‘That’s better. So how’s the revision going? First exam in six weeks? You’re going to do brilliantly, I just know it.’ He takes a long, thirsty gulp from his pint of bitter before letting his fingers rest on hers.
His touch is light, but Audrey feels as though her hand is pinned flat to the table like a butterfly in a lepidopterist’s display case. ‘It’s OK. But you never know, do you? Not until you get in the exam room and read the questions. You could find out you’ve prepared completely the wrong topics.’ She listens to her pre-emptive excuses, a preparation for the disappointment she feels sure will greet her results in four months’ time even though she is yet to sit her first paper.
She has done no A-level revision for the past fortnight. Every time she has opened a book the words have dissolved in front of her eyes. She has sat on her bed, hour after hour, imagining the A grades she has been predicted in English, History and French flipping like letters on a train station noticeboard, replaced by Bs and then Cs, until they land, decisively, on Ds. She has felt her future sliding from her grasp: all her ambitions slipping through her fingers, like grains of sand on a windswept beach.
‘You’ll be fine, Auds. This time next year you’ll be two terms into an English degree at UCL and all this worry about your exams will be a distant memory. Trust me, I’ve been there. I wouldn’t be able to tell you a single question I answered in my A-levels now.’ Edward continues to talk, presenting her with platitudes of support and encouragement she hasn’t requested but feels she should be grateful for nonetheless.
His voice fades in her ears, as if a sound engineer has remixed the volumes so that she can no longer hear him above the white noise of a busy pub on a Saturday night.
This time next year.
She tries to imagine it, but can’t. She cannot visualise herself with a baby, cannot imagine where she might be living, or with whom. She cannot picture a version of her life that doesn’t involve Senate House library, lectures on the Bloomsbury Group, tutorials in Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, Waugh.
‘I need to talk to you about something.’ She has interrupted him without realising he was still speaking.
A microscopic twitch hovers at the corner of Edward’s mouth. At first she thinks it is irritation. They have only been going out for eleven months and she has not yet learned the full repertoire of his facial expressions. But then he frowns and she sees that she is mistaken: it is not irritation but fear. She realises that he thinks she’s about to end their relationship and is surprised by how distraught he seems.
Words scramble from her mouth, like unruly children piling out of a classroom as the bell rings. ‘There’s no easy way to say this so I’m just going to come out and say it. I’m pregnant. About nine weeks, the doctor thinks. I’m sorry, I know it’s the last thing either of us wants.’
Her lips part in preparation for another apology but she forces herself to close them. It is true that she is sorry, but it should not be her apologising. It has been his responsibility, after all. She has trusted him to buy them, put them on properly, withdraw ensuring that nothing escapes.
Edward is shaking his head and Audrey cannot tell whether it is in disbelief, horror or denial.
‘Say something. I need you to say something.’ She does not know what she wants him to say, only that his silence is suffocating.
‘Sorry. It’s just a lot to take in. How are you feeling? I mean, are you OK?’
Audrey nods but she cannot find the words to articulate how she is feeling. She fears that if she tries, all that will emerge will be a persistent, fearful howl.
‘Look, I don’t want you to worry about anything. I’ll go to the town hall in the morning, enquire about marriage licences. I think you can get them pretty quickly these days. And then we’ll tell our parents. You haven’t told yours yet, have you? OK, well, I’ll come with you. We’ll tell them together. It’ll be much easier for them to accept if they know we’re getting married.’
Audrey listens to him talking and envies him his clarity, his certainty, his unambiguous sense of purpose. It is a decisiveness, she knows, that should reassure her. She has a sense that in a parallel world there is a version of herself whose lungs are inflating with relief and gratitude. But the Audrey sitting here, opposite Edward right now, feels his words slip into her chest and clatter against her ribs demanding to be let out.
‘But what about my university place?’ Her voice sounds small and she wonders whether she has managed to say the words out loud. But then he turns over her hand, squeezes her fingers, and she cannot discern whether the clamminess between their flesh belongs to him or to her.
‘Audrey, we’re having a baby. And I want to be with you – with both of you. Maybe you can go to university later, when the baby’s gone to school?’
Audrey stares down at their hands, notices how neat his clipped fingernails are in contrast to hers, bitten to the quick.
Edward is six years older than Audrey – six years wiser, she has always believed – and there is a kindness about him she finds reassuring. He is steady and reliable: a junior aviation strategist for the British Overseas Airways Corporation who has enjoyed a quiet, unblemished journey through private school and university. He is not maverick or spontaneous in the way that Audrey’s friends’ boyfriends usually are. But then, those boys always break girls’ hearts. And one thing Audrey is sure of is that Edward would never break anyone’s heart.
Audrey loves Edward, she is in no doubt about that. She has just never imagined spending the rest of her life with him. She has never, in truth, imagined spending the rest of her life with anyone. While most of her friends daydream about weddings and motherhood, Audrey saves her dreams for a dark mahogany desk in a university English department, library books stretching from the floor to the ceiling and lecture halls filled with students taking notes from her meticulously prepared lessons. For years she has secretly harboured the fantasy that if she works hard enough, and believes in herself, a future in academia may await her. It is a dream, she knows, that stretches her imagination to its limits, yet one which, in moments of fortitude, she dares to believe might come true.
Now, suddenly, that dream seems to be little more than a childish fantasy.
‘I love you, Audrey, you know I do. And I will always, always look after you and the baby, I promise. Will you marry me, please?’
He is waiting, she knows, for her to lift her head and meet his gaze. But it feels like a gargantuan task, to heave this great weight from her shoulders. She hears the seconds tick by, feels him stroke the back of her hand, senses the anticipation thicken between them.
She is aware of the points shifting, hears the grinding of gears as she reaches the base of the V where two lines diverge, watches herself hurtle along this new route. She glances sideways out of the window to where the other branch is receding, the distance growing ever greater until there is nothing more than a memory of where her alternative future had once been.
And then she is nodding. Her head is moving independently of her ambivalence. She feels his fingers encase her hand, can sense his happiness radiating from his touch. His words echo in her ears – I will always, always look after you and the baby – and she tries to hold on to them, to take comfort from the reassurance and stability he is offering.
Chapter 14
Lily
Lily sat at her desk, staring out of the glass wall onto the Thames beyond. Steel clouds hung low in the sky, the river leaden and unmoving. A tourist boat drifted across the water, camera flashes blinking into the grey air, its passengers keen to take home a more enviable image of the city.