Non Pratt - Trouble

I twist off the tap and stand, dripping for a moment, slicking my hands back over my hair and wringing out the ends before I get out, taking loads of care — I have proper paranoia about slipping and falling on the wet tiles. I wrap the towel around me and stand in the patch of sun from the window, snug inside my warm, soft cocoon. The baby presses a limb against something and I wince but it’s still on the move so it passes quickly.

I’m dry and wearing my favourite dress and leggings. I haven’t bothered with make-up. I predict tears today and I don’t want panda eyes — it’s bad enough I’m going to have puffy eyes. I have puffy everything at the moment. My ankles are a weird shape and my fingers are pretty swollen too. In some ways I’m looking forward to having the baby — at least then I might get my body back, even if it is different from how it was when this started.

I hear a squeal of laughter from the sitting room and psych myself up for what’s ahead. I stand on the top step and think about running back into my room, slamming the door shut and refusing to come out, like some diva who’s had the wrong champagne delivered backstage. Can I run away and hide? Please?

But running is all I’ve been doing and I’m tired. Time to stop and take a stand. There’s no justice in Jay getting away with it any longer — he’s the father. He doesn’t get to opt out. That’s all there is to it.

Pausing outside the door, I look round the frame, ready to see Jay and my little sister having fun without me. Robert’s there too, his two kids standing either side of him, showing him something on the Wii. Lola’s pretty party dress is tucked into her knickers so she can move around more easily, and a suit jacket I suppose must be Jay’s is lying on the sofa. Mum comes up behind me and rests a hand on my shoulder and I turn to see her watching them too, a warm, happy smile on her face.

Can I really do this?

There’s a knock on the door and Mum frowns. She’s not expecting more guests and I duck under her arm, beating her to it. I open the door to Aaron, dressed as if he’s come for dinner, although he should have come dressed for war.

I say nothing, just step into his arms.

“This is it,” I say and Aaron kisses the side of my head.

I can feel her quaking as I hold her.

“This is it,” I say, wishing it wasn’t. When she lets go I have to fight the urge to pull her back and tell her that she doesn’t need to do this. She doesn’t need Jay.

But needing and wanting are different things. She can pretend that this is about ending the lies, but it isn’t only that, it is because, even after everything he’s done, Hannah still wants Jay.

Mum’s gone into the sitting room to join the others so when we walk in it’s to face all four of them.

“Aaron!” Mum sounds as surprised as she looks. “We weren’t expecting you.”

“Happy birthday, Robert,” Aaron says and hands him a card and a bottle of whisky — good stuff that I reckon he’s nicked from his dad. We both know Robert’s going to need that later.

“Er… thank you.” Robert looks baffled.

All this time I’ve been avoiding looking at Jay, but I can’t hold it off any longer. His lips are pressed so tight together they’ve turned white and with his short hair and stubble he looks dangerous. And he’s looking at me.

Paula looked at the clock when I walked in and when she turns back to me I can tell that she thinks I’m intruding.

“I didn’t know you were coming over, Aaron. We’re about to go out for dinner…”

“Aaron can come too!” Lola bounces over to hug me, knocking into a vase of flowers, spilling water all over her dress and the carpet. I bend over and right the vase as Hannah’s mum fusses over Lola, telling her to go and get changed whilst she cleans this mess up.

Lola bounds upstairs saying she’ll choose something Daddy would like and I feel Hannah tense as her mum comes back in with a tea towel.

“Honestly, I don’t know what’s got into that child today. She’s been mad with excitement about you coming, Jay—”

“Jay’s the father.”

Oh God, there must have been a better way to do it than that. Mum’s looking at me as if she has no idea what I just said and Jay’s looking at me with nothing but fury in his eyes. I daren’t look at Robert. I daren’t.

I open my fingers and Aaron’s hand is there almost before I knew I was reaching for it. Is he trembling too, or is that just me? It’s me. I’m terrified.

“Hannah?” Mum. Her eyes are pleading when I meet her gaze, as if she’s asking me to take back the words, swallow them as if they never existed.

“Jay’s the father of my baby,” I say again, quieter this time.

“Aaron?”

I just shake my head and feel his thumb brush the side of my hand. We agreed he should stay quiet, he’s here to give me the strength to do this myself.

“Jason?” Robert’s voice. I look up and he’s looking at Jay, who is still looking at me and not at his father. When Jay says nothing, Robert repeats his name. “Jason, what’s going on?”

I look at Jay. Don’t just leave this to me, Jay. Please don’t. Say something, say anything.

“I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

“What?” I hear Aaron’s voice chiming in with mine.

“Hannah’s lying.”

When I said “say anything” I didn’t mean that. The horror of what I’m hearing has sealed my throat and frozen my face. He’s saying I’m a liar? He’s telling them I’m making this up? How can he do this?

I step forward straight onto a soggy patch of carpet.

“Sit down, Hannah,” Mum says, then calls up the stairs to Lola to tell her to practise her birthday dance for Daddy before she comes down. I sit on the second sofa, Aaron next to me, Mum and Robert on the other one and Jay on my favourite armchair. He and I used to fight over it, sitting on one another, trying to crush the other into submission, until we’d give up and squash into it together. Bet I’d win if I sat on him now.

“Why are you saying this, Hannah?” Mum says. I don’t know whether that means she believes me or that she doesn’t.

“Because it’s true. Jay and I… we… and…” I look at her and hope she understands what I’m saying.

“You two slept together.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

I stare at him, but his eyes are narrow and sharp and ready to cut through my soul.

“Why are you doing this?” I whisper, the words catching on my tears as they come out.

“Why are you?” Jay says, but there’s no sadness in his voice that I can hear. Just anger.

I have no answer to this and I look at him, tears flowing down my face. Does he know how much he’s hurting me? Can’t he see?

“It’s Dad’s birthday and you’re saying all this. Why, Hannah? Why would you do that to Dad?” Jay’s warming up now and I can hear he thinks this is going to work.

“Jason—” Robert puts a hand on his arm, warning him to stop, then turns to me. “If this is a joke, it’s not very funny.”

Even though I’m dreading it, I manage to meet his eyes. They’re hard and bright, like Jay’s, but they’re not unkind, just lost, disappointed in me for making up such lies about his beloved son.

“It’s not a joke,” Aaron says. Robert and Mum look over at him as if they’d forgotten he could talk. “Hannah slept with Jay and now she’s about to have his baby.”

Jason looks at Aaron with loathing. “You’re not going to listen to him — he’s just trying to worm his way out of it, isn’t he?”

Mum and Robert glance at each other. They might have a hard time thinking Jay’s the father, but they’d have a harder time believing this is Aaron’s idea.

“The due date is the eleventh of June. I” — Aaron glances at me apologetically — “got to know Hannah properly in October.”

“These things aren’t accurate…” Mum says, but she goes out to the kitchen and fetches the calendar, flicking back through the months. I watch when she flips from October to September, but Robert’s not looking at her, he’s looking at me.

“When?”

“Jay’s leaving party,” I say quietly, wanting not to meet his eyes, but knowing I’ve got to.

“She’s lying! Hannah’s slept with loads of boys.” Jay’s almost shouting.

“That’s not true,” I whisper.

No one else hears Hannah say that it isn’t true. But then she says something that we all hear:

“You were the first.”

And I feel her gripping my hand so tight that my fingers turn cold, but I’m squeezing back, telling her that I’m here for her.

Jay was her first?

I never realized.

All I can feel is Aaron’s hand in mine as I look at Jay struggle to understand what I’ve said. He didn’t know. How could he, when the girl in his bed was pretending, the way she’d been pretending all summer — to her friends in the park, the boys she pulled? The way she’d pretended to her best friend.

“It’s not true!” Jay’s voice is loud with indignation and I want to slam my hands to my ears and shut out the noise. “Tell them about the others.”

No one says anything. We’re all looking at Jay, who’s looking at me and at Robert and Aaron, across at Mum. Beside me, Aaron says quietly, “‘Others’, Jay?”

Robert looks at Aaron and then at Jay, his face pale as Mum walks back over to me, the calendar open on September, finger resting on the nineteenth, the night of Jay’s party, eyes wide with a question she doesn’t want to ask.

At last Robert says something.

“Others?”

Jay doesn’t seem to understand. So much for university education.

“You slept with your sister.”

“Stepsister,” Jay tries to say, but Robert isn’t listening.

“You slept with Hannah!” Robert’s shouting and when he steps across the room Jay actually flinches, but it’s Hannah his father reaches out to, a hand on her shoulder. “She’s fifteen. You slept with your—” This time he can’t even say it — the horror is insurmountable.

Jay starts, “I didn’t—”

The look Robert shoots him stops Jay’s protest dead. His father turns to look at me. “And you? October…” His eyes widen as it dawns on him. “You knew all along.”

I want to shake my head. I want to say no. “I didn’t know it was Jay until—”

What is it that I’m going to say? But I don’t get the chance to finish the sentence.

“You need to leave,” Robert says, quietly.

I look at Hannah, her eyes tear-glazed and swollen, but it’s her mother who answers.

“You lied to us, Aaron.” Eyes as anguished as her daughter’s. “How could you? You must have known this would—”

“It’s not Aaron’s fault,” Hannah tries, but it was never going to work.

“Get out.” Robert once more. “This is a family matter. You are not family.”

And I leave, walk down the road to where my mum has been waiting in the car. We say nothing as she pulls away and I rest my head on the glass, thinking of the way the family I’d become a part of threw me out of their brood.

It’s done. I’m no longer the father of Hannah’s baby.

It’s important to give people space. I understand that, which is why I have only sent one text, one email and called her mobile once. No reply. I draw the line at calling her house phone; I don’t want to risk speaking to Paula or Robert. Or worse, Jay.

Whether I get through or not, I don’t for a second doubt that Hannah knows I’m here for her. But what Hannah needed was the father and now, finally, she’s got him. If Jay’s still around, does it really matter where her best friend is?

Mum has put my life on lockdown until something is worked out. I don’t know how taking my phone away and disconnecting the Wi-Fi is going to help, but no one in this family is thinking straight at the moment. For some reason Mum seems intent on stopping me from talking to Aaron — as if he’s to blame for any of this.