‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Where’s the appointment?’
‘The hospital,’ she said. ‘I’ve decided to take the pill that ends this nonsense once and for all.’
* * *
I picked her up just before two. I had to ‘pop in’ somewhere first, I said.
The place I had to ‘pop in’ to was a house in Cliftonville, up by the lido – one of those washed-out bed-and-breakfast places that had been used, for some years, as temporary housing for DSS recipients, but which now had a battered for-sale sign outside.
I knew the inside was going to be rough, but I could just about borrow enough to buy the place and if there was one thing I had mastered it was DIY. The estate agent, young, smug, dandy, was standing outside fiddling with the enormous knot of his tie.
‘So this is the hallway,’ he said, as he let us in.
I winked at Dawn and murmured, ‘Just in case you didn’t realise,’ but she didn’t react. She was, understandably, thinking about other things.
The place was basically a wreck, all cracked lino, boarded-up windows and mouldy silicone joints. It had a leaky roof over the top two bedrooms, a bathroom that had been beyond cleaning for decades, and a chipped seventies Formica kitchen. But it was big – five bedrooms in all – and had a sea view from the upstairs front bedrooms, along with a surprisingly well tended backyard.
Once the tour was over, I led Dawn back to the van.
‘So?’ I asked, once she’d buckled up. ‘What d’you think?’
‘About what?’ she asked. She hadn’t realised where I was going with this and her naivety actually made me feel a bit gooey about her.
‘The house,’ I said, softly.
‘Oh, it’s huge,’ she said. ‘A huge, three-storey shit-hole. It’s like a hotel from the 1930s or something. The 1830s, actually. Who’s it for? They doing aremake ofFriday the 13thor something?’
‘It’s for us,’ I said, ignoring the joke. ‘And it won’t be a shithole once I’ve fixed it up.’
‘Us?’ she repeated. She seemed more startled than outraged.
‘You, me, and the baby,’ I said.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Rob,’ she said. ‘I’m on my way to get an abortion here. Or did you think we were going to Dreamland?’
‘Yeah, I know,’ I said, calmly. I’d expected to meet resistance. I’d even noted it in my bullet points. ‘But what if you didn’t?’
‘It’s not yours, you know,’ she said. ‘It’s Billy’s. The baby’s Billy’s, Rob.’
‘You don’t know that,’ I told her. ‘No one knows that.’
‘Oh, I do, though,’ she said. ‘That’s the thing.’
‘How?’ I asked.
‘I can just tell,’ she said, glancing at her feet. ‘I can sense it.’
‘And what if I can sense that it’s mine?’ I asked. I tried to reach out to touch her belly, but it was a bad move – too much, too intimate, too soon. She pulled away, and I felt bad. ‘What ifIcan sense we’d make a bloody amazing family together, Dawn?’ I asked.
‘Oh…’ she said. And then she made a strangepfff!noise, waved me away like a fly, and let herself back out of the car.
I caught up with her in Dalby Square by the green, and grabbed her sleeve to make her stop. ‘Get off me,’ she said, then louder, ‘GET OFF ME!’
A passing guy with tattooed knuckles crossed over to ask Dawn if she was ‘having trouble’.
‘Oh, just fuck off!’ Dawn told him, making me smirk.
His sympathy switched immediately to me. ‘Good luck with that one, mate,’ he said, shaking his head and trudging off.
