well, but I can see how much my son... admires you.’ (It didn’t surprise me to discover that Debra was apparently allergic to the L-word.) ‘I’d like to ask you a question, and for you to answer truthfully.’

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