Seizing the hem, I pull it over my head, forgetting to unzip the side. Halfway up, my arms lock. I’m stuck. I can’t get my arms back down and I can’t get the dress over my head.
I glimpse myself through the sweetheart neckline and see a strange, misshapen black-and-white creature whose stomach bulges over the top of grandma knickers. I don’t look pregnant. I look like I ate all the pies.
“Is everything all right?” asks Caitlin, speaking from the other side of the door.
“I’m having a small problem with the dress.”
“I’ll get the manager.”
“No, that’s OK.”
I heave at the dress, huffing and puffing. The manager has arrived, talking through the door. “What seems to be the problem?”
“Nothing.”
I curse some more. The lock rattles. The door swings open. I cannot lower my arms to cover my bits.
The manager and Caitlin and three shoppers are witness to my retailing horror, seeing my purple veins, stretch marks, and dimples of cellulite.
“You’re stuck,” says Caitlin, stating the obvious. “I told you it wasn’t your size.”
Bitch!
“It fit me just fine. I forgot to unzip it, that’s all.”
The manager and Caitlin have to pull the dress off me, almost costing me an ear.
“Would you like to try something else on?” asks the manager.
“No. Thank you. This one is fine.”
I get dressed, my face on fire and static electricity having made my hair fly around my head. I pay for the dress and walk out of John Lewis, picturing the staff laughing at me. I can never go back. I blame Simon. If I weren’t so worried, I would never have tried on that dress.
Arriving home, I discover more messages on the answering machine. What if Jack had picked them up first? I have to stop this. The phone rings again. I don’t recognize the number.
“If you hang up on me, I’ll come to the house,” says Simon.
My finger is paused over the button to disconnect. “Please leave me alone.”
“We have to sort this out.”
“No! Stop texting me. Stop calling. I don’t want to see you again.”
“You have no choice.”
“I’ll call the police.”
“Fine. Call them.”
I want to kill the arrogant fuck, but there’s nothing I can do. I can’t involve the police or take out a restraining order without Jack finding out. Simon knows I’ll do anything to protect my marriage and family.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he says quietly. “Meet me. Let me explain.”
*
At high tide on the Thames path at Kew the water has breached the banks in places, trickling across the towpath, turning into puddles and muddy pools. I wait on a bench, watching a rowing eight skate across the river, creating ripples that angle like a feathered arrow.
“Sorry I’m late,” says Simon.
“We’re both early,” I reply, standing to meet him, not hiding my anger.
He’s come straight from the office, wearing a rumpled suit and loosened tie, the picture of studied nonchalance. Sunglasses are propped on his head. He leans close, as though expecting an embrace, but I step back and away.
“What is it, Simon? I have to get home.”
We begin walking along the path beneath the trees where the last of the leaves have turned, yet cling stubbornly to the branches.
Simon clears his throat. “When the baby is born, I want a paternity test done.”
The gasp of breath is mine, but sounds like it comes from behind me. “What?”
“You heard me.”
I stop walking and step to the side of the path. A jogger passes, nodding hello. My fingernails are cutting into my balled fists.
“You have to stop this. Jack is your best friend. He’s my husband. What happened between us was wrong. We admitted that. We promised never to speak of it again.”
“That was before.”
“Before?”
“I want to be a father.”
“This baby has a father.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Explain it to me.”
He takes in a deep breath, as though the story is like a balloon that needs inflating.
“I don’t have a father. I have only vague memories. He’s a man in a photograph, standing next to a VW Beetle in the driveway of a house. He’s someone banging on the door, begging my mother to let him come inside, his voice getting louder. Angrier. My brother and I were cringing in the darkness. My mother threatened to call the police.
“A few years later my brother saw a man standing opposite our school. He followed my brother home but never crossed the road. My mother called the police, but the man had gone when they arrived.
“For years I told myself that I didn’t care about not having a dad. Loads of kids come from broken homes. Some are better off than if their fathers had stuck around. When I turned fourteen I began asking questions. My mother wouldn’t answer them. I went searching among her things and found the photograph—the one of him standing next to the VW. I asked her if it was him, but she snatched the picture away and accused me of stealing. I never saw it again.”
I don’t know why Simon is telling me this. I want him to get to the point because my feet ache and I need to pee.
“A year after I finished school, I visited my grandmother in Scotland, whose mind had started to scatter. She told me my father was a master of get-rich-quick schemes that always seemed to fail, leading to bankruptcy and bailiffs knocking on his door. Even as she told me the story, I remembered my mother in tears, watching our furniture being carried out of the house and loaded into a truck.
“After I graduated I was living with my mother. A water main burst and flooded her basement, where she kept old letters and postcards. Most were water-damaged. I began throwing things away. In one of the boxes I came across dozens of unopened letters. They were addressed to my brother and me. There were birthday and Christmas cards dating back to when we were children . . . all sent by our father. He didn’t abandon us. He had tried to stay in touch.”
“If he’d really wanted—”
“Please let me finish,” says Simon, grimacing and apologizing for his tone. “I started searching for my father. I tried the usual channels—phone books and electoral rolls. I hired a private investigator. It took six months and most of my savings. An email arrived with two attachments: a death certificate and the findings of a coroner’s inquest. My father had died of a drug overdose in Morocco. He was forty-seven.”
Simon looks at me, pain etched into his forehead, and I feel a flutter of sympathy.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “The guy was a loser and we were better off without him. But I have mourned the absence of that man for my entire life. It probably seems ridiculous to miss someone I barely met, but I’ve always wondered if his absence was the cause of my problems with women. Is that why I can’t commit to a relationship? I also wonder if it’s easier for children who lose a father they have grown to love. They can mourn an absence or try to fill the space that was once taken. I have no space to fill, but I still feel empty. Maybe the separation wasn’t worse on him than me. Did he worry about me? Did he mourn for me? Is that why he turned to drugs?”