Page 68 of Statistically Speaking
I get up and get dressed. I don’t keep anything here, at Karim’s, and I am punished for that oversight by having to wear yesterday’s clothes. It is nothing more than I deserve.
I mooch around his flat, not snooping but examining—the photos of his family, the hardback books that mainly seem tobe biographies of sports people. The fridge magnet that says “I Heart Milk,” the collection of sneakers all neatly laid out on a shoe rack. Sixteen pairs, to be exact.
It makes me smile, seeing it all. All the tiny pieces of him, the little clues to his personality, the shards of his life all reflected in his home habitat.
I am rooting through his surprisingly large vinyl collection when he appears, wrapped up in a parka and holding a big paper bag.
He puts it down on the table and beats his chest like Tarzan.
“I am hunter-gatherer!” he says in a fake-macho voice. “I bring food for woman in cave!”
“For a hunter-gatherer, there’s a lot of Motown in this record collection...”
He dumps his coat and sweeps me up into his arms. He starts singing “It Takes Two, Baby” as he spins me around, and I laugh in a way I haven’t laughed before. I feel free, and light, and giddy. Like there is fizzy pop running through my veins.
He kisses me and sets me down, disappearing off into the kitchen for plates and coffee. He’s a hunter-gatherer with a very evolved coffee machine as well, which is a tribute to humanity’s progress.
“What shall we do today, Gemma?” he shouts from the other room. “Go to town? Go to the zoo? Stay in bed and feast? The world is our lobster!”
I am giving this some thought, and coming firmly down on the third option, when my phone calls out for attention. I haven’t looked at it since the day before, which is a testament to just how much this being-in-love thing has affected my normal routines.
I pick it up and first see a message from Margie.
Sorry if I was rough on you yesterday, kiddo. It might have been tough love, but it was still love. Let me know if you’re okay. xxx
I quickly tap a reply assuring her that I am, and see that I have another notification.
This one is different. This one wipes the silly smile from my face and demands my full attention. This one is a game changer.
I am distantly aware of Karim coming back through, of the clatter of plates and cutlery, of the sight of those mini jars of jam they always have at hotel breakfasts. Only distantly, though, because my phone has yet again become the center of my universe.
He stops, looks at me. Sees my expression.
“What is it?” he asks, suddenly serious. “Are you all right?”
“I think so,” I reply, looking up at him, feeling my face drain of color.
“It’s from the Adoption Contact Register,” I say, the words making it real. “She’s been in touch. My daughter. Baby. She’s asked for my details, and they’ve given them to her.”
“Okay... well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? That’s what you wanted?”
I nod, because of course he is right. It is what I wanted, desperately. And yet now that it has happened, I feel terrified.
Chapter 29
Two Cheeky Corgis, One Pep Talk, and Hammering It Out
I know, of course, exactly how many weeks, days, minutes, and hours it has been since Baby turned eighteen. I know exactly how long I had been waiting to hear that news—to find out that the process had begun.
Now, I am still waiting. The process has begun, but nothing else has happened. If I’d been a little obsessive about checking my phone before, I am now reaching Olympic gold medal standards. The damn thing is practically glued to my hand, like an extra appendage. Gemma Mobile Hands. Even in lessons, I have it out on the desk, breaking all the rules that I set for the students and usually abide by myself.
Days and nights have passed with no news. Halloween has already come and gone, quickly followed by Bonfire Night, and before it seems feasible, everyone is talking about the staff Christmas party and the shops are all full of boxes of crackers and jumbo tubs of Roses chocolates. Nothing says “birth of our Lord and Savior” quite like a jumbo tub of Roses.
I live my days and nights in a surreal hinterland of actually happening and what-might-happen. I get on with work and I spend time with Karim—or King I-Love-You the First, ashe occasionally insists on being called—and I see my friends and I walk Bill and I do yoga and I run and I swim and finally I watchThe Bridgeand I do absolutely everything I can to keep myself busy.
It doesn’t work, of course. I seem to have developed a superhuman ability to do one thing perfectly well, while all the time actually being completely focused on something different. The gap between the external and the internal, the surface me and the background me, is widening, and I fear I am going to have some kind of crisis if it continues.
I know it is ridiculous, but I don’t seem quite able to end it—to clear my mind, to stop planning for the unplannable, to switch off and relax.
