Alice Adams - Invincible Summer

‘Eva? It’s Sylvie. There’s no way you could look after Allegra today, is there? I’ve got a stomach bug, been up half the night vomiting.’

Eva groaned. ‘I think I’ve got it too. But I could come over and help if you’re completely out of action. Give me a few minutes to pack up my laptop and paperwork and I’ll bring it over and we can do some combination of work, throwing up and looking after Allegra together.’

She hung up and carried the pregnancy test into the kitchen to bury it at the bottom of the bin where Benedict wouldn’t see it. She wouldn’t bring it up; if anything, the continual focus on it was making it less likely to happen. Sex could almost be a chore when you had to do it to schedule. It was becoming a lonely journey for this sort of reason, both of them leaving things unvoiced because they feared that talking about them would only make it harder. It was a horrible feeling after the closeness that had enveloped them for most of the two years they’d been a couple, and an unwelcome reminder of the time there had been too many things they couldn’t talk about and their friendship had faltered.

Being together was so overwhelmingly right that it seemed impossible they could ever return to such a state, but now a distance was starting to open up between them, no one’s fault, but a function of a situation that neither of them could fix. Eva couldn’t count the number of times she’d imagined telling him, saying the words, I’m pregnant , and watching his face as he realized that in her belly was a baby that was theirs, that belonged to them both. Now the fantasy brought tears to her eyes and she pushed it roughly from her mind. She closed the bin lid and was just about to go and pack a bag to take to Sylvie’s when her phone rang again. It was still in her hand and she looked down at the screen, noting before answering that this time the call came from an unfamiliar number.

*

Benedict was strolling along the Brompton Road towards Imperial College when his phone started to ring. He tugged it out of his pocket and saw that it was Eva, which was strange because he’d seen her only half an hour ago. It couldn’t mean. . could it? Benedict was painfully aware that her period was due; he didn’t mention it, tried to keep the pressure off, but each month he was on tenterhooks. He was starting to worry that it would never happen for them. It had been well over a year since they’d ditched the condoms, and as the months rolled by it was getting harder and harder for them both to act nonchalant each time her period arrived.

He’d known what she was thinking: that Lydia had got pregnant at the drop of a hat, so there was nothing wrong with him and it must be her. You couldn’t open a newspaper these days for articles about how female fertility drops off a cliff after the age of thirty-five. Rationally, they both knew that what the GP said was true, that it could take a while to happen for some people, but there had been that nagging voice in his head saying, it’s all too good to be true, nothing’s ever perfect, you can’t have it all.

He so desperately wanted for Eva to experience what he had with his kids, the love, the enchantment, the sheer wonder. He still regularly burned with a mixture of adoration and shame when he saw them. He’d been such an imperfect father, and watching the pain and confusion that the divorce had caused Josh and Will had been agonizing. In the dark of night a small voice whispered to him that this was the reason that he and Eva couldn’t conceive, that he was being punished for not being a good enough father to his existing children.

Still, the boys seemed happy enough these days, in fact once everything had been settled they had seemed to take the new arrangements in their stride almost better than he had. After he and Eva had got together she’d insisted he read a book on helping children to cope with divorce and stepparents, and try to follow the advice in it. It hadn’t always gone to plan, he remembered, thinking back to the last time he’d attempted to give them the recommended ‘safe space in which to express their emotions’.

‘Boys,’ he’d said, clearing his throat. ‘I thought this might be a good time for a bit of a chat. Obviously there has been a lot going on, and Mum and I both know you’ve had to cope with a lot of uncertainty. I know that my moving in with Eva is a big change for you. Is there anything you want to talk about?’

‘Oh, Dad,’ grumbled Josh. ‘Do we have to talk about the divorce again?’

‘Well, no, we don’t have to,’ said Benedict, taken aback. ‘Not if you’d rather not. It’s just that it’s better to talk about things that are upsetting you and not keep them bottled up inside.’

Will and Josh looked at each other.

‘The thing is,’ Will piped up, ‘we’re not really that upset about it anymore. Loads of kids at school have divorced parents, and step-parents too. In my class there’s James, and Tom and Rufus, and probably a bunch more.’

‘Oh. Ah. Right.’ Benedict rubbed his chin. ‘So you’re okay with it all, then? We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’

Josh sighed and then said patiently, as if explaining to somebody very slow on the uptake, ‘We can talk about it if you want, Dad. It’s just that we’ve talked about it quite a lot already, and we don’t really have anything else to say. We’d rather watch Finding Nemo . You did say we could see a film today, remember.’

*

So apparently the children didn’t feel that their lives had been totally ruined by what he’d done. Was it too much to hope that he and Eva could have a child too, that their life together could contain the richness and joy that he got from Josh and Will? The night they’d got together they had talked about whether they’d missed their moment, and he’d said that perhaps this was the only moment they could ever have had. But what if this moment was too late for them to have a baby? That was the fear that kept him awake at night, listening to Eva’s breathing to try to ascertain whether she was already asleep or lying awake worrying beside him. And now, the phone was ringing and Benedict had a sudden bolt of certainty that it was finally going to happen for them, that she was ringing to tell him she was pregnant, and he couldn’t keep the smile out of his voice as he flipped open the phone and said, ‘Hi, Eva?’

The daylight filtered through the stained glass, casting a blue glow across Eva’s cheek as she sat in a pew near the front of the church watching the candle she’d lit flicker in the shadowy corner. She’d been coming here most days in the four months since Keith had died; barely able to concentrate on work, she found being alone in the empty flat intolerable. It didn’t seem fair to spend too much time at Sylvie’s, alternating between sitting frozen and crying as Sylvie tried to usher a curious Allegra away from her. In the weeks since the call from the hospital Eva had wept everywhere, in the street, on the Tube, in Starbucks, amid stares and glares from the people around her. Then, on one of the endless walks that she took to get out of the flat and tire out her body, she’d come past St John-at-Hampstead and realized the doors were open.

There was a sign up saying visitors were welcome to come in, sit quietly, light a candle, and so this was what Eva had done nearly every day since. Usually she had the place to herself; a few times a churchwarden had cautiously approached offering a listening ear, but each time she’d waved them away and soon they left her alone. This was where she felt most calm. Alone at home her grief felt like fear, like staring into an abyss that threatened to engulf her, but here in the muffled almost-silence beneath the soaring ceilings, and surrounded by the engraved memorial stones, it felt less frightening, like something natural and part of the greater mass of human experience.