‘I haven’t been to the toilet yet. I’m gonna wee on you,’ I splutter desperately.
It works instantly. They stop immediately and I worm off them and land on the floor on my back,
breathless and panting.
My brothers look down at me indulgently, but my mother is tutting away. I turn my head towards my mother’s upside down face.
‘I thought you were going to wake me up and let me help you with lunch.’
‘I heard you stumbling around at two in the morning. I wanted you to have a good rest. You look better for it. Anyway, everything is done. Go and make yourself presentable. Lunch is in an hour.’
‘Thanks, Ma.’ I grin at her, then I turn my head back towards Jake. ‘Where is Lily?’
‘She was feeling a bit tired. She’s lying down in Ma’s room.’
I frown. I really like Lily. There is something so delicate and sweet about her. ‘She’s okay, right?’
‘Yeah, she fine.’
I sit up. ‘OK, I’m going to go say hello. See you guys after I have peed.’
I run up the stairs towards my mother’s room. Outside her door I knock softly and call, ‘Lily?’
‘Come in,’ she says instantly.
I open the door and she is trying to sit up. She is already eight months pregnant and her belly is quite big for her tiny frame.
‘Don’t sit up,’ I tell her and she lies back down.
I go up to her. ‘Can I listen?’
She smiles.
I crouch next to the bed, put my ear against her stomach, and listen to my niece. For a few seconds everything is quiet. Then I distinctively hear a noise.
‘What can you hear?’ Lily asks.
‘I think she just hiccupped,’ I tell her.
Lily laughs. ‘You’re as bad as your brother. He swears he can hear her laugh.’
I look at her incredulously. ‘Really?’
She looks at me and shakes her head. ‘Through amniotic fluid? Very doubtful. But, to be fair, when he puts his head on my stomach she will shift around excitedly and kick hard. As if she recognizes her father.’
I look at her in wonder. ‘Wow, how amazing is that?’
She chuckles softly. ‘It is when you think about it.’
I sit cross-legged on the floor with an elbow resting at the edge of my right knee and my chin in my palm. ‘Tell me about the day when you found out you were pregnant. I want to know everything. How you told Jake. And then what he said and did.’
She smiles with the memory. ‘Well, I guess I knew I was pregnant two days after I missed my period. I’m like clockwork. So I bought a couple of pregnancy tests and both were positive. The funny thing is, it was one day before the first anniversary of the day we met, so I decided not to tell him until our anniversary night. We were going to spend it in Paris and I wanted to tell him at the hotel before we went to dinner.’
She looks away from me, a dreamy, far-away look in her eyes.
‘He had booked us this beautiful hotel suite in Paris. It had one of those impossibly glamorous interiors, you know, the ones you see in movies. With tall, gilded ceilings, wall paneling, antique wooden floors, and a massive, intricately-carved gold bed. It had a three balconies and palm trees in Chinese pots. That’s where I told him.’
She pauses and there are tears in her eyes.
‘Oh Lily, you are crying.’
She shakes his head. ‘It was just so beautiful. I had bought these little yellow shoes. They were the tiniest pair of knitted shoes you ever saw. They came in a white cardboard box and I had asked the girl in the shop to gift-wrap them. I still remember the wrapping. Yellow with red balloons. So just before we left for dinner I put the box into his hand. “For you,” I said. He frowned, holding the small box in his hand as if it was the most precious thing in the world. “For me?” he asked as he did not quite believe it. You see, until then I had never given him anything. What could I give him? He was the man who had everything.’
She smiles, a glowing secret smile.
‘He opened the box. For a while he simply stared at them incredulously and then he fished them out between his thumb and forefinger and looked at me. Oh Layla, you should have seen the expression on his face. It gives me goosebumps even now. He was so happy, but he didn’t dare believe it, just in case it was a stupid joke or it meant something different. “Are you trying to tell me what I think you’re trying to tell me?” he whispered.’
‘I just nodded and watched as he carefully put the shoes back into the box, and put the box on the side table. Then, with a crazy, small boy whoop of pure joy, he lifted me up into the air and whirled me round and round until I was quite, quite dizzy.’
‘Oh Lily,’ I breathe. ‘What a lovely story.’
‘It was an unforgettable night,’ she says softly, and strokes her belly with a contented sigh.
‘I don’t know if I’ll ever find the kind of love you have.’
She looks me in the eye. ‘Sometimes the man for you is closer than you think.’
BJ’s face flashes into my mind. How would such an obviously cold and hard man react to the news he is going to be a father?
‘One day you’ll be pregnant and when you tell your man you’re carrying his child you will know exactly what I mean. A light, a special light, comes into his eyes.’
For a while we stop speaking. Each of us lost in our own thoughts. Then Lily breaks the silence. ‘Your mum said you went to a party at Laissez-faire last night.’
‘Yeah,’ I admit. ‘It was Ria’s birthday party.’ I briefly consider telling her about BJ, about that slow-motion, sex-drenched dance and the drug-like kiss afterwards. Then I decide not to. Nothing has happened yet. Nothing will if I don’t make it to Pigeon’s Pie.
‘Was it good?’
I grin. ‘It was brilliant. The music was great and we danced all night, but there was a big fight at the end. A guy almost crashed into me, but I was lucky. The manager of the club appeared out of nowhere and pulled me out of harm’s way. He immediately called a taxi and insisted on putting me into it. Very decent of him, I thought.’
Lily’s eyes have an oddly knowing glint and she looks as if she is about to say something, but at that moment Jake enters the room, and I run off to the toilet. After I brush my teeth and hair, I dress in a pair of old jeans and a huge, comfy jumper. Then I run downstairs to join my family.
Lunch is fun. It always is when my brothers are around. Jake is the oldest and he took on the role of breadwinner when my father died, making him the lucky one I run to when I am in trouble. Then there’s Dominic. He is a hothead with a hair-trigger temper, but he has a soft spot for me, so I can generally get away with murder with him. He’s the one I go to when I’ve done something I shouldn’t have and need to be forgiven.
Shane is only a year older than me. He’s the coolest of my brothers, I can totally relax with him and say and do anything I want. He is also the most classically handsome Eden brother and the playboy of the family. He’s got girls everywhere. When we go out together I get a ton of venomous and jealous looks from women. I almost pity the woman he will end up with. It must be hell to be with such a player.
Shane catches my eye and taps the handle of his knife so it hits the table surface and expertly flicks a pea in my direction. I open my mouth and in it goes.
‘Stop it, both of you.’ My mother looks at Shane sternly. ‘Layla is not a child.’
Both of us erupt into irrepressible laughter.
My mother turns to me. ‘By the time I was your age I was married with four children.’
‘Shane started it,’ I say.
‘This is not proper behavior for a lady. Do you want people to think I raised a hooligan?’ my mother asks.
I cast my eyes down.
‘Let her be, Ma,’ Dominic, ever the gallant, comes to my rescue. ‘When she was away you were always moaning that it was like the life and soul of this family went away. All our meals were proper and dull. Now she’s back and you won’t let her have a bit of fun. She doesn’t behave like this when we are out. This is our family meal. Let her have her fun.’
I look at Dominic with astonishment. My mum said that.
To my surprise Jake
cuts in. ‘It’s true that we spoil Layla rotten, but she hasn’t turned out so bad. She knows right from wrong. She’s never ever mean to anyone. She’s generous to a fault. She wouldn’t hurt a fly. She’s not stubborn or selfish or bossy or bitchy. Quite frankly, she makes me proud of her.’
‘And she knows how to catch flying peas in her mouth,’ Shane adds with a grin.
Everybody laughs. Even my mother smiles.
I gaze around the table at all their faces, even the latest addition, Lily, and my heart brims over with love. At that moment I think I am the most blessed person in the entire world
‘How’s the job search coming along, Bear?’ Jake asks.
‘I’ve got an interview on Wednesday. Fingers crossed,’ I say and stuff a chunk of roasted potato into my mouth so that he can’t ask where it is. Jake is such a control freak, he actually paid the people living in the flat next to me in Milan to keep an eye on me and make sure I was all right! God knows what he will do if I tell him where my interview is.
‘Mmmm … delicious, Ma,’ I say around my food.
My mother makes the best roasted potatoes ever. Her secret is twofold. She strains the potatoes and gives them a good hard shake in a closed lid pot after they have been cooked to break up their edges. Then she drops them on a baking tray of very hot goose fat. Hot enough to make the potatoes sizzle. The result: crispy on the outside, billowy on the inside.
After lunch Jake and Lily offer me a lift back to London, a suggestion I quickly accept.
FOURTEEN
Layla
The journey is pleasant. The conversation is light and easy and it is only when Jake and Lily start talking about attending a wedding of a family friend that I kind of put my foot in it.
‘Do you want to go, Bear?’ my brother asks.
‘Will BJ be there?’ I reply.