Cal explodes with laughter. He throws himself off his chair onto the floor and waves his legs about. Sally’s pleased, reads the joke out again. It is funny. It starts as a ripple in my belly, then moves up to my mouth. Sally laughs too, a great gulping sound. She looks surprised to make such a noise, which makes Mum, Dad and Adam start to chuckle. It’s such a relief. Such a bloody relief. I can’t remember the last time I laughed out loud. Tears roll down my cheeks. Adam passes me his napkin across the table.
‘Here.’ His fingers brush mine.
I wipe my eyes. Upstairs, upstairs. I want to run my hands along you. And I’m just about to say it out loud, just about to say, ‘I’ve got something for you, Adam, but it’s in my bedroom, so you’ll have to come and get it,’ when there’s a rap on the window.
It’s Zoey, her face pressed against the glass, like Mary in the Christmas story. She wasn’t supposed to be here until tea time, and her parents were meant to be coming with her.
She brings in the cold. She stamps her feet on the carpet in front of us all. ‘Merry Christmas, everyone,’ she says.
Dad raises his glass to her and wishes her the same. Mum gets up and gives her a hug.
Zoey says, ‘Thank you.’ Then she bursts into tears.
Mum gets her a chair and some tissues. From somewhere two mince pies appear with a large dollop of brandy butter. Zoey shouldn’t really have alcohol, but maybe the butter doesn’t count.
‘When I looked through the window,’ she sniffs, ‘it looked like something from an advert. I nearly went home.’
Dad says, ‘What’s going on, Zoey?’
She stuffs a spoonful of pie and brandy butter into her mouth, chews quickly, then swallows it down. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Whatever you want to tell us.’
‘Well, my nose is stuffed up and I feel like crap. Do you want to know about that?’
‘That’s caused by an increase in HCG,’ I tell her. ‘It’s the pregnancy hormone.’ There’s a moment’s silence around the table as everyone looks at me. ‘I read it in the Reader’s Digest.’
I’m not sure I should have said this out loud. I forgot that Adam, Cal and Sally don’t even know Zoey’s pregnant. None of them say anything though, and Zoey doesn’t seem to mind, just shoves another load of pie into her mouth.
Dad says, ‘Has something happened at home, Zoey?’
She carefully reloads her spoon. ‘I’ve told my parents.’
‘You told them today?’ He sounds surprised.
She wipes her mouth with her sleeve. ‘It may have been bad timing.’
‘What did they say?’
‘They said a million things, all of them terrible. They hate me. Everyone hates me in fact. Except for the baby.’
Cal grins. ‘You’re having a baby?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I bet it’s a boy.’
She shakes her head at him. ‘I don’t want a boy.’
Dad says, ‘But you do want a baby?’ He says this very gently.
Zoey hesitates, as if she’s thinking about this for the very first time. Then she smiles at him, her eyes watery and amazed. I’ve never seen such a look on her face before. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I really think I do. I’m going to call her Lauren.’
She’s nineteen weeks pregnant, her baby is fully formed and weighs roughly two hundred and forty grammes. If it were born now, it would fit into the palm of my hand. Its stomach would be pink-veined and transparent. If I spoke, it would hear me.
I say, ‘I’ve put your baby on my list.’ I probably shouldn’t have said this out loud either. I didn’t really mean to. Once again, everyone stares at me.
Dad reaches out a hand and touches mine across the table. ‘Tessa,’ he says.
I hate that. I shrug him off. ‘I want to be there.’
Zoey says, ‘It’s another five months, Tess.’
‘So? That’s only a hundred and sixty days. But if you don’t want me there, I can sit outside and maybe come in afterwards. I want to be one of the first people in the world to ever hold her.’
She stands up and walks round the table. She wraps her arms around me. She feels different. Her tummy’s gone all hard and she’s very hot.
‘Tessa,’ she says, ‘I want you to be there.’
Twenty-seven
The afternoon goes quickly. The table’s cleared and the TV’s turned on. We all listen to the Queen’s speech, then Cal does a few magic tricks.
Zoey spends the afternoon on the sofa with Sally and Mum, going through every detail of her doomed love affair with Scott. She even asks for their advice on childbirth. ‘Tell me,’ she says, ‘does it hurt as much as they say?’
Dad’s engrossed in his new book, Eating Organic. He occasionally reads out statistics about chemicals and pesticides to anyone who’s interested.
Adam mostly talks to Cal. He shows him how to spin the clubs; he teaches him a new coin trick. I keep changing my mind about him. Not if I fancy him or not, but if he likes me. Every now and then his eyes catch mine across the room, but he always looks away before I do.
‘He wants you,’ Zoey mouths at me at one point. But if it’s true, I don’t know how to make it happen.
I’ve spent the afternoon flicking through the book Cal got me, A Hundred Weird Ways to Meet Your Maker. It’s quite funny, but it doesn’t stop me feeling as if there’s a space inside me that’s shrinking. I’ve sat in this chair in the corner for two hours, and I’ve separated myself. I know I do it and I know it isn’t right, but I don’t know how else to be.
By four o’clock it’s dark and Dad’s switched on all the lights. He brings out bowls of sweets and nuts. Mum suggests a game of cards. I sidle out to the hallway while they rearrange the chairs. I’ve had enough of stagnant walls and bookshelves. I’ve had enough of central heating and party games. I get my coat from its hook and go out into the garden.
The cold is shocking. It ignites my lungs, turns my breath to smoke. I put my hood up, pull the drawstring tight under my chin and wait.
Slowly, as if arriving out of mist, everything in the garden comes into focus – the holly bush scratching the shed, a bird on the fence post, its feathers fluffing in the wind.
Indoors they’ll be dealing out the cards and passing round the peanuts, but out here, each blade of grass glistens, spiked by frost. Out here, the sky’s packed full of stars, like something from a fairytale. Even the moon looks stunned.
I squash windfalls under my boots on my way to the apple tree. I touch the twists in the trunk, trying to feel its bruised slate colour through my fingers. A few leaves hang damply in the branches. A handful of withered apples turn to rust.
Cal says that humans are made from the nuclear ash of dead stars. He says that when I die, I’ll return to dust, glitter, rain. If that’s true, I want to be buried right here under this tree. Its roots will reach into the soft mess of my body and suck me dry. I’ll be reformed as apple blossom. I’ll drift down in the spring like confetti and cling to my family’s shoes. They’ll carry me in their pockets, scatter the subtle silk of me across their pillows to help them sleep. What dreams will they have then?
In the summer they’ll eat me. Adam will climb over the fence to steal me, maddened by my scent, by my roundness, the shine and health of me. He’ll get his mum to cook me up in a crumble or a strudel and then he’ll gorge on me.
I lie on the ground and try to imagine it. Really, really. I’m dead. I’m turning into an apple tree. It’s a bit difficult though. I wonder about the bird I saw earlier, if it’s flown away. I wonder what they’re doing indoors, if they miss me yet.
I turn over and press my face right into the grass; it pushes coldly back at me. I rake my hands through it, bring up my fingers to smell the earth. It smells of leaf mould, worm breath.