James turned back slightly from his position at the bar, and glanced at his friend and colleague while keeping one eye out to make sure the harried barman didn’t miss him.

‘ESB? On a school night?’ he asked.

‘Been a long day,’ said Kam bouncing on his heels. ‘Hey gorgeous, it’s me… Don’t ask – I’ll tell you later. Is she having her dinner? Yeah, great, pop her on.’

James raised a finger, but the barman, partially obscured by gleaming pipes for the beer taps, was ambushed at the other end of the long wooden bar.

‘Jimmy, I’m just going to take this outside… Hello, Hannah-Banana, are you being a good girl for mummy…?’

By the time Kam got back James had finally got served, and found a small wobbly table with two tiny stools at the back of the pub near the gents. It wasn’t ideal, but for a Holborn pub at six o’clock on a Thursday it wasn’t bad – although the proximity to the toilets did mean there was a good chance they’d have to be polite to every other sod from the office who was in there. Still, it was gloomy enough back there to be private, gave them both the chance to clock what was going on across a large section of the bar, and didn’t feel as seedy as lurking by the one-armed bandit by the Ladies.

‘Sorry about that. Ended up having a quick fag with one of the guys. Miserable bastard makes me seem like Olly Murs.’

Kam slouched down into his seat and tore into his packet of crisps, ripping the bag apart down the seam and smoothing the packet flat against the table, before repeatedly jabbing at the contents.

‘Rough day?’ James asked.

‘First week back from holiday and just all about the merger, corralling two IT teams into one vision of an integrated networked backbone at the core of our shared goal of being the best little medium-sized accountancy in the country. I don’t know if I’m supposed to get everybody to cheer and high-five after setting out that utopian vision. There was one chap with tears in his eyes, but that’s because the room we were in had a window and he’s unaccustomed to daylight. And there was some whooping, but that was this other guy’s condition which we’ve been told we have to accommodate, but also never mention. I’m supposed to be inspiring and organising this new team, and I’ve got two dozen people arguing about who’s got the worst company-issue keyboard.’

Kam paused in his rant to down a quick third of his pint of strong bitter.

‘So anything new with you?’ he asked with a soft belch.

‘Oh, you know, nothing much, still fairly quiet. Leonard is being an arse, all aloof with his additional power. Got the new Sherlock box set you’ll have to borrow when we’re done.’

‘Cool. The winner was the guy who had had all the letters worn off, by the way. With the keyboards. He has to find the Q by trial and error and mentally works out everything else from there.’

‘Sounds like an IT Jedi exercise,’ said James, before casually adding, ‘and I might need to put in for a bit of paternity leave for late August.’

Kam picked up the significance of what James said with a pint halfway to his crisp-stuffed mouth.

‘Eh? Congratulations, mate! You’re finally coming over to our side! Brilliant. Go straight home now and start storing up some sleep.’

‘Rebecca’s sleeping enough for three. She just texted she was going to stay up late and catch the end of EastEnders but then hit the hay.’

‘What is she, about ten weeks?’

‘Eleven.’

‘That’ll happen. So how come I’m only just finding out now?’

‘You know, early days, Rebecca didn’t want to jinx anything. It’s still on the QT, so you can’t start gossiping about it yet.’

‘Had the scan?’

‘That’s Monday week.’

‘That’s brilliant, you’ll love it. Won’t have a clue which way is up on the pictures. I remember with Hannah what I’d been telling everyone were her tiny little tootsies were actually kidneys, but you kinda see what you want to see. So you kept this all a bit quiet, when did you start?’

‘Not long ago really. You know we’d been talking about it for years, but it was around Guy Fawkes we thought we’d give it a proper try.’

‘Fireworks eh? Quick work. So I suppose it was our good example that inspired you, was it? My joyous exterior and blissful demeanour made it look like something to aspire to?’

‘Right, that’ll be it,’ said James. ‘Your two must have loved Christmas, did they?’

‘First year Hannah’s really got what’s going on. Bossing me around to make sure I’m following the correct etiquette to hold up our side of the bargain with Santa and the reindeer. Checking for his spies everywhere to make sure we’re not caught being naughty. Will’s still mostly oblivious, but we’ve got this great picture of him looking absolutely terrified of this weird-looking stranger in red he’s been abandoned with at the grotto in Debenhams.’

‘Was he OK?’ James asked, trying out his voice of fatherly concern.

‘Ah, he was fine. He’s terrified of his own shadow half the time, and fearlessly trying to hitch a ride on the back of the neighbour’s nasty dog the rest of the time,’ said Kam, his voice a mixture of insouciance and pride. ‘Horrible animal. Nice to everyone else, but always growls at me. I think he’s prejudiced.’

Kam knocked back the end of his beer. ‘Pint?’ he asked glancing quickly at his watch.

‘Sure.’

‘Good man.’

While his friend went to the bar, James sat agitatedly playing with his beer mat, worrying away at an edge damp and sticky with spilt lager. He looked up when a rowdy bunch of young lads, trainee somethings still not at home in their workwear suits, gave out a large camp ‘oooh!’ as two of their gang headed towards the Gents at the same time. As they came out again they were playing along with the joke, the first dabbing the corners of his mouth as if he’d swallowed something tasty, and the second walking as if doing so was causing him a degree of discomfort. By the time Kam got back with their pints, the beer mat was in tiny pieces on top of the empty crisp packet.

‘I didn’t tell you,’ said Kam sitting down, ‘there was this other guy with a keyboard that had a small little plant growing in the dirt and hair and dead skin collected underneath his Escape key. Claimed it was from a seed on a roll he’d eaten at this desk, but there was a suggestion he’d fixed it and brought one in he’d been working on at home. I would’ve believed it was genuine though, grubby bastard that one.’

James went quiet for a bit, and sipped on his beer and nibbled crisps for a while.

‘Did you ever have any trouble with your parents because of you and Kate?’ he finally asked, ‘Y’know cultural differences? Prompting a family crisis?’

‘Nah. Kate was a smart girl anyway, got gran on her side early on, and that cut out any “I don’t mind, it’s just what poor old nana-ji thinks” bollocks that anyone else could come up with. Anyway, we’re Hindus, which is like the C of E of Indian religions, anything goes most of the time.’

‘Kate’s parents were OK with it too?’

‘Pff,’ exhaled Kam leaning back on his stool, ‘I reckon they were horrified but too embarrassed to say so.’

‘And with the kids coming along no fall-outs there?’

‘Happy families, mate. All happy families. It’s like we’re colour-blind and living in one of Michael Jackson’s songs.’

‘So you’ve not had any major falling outs with parents or in-laws at all in the past ten years? That’s no help at all.’

‘Now I didn’t say we hadn’t had our tiffs. I was only talking about the racialist stuff.’

‘Oh really?’ James said perking up a little.

‘Kate and her mum have blazing rows. Totally out of nowhere they can just explode in front of everyone, one’s all “you never thought I was good enough”, the other’s all “you always try and push me away”. One thing I’ve learned is you don’t try and get in the middle of them when it kicks off though.’

‘And these rows, they can fester and linger after the event?’ asked James hopefully. ‘Loads of tension that’s never acknowledged?’

‘Nah. After about half an hour the blubbing really kicks in and they’re all huggy and kissy and telling each other “I love you”. Why you’d need to do that with people in your own family I’ll never know, but that’s their way. When the whole thing starts me and Dave usually just go into another room and watch football without talking much.’

‘Oh,’ sighed James, disappointed.

‘Family problems huh? Whose side?’

‘Well, it’s like this. It’s Rebecca’s dad.’

Pausing only briefly halfway through to get more drinks, James told Kam about Christmas Day, and the news about Howard’s arrest. He explained how she’d been upset about it, but didn’t usually want to talk about it much, but then got angry when her parents were acting like nothing had happened. He told Kam how Rebecca was pissed off because she was pregnant and everything should be about that right now, but there was this thing spoiling it a bit. And how he felt kind of the same way.

‘And do you think he was doing it?’ Kam asked.

This was the second time James had been asked that question. The first time it had been Rebecca, when they were sitting in together on New Year’s Eve. They’d been talking about the year ahead of them, and thinking that this time next year there would be three of them, and being up at midnight would probably be a daily occurrence. Then, in the middle of romanticising sleeplessness, Rebecca had gone quiet and asked him did he think her dad was gay.

His mistake had been how he’d reacted. He said, ‘What? Gay? I hadn’t really thought about that…’ in such a way that it was obvious that it was something he’d been thinking about a lot, and that he thought that Howard probably had done it. To him it had felt like the sort of thing you hear about all the time, the stuffy conservative family man with a double life, having angry self-loathing encounters in public parks. But he hadn’t wanted to let her know he was thinking that. It would have felt like providing proof that that was precisely what everybody who ever heard about it would think.

Rebecca didn’t say anything after his overly-mannered denial, but she seemed to shrink a little.

‘Would it be a problem if he was?’ he’d asked her.

‘He’s my dad,’ she’d told him. She said it wasn’t the gay thing that was the problem, it was the cheating aspect. If it was true. But what else could he have been doing?

He is the sort of man who would talk to strangers in a lavatory, James had pointed out, although he was pretty sure it took more than a remark about the weather and a bit of a peek to get arrested for cottaging these days.

‘It just makes everything complicated,’ she’d said.

James had told her that everything was going to be fine. He didn’t mention he’d been having sleepless nights waiting for something to appear in his dad’s paper. That he thought they’d dodged a bullet with the crime news in brief round-up that just mentioned several men had been arrested in the station toilets as part of a crackdown. Still, he knew in local newspaper terms, an ex-councillor in the nick was going to be trouble. He assumed Rebecca hadn’t made the connection yet. She wouldn’t have spent years hearing about how these stories got put together in the same way he had, the little battles between all the personalities involved. The likelihood that someone, somewhere, with a grudge would be out to stitch him up.

But it hadn’t happened yet, and so he just had to keep positive. There were topics he’d been getting good at avoiding. He was keeping quiet about all the crap going on at work, and focusing on the good stuff with the baby. He’d deleted from the laptop’s browser any trace of the research he’d done on the problems stress can cause during pregnancy – reading what he’d read about stress looked like it could be so stressful it would just make the risks they talked about in the articles all the more likely. No, he was going to make sure that Rebecca got through this as serenely as possible, and that was an important part of what being a good dad was going to be all about.

‘Well,’ James finally said in answer to Kam’s question, ‘I think if he was going to do that kind of thing he’d be more of a local park or common guy. Bit of fresh air and dog-walking to go with his blowing strangers. “Exercise, James! Important to get your exercise!”’

‘Ah but if he feels like degrading himself, wouldn’t a glory hole in a filthy public bog be the place to go? “As a successful businessman I’ve always appreciated a bit of rough trade!”’

‘But as he’s often told me, he’s a man that likes to do things face-to-face,’ said James.

‘Might be tricky if he’s on his knees or bending over…’

‘Good eye contact and a firm handshake are his watch words.’

‘What’s the hand shaking?’ asked Kam.

The two men spent the duration of the rest of a pint with smutty gags about Howard’s predicament, each more tenuous than the last, and each getting a bigger laugh. James couldn’t quite help thinking: what if Rebecca could hear him now? Or his parents, who’d endlessly made sure he knew better than the macho bullshit that goes around homophobia? But Jesus he’d needed this.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Kam, as they ran out of steam, ‘I thought your folks were screwed up, but poor old Becky’s trumped you, eh?’

‘Yeah, I guess so, said James. ‘Hey, what’s the angriest button on the keyboard?’

‘It’s the “alt grrr!”, pops, I told you that one in the first place.’

‘Oh yeah, fair enough. Pint?’

Chapter 8

‘Well congratulations, that’s lovely news! Of course we can’t really be friends any more, but I’ll try to remember to keep sending you a birthday text. Although I’m making no guarantees about one for the baby.’

‘Thanks. I live for those texts, whatever random month they come in. Last year I was blessed with messages in both April and October.’

‘I always get your day mixed up with the queen. Or somebody else, anyway…’

Rebecca knew they weren’t officially telling people outside family about the pregnancy for another week, but it wouldn’t count telling her old pal Sophie. She wouldn’t classify it as good news, and conceivably wouldn’t remember it at all as it didn’t make a direct impact on her life.

The two women had met at university, and their friendship had been one not quite of opposites attracting, but rather opposites reassuring each other that they were making the right decisions so they didn’t end up like the other. In Sophie, Rebecca had a friend who would do a lot of the things she wouldn’t, someone who took chances, would be spontaneous, inhale glamorous drugs when offered, and get involved in complicated affairs. And seeing the messes that Sophie ended up in as a consequence – how she felt her friend was trapped with an obsession with status and looks, constantly wrestling with the nagging idea there might be something else better out there – these made Rebecca feel happier about herself and her choices. It helped her remember she was getting what she wanted from life.

Sophie meanwhile had always said she couldn’t imagine how Rebecca didn’t go mad with the restricted life she lived. Looking at the wealth of experiences she’d had compared to those of her stay-at-home friend confirmed to Sophie that the drama in her life was worth it. However, all of Sophie’s other friends were people she’d met while pursuing her career or some form of excitement and were more like herself. It was nice to have somebody she could talk to about her latest trauma, who wouldn’t take the conversation and make it about themselves, or wouldn’t store up any admission of insecurity as a weapon for the next time they had a falling out.

‘You know you’ll never pass the birthday knicker test again now,’ Sophie told her.

Sophie had, since the age of nineteen, had a ritual. The annual Knicker Test. Back then she’d prepared for a big night at a university ball by spending money meant for books and food on lingerie from Agent Provocateur to impress her new boyfriend. But even money for books and food could only stretch so far, and all she’d bought had been a pair of knickers. Rebecca, who had the room in halls next to Sophie and would soon move into a student house with her, remembered being stunned at the price of them. It was more than she could imagine spending on pants for a lifetime. But they had looked and felt beautiful when she was examining them on Sophie’s cluttered desk, after her big trip to the shops to get them. They looked pretty amazing on Sophie too, Rebecca had had to concede, when her friend had walked out into the halls corridor wearing just them, a pair of heels, and a ratty old T-shirt bunched and tied above her waist. One of the other girl’s boyfriend’s, who’d popped over to revise a bit of French literature, seemed to think so too, much to the evident displeasure of his girlfriend.

The bra that would go with the pants would need to wait until she got another cheque from her parents or the student loans people, Sophie had said at the time. ‘Or you could just pop down to the by-pass looking like that, and make the money in no time,’ Rebecca had suggested. The rest of the big end-of-term night out had been fabulous for Sophie, and Rebecca remembered she’d had a pretty good time at her first ball too, although it did seem mainly to be a typical night of getting pissed and snogging the same people you always did, just in prettier clothes. The boys in their dinner jackets had seemed even more inclined than usual to pretending their fingers were guns and they were James Bond. Sophie and her boyfriend hadn’t lasted, and the bra had never been bought (‘Let’s face it, I don’t really need one with these bee stings anyway,’ Sophie had reflected), and the knickers had been wrapped up in the crepe paper and box they had come in. But every year they were taken out on Sophie’s birthday and tried on, to make sure she was managing to look as good as she had at nineteen. And she’d pretty much managed it. There was a year in her late twenties when the heels had started getting a little higher to get the same effect, and she wouldn’t do the test without just a touch of make-up, but she was still happy with the outcome.

Sophie seemed to be under the impression that this test was something everybody did. For years Rebecca had wondered how Sophie could even imagine needing to do such a thing every birthday, and what it was her friend was worried about. Sophie always looked great – a walking advert for the slimming effects of a vodka diet. But, at about the same time there was an increase in the height of the heels that Sophie needed to get the right level of bum pertness, Rebecca had noticed maybe not everything in the mirror was where it had once been. It gave her more of a jolt than she expected, never having been that worried about her looks, and always assuming that what she had she’d keep and she’d keep what she had. Her reaction to this development had been that maybe it was another sign that it was time to start thinking about a family, rather than to reach for the taller stilettos.

‘I’ve got tits!’ said Rebecca.

That was one of the main things she liked about talking to Sophie. She could say things like that without either of them batting an eyelid, whereas everyone else looked at her as if their sweet old nan had told a filthy joke, causing her to blush like a schoolgirl.

‘That can happen when you get hideously fat I hear,’ Sophie replied.

‘But that’s the thing! You wouldn’t notice the difference right now, weight-wise. I look exactly the same as I always do. Except I’ve got these breasts that have appeared out of nowhere.’

‘An instant boob job?’

‘Yep.’

‘Lucky bitch.’

‘It’s terrible really,’ Rebecca said. ‘People have been noticing them. It’s like being thirteen again, I’m walking everywhere with my arms folded across my chest trying to hide that they’re there.’

‘Would you like me to take you shopping for a training bra?’

‘Twice different guys in the office have asked if I’ve got a new outfit.’

‘Meaning, I hadn’t noticed them before.’

‘I know! I’ve seen them sneaking peeks as I walk past. This is entirely new for me.’

‘Well dear,’ said Sophie, ‘if you hadn’t been the only non-virgin in the country to insist that Wonderbra’s weren’t for you because they wouldn’t be as comfortable as your ratty old ones, you might have experienced this when you had a chance to do something with it.’

‘I think some of the older women in the office have noticed too and they’ve worked out what’s going on.’

‘Trust an embittered old hag to spot these things. Shouldn’t you tell someone before they sack you first to save on the maternity pay?’

‘They couldn’t do that could they?’ asked Rebecca. The silence at the other end of the line made her think it was the sort of thing Sophie might try and do.

‘I’m telling them next week, after the scan,’ Rebecca continued, ‘they’re always lovely about these things. At least, they always seem to be lovely.’

‘And so what else is new with you?’ Sophie asked. ‘Aside from that husband of yours being like a fumbling adolescent around your new jugs?’

Rebecca thought about mentioning that the whole issue of sex with James had got a bit cagey since the pregnancy was discovered. Sophie would be horrified and fascinated, but she didn’t want to confirm her friend’s suspicions of the horrors of family life too much. The stuff with her dad, Sophie would love too, and want all the gory details of. Rebecca would be able to say anything she wanted about it, without any judgements or repercussions from her friend, just her usual blunt ‘telling it like it is’ declarations getting to the heart of the matter. It might be helpful, ahead of the weekend’s Sunday lunch playing Happy Families. She could tell her everything she’d been bottling up for the last month.

‘No, that’s it. Nausea, knockers, not much else,’ she finally said.

The part of the conversation about her was now officially finished. Sophie could get on to the main purpose of her call, without fear of interruption.

‘Well, work has been hell for me. There’s this horrible sexual harassment case with my boss going through internal procedures at the moment. I mean really, it’s just a bit of fun, and if he doesn’t like it he shouldn’t dress like he does around the office. But of course, you can’t say that to them…’

With the careful precision of a bomb disposal expert who’s just had five pints, James guided his house key towards the front door lock. Just a couple of goes dinked the metal disc of the Yale lock before he heard the crunch of the key finding its home. He turned it 360 degrees for the first click, and again for the double lock, before gently leaning his frame against the door to ease it open silently. Inside he twisted the knob to retract the locking mechanism into the door as he closed it gently, and then slowly released it into the jamb before slipping down the snib with a muffled click. He worried that maybe coming into the house so quietly might actually be a bad idea – that Rebecca might get a fright if the first she heard of him coming in was when he got to the bed. She might confuse him with a silent cat burglar. Then he walked into the coat stand, kicked over her heeled boots, and sent two umbrellas clattering onto the wood floor.

‘Sorry! Sorry,’ he whispered as loudly as he could, ‘just me. I’ll get some water. Sorry!’

Navigating the kitchen, the stairs and a wee sitting down, James crept into bed next to his wife.

‘Good work, darling,’ she mumbled into her pillow, ‘if you hadn’t knocked over the plants, I’d have been worried you were a rapist.’

‘Thanks. It was umbrellas.’

‘Your knees are freezing.’

‘You’ll help me warm up,’ he said softly into her hair, snuggling into her back. A low guttural growl emerged as he slid his arm over her side and his hand found a home on her breast.

‘How was Kam?’

‘Good, good. Seething slightly about everything as usual.’

‘Did you tell him?’

‘Yep.’

‘Was he excited?’

‘Oh y’know, he squealed, we hugged, we both cried. Guy stuff. How was your evening?’

‘Sophie.’

‘You tell her?’

‘Yep.’

‘Excited?’

‘Same reaction as Kam. Although she did also mention I’m stuck with you now I’ve ruined myself for other men.’

‘I did that to you a long time ago,’ he said, squashing his groin in closer to her bum.

‘Easy, tiger,’ she said. She knew that he knew that any time spent talking to Sophie was likely to get her a little…revved up. But she had just been in a lovely cosy snooze when he’d woken her with the constant tip-tapping of his key against the edges of the lock when he was trying unsuccessfully to hit the target to get the door open. That doesn’t bode well, she smiled to herself, as she backed further into him, her foot sneaking between his calves.

‘Everything all right in there?’ he asked as his hand trailed down from her breast, and over her belly. He wasn’t going to mention it at a time like this, but he was pretty sure Bompalomp was making his presence felt now on her lower half as well as on the top.

‘All good. Ben & Jerry’s with crumbled ginger nuts on top makes us both happy.’

‘You seem pretty awake now,’ he said, his hand travelling further down towards her thigh, ‘and sexily un-nauseous’.

‘What’s that?’ she asked as an insistent nudging presence reached her lower back.

‘Well, you know. I’m awake, you’re half-conscious, it’s been a while.’

‘You’re not too…?’

‘Worried about waking up Bomp? I was being silly. The blighter’s big enough to look after itself now. Isn’t it?’

‘I was going to say pissed.’

She turned around to face him, slipping her hand into the elastic of his underpants.

‘So all it takes for you to get over being a bit squeamish is four pints and a bit of male bonding?’ she said with a smile. ‘Wish I’d known earlier.’

‘Five pints actually. And some crisps. And Maryland Chicken from outside the station.’

He leant in and they kissed. He thought that he couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a proper snog. He couldn’t understand why they’d left it so long as he manoeuvred his hand around her pajama buttons.

Then he jerked his hips slightly as she snapped the waistband of his briefs back in place.

‘Go brush your teeth first,’ she said, and smiled as he hopped out of bed and across the cold floor to the bathroom, tail wagging ahead of him.

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