I pause. When you’re grieving, people say a lot of odd things toyou—sometimes because they feel they just need to saysomething—and occasionally you have to stop and work out what they mean.
“Help?” I repeat.
“You know, with your...” Dean clocks my expression, trails off.
I feel a coldness wash over me. But not cold like a breeze—cold like a deep, deep chill. “With my what?”
He waits for a couple of moments. “Ah, sorry. I’ve put my foot in it.”
“Please tell me what you mean.”
He hesitates. “I had lunch with Max that day. He said you had this... thing about being on your own in hotel rooms, so he was going to drive to Surrey that night and surprise you. So you wouldn’t be by yourself.”
And now it’s like the armchair has slid sideways, because my face has somehow landed in a cushion, and Macavity has fled my lap. And I am sobbing hot, messy tears for the sweetness of Max’s gesture, feeling like I’ve lost him all over again.
—
Dean stays with me until it gets dark, leaving only once I’ve assured him he’s not made everything a hundred times worse. I’m not sure if he has or hasn’t, really—my head is swarming with new questions and self-recriminations, but at least my brain is busy. It makes me feel less alone, somehow.
I curl up on the sofa with Macavity after Dean goes, thinking—as I do most days—about what would have happened if I’d told Max to come to the hotel that night. If I’d never met the man who gave me my phobia of strange places. If Max had never slept with Tash. If we’d never split up.
But eventually, as the darkness drains into a pink-stippled dawn, I realize Pippa is right. No amount of rumination or soul searching will change the fact that Max is gone, and he isn’t coming back. What Deantold me last night doesn’t change anything, not really. It only confirms what I already knew—that Max loved me to the tips of my toes. He’d made mistakes, sure. But he had more than made up for them in the nineteen months since we’d got back together.
It’s Sunday now, so beyond the living room window, the world is quiet, though I do hear the occasional sprinkle of conversation, the slapping of trainers running past on the pavement. Then I realize I’m nauseated again.
It occurs to me as I rush to the toilet that I haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours. The cake Dean brought me lies untouched on the coffee table. A waste of quality patisserie, but I can’t stomach anything sweet. So at eight a.m., I make canned macaroni cheese. I don’t have the energy to create anything more nutritious, which is just as well, because I throw it up about twenty minutes later, at the same time as Jools’s number starts flashing on my phone.
“Again?” she says, once I’m back in the kitchen and have returned her call, told her why I couldn’t pick up.
“It’s fine,” I say, thinking about what Pippa said. “It’s normal, apparently.”
“But you threw up yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that.”
“I know,” I say vaguely, sensing she might be trying to make a bigger point, though I can’t quite grasp what that is. It’s not up to me how my body responds to losing Max, is it?
“Lucy,” Jools whispers. I hear her voice wobbling slightly down the phone. “Is there any chance... you might be pregnant?”
For a few moments I don’t reply. I just stare straight ahead of me at the letter magnets on the fridge, which Max arranged to spellMAX LOVES LUCY 4 EVER XO. I’m so paranoid about someone messing them up I must have taken about fifty photos of them on my phone.
Working saliva onto my tongue, I dare to taste the magic of Jools’swords, just for a moment. And then—for the first time since Max died—I detect the faintest wisp of something unfurling, spiraling to the ceiling like a smoke signal. It is strange, and at first, I can’t quite tell what it is.
And then I realize. It is hope.
So, thirty minutes later, I head into the bathroom with a pregnancy test in one hand and my heart in the other. Jools offered to come round and sit with me, but I need to do this alone.
Almost robotically, I take the test, then perch on the edge of the bath to wait. My hand is shaking.
I wish you were here, Max. I wish you were sitting next to me, squeezing my hand. I wish we were praying together for that little blue cross to appear. I never actually believed in the afterlife until you died. But now, I do. Because I know you’re here. I know that somewhere, your heartbeat is hammering just as hard as mine.
A mewl slides through the gap beneath the bathroom door before it nudges open to reveal Macavity, like he’s as impatient to know the outcome as I am.
I take a breath and turn the test over. And there it is: my hopelessness diminished, my despair drifting away. Because against all the odds, Max is still here. His baby boy or girl is two months old and nestled inside me, gifting me with a joy I thought I’d never feel again.
I think back to the day I moved in here with him. To him asking me, playfully, how I saw our future panning out.
How many kids?
Three. No, four.
