Stop the Clock Read online

  She sorted out a vase for the flowers, then turned to Dan and said, ‘Now, what can I get you? Wine? Beer? I got the kind with alcohol in.’

  ‘Better not. Not if you want that cot to hold up,’ Dan said. She noticed he made no move to take his jacket off. He looked slightly nervous, which was to be expected, but also shifty, and she wondered with a pang of jealousy whether he was seeing someone else . . . someone new, rather, since they weren’t actually seeing each other. Not in that way.

  That was one thing they’d never discussed on their weekend walks: his love life. In theory, of course, he was quite within his rights to have one. What if he’d got back together with Julia? Or had been seeing her, on the quiet, all along? Julia didn’t strike her as the sort who would accept an exes-with-benefits arrangement, but people did sometimes make strange compromises in order to get their needs met . . . as she, of all people, should know, after all those years with Justin.

  It wasn’t unreasonable to be jealous, she told herself; well, not entirely. Right now, whether for good or ill, she wanted him to want her, at least for . . . maybe . . . a kiss or something. If he was still expending his romantic energies on Julia, or on A. N. Other – presumably someone with regular-size boobs and a normal waistline – what chance did she have?

  ‘Oh, the cot’ll be fine,’ Tina said breezily. If she didn’t get Dan at least slightly inebriated, what chance did she have? She was beginning to wish she’d never mentioned the flipping cot – anyway she was sure she was perfectly capable of putting it up herself. ‘Probably go up all the easier with the help of a quick drink. Go on, what can I get you? Or would you like some cordial?’

  ‘Actually, can I have a look at the cot?’ Dan said. ‘Might be an idea to tackle it before we eat.’

  ‘OK,’ Tina said. Perhaps if they got the cot out of the way . . . but it did seem like a bit of a passion killer.

  She took him downstairs to the little second bedroom, where the constituent bits of the cot were leaning, still wrapped in polythene, against a wall, next to the pristine kitten changing mat and a plastic bag full of baby clothes. It definitely didn’t look like a baby’s room – it looked like a spare room that was being used for storage.

  Dan got to work, scanning the instructions and laying out the bits of slatted wood, and she hovered like a spare part until he asked her to hold part of the frame in place for him while he secured it with the Allen key.

  ‘There, just like that. Don’t strain your strings,’ he said, and she said, ‘That was it! That was your West Country accent. Wasn’t it?’ and he said, ‘All right, Miss West London, you got me, I let it slip.’

  After a while she said, ‘Don’t you want to take your jacket off?’ and he said, ‘Are you kidding? It’s freezing in here. Aren’t you cold?’

  She realized he was looking at her bare legs. Was that a good sign?

  ‘Oh no. You know, right now, I’m finding I don’t really feel the cold. Shall I turn the heating up?’

  ‘Don’t bother on my account,’ he said, ‘but you might want to think about turning it up a notch once the baby arrives. He’ll be in with you at first, won’t he? Do you want me to move this into your room when it’s done?’

  This cot-building lark was all very well, Tina thought, but it was getting less erotic by the minute.

  ‘Maybe another time,’ she said. ‘It can stay in here for now.’

  Eventually the cot was done. It looked convincingly sturdy and robust, and Tina was rather impressed; she hadn’t had Dan down as particularly handy, given his lack of ironing skills, and the moss growing in the window seals of his car. They put the mattress in, and just like that, the room was transformed into a space that was waiting for a child.

  ‘I think I decided on a name,’ she said. ‘William. William Fox.’

  ‘William Fox,’ he repeated. ‘That’s good. I like it. So what about the birth certificate? Do I get to go on it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘for the record, I suppose you do. Come on, I’m starving? let’s go and eat.’

  They went upstairs and she gave him a beer and got stuck in to making dinner, warming the noodles and stir-frying the beef. You couldn’t fail with this recipe; it smelt amazing. It turned out just right . . . but once she’d served, and was tucking in, she saw that Dan was sitting opposite her pushing his food around his plate like a WAG with a salad.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Tina said. ‘Spit it out. I know my cooking’s not that bad.’

  Dan shrugged. ‘It’s just . . . It’s all so real.’

  Any remaining hope that they might end up making love in an abandoned fashion on the sofa was finally done for.

  ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve always thought I’d like to be a dad one day,’ he said. ‘But I was thinking maybe in a decade’s time, you know, when I’ve settled down, bought a house, got married . . . And now it’s about to happen. I mean, it could literally be any day now. Couldn’t it?’

  ‘It’s a bit late to suddenly get cold feet,’ she said. ‘Are you with me on this or aren’t you? Because I don’t need a waverer on board.’

  Dan looked both hurt and ashamed.

  ‘I’m just trying to tell you how I feel,’ he said.

  ‘Well, don’t,’ Tina said. ‘I’m the one who’s got to give birth to this . . .’ She gestured towards her belly. ‘That’s real. That’s pain. That’s not just . . . feelings.’

  ‘Yes, and you don’t want me to be there,’ he said. ‘You’ve never even asked what I think about that.’

  ‘OK, then, go on, tell me, I’m all ears. What do you think about it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Dan said, ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘Well, that was worth asking, wasn’t it?’

  Dan pushed his plate away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. But I don’t know who else to talk to about it. I mean . . . to say something like that, to someone else . . . it would seem like a betrayal.’ He stood up. ‘I think I’d better go.’

  ‘Then you better had,’ Tina said. ‘You can let yourself out.’

  She pulled his plate towards her and helped herself. She sensed rather than saw him hesitate at the door, but didn’t look up, and then it clicked shut.

  What would he do now? Go to the pub, probably, and nurse a pint and tell himself she was half mad with hormones and had been totally unreasonable. Maybe he’d even indulge in a packet of cigarettes. He’d said that he’d given up, and he never smoked when he was with her, but she suspected him of occasional lapses; she still sometimes picked up the smell on him.

  While she ate, she thought about all the people who would have preferred it if this baby had never come along. Justin. Her parents. Her boss . . . It was all very well now, when her column was attracting a pleasing amount of web traffic, but what was Jeremy going to say when someone gazumped her nanny and she missed a deadline, or the kid came down with a string of freak infections contracted at some plague pit of a nursery?

  And here was Dan, wanting to do the right thing but doubtless wishing, deep down, that it had never happened.

  There was a difference between fathering a child and becoming a father. Was Dan capable of turning into a parent? Was she? Could she evolve into someone who was not wary of proximity, stickiness, love; who was nurturing, reliable, dependable, in for the long haul, willing to stick around no matter what? Inevitably she would be clueless, ignorant and wrong-footed; she would be way out of her depth; she would fall short and she would fuck up and she would fail.

  But maybe she would surprise herself, too . . . For the baby’s sake, she hoped so.

  She moved the hand that wasn’t forking meat into her mouth on to her belly and rested it there. Maybe she was seeking reassurance, maybe she was providing it; maybe both.

  Despite its reputation for stuffiness, the Post threw very good Christmas parties. There was always a reassuring press of bodies, plenty to drink and lots of enticing nooks and crannies. The
venue was usually an avuncular club, somewhere designed to suggest a blend of one of the smaller stately homes and an unusually comfortable boarding school, and the party was a chance for everyone to celebrate making it through another year without being summoned to walk Stab Alley (the corridor leading to the editor’s office, and to dismissal). So long as you were naturally cautious, or some kind old hand had warned you not to let your hair down before ten o’clock, when the senior management traditionally left the building, it was likely that you’d make it through at least until January. (It was a generally held belief that only left-wing papers fired people just before Christmas.)

  It was also wise not to wear a low-cut or strapless cocktail dress, or any other garment likely to reveal what was best left to the imagination, especially during enthusiastic bopping. It was, however, acceptable to wear a skirt that rested some inches above the knee, though it was necessary to be sporting about any excitement that resulted.

  Tina usually judged the success of her Christmas party outfit by the number of older, married hacks and executives who propositioned her each year, but on this occasion her shape was well past disguising, and the dress she was wearing (empire-line, knee-length, not too plunging at the neck) was flattering only in comparison to the drawstring-waisted pyjamas she’d be putting on as soon she was safely back home.

  By half past nine, a mere hour after arriving, she was propping herself up against the wall near the end of a sweeping staircase, close to the exit for the ladies’. She was determined to avoid sinking into one of the large Chesterfield sofas scattered around the margins of this hall and the upstairs reception room that the Post had hired for the disco. Once she sat down, she’d be stuck. She was already feeling the lack of her usual social agility. She’d never normally have settled on the outer edges of the action.

  She checked her watch and suppressed a sigh. She’d had far too many conversations with female colleagues who were already mothers, none of which had been reassuring. Meanwhile, the brief chats she’d had with her male co-workers had been brief, tense and jocular, and involved them looking at her bump with pink-faced pride, as if they, rather than Man Unknown, were responsible, and would shortly be priming a fine cigar and selecting something from the cellar with which to wet the baby’s head.

  Monty Delamere passed by in pursuit of the waitress with the top-up bottle of fizz and paused to greet her.

  ‘Tina, how lovely that you’re still here,’ he said. ‘Marvellous. Absolutely marvellous.’

  He made a full-bodied gesture with both hands, intended to mimic the circularity of her frame.

  ‘Motherhood, always such a wonderful thing for a woman,’ he went on. ‘My wife took to it like a duck to water. She used to work here, you know. One minute she was all sharp elbows and vaulting ambition, the next she’d thrown herself into baking pies and knitting booties, and she was as happy as Larry. Mother Nature is just extraordinary. I must say, though, you’ve played your cards very close to your chest, haven’t you? Are you planning to share all with your faithful readers after the birth?’

  ‘I’m not going to go into all the gory details, if that’s what you mean. I don’t want to put anyone off their cornflakes.’

  Monty looked at her as sharply as he could, given that he was too pissed to focus, and had a slight squint at the best of times.

  ‘No, no, I meant the paternity question. Who the lucky chap is. We’ve all been speculating, you know. All sorts of wild rumours. I’ve heard at least one law lord mentioned, and a cabinet minister. But a little bird tells me he might be closer to home, and a bit less of a catch.’

  Then he narrowed his eyes and pressed his lips together as if he’d just finished snacking on a particularly large and tasty canapé, and was availing himself of the last trace of flavour.

  ‘Sometimes what you leave out is so much more powerful than what you put in,’ Tina said, and gave him the smile that was intended to convey her willingness to bite if necessary.

  ‘Now, now, I only meant to tease. Why is it that the fairer sex struggles so with humour?’ Monty said with an evil stare, and went off huffishly.

  Tina’s fellow columnist Anthea Trask passed by.

  ‘Not long now,’ Anthea said sympathetically. ‘Can I get you anything from the bar?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Tina said. ‘There’s only so much orange juice I can take.’

  ‘I do hope you’ve had at least one glass of champagne. I should think this would be pretty unbearable otherwise.’

  Tina shook her head. Anthea smiled pityingly.

  ‘Word of warning to the wise,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t take the latest guidelines too much to heart if I were you.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Tina said as Anthea moved on.

  She was just wondering how soon she could make her escape when Julia McMahon saw her from across the room and bore down on her with the righteous anger of a victim seeking redress. Must be Dutch courage – in the office, she avoided Tina as much as possible. It was obvious to Tina that Julia had fallen hard for Dan back in the summer, and it must be equally obvious to Julia that something had happened between Tina and Dan. If Julia had put two and two together, then . . . oh dear.

  ‘So when are you coming back?’ Julia demanded. She had interpreted the dress code faultlessly – she looked decorative but demure, with just a hint of fun. Close up, though, her dark eyes had a dangerous, champagne-fuelled glitter.

  ‘I’m not really going away, strictly speaking,’ Tina said. ‘I’ll still be writing my column every week, and generally keeping my hand in. But I’ll be back full-time in June.’

  Julia’s lip curled. ‘It’s a long time.’

  ‘I’ve been working here for a decade,’ Tina said. ‘If you look at it in terms of a whole career, six months is not a big deal. On the other hand, if you look at it from the perspective of someone who only started a year ago, I suppose it is.’

  Julia turned red. Her mouth puckered as she rummaged round for something to come back with. Tina thought for a moment that she was about to apologize. Then Julia’s gaze settled on Dan, who was standing, glass in hand, next to Monty, and attempting to banter with him.

  ‘Well, where would you old hands be without some fresh blood?’ Julia said.

  ‘If you want him, I’m sure he’s all yours,’ Tina told her.

  ‘He’s not an office chair. You can’t bequeath him,’ Julia snapped.

  Dan chose that moment to excuse himself and amble over. Either he’d had nothing more to do with Julia since their break-up and had an entirely clear conscience? or he was blind drunk and wanted everybody to love each other because it was nearly Christmas.

  ‘What are you two talking about so intensely?’ he asked.

  ‘Julia was just about to tell me the ways in which you are not like an office chair,’ Tina said.

  ‘I think I’ll leave you two to it. You obviously have rather a lot to talk about,’ Julia said with a pointed look at Tina’s bump, and marched off.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Dan said.

  Tina sighed. ‘You know what, I think I’m going to go home.’

  ‘Oh no, no, don’t do that. Let’s find a sofa somewhere and sit down. I want to talk to you. I’ve been feeling awful about the way I behaved the other night. I’m so sorry, Tina. I shouldn’t have said what I said. I am with you, I’m completely with you, whenever you want me to be that is, and when you don’t, then, phhht! I’m gone.’

  Yup: blind drunk.

  ‘OK, Dan, I appreciate that. Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t have bitten your head off. Great party, isn’t it? You have a good evening – I’m just off to get my coat.’

  But Dan grabbed her by the hand. ‘Please don’t go, not just yet. I’ve been thinking about you so much, and there’s something I want to say to you.’

  Monty, now in conversation with Jeremy, was staring at them both as if considering a gentlemanly intervention.

  ‘Not here,’ Tina hissed. ‘People are
staring.’

  ‘So what?’ Dan said. ‘They’re going to find out sooner or later and when they do it’ll be a ten-minute wonder and then they’ll get over it. Why are you so obsessed with having secrets?’

  Jeremy detached himself from Monty and descended upon them with the melancholy assurance of the senior colleague who knows his underlings have to at least pretend to like him.

  ‘Evening all,’ he said. ‘Enjoying the largesse?’

  ‘Dan, please,’ Tina whispered, and Dan let go of her hand.

  ‘We are, very much,’ she said to Jeremy, ‘but I’m actually heading off now. Dan’s very kindly offered to help me on my way. The coat check’s down a few too many stairs for me – I’m getting to be like a little old lady.’ She got the ticket for her coat out of her evening bag, and Dan took it and went obediently off.

  Jeremy watched him go, then turned back to Tina.

  ‘I suppose that was what they call inappropriate behaviour,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t it?’

  ‘He was just getting a little carried away with the festive spirit, I guess,’ Tina said. ‘Marvellous party. I thought they might scale it down a bit this year, after the redundancies.’

  ‘Different budget,’ Jeremy said. ‘You know how companies like to compartmentalize these things. Well, we all do, don’t we? It’s human nature, isn’t it? But sometimes it’s hard to keep it going. You know, Tina, you’ve done a great job so far, but I’m genuinely curious to see how you’re going to manage when you’ve got a screaming infant keeping you up all night. And they do, believe me. Women moan about men, but children are infinitely more trying.’

  ‘Yes, well, men are meant to be adults,’ Tina snapped.

  ‘You’re going to have to be careful. The powers-that-be don’t like the chaotic mum thing.’

  He gave her the full benefit of his disturbing smile: a mouthful of true hack’s teeth, stained with a lifetime’s heavy reliance on nicotine, beer and coffee. Then he walked away.