You, Me and Him E-Book

Alice Peterson

• Herausgeber: Bedford Square Publishers
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 449

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Josie and Finn seem to lead a charmed life, with successful careers, an enviable relationship and an adorable son. But parenthood is no easy ride when your adorable son is hyperactive. When Josie unexpectedly finds herself pregnant again, her feelings are mixed. How can you love your child yet fear to have another who might be just like him? Finn thinks she's overreacting so she turns to her best friend, Clarky. He's always been there for her, even if Finn suspects ulterior motives. As she and Clarky become ever closer, Josie's world is suddenly thrown into doubt. What if she and Finn aren't the perfect couple after all? Is there such a thing as a straightforward friendship between a man and a woman? But most importantly: is she prepared to risk everything to find out?

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Praise for Alice Peterson

‘If You Were Here is a moving and emotional story about facing a life-altering dilemma’ Jill Mansell, bestselling author of Rumour Has It

‘It’s not often that I fall in love with a book within the first few pages, but it happened to me with this one’ The Bookbag on You, Me and Him

‘Compelling and beautifully written’ Daisy Buchanan, journalist and author on If You Were Here

‘I loved it. It’s character-led, warm and sensitive’ Sarah Broadhurst, The Bookseller on Letters From My Sister

‘This is a wonderful portrait of the different dynamics within an unusual family’ Sara Lawrence, Daily Mail on The Things We Do for Love

‘A lovely example of realistic fiction that many women will be able to relate to’ Sun on One Step Closer to You

‘A lovely read, tackling both light and dark material with real assurance. I love the idea of a love triangle where one of the characters has died, which actually makes him more of an obstacle than if he were still alive. Also, the thought that you can find true love twice feels a strong romantic notion – and quite true, I’m sure’ Tom Williams, Chalet Girl screenwriter on Ten Years On

‘Echoes of Jane Austin, A Room With a View and Bridget Jones’s Diary’ Robert O’Rourke on Monday to Friday Man

To Elaine and Sue

1

My legs and feet shiver in the draught. The noise sounds distant to begin with and then I realise it’s right in my ear. ‘GET UP!’

It can’t be the morning?

Finn and I were bickering again last night. He hadn’t bothered to refill the filter jug and, on top of that, he’d left a teabag in the sink. ‘You only have to stretch an arm out to put it into the bin,’ I had demonstrated, holding the little stained and wrinkled bag in my hand. ‘Look! Pop! In it goes.’ I am becoming an old fishwife and I’m only thirty-one.

‘Are teabags the only topic of our conversation now?’

‘Only if you don’t put them in the bin.’

‘Why are you so crotchety? Is it that time of the month?’

‘Shut up.’ I didn’t tell Finn I am three days late. ‘Anyway, what’s for supper? I’m starving.’ Finn and I have made a decision that he cooks once a week, on a Saturday.

‘I’ll cook us some steaks, won’t take long,’ he’d said, voice as light as a breeze.

‘And chips?’ I have been craving potatoes recently. Maybe I am pregnant?

Finn would love to have another baby. He is close to his twin brother Ed, and would love George, our six-year-old son, to have a playmate. I would be happy to stop with one. I’m an only child and have a close bond to my parents. It is true to say that Clarky, my oldest friend from home, was my surrogate brother. Without him, I would have been lonely.

A small hand tugs at my cotton nightshirt again. ‘My brain won’t let me sleep anymore,’ George says.

Finn gets out of bed boasting that he can survive on the same amount of sleep as Margaret Thatcher. ‘Wake up!’ George bellows in my ear again.

‘Don’t shout.’

‘We might be getting old but we’re not deaf,’ Finn adds.

I yawn. ‘That’s something to look forward to.’

Finn is stretching out his arms, circling his shoulders and cracking his knuckles into place like he does every morning. He then starts to sing the familiar lyrics to Matt Bianco’s song ‘Get Out of Your Lazy Bed’.

George joins in, somewhat flat.

I sit up and rub my eyes. I have a weird feeling in my stomach. I was having the strangest dream that I was marrying Clarky in a hot air balloon. I am terrified of heights and Finn of all people was officiating, dressed in a long dark robe and white collar, and finding the whole event inappropriately funny. He was roaring with laughter in between the vows. I smile to myself, remembering that when Finn and I announced our engagement Clarky wrote all the lovely things that everyone else writes in a congratulations card, but then, in tiny, almost illegible writing at the bottom, he wrote, ‘Remember, there are three of us in this marriage’.

I pick up the clock, trying to shake the dream out of my head: 7.19.

Finn ties the cord of his dressing gown into a clumsy loop around his waist and then briefly kisses me on the cheek.

‘Stop sexing her, Dad.’ George crosses his arms and waits impatiently.

Finn and I look at each other in disbelief before both laughing. Where did he get that one from? School is like the lucky dip. You don’t know what expressions they’ll come home with.

‘Mum’s cross because I said the word sex,’ George says.

‘Well, I reckon we should go make her one of our finest cooked Sunday breakfasts,’ Finn suggests, and they leave the bedroom like two happy children, George clinging on to Finn’s dressing-gown cord and pretending his father’s a horse. ‘Giddy-up, Dad!’

Sunday morning is officially my lie-in morning. Finn and George like to spend Sundays together doing their ‘boy’ things. This is another resolution Finn and I made six months ago. He needs to spend more time with his son. They cook breakfast and then Finn takes him to the carboot sale. They love George at the car-boot because he spends all his pocket money within minutes, ‘bargain-hunting’, as he calls it. He’s called the Whizz Kid by all the car owners. Last time George came home with a mustard yellow-coloured teapot in the shape of a house. ‘Look, Mum, look!’ I’d opened the lid and it was full of cobwebs, with a few squashed flies lying on the bottom. ‘It was only ten pence,’ George informed me as he shoved it back into its flimsy white plastic bag and then placed it on his bedroom floor, alongside all the other junk he’d bought from weeks before.

I would like more time to paint at the weekends. Mum tells me that when I was a child I was easy to look after because all I wanted to do was sit at my little white table with its glossy tablecloth and paint pictures of stars, people, our dogs, thatched cottages, the horses in the field, anything I set my eyes on.

I have turned George’s old nursery, that used to be divided from our bathroom by white sliding doors, into my art studio. I have a narrow glass desk with my silver laptop on it for graphic design work. Above it is a small shelf with art and design books, a photograph of Tatiana – Tiana for short, my oldest school friend – in a leather frame, and beside the frame is a large green frog which holds a ten-pence coin in its mouth. Mr Frog promises good fortune in business apparently. I have to kiss him each morning and take the coin out of his mouth at night to allow him to rest. It’s a ritual Tiana taught me and which she practises religiously. I often forget.

On the wall is a year planner that I designed, decorated with pretty silver shells. Each day is plotted out with neat boxes representing the meetings I have to go to. But the thing I love most is the old wooden case filled with tubes of oil paints. My studio is like a therapy box. If I had to sum up our home in one word it would be ‘clutter’, but this room is my own private ordered world where I don’t allow even Finn and George to enter. When I sit down in front of my easel I escape into my picture.

I lie back and open my paperback. ‘Unputdownable’ and ‘Compelling’ is written in bold type on the back of the jacket, which makes me smile. It’s been by my bedside for three weeks and I have reached page fifteen.

‘Morning, Rocky,’ I hear George say. Rocky is our wirehaired sausage dog. ‘Can’t reach, Dad.’ Our kitchen is designed for tall people with high cupboards that George needs to climb on to a chair and then stand on tiptoe to reach. Pots and pans hang on a rail above the cooker. A few minutes later… ‘Dad, what do I do now?’

‘Stand back – careful!’ We don’t let him anywhere near the hot stove. ‘They need more stirring. Remember, not too runny.’

‘They’re ready, Dad.’

‘No, they’re not.’ I can envisage Finn showing George the sloppy egg mixture as it drips off the wooden spoon.

‘Can I put the eggs on the plates now?’

‘They aren’t READY.’ Finn’s sunny tone is already beginning to lose its edge. ‘Listen.’

A split second later: ‘Are they ready now?’

‘George! Don’t let Rocky lick the butter, get him off the table.’ I don’t feel so hungry now. Rocky yaps.

‘Butter the toast, that’s your job.’ Finn pops four pieces in the slots and pushes the lever down. The timer starts to tick.

Twenty seconds later: ‘Don’t force the thingy…’

‘It’s done. Look!’

‘Only on one side. Put it…’

‘Done!’

‘… back in.’

‘Mum won’t notice.’ I can hear George dropping the knife on to the floor and picking it up again.

‘That’s enough butter. Remember what I told you about cholesterol?’

‘Boring.’

‘Too much fat clogs up our heart.’ Finn is a cardiologist.

‘Boring.’ George starts to hum loudly.

‘You’ve only buttered one… oh, it doesn’t matter.’ I can picture Finn’s frustrated expression. ‘Careful,’ he says. ‘Whoops! Rocky can have that bit.’ Rocky is as fat as a pork pie because his diet consists of all the food that misses George’s plate or mouth.

‘I’m a good cook, aren’t I, Dad?’

‘Gordon Ramsay would be proud. OK, Mum likes marmalade on her toast.’

‘She likes Marmite and marmalade. I love Mum.’

‘So do I. George, it’s all over your fingers!’ Finn is now laughing wearily. ‘What are we going to do with you, Mrs Bourbon?’ George is called Mrs Bourbon because those are his favourite biscuits; Finn is Mrs Jammie Dodger.

‘I want a brother, Dad. Mrs Jammie D, how many spoons of coffee?’

‘Three, dear. STOP!’

‘When will I get one? Everyone at school has one.’

‘Don’t press the plunger down!’ There is now despair in Finn’s tone. ‘Soon,’ he answers George’s question. ‘Sugar… bacon’s burning… Trying to do too many things at once, aren’t we, Mrs Bourbon?’

‘I’d like a brother, don’t like girls.’

‘You’ll like them when you’re older.’

‘Why?’

‘You just will.’

‘Why?’

‘Because a life without girls is like… a life without biscuits.’

‘Without biscuits?’ George gasps incredulously. ‘I wouldn’t like that.’

I enjoy listening to their conversations. I can hear a frying pan being chucked into the sink, the hot grease spitting in the cold water, smoke rising. I can smell grease, bacon fat and eggs. I feel sick. I am going to be sick. I rush into the bathroom and kneel down by the loo, hand held over my stomach. What did I eat last night? Did Finn cook the steaks properly? I can’t be pregnant, can I?

Glasses and mugs slide across the tray as George attempts to carry it upstairs to the bedroom. I run back into the bedroom and take my position on the bed, placing a pillow behind my back and trying to look like a queen. The door handle is being turned, the tray rattles again with everything on it. ‘Careful, George,’ Finn warns.

‘Queen Josie! Wheels on meals.’ Rocky follows him, scuttling behind. Rocky’s legs are about an inch long. He’s often mistaken for a large rat. George informs me I need to buy him a tartan coat to keep him warm in the winter.

‘How delicious,’ I act out, licking my dry lips when he puts the tray on to my lap. George’s stripy pyjamas are stained with orange juice and Marmite. ‘But I can’t eat all of this, you must have some.’ George shakes his head adamantly. ‘I’m the Queen’s maid,’ he states proudly.

Finn takes his plate of eggs and returns to his side of the bed.

George sits in between us. I pick out one of Rocky’s wiry hairs that sits crookedly on top of my toast. ‘Mmm,’ I murmur with pretend pleasure. ‘Delicious!’ To wash the taste out of my mouth I take a sip of coffee. It’s as dark as liquorice and most of the coffee grains are still in it. ‘Did you bring the paper up?’ I ask Finn, almost choking.

‘I’ll get it,’ says George, springing up like a rabbit and leaving a trail of sticky toast crumbs behind him.

When he is out of earshot, ‘Want some?’ I offer Finn.

He shakes his head and I cram it into his mouth. We start to laugh. ‘Eat it!’

‘Josie!’ Finn shakes his head. ‘I’m feeling a bit sick, actually.’

‘Really?’ I’m smiling.

‘Thanks for the sympathy.’

‘Those steaks must have been off.’ Relief floods through me. Of course there is a simple explanation.

‘I don’t feel like taking George to the car-boot…’

‘No way! You’re going. I’m meeting Tiana.’

‘Prickman?’ Finn loves saying her surname. Tiana would like to meet someone just to rid herself of it.

‘Come on, Finn, eat.’ We both look at the messy plate and then try not to laugh as we give a large piece of toast to Rocky instead. ‘By the way, I liked the bit about a life without girls being like a life without biscuits.’

‘What’s a life without men?’

‘A life without men is…’ I purse my mouth, thinking ‘… life without weather.’

‘Great,’ he says flatly.

‘Think about it. We’d have nothing to talk about if we couldn’t discuss the weather, would we? Makes life far more interesting.’

George crashes through the door with the newspaper and all the supplements fall out and scatter across the wooden floor.

After breakfast Finn takes the tray downstairs.

‘Mum!’ I hear George shout. ‘Look!’

I rush into his bathroom. What’s he done this time? He’s wearing Finn’s snorkel and flippers and is pretending to dive for treasure. His toy soldiers bob up and down in the water with him.

Another normal morning in the Greenwood household.

Normal to us, that is.

2

I think you can always judge a day by the supermarket trolley you choose.

I am late.

I fetch my trolley. When I picked George up from school this afternoon his thin arms were covered in black smudges. Ms Miles, his teacher, had met me at the school gates, saying in a deliberately loud voice that George had stolen her fountain pen in class and flicked ink all over himself and her new skirt. ‘I’ve given him a detention,’ she’d stated, the other mothers staring, ‘and four black clouds.’ If the children are good they get gold stars on the ‘happy side’ of a chart. If naughty, they get black clouds on the ‘sad side’.

I’d smiled, so relieved that it was nothing to do with bullying. ‘Mrs Greenwood,’ she had said with a scowl. I could almost see fire flaring through her nostrils. ‘This kind of behaviour must be taken seriously.’

George runs ahead of me now. ‘No dramas. You can have one toy or sweet, that’s the deal,’ I warn him.

It’s been nearly a week now… It could be stress? The run-up to Christmas is always stressful. I overheard one of the school-run mums saying that she hadn’t made the Christmas cake yet. Last year she’d forgotten to put the brandy in. The best part, she’d claimed with a bark of laughter. Where’s George gone? I look around frantically. Then I hear the curtain of the passport booth being pulled back.

‘George! Come here!’

It could be that I’m anxious about the new headmaster at George’s school. He starts next January. I fret about his teachers, too. If they don’t understand him and his behaviour, it makes life impossible. Everyone is talking about the sudden resignation of Mrs Liddell. She had a nervous breakdown.

I am never late.

I have a hectic job. I’m not complaining as I love my work, but it can be demanding at times. I work for a design agency called Gem Communications and my boss is called Ruby Gold, a high-powered, pinstripe-suit-wearer who uses so much face powder that by the evening it has cracked like a clay mask above her top lip. Ruby exudes charm in a voice as smooth as caramel, but I am aware that I only have to put one foot wrong to be looking for another job. I can see her now in her executive leather chair, shiny blonde hair tucked neatly behind diamond-studded ears, telling me that Ruby Gold expects: ‘One hundred and ten per cent at all times.’ She has just employed a young South African girl called Natalie. We used to work in Ruby’s home, on the top floor of her spacious minimalist house, but as the company is expanding we need more than one room so we have moved into a modern office block in Hammersmith. If Ruby knew I was pregnant… I can’t think about it.

I am always on time. My period strikes as faithfully as Big Ben. I get out my list. ‘I love you if you buy me some tobacco, Jammie D’s and gin,’ Finn wrote on our kitchen blackboard this morning. I want to try to be prepared for Christmas this year. He and I are having all the family in London: my parents, Finn’s mother and her boyfriend, and of course Finn’s granny, so I need to be super-organised like the other mums and make my cake and Christmas pudding a month before. I can remember my mother making a cake every year and the best part was always when she gave me her leather handbag to rummage through and find some five-pence coins to add to the fruit mixture. Her handbag had exciting hiding places for lipsticks and powder compacts, and she always had lots of parking change in the zip compartment of her wallet. Carefully, I’d cover the silver coins in foil whilst saying a prayer that they would all land in my bowl.

‘I want three pounds, Mum.’ George pokes his head out of the booth and sticks his tongue out at me.

‘I want never gets. OUT, George.’

‘Please?’ He continues to pull the pale blue curtain back and forth, scratching the fabric against the rail. Then he sits on the stool and starts pressing the control buttons haphazardly.

I try to manoeuvre the trolley. ‘If you don’t get out now there’ll be no Slush Puppy.’ Finn gave me a book entitled, If You Behave, So Will Your Child. The author, her cheery face beaming from the jacket, tells me that I must not use blackmail or bribery in order to make my child behave; I am no better than a child myself if I adopt these methods.

George races past me into the fruit and vegetable aisle.

I push my trolley and it moves like a crab. I have to make a decision. Do I turn round and get another one or do I persevere?

George is now out of sight.

I am never late.

I remember that half-witted conversation I’d had with the receptionist at my GP’s surgery a month ago, just before staying with my parents for the weekend. ‘I’m afraid we have no appointments today, Mrs Greenwood. Please try again tomorrow morning at eight-thirty.’

Obediently I had, only to listen to the engaged tone, over and over again, like a funeral march in my ears. When I’d finally got through at 9.10: ‘I’m afraid the doctor’s full up for this morning. If you ring at…’

‘But I’m leaving today. Can’t he fit me in? I’ve been trying constantly for the past forty minutes.’

‘The surgery has been exceptionally busy this morning.’

‘All I need is a prescription signed,’ I’d argued reasonably.

‘If you call at two-thirty he might be able to fit you in this afternoon.’

‘There’s no one else I can see this morning?’

Some tapping on a keyboard. ‘The computer says all booked up. Lots of flu bugs around this time of year.’

‘This is a ridiculous system!’

She’d bristled. ‘Any comments you have, you can place them in the comments box.’

I start to smile, remembering that night at my parents’. Mum, Dad and George had all gone to bed. Finn and I had stayed up talking on the window seat in the kitchen. It’s my favourite place in my parents’ home, somewhere I feel safe. I’d stretched my legs out across his knees and picked up the nearest glossy magazine. Finn swiped it away from my hands. ‘Hey! I was reading that.’

‘How to make the most out of your greenhouse,’ he’d read out to me, and then shut it immediately. ‘Oh come off it, J, we don’t even have one.’ I’d shrugged my shoulders. ‘We’ll get one when we move to the country and I’ll grow cherry tomatoes.’ Finn has always been a city boy; he says he feels lost and confused in front of green spaces and trees.

He’d unzipped my black boots slowly, gently stroking my calves. I was wearing black diamond-patterned tights. He started to massage my feet, raising an eyebrow at me. ‘Carry on,’ I’d insisted, leaning back.

With his hand moving up the inside of my right leg, we heard a door shut upstairs and both drew in our breath and looked at each other like teenagers again. I put a finger to my mouth. We’d listened to the sound of my father’s footsteps coming along the creaky corridor. I knew they were Dad’s because they are heavier and more deliberate than Mum’s. My skirt was inching up my thighs; Finn’s hands were touching my hipbone now and pulling at my tights. I’d wriggled and arched my back to allow him to peel them off. We heard footsteps again. ‘Will you remember to turn off the lights when you come up?’ Dad had called down the stairs.

‘What’s so funny, Mum?’ Now George is tugging my coat.

‘Will do,’ Finn had called back, throwing my tights to the floor with exaggerated abandon.

I laugh out loud, remembering.

‘Mum! What’s so funny?’

‘Nothing. Can you grab some milk with the green top and some of your cheese straw things?’

I remember repositioning myself so that I was sitting facing Finn. I was unbuckling his belt; the leather slipped through the loops of his jeans and on to the floor. I lifted my arms and he’d pulled my jumper over my head. ‘The tights were getting lonely,’ he whispered. He’d looked at my bra then, a slightly faded off-white number that needed replacing. ‘I think you could have dressed up a little more for me. This has to come off…’

George rushes back to me with no milk. Instead he shoves a CD excitedly in my face – Best of Kylie. He’s also struggling to hold a Snickers bar, packet of crisps and sherbert dip.

I shake my head. ‘That’s four things. I said one.’

He throws them into the trolley. ‘I want them all!’

I take out the Snickers and Kylie. Although I love Kylie… maybe I can keep her? No, I say to myself. George grabs the CD from me and puts it back into the trolley. ‘No,’ I say, trying to keep my voice low and calm. A man walks past. ‘Children are so spoilt these days,’ I hear him mutter.

‘NO, GEORGE.’

He starts to cry. Anyone would think I had run over Rocky and then reversed to make sure the damage was done. Some more looks askance and murmurs of disapproval.

‘Start as you mean to go on. If your child starts creating merry hell because they want sweets, don’t give in to them,’ the cheery woman had advised.

George starts to cry violently now, tears streaming down his face like a sudden rainstorm. ‘I want the Kylie CD. It has the “Locomotion” song.’

‘All right, we’ll keep Kylie, but that means no sweets.’

‘But I want the sherbert dip!’

A woman turns round to stare. George and I halt traffic around us like a car crash. ‘I won’t eat them all in one go,’ he insists with big pleading eyes. ‘MUM, I WANT THEM ALL!’

I’m beginning to feel sick. It’s the smell of coffee. ‘OK, fine, keep them.’ His tears dry instantly and his smile returns as if it has been quickly painted on again with one rushed sweep of the brush.

I continue pushing the trolley. ‘My dad likes Jammie Dodgers,’ George tells one of the shop assistants when we reach the biscuit section. He grabs about five packets and another five fall to the floor. I apologise before yanking him up by the arm and ordering him to take one handle of the trolley. With each breath, I am inhaling the smell of coffee beans and the doughy white warm bread that is coming out of the ovens. I shut my eyes. ‘Mum!’ Our trolley crashes into the sweets section. Pick ’n’ mix. George’s hand dives into each box greedily.

‘Is she all right?’ I hear someone muttering.

I can’t go through it again. I can see George dismantling the cot, his small hands pressing against the bars, screaming as if I have put him into a cage. A prison. I haven’t given birth to a baby, I have a trapped animal that wants to make my life hell. I love George now, but then…

Sometimes I couldn’t even look at him.

Unscrewing the bars.

I can hear sweets being thrown into the trolley. George is like an abstract figure to me now. I try to tell him to stop, but no words come out.

Opening windows. Trying to jump out of them.

Emulsion paint all over the new carpet.

I can’t do it again. I won’t. I have a life to lead. A good life! I can’t go back to those days.

‘Your child is making a terrible mess,’ a shopper observes. ‘Can’t you control him?’

Radiators being ripped off the wall; curtains being torn and pulled. Handbrake lifted. Accident. Being locked out of the car.

Calling the police.

‘There’s no discipline these days.’

I lean against the trolley. My head is pounding. ‘I’m going to be sick.’

‘Someone, call for help!’

‘Mummy! I’m sorry, Mum. I’ll put my sweets back.’ George is scrabbling around on the floor.

I can hear voices but can’t register faces.

My breathing is quickening. I feel hot. Dizzy. Sweat on my forehead.

George crawling; breaking everything in the house.

Finn and me arguing.

Sleepless nights.

Burning his hand on the fire.

Accident and Emergency.

Anti-depressant tablets.

Being told I’m not a good mother.

Thinking I am a terrible one.

Living in a faded red dressing gown.

End of my career.

End of my life.

I gulp hard. There is a hand on my shoulder. A balding man with a large badge on his white shirt hands me a glass of water which I take gratefully. ‘Would you like to sit down?’ he asks. ‘There’s a bench over there, behind the check-out.’

I swallow the water in one go. It’s like Popeye’s spinach. I have to know. I straighten up. ‘Thank you,’ I say, ‘very much, but I’m fine.’ I hand back the glass.

‘You take care,’ he says.

George runs alongside me. He starts to pull something else that we don’t need off the shelf. ‘No more trouble or I’ll tell your father,’ I threaten sternly. ‘Try not to bring your partner into the argument; it’s always best to deal with the crisis on one’s own to gain your child’s respect.’ ‘I’ll tell Finn and he’ll stop you from using the computer for a week.’ George pauses as he thinks about all those games of Hangman he’ll miss out on. I head for the pharmacy, an air of purpose to my stride at last.

I pick up a pregnancy-testing kit. I decide to buy three.

My trolley tries to meander in a completely different direction as I attempt to steer it safely to the car. I bend down to try to straighten the wheel as it is now totally skewwhiff. I hear a car horn honking ferociously and, without thinking, let go of the trolley. ‘GEORGE!’ I scream, seeing him inches in front of the red bonnet. The driver winds down his window furiously. ‘For God’s sake, woman! Can’t you control your son?’

‘I’m sorry, OK?’ I say, tears stinging my eyes like nettles. My trolley is now in the middle of the lane too, blocking the driver’s exit. ‘George, come here!’ He runs back to me so quickly that one of his shoes scuffs the tarmac and he trips and falls. His knee is grazed and bleeding. I rush over to him as he starts to cry.

‘Jesus Christ!’ the man yells.

I help my son up and dust the dirt from his knee. I find a handkerchief from my bag to mop up the blood.

‘It’s not my fault,’ he insists, tears running down his cheeks. ‘It stings, Mum.’

‘Come on, woman. I don’t have all day.’

Other shoppers pushing their trolleys past stop and stare. ‘Stop shouting,’ I tell the red-faced driver, ‘and stop calling me “woman”.’

I can’t control my own son. I will never be able to. I can’t even control my trolley! I keep a firm grip on George and tell him not to leave my side; for the first time that day he obeys me.

‘You must never, ever cross the road without looking,’ I tell him when we arrive home. He wouldn’t listen to me in the car. Hands held tightly over his ears, he’d hummed so loudly that I could hardly hear myself speak. ‘You stop. You look right.’ I do the actions. ‘You look left. You look right again, and then you decide if it’s safe. I was only cross because I was scared. I love you too much to see you hurt.’ I hold his knee still and manage to get a plaster on the cut and even a quick kiss before he wriggles out of the chair.

He runs up to his bedroom, slams the door and turns his music on loudly. I follow minutes later and find him curled up in a ball on his bed, sucking his thumb, a corner of his pale blue cot blanket poked in his nose. Long-suffering Rocky is fighting to breathe against his chest, his big eyes almost popping out with the pressure of being squished into this awkward position by his master. George is breathing heavily, trying to inhale the comforting smell of the blanket. He calls it ‘Baby’ because it has travelled everywhere with him since he was born. He even takes it to school, hiding it in his PE bag. I remember the panic we’d once had after leaving it behind. I’d been pushing George in his buggy in the supermarket and nothing I said could make the absence of Baby less painful. Then he had fallen quiet. We were in the checkout queue and he’d grabbed a lady’s jersey skirt, the exact same pale blue as Baby, taken the hem and pressed it to his nose, his eyes shut, the pain instantly taken away.

I walk to my bedroom, clutching the pregnancy kits with clammy hands. I have to know before Finn comes home. Finding out you are pregnant can be a joyous moment for you and your partner, I read on the back of the pregnancy kit box.

I take the test and pray.

The line turns blue.

I take the test again. Best out of three.

Another blue line.

I sit down at my desk and write an email to Emma, my ADHD friend. I met her through a website support group for ADHD mums and dads. George was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder when he was five, nearly six, years old. Emma has a seventeen-year-old boy called Nat with ADHD. She’s so proud because he’s just become an apprentice at British Gas.

Fingers trembling against the keys, I tap, ‘Emma, if I have another child, what are the chances he or she could have ADHD? Am terrified. Have just found out I’m pregnant. Gene is stronger in boys, isn’t it?’

I pick up the phone, too restless to wait for a reply. I key in a mobile number. Pick up. ‘Thank God you’re there,’ I say.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Are you free?’

‘What, now?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, I’m about to go to rehearsals.’

‘Oh, don’t worry.’ I can feel tears coming on.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Everything. George nearly got run over today.’

‘Is he all right?’

‘He’s in his room.’

‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’

‘I’m pregnant.’

‘I’ll be round in a minute.’

‘But your rehearsals…’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he cuts in.

‘Thanks, Clarky.’ Already I feel relieved. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

A message appears in my inbox from Emma. ‘Josie, congratulations first, although can see it’s terrifying prospect too. The condition is two point five times more common among boys than girls. There’s always a possibility, but try not to worry. Easier said than done, I know…’

I go back into my bedroom and lie face down against the pillow. Sometimes I wish I could rewind time and go back to those carefree days. If I had a magic carpet I would fly back to that world with no responsibilities. No fear. No George. The world of smoky pepperoni pizzas and warm beer; lazy days by the river and drinking coffee in rundown cafes.

When it was just Finn and me.

And Clarky.

3

I met Finn when I was eighteen and living in Cambridge. I thought it was going to be another ordinary day at the restaurant, washing the glasses, laying the tables, renewing the flowers, refilling the olive oil bottles, writing the specials on the board. I was too busy to think about meeting anyone, my face flushed from the hot ovens in the kitchen and my feet sore from racing around while I tried to remember what everyone had ordered. Look and you never find. Don’t look and they walk through the door.

I was living with Clarky, my old neighbour from home. Growing up, he was like the brother I’d never had. After me, Mum couldn’t have more children so instead she’d decided to have dogs. She’d bought an Alsatian called Molly and a mongrel called Tinker who was a mixture, we thought, of Basset hound and Jack Russell. Tinker had a strong chest and sturdy front legs. She took us for walks.

Clarky’s real name was Justin Clarke, but I called him Clarky. He’d always been popular at school; not in an obvious way, he was just different from all the other children. The other boys loved football and sport – which he liked, too – but Clarky was also a brilliant musician. He started playing the violin when he was four. ‘I only began to talk properly when I was four,’ I’d told him.

‘Yes, but I wasn’t really serious at four,’ he’d explained dismissively, with a little wrinkle of his nose, ‘I only started playing seriously when I was seven.’

His father, short and severe with a dark beard, had taught him every day for at least two hours. He looked like the type who’d own a long wooden ruler which he’d rap against your knuckles if you weren’t behaving. When I was younger I didn’t like going round to Clarky’s for tea because I’d be told off if I didn’t sit upright in my chair. I didn’t dare lean my elbows on the table either. Clarky’s dad played the flute and his mother was an opera singer, so it wasn’t surprising that they wanted their son to follow in their exalted musical footsteps. My parents’ jobs hadn’t seemed nearly so interesting. Mum had looked after me full-time when I was very young, but when I was at primary school she’d started to run a bed and breakfast. Before she married, she was secretary to an eccentric scientist who had worked in a shed at the bottom of his garden. My father was a solicitor. He looked important in his dark suit and polished shoes but, growing up, I hadn’t seen much of him. He’d commute into London and stay with his sister during the week, only to return grumpy and tired on a Friday evening. By Sunday he was full of laughter and fun, back to himself, either in the garden or sitting at the kitchen table making things out of wood. That was his passion. He’d made me a tree house where as a teenager I’d sit for hours, painting and drawing. On Sunday evening he had to go back to the ‘big smoke’ as he called it. ‘London leaves you grey by the end of the week,’ he’d admitted.

Clarky had been a mini-celebrity at school. His name was often read out during assembly. One day the headmistress, wearing her usual plum-coloured dress, beamed with pride, saying we must all congratulate Justin for being accepted into the Junior Royal Academy of Music. Each Saturday after that he’d travel by train to London wearing sensible trousers, a white shirt buttoned so high at the collar it looked like it was choking him, and a round-necked patterned jumper. He always carried a dark brown leather case that held his sheet music. I used to love the smell of that leather case. I would press it against my nose. ‘Josie, you’re mad!’ he’d say, trying to claw it back from my fingers.

‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I once asked him.

‘I want to go to Cambridge, like my grandfather, and read music. You?’

‘I want to be an artist, like… Michelangelo! Or Leonardo da Vinci, that wouldn’t be so bad.’

‘He invented flying.’

‘Yes, I want to be like him.’

Clarky had the unfortunate label ‘teacher’s pet’, but miraculously this hadn’t annoyed the other boys because he wasn’t big-headed about his success. I think he’d been embarrassed by the attention. The others were in awe of him, though, just as I was. I would watch him staring out of the window during a maths class, in his own world. I used to long to know what he was thinking. Whatever it was, I’d imagined it to be mysterious and interesting compared to my own dizzy thoughts about what was going to happen in the next episode of Dallas. Clarky had pale grey eyes, a neat thin nose, and a mop of curly fair hair that went all fluffy when it was washed. ‘He’s like an angelic choirboy,’ Mum used to say, ‘and he always helps me with the washing-up.’

He wasn’t perfect, though. When he was ten he went through a weird phase of not talking to me in class. We caught the big coach to school together, but he wouldn’t sit next to me on the lurid red-and-purple-patterned seats. He’d sit at the back with all the other boys instead, so I sat next to Tatiana Prickman who was pale-skinned with bright blue eyes, and appeared homesick from the moment she stepped on. She was slight with long blonde hair caught limply at the sides of her head with plastic green hairclips. My hair was in a pudding-bowl cut. I have never forgiven Mum for that look, but she told me it was the most practical style to maintain. Tatiana was a gymnastics freak. She could bend and twist her body into any shape and would fly across the gym mats in a slick combination of somersaults, bends, flips and cartwheels, while the rest of the class did handstands and forward rolls. We didn’t talk much on the school bus. Her arms were always firmly crossed as if she were guarding herself from any intrusion into her world.

I couldn’t understand why Clarky didn’t like me at school when we’d have such fun at the weekends. We’d watch Mum’s bed and breakfast guests from between the banisters at the top of the stairs. There was a Japanese man who patiently taught us origami. There was a rich American couple who couldn’t get the hang of our old-fashioned loo chain. Clarky and I would listen to them pulling it and then holding it down without letting go. We’d giggle as we watched Mum and Dad take it in turns to stand outside the door telling them to, ‘Release! Let go!’

‘Embarrassing to have to serve them eggs sunny-side up now,’ Dad had laughed as he skipped downstairs, loose change rattling in his trouser pockets.

Dad called us ‘Justin ’n’ Josie’. ‘You’re like two peas in a pod,’ he’d say. ‘I almost think of him as my own son now. Might send his parents a bill for his food.’

‘Why don’t you talk to me at school?’ I’d confronted Clarky one Sunday afternoon when we were singing and dancing in our sitting room. I was dressed up as Madonna with black lace gloves that I’d pinched from Mum’s drawers and an old pink suede miniskirt. Clarky was Freddie Mercury, dressed in one of my dad’s Hawaiian shirts. He looked nothing like him.

‘I do talk to you,’ he’d lied, jumping up and down on the sofa with an old white and navy Slazenger tennis racquet held in front of him as a fake guitar.

‘No, you don’t.’ I stumbled in Mum’s knee-high black boots.

‘I certainly do.’

‘You don’t.’ I placed one hand on my hip. ‘One day, Clarky, I might not be around, then you’ll be sorry.’

He’d laughed. ‘Where will you be?’

‘Just… gone.’ I lifted my chin high and with a dramatic sniff turned away from him.

‘Dead?’

‘No, stupid, I mean I might play with someone else.’

Clarky stopped jumping. ‘None of the boys talk to the girls at school,’ he had reasoned. ‘It’s the way it is. It’s not because I don’t like you.’

‘Show me then,’ I’d said.

There was a definitive moment when I decided I would love Justin Clarke for ever. I was terrified as I stepped on to the coach one morning wearing a strange orthodontic helmet with thick black elastic bands and wires looped through hooks at the front of my teeth.

I took my place next to Tatiana, knowing she wouldn’t say anything, but even she had looked shocked, putting a hand over her mouth and asking loudly, ‘Blimey, does it hurt?’

I’d turned to her in surprise. ‘Kills,’ I’d replied, enjoying the sympathy. ‘I have to wear it at night too.’

We were sitting in the front seat, level with the driver, Terry, who looked like he ate too many doughnuts.

‘Did you see Josie?’ I heard one of the boys saying, followed by roars of laughter. I stared ahead. One of them was walking back down the middle of the bus; my heartbeat quickened. Then he stuck his pimpled face right in front of me. It was Kevin, the leader of the pack. ‘Can you kiss with that thing? Wanna give it a try?’ More laughter from the back. ‘Are you a virgin?’ he’d continued. Terry ordered the boy to return to his seat immediately, but Kevin ignored him.

I hesitated. ‘Of course I’m not!’ I finally replied, sure my voice had a lisp.

‘She’s not a virgin!’ he shouted down the bus.

‘Shut up, Kevin,’ Tatiana shouted back. ‘Crawl back into your dirty hole.’ I turned to her with amazement, almost envy.

‘What did you say, Prickman?’

‘She said, shut up and push off,’ I told him with renewed confidence.

‘SIT DOWN!’ yelled Terry, one eye on us, the other on the road. The coach swerved, tyres screeching against the tarmac. I heard more footsteps. Kevin grabbed one of the straps on my head and gave it a sharp yank.

‘Kevin, leave Josie alone.’ I turned round and there he was. Justin. My hero. Through the wires, I smiled at him and he smiled back. I was glowing inside. It was true love. But there was something equally pressing on my mind. ‘What’s a virgin?’ I whispered to Tatiana when the boys sat back down.

‘Someone who hasn’t had sex, stupid. You know, kissing a boy and all that stuff. Justin wants to kiss you,’ she’d added with a sharp dig in my stomach from her bony elbow.

‘No, he doesn’t!’ But I had felt an excited kick inside me, a punch of pure happiness.

‘I can tell you all about sex,’ she’d informed me before pulling a horrified face. ‘I saw my parents doing it.’

I gained another lifelong friend that day in Tatiana Prickman. She told me she’d always been quiet and self-contained because other people thought she was weird. ‘Do you have an invisible friend?’ she once asked me. I said yes, his name was Casper and he wore a green velvet cap. ‘He’s your guardian angel,’ she’d confirmed. ‘What’s your star sign?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m a Capricorn, a mountain goat. And, by the way, call me Tiana.’

Tiana taught me a game that would help me calculate just how much Justin Clarke loved Josie Mason. It worked out at 12 per cent. ‘It’s a stupid game,’ she’d assured me afterwards. ‘He definitely likes you.’

But she’d been wrong. We never went out together. Instead he went out with Rosie, a quiet mousy girl. I was consumed with jealousy when they shared a desk together, passed secret notes or exchanged coy glances.

‘Why don’t you fancy me?’ I’d asked him once.

‘You’re like my sister… ugh!’ So I went out with Kevin instead. It turned out his attention had been for a reason.

I had a rich uncle in Cambridge who had given Clarky and me his home to ‘housesit’ during our gap year. He had bought a three-month round-the-world air ticket. We watered the purple pansies in his window boxes, forwarded his mail, made sure the house didn’t get dusty and smell like a nursing home, and in return stayed there rent-free. He lived on a long residential road that ran into the city.

We needed to earn some money before we bought tickets ourselves to travel across Europe. I wanted to go to Barcelona, Madrid and Paris; Clarky wanted to go to Venice. He was working in the shop at the Fitzwilliam Museum, taken on for the run-up to Christmas. His main job was stacking cards on the shelves and working the till.

I found work in a baking hot Italian restaurant called Momo’s. It was on a street running off King’s Parade, opposite King’s College. Momo’s was small and rundown, I was sure there were mice, and the walls were more like cave stone with small crystals visible inside them. It was romantic at night, lit by white candles stuck into dark green bottles with great wedges of wax spilling over the sides. The food was simple, flavoured with lots of garlic and chilli. There was constant noise from the students huddled around the tables. Momo looked like a giant bear with his dark hair and bushy eyebrows.

‘Josie!’ he roared across the room one day.

‘Yes?’

‘What’s wrong with this table?’

He was standing in front of a wooden table laid for four. Knives and forks were in the correct places. Olive oil bottle refilled. The menu was wedged into a loaf of crusty bread in the middle of the table.

‘I can’t see anything wrong.’

‘Look again,’ came the gruff response.

Another of the waiters, Mikey, came to the table and examined it carefully.

‘Take a look at the coasters,’ Momo commanded, his breathing fiercer than usual.

Momo had just been to Italy and had returned with new coasters depicting Italian scenes. The Ponte Vecchio graced this table, as did the gondolas of Venice.

‘The Leaning Tower of Pisa is upside down!’ he said, gesticulat-ing vehemently. ‘Don’t laugh.’

‘There, it’s tilting the correct way now.’ Mikey winked at me. He was a year older, had worked at Momo’s for six months and liked to look out for me.

‘Very good.’ Momo nodded his head, tension gone, before he started to inspect the other tables. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I’m having a meeting any minute. Some student wants to rent downstairs for his music.’

‘His music?’ I was interested. ‘What do you mean?’

He shook his head stubbornly as if to say, don’t ask questions, wait and see.

*

A group of students piled through the door. I was in the kitchen operating the cappuccino machine. It loved to break down just before the lunch rush.

Chairs were scraped back. I peered through the crack in the door and saw one of the boys who’d just entered taking a wooden chair, turning it round and sitting on it back-to-front. He was wearing a dark hooded top with jeans and trainers. I wanted to see his face. Take your hood off, come on, what have you got to hide? And it was as if he heard me because he did, before briefly turning around as if aware of someone watching him. Momentarily I edged back from the door before leaning close to it again. He had dark brown hair with a shock of peroxide blond falling across his forehead. He was wearing dark jeans that showed off the top of a pair of checked boxer shorts and a patch of bare skin. He waved one arm expressively, saying that Momo’s was perfect for what he had in mind.

Through eavesdropping, I established that these students were in their second year and all thought that Cambridge’s nightlife needed a serious boost. The man in the hooded top was called Finn. ‘There’s only one disco in this town,’ he complained, ‘and not even a good one at that. I don’t think we’d have any trouble pulling a crowd in here, Momo.’ His voice was authoritative; his manner persuasive. He circled the Pisa coaster with his fingers before tossing it into the air like a pancake. I wanted to warn him to put it down. ‘Keep still, boy, and give me that,’ Momo demanded.

Finn started to tap his foot under the table instead. They wanted a venue with a liquor licence, he explained. They had their own decks, just needed to hire someone for the door, to take the money and the coats. They wanted the club to operate once a week, on a Thursday night. Entry to be three pounds for the Cambridge students, five for anyone else.

Momo took them downstairs. It was a dingy, dark-walled space; at a pinch you could fit in about one hundred and twenty people. Cobwebs hung from the ceilings and the room smelled musty, but it had definite potential. The idea excited me; every Thursday lots of students coming in here, grabbing a pizza and something to drink and then going downstairs to dance.

‘Mikey, one lasagne, one pizza with mozzarella and tomato, one pizza with anchovies and olives.’ I gave him the order while fetching drinks from behind the bar at the back of the restaurant, just in front of the kitchen. I could now see all the students properly. There were two boys, one of them black with dreadlocks. His name was Christian but they called him Christo for short; his profile was handsome and strong. He looked as if he played hard gruelling tennis matches on clay courts every day. Finn was taller but more fragile in physique. He looked as if he dipped in and out of exercise, like flicking in between television channels. A stylish blonde girl dressed in black sat next to him. She was pretty in a polished way; the kind of woman who would pout perfectly even on a passport photograph. I wondered if she had lent Finn her peroxide. She was called Dominique.

Momo beckoned me over. ‘A bottle of red,’ he said, ‘and four glasses.’ Finn looked at me, his eyes narrowing as if he had seen my face before and was trying to put a name to it. There was a small faded scar beside his left eye. I wanted to ask him how he’d got it. ‘Well, go on, Josie,’ Momo ordered impatiently, looking at me and then Finn.

I returned with the glasses and opened the bottle of wine in front of them. Christo took a sip to taste. ‘Not bad,’ he grunted, without a thank-you. ‘Now, names for the club?’

‘So pretentious,’ I muttered under my breath as I walked away, knocking a menu off the table.

‘Sorry, what was that?’ Finn called out.

I picked up the menu and continued walking.

‘Waitress girl! What did you just say?’

I stopped and turned, catching my breath. ‘Think we’re pretentious?’ he asked. His eyes flickered with delight that he had caught me out. I was drawn to those brown eyes. I felt there was a whole story behind them.

As he rolled up his sleeves, waiting for a response, his eyes locked on to mine. He was wearing an old leather plaited bracelet around his wrist. The overall look was scruffy but thought-out.

‘Come on, Finn,’ Dominique said, touching his arm. He shrugged her off.

‘What’s your name?’ he demanded.

‘Josie.’ He was not going to intimidate me.

‘That’s a nice name.’

‘We’ve got business to do,’ Momo reminded him, telling me with the wave of his hand to scarper.

‘So what do you think our club should be called?’ Finn called loudly after me. ‘Josie?’

There were groans around the table. ‘Come on, Finn,’ they all said.

‘It’s music to get down to. Break into a sweat.’ He was still teasing me with those dark eyes and I could feel the redness creeping up my neck.

Everyone was staring at me now, even Momo.

I cleared my throat. ‘Something like, Dare to Dance? You know, it’s “Care to Dance?” but…’

‘No, don’t like it,’ Finn pounced.

‘Lame,’ Christo agreed.

‘Born to Dance?’ I knew it was bad the moment it came out of my mouth. ‘Dance to Death?’ That was even worse.

There was stifled laughter.

Christo looked frustrated. ‘Leave her alone, she doesn’t have a clue.’

‘Well, I don’t hear you coming up with anything better.’