Dawn shrugged. ‘I suppose he must’ve,’ she said.
‘But he didn’t tell you? He never mentioned it? Not once? Not even a hint?’
‘No, Rob,’ she said, sounding annoyed. ‘He didn’t.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘But it sounds like—’ But then I stopped myself and petted Choupi instead.
‘Sounds like what?’ Dawn prompted.
I shrugged. ‘Sounds like the guy’s a dick. Maybe you’re better off without him.’
‘Yeah, maybe I would be,’ she said, visibly tearing up again and then turning away from me to hide the fact. ‘But the thing is, Rob, I’m pregnant.’
I frowned, struggling to take her words in. I had a lump in my throat before I could work out why, and, when I opened my mouth to speak, nothing came out. An unfamiliar feeling was sweeping through me – a sense of warmth seemed to be welling up from some previously unknown place, deep within. It’ll sound a bit weird I suppose, because it’s kind of hard to explain, but it seemed like it was physical before it became mental, like a sort of weird lovely full-body rush. A new emotion, a new feeling, a new sense of hope, but for the time being without any kind of thought process as to why I was feeling that way.
Unable to speak, I patted Dawn’s back and waited until she continued, telling me in dribs and drabs how she felt. She spoke to me like a mate, or perhaps a brother, definitely not like someone she’d slept with, and not like someone who might be madly in love with her, either.
But I was in love with her – that’s the thing. She was pretty and she was funny and she was clever. Just sitting next to her made me feel warm and deep-down happy. Now that she was pregnant as well, she represented everything I’d ever wanted and everything I was terrified I’d never have.
‘So how far gone are you?’ I finally asked. She’d started talking about how it wasn’t too late to ‘get rid of it’.
‘Ten weeks,’ she said. ‘So it’s still an option. If I can get my head around it.’
‘Ten weeks,’ I said, scratching my ear as I worked out the dates.
She looked at me questioningly, then laughed. ‘Oh, Rob!’ she said. ‘We did it once and it wasn’t even… C’mon.’
‘Once is enough,’ I said. ‘I mean, do you know it’s Billy’s? Is there actually some way you can tell?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘It’s Billy’s.’ But because she looked away again, I could tell that she was lying and she didn’t know at all. It was as much as I could do to stop myself from breaking out in a grin.
I reached out to take her hand in mine. I half expected her to pull away, but she didn’t. She let me do it, which had to be a good sign, didn’t it?
‘Billy’s a knob,’ I told her. ‘You know that, right?’
‘Yeah,’ Dawn said. ‘I’m slowly working that out.’
‘You deserve better,’ I said, squeezing her fingers. ‘You deserve much, much better.’
She turned back towards me then, and as her eyes searched my face I could tell she was considering it for the first time.
Once I’d fed Choupi and washed up our cups, I gave her a lift home, and by the time I drove away the decision had been made to woo her.
I’m a very organised, logical kind of guy – something my friends often joke about – so I did what I always do when faced with a complex problem. I sat down and wrote out a plan.
Phase one was dealing with Billy. I figured that if he hadn’t even told her he was at uni, he definitely wasn’t going to give it all up to become a dad. But until Billy was done and dusted, there was no space in Dawn’s head for Yours Truly. So I’d encourage her to contact him. Hell, I’d drive her up to Manchester if that’s what was needed to get him out of her system.
Phase two was to make myself seem essential. I was good at listening to people’s problems, and lord knows Dawn had a few of those. I was good at talking to girls generally in fact, just not so good at seducing them. Dawn would need help, and she’d need support, and she’d need problem-solving. These were skills I reckoned I could make work for me.
As for phase three, well, that was the biggy. Because phase three meant moving out of my flat. There was no way we could bring up a baby in my place, so it was obvious what needed to be done.
Phase one went perfectly to plan. I went to the Wheatsheaf on Monday evening and asked Tracey – Dawn’s mum – if she could get her out for a drink the next night. Tracey loved me to bits, so that worked out a treat. Dawn and I sat in the corner while I listened to all her Billy-shaped woes.
Dawn declined my offer of a drive to Manchester, choosing to write to Billy instead. And just two days later he phoned her, apparently both panicked and angry. He’d pay for her to get rid of it, he said, something Dawn laughed about, saying he’d obviously seen too many films set in America where the NHS doesn’t exist. But that was the limit of Billy’s involvement. He was young, he was having fun, and he had his whole wonderful life ahead of him, he said. The last thing he wanted was marriage or babies.
I commented that some people sure had a weird idea of what a wonderful life looked like, because without kids or love, what was left? Dawn gave me that gentle searching gaze all over again, and I reckoned I’d gained a few points.
But then she asked me if I could drive her somewhere that Wednesday. Her mum was having to work that day and she had an appointment at three she couldn’t miss.
