Shelley, who often surprised me by revealing hidden depths, said that maybe I just needed to choose it.
‘Sometimes you have to choose to let yerself be ’appy,’ she told me. ‘And maybe, in your case, you need to choose Rob. I know I bloody well would, given ’alf a chance.’
The thought crossed my mind that perhaps it might be Shelley’s life I was living, because it certainly wasn’t mine.
Anyway, I tried her words out in my mind, as I sat together with Rob, as we ate, as we made love, as I vacuumed the hall…I choose to be happy, I repeated like a mantra.I choose Rob. And sometimes, it felt, for a bit, as if it worked. But then I’d think of Billy, and sigh.
I hadn’t seen or heard from Billy for years by then, but still he’d pop up in my thoughts uninvited.
Only once did I bump into his mother, outside Margate train station. She hugged me and asked me how I was and cooed a little over Lucy.
But she didn’t ask any difficult questions and I found myself too scared to enquire after Billy. Knowing more felt, in that moment, terrifying. So I made my excuses and left, something I regretted afterwards for years.
Shelley was the only person I really talked to about deeply personal stuff, but I did try, just once, to discuss my doubts with Mum.
We were on Margate beach one sunny September lunchtime. Lucy, now two, was discovering the mysteries of sand, running it through her fingers, inserting it into her mouth, considering rubbing it into her eyes.
As even the concept of staying with the same guy for more than a few weeks was one that was challenging for Mum, I’m not sure what I was hoping for, but I tried.
She nodded thoughtfully and then said, ‘Look, I know you’ve got a kid and everything, but you can still leave if you’re not happy. It’s not like you’re stuck with him. This isn’t the 1920s any more.’
‘Mum!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’m not looking to leave him! I’m just trying to find a way to… I don’t know…’
‘If you don’t know, I’m sure I don’t,’ Mum said, one of her stock phrases.
‘A way to… I reallydon’tknow, actually. To feel like I belong, perhaps?’
Mum pushed her lips out and shrugged. ‘Maybe you need to get married, then,’ she said. ‘Or maybe you need another kid.’
‘How exactly wouldthathelp?’ I asked.
Mum shrugged again, but started fiddling in her bag for cigarettes. I guessed there was something she wasn’t saying.
‘What?’ I asked. ‘Come on.’
A split second before she replied, I knew exactly what she was going to say. If I’d worked it out a bit sooner, I definitely wouldn’t have asked.
‘At least you’d know it was Rob’s,’ she said. ‘At least you’d know he’s the father.’
‘Jesus!’ I said, glancing at Lucy just in case she’d decided to tune in and understand a concept way beyond her years. I stood and brushed the sand from my bum. ‘Leave him! Marry him!’ And all in the same breath! I don’t know why I even bother asking you for advice.’
‘Someone doesn’t like the sound of the truth,’ Mum muttered, then, ‘Anyway, now you’re on your feet, how about you pop over there and get us all an ice cream. I fancy a ’99.’ At those words, Lucy looked up. Ice cream was definitely a concept she understood.
Her advice had hardly seemed useful, but, when I dismissively told Shelley what Mum had said, she nodded. ‘It’s not helpful how she put it,’ she said, ‘but in a way your mum’s got a point.’
‘A point?’ I repeated, putting down my mug of tea. We were sitting in Rob’s back garden on deckchairs.
‘Yeah,’ Shelley said. ‘I mean, you didn’t exactlychooseto have you-know-who, did ya?’ She nodded vaguely in Lucy’s direction. She was playing with a washing-up bowl of water. ‘And you never really chose to live here either.’
‘So what I should do is get married and have loads of babies?’ I said, sarcastically. ‘Fantastic!’
‘That ain’t what I’m saying at all,’ Shelley said. ‘There ain’t no shoulds and shouldn’ts in stuff like this, are there? But if youdidchoose to do that, and then you did it, then at least it would be something you’d actually chosen, instead of something that just, like, happened to you. D’ya see what I mean?’
And Ididsee what she meant.
I argued with myself about it all winter. I found I could sit with Rob and watch a film, or go for a walk with him or have sex, and all the time a part of my brain would be arguing with itself, trying to decide whether choosing to marry Rob, choosing to have another child with Rob – would these actually feel like choices at all?
Or would they feel like sort of Hobson’s choices? Would they feel like imposed choices, like the only choices available because I was stuck in someone else’s life?
