Page 41 of The First Mistake

‘We didn’t get that far,’ she says. ‘He was just about to move in with me.’

‘So, there’s no paper trail at all?’ I say.

She shakes her head ruefully. ‘It’s embarrassing. How can I know so little about my child’s father?’

‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Don’t beat yourself up. It’s just one of those things, though I do hope you know his name.’

She looks at me witheringly, but there’s humour in her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Andhis date of birth, actually.’

‘See,’ I jest. ‘What else do you need to know?’

She rolls her eyes, but I can see that she appreciates me adopting a more light-hearted approach.

‘So, come on,’ I say, my pen poised. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Thomas Evans,’ she states boldly.

I can see her lips moving and hear a muffled sound, but I can’t even begin to compute what she’s saying. My head fills up with a hotness that feels like it’s trapped, with no way out. I need air to breathe, but I panic that I can’t take it in quickly enough.

I want to throw myself across the table and hold a hand to her mouth, so that she can’t say anything more. But because I don’t, she continues, blissfully unaware.

‘Date of birth, 21 May 1976.’

Her head tilts to the side, a look of concern on her face, and I try to stand up, but feel so dizzy that I immediately fall back down again. I can’t breathe, my lungs won’t let me, and my body burns.

‘But ... but it can’t be,’ I falter. ‘That’s not possible.’

The last thing I remember is Beth mouthing, ‘Are you okay?’, seemingly in slow motion. Then everything goes black.

PART 2

Nine Years Earlier – Beth

14

It had been a long day – I was off the back of parents’ evening and knew I was staring down the gun at thirty English tests. Jacob’s attempt to rearrange ‘is pen pig the in my’ into a sentence was on top of the pile; ‘My penis in the pig’ was beautifully written, but not quite what I was looking for. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

‘Just come for one drink,’ Maria had pleaded, and for a moment I had been sorely tempted to go for three. Would a class of seven-year-olds really worry if I didn’t correct their grammar and just gave them a big red tick and gold star instead? But then I remembered Mrs Pullman, who had expressed concern that little Bertie’s answer toWhat could you do better at?had gone unchecked. How was I to know he’d writespillings?

‘No, I’d better get off,’ I’d said. ‘I’m definitely up for Friday though. My treat, so name your poison.’

‘I’ll hold you to that,’ Maria had laughed as she pulled her coat on, and I smiled ruefully. I was still thinking I should have gone when I was in my car driving down the A23, my hands twitching on the steering wheel, waiting to see if the good fairy or bad fairy would win out.

Just one, said the dark, forbidding figure on my left shoulder.

Go home and do your marking, piped up the pure, angelic voice on my right shoulder, just that little bit louder.

I was pleased I’d listened to her, because as soon as I was indoors, and changed my tartan skirt and polo neck for a dressing gown and slippers, I was happy to be there, safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t have to leave my snug haven until the next morning.

I didn’t promise I wasn’t going to have a drink though, and poured myself a generous glass of red wine as I psyched myself up to tackle Jacob’s vocabulary conundrum. One final look at my phone and then I’d hide it under a cushion and pretend that I was controllingit, rather thanitcontrolling me.

As soon as I saw the notification from Better Together, a dating website I’d signed up to, I was intrigued. Enough to make me want to read the message in its entirety, enough to put me off marking for just another few minutes.

Hi – just read your profile and you sound like you’re up for some fun.

Was I? Is that how Maria had presented me to the online dating population? A girl who was looking for some fun?

She’d been in hysterics as she set me up on the site, as had I, but we were two bottles of wine in by then, andeverythinghad seemed funny. She’d agreed to change the wording from ‘sex-maniac’ to ‘liberated woman who knows what she wants’ to ‘looking for a good time, life’s too short to be serious’. I couldn’t even remember if that was the final profile we’d settled on, but I guessed it might have been if this guy thought I might be up for ‘some fun’. I didn’t know whether I should be proud or horrified. I supposed that all the time I was behind a screen, I could be anything I wanted to be.

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