‘Give me a call next week if you come for a swim. Evenings or lunchtimes suit me best. We could grab a coffee afterwards then if you want.’
I look at the paper and see she has noted down a mobile number. She hasn’t written her name.
‘OK, thanks,’ I say, pleased at how eager Vicky seems to meet up with me again. This time she holds the wooden doors open for me and I follow her through the reception area and out into the car park.
As I get into my car, it dawns on me that I know hardly anything about this woman. I don’t know what she does for a living or if she’s married or single. All I know is she has a dog and she’s an excellent swimmer. She knows even less about me. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to see her again. I ignore the niggling doubt in my mind, thrilled at the idea I might finally be making a friend.
I fish my mobile phone out of the pocket of my jacket, which I’ve flung on the passenger’s seat, and as I add Vicky to my contacts, the phone beeps and vibrates several times. I have six missed calls, two voice messages and four text messages. They’re all from Alex. I read the text messages. Trepidation erases the joy I was feeling. I turn the key in the ignition, opting to get going rather than ring or text him back.
‘Hi,’ I say, brightly as I make an attempt at breezing through the front door with my large frame about fifteen minutes later. I’ve left my swimming bag in the boot of my car for now. Alex is sitting on the stairs in the ‘vestibule’.
‘You’re late.’ He sounds aggressive.
I wonder how to play this and decide it’s best not to snap back at him. I need to placate him before this gets out of hand.
‘Where have you been?’ he barks before I can say anything. ‘Didn’t you get my messages? Why didn’t you answer your mobile? I was worried.’
‘You don’t need to worry about me.’ I can feel a bead of sweat roll down the side of my face.
‘I wasn’t worried about you.’ He looks at me as though I’m unhinged. ‘We’re supposed to be there at six.’
‘Oh, I see. Well, we’ve got loads of time.’ I try to come over as reassuring, but I can hear my voice falter. ‘I popped out to buy these.’ I thrust the huge bouquet of orange gerberas, lilies and roses, which I bought on the way home, into Alex’s arms. ‘I didn’t want to answer any calls in the car.’ It’s stretching the truth slightly, but it works. He calms down. I force myself to breathe in and out slowly.
‘She’ll love them,’ he says, holding them up to his face and smelling them.
‘Oh, they’re not for your mother,’ I say, unable to resist winding him up a little to get my own back. His face falls and I burst out laughing. To his credit, he manages a smile. ‘Why don’t you go and hunt out a bottle of good wine while I put some make-up on and then we’ll be off.’
‘It’s just that she thinks it’s bad manners when people arrive late, you know?’
‘I know. Oh, and Alex?’
‘Yes?’
‘I made some brownies. They’re on the worktop in the kitchen in a Tupperware box.’
He looks delighted, which gives me such a sense of relief. I turn and run up the stairs as fast as I can, feeling light despite my extra bodyweight. In the bedroom, I apply foundation to conceal the red marks the goggles have left under my eyes. I do a quick job with the mascara, blusher and lipstick and I appraise my reflection. I don’t look too bad. I feel good, too, for having done some exercise.
Alex and I arrive ten minutes early at his mother’s house and we sit in the car and listen to the news while we wait. As Alex has already told me, my mother-in-law is a stickler for punctuality. She hates tardiness, but she can’t bear it when her guests arrive early either.
There is an interesting debate on Radio 4 about the recent French presidential election. I know my colleagues will be discussing this topic amongst themselves as well as with our students and for a moment I miss the world I used to live in.
Just as I’m about to turn up the volume, Alex switches the radio off.
‘It’s time,’ he announces. He comes round to my side of the car, opens the door and helps me out. I carry the flowers and he takes the brownies and the wine.
My mother-in-law opens the door before we can ring the bell. She’s a stick-thin petite woman with greying hair and the same hooked nose and blue eyes as Alex. She speaks with an annoyingly loud, shrill voice. She and Alex are very close, and that’s an understatement. She gives me a perfunctory air kiss near my cheek and then she hugs Alex for several seconds while I wait on the doorstep.
She leads us into the living room, which is pristine. Not a speck of dust, nothing out of place. Even the magazines have been positioned dead centre on the coffee table. The first time I came into Mrs Riley’s house, I realised Alex must have got his obsessive tidiness from his mother. I hope he won’t expect everything to always be immaculate when our baby comes along.
‘What a lovely picture, Mum,’ Alex says.
I look around the walls, before spotting the painting on the floor. It’s a striking cityscape, an oil painting in which the hustle and bustle of the centre of London is conveyed by blurred colour highlighting the furious movement of buses and taxis alongside a pavement illuminated by streetlamps. It is indeed lovely.
‘I was wondering if you could hang that on the wall behind the sofa for me,’ Alex’s mum says. It’s an order rather than a request.
‘Of course. I’ll do it right now.’
Alex prides himself on being a dutiful son. He’s a bit too devoted to his mum for my liking – he drops everything and rushes round to her house to sort out every little problem the moment it arises, from a squeaky door to a dripping tap. But Alex is an only child and I suppose once his father left, he must have taken on the role of man of the house from an early age.
In truth, I envy their closeness. I miss my own mother when I observe the two of them together. Alex can do no wrong in his mother’s eyes. I wonder what my mum would have thought about me getting pregnant after a one-night stand. I know she would never have criticised me. She would have been caring and understanding. I could have done with her support. I could still do with it now.
‘Come through with me to the kitchen, Kaitlyn,’ my mother-in-law says, breaking into my thoughts just as I’m starting to feel morose.
I follow her as Alex heads for the garage, presumably to fetch the toolkit. She pulls out a kitchen chair for me to sit on, and then she turns away from me to stir the dinner bubbling away in the frying pan on the hob. My gut churns at the aromas drifting towards me.
Since I’ve been pregnant, I’ve had a heightened sense of smell. I’ve become very sensitive to certain odours. I’m suddenly transported from my mother-in-law’s kitchen to a lakeside café in Windermere where Alex and I had brunch a few weeks ago. The smell of Alex’s bacon sandwich made me so nauseous that in the end I couldn’t eat my pancakes. I’ve stuck to beef, chicken and fish since then.
‘I’ve made your favourite meal,’ my mother-in-law trills. ‘Sweet and sour pork.’
‘Oh.’ I can see an open tin of pineapple on the work surface next to the stove.
I frown. I’ve never told her what my favourite meal is. It certainly isn’t sweet and sour pork. When I’m not pregnant, I eat pretty much anything, but I’ve never liked sugary things mixed with savoury foods, like fruit with meat.
She turns and narrows her eyes as she examines me, no doubt trying to decipher my reaction.
‘That’s very good of you,’ I say. It doesn’t sound very sincere, but she looks pleased with herself and goes back to stirring the meal with her wooden spoon. For a fleeting moment, I wonder