‘Of course, you know it’s all a bunch of total bullshit?’
‘What is?’ I ask, although I already know the answer to my question.
‘Valentine’s Day.’ My friend JoJo speaks with the gusto of the true non-believer. ‘It’s just a retail con to make you buy a load of pink and red tat.’ She takes a triumphant slurp of her latte. ‘The original St Valentine was struck off the list of saints by the Vatican anyway.’
‘I don’t think people give a toss about the facts,’ I retort, placing my own coffee cup in its saucer and admiring the gleaming surfaces of my freshly manicured scarlet nails. ‘They just relish the excuse to ramp up the romance.’
‘And is that what you’re doing?’ JoJo gives me a sharp look. ‘Ramping up the romance? Even though you’re an old married lady these days?’
I’m snatching a quick half-hour with my best friend at Bean & Beaker, our favourite coffee shop on Chamberlayne Road. I’ve taken the afternoon off work to shop for and cook a special Valentine’s Day supper for my husband. Since I’m the owner of a company – a rapidly expanding catering business covering corporate events and weddings – I can take time off whenever I like. That’s the theory, at least. In practice, it’s difficult when we’re so busy. The approach of spring means a flurry of weddings, on top of our work for the media awards season.
I smile, aware I must look coy. ‘We’ve been through our ups and downs, but since… you know…’
‘That crazy woman,’ JoJo interjects.
‘Yes. Since then… things have been great. Really great, in fact.’ I can’t stop the flood of colour rising to my cheeks.
JoJo notices. Of course she does. ‘Aliiiiice?’ she draws out my name. ‘Anything you care to share with Auntie JoJo?’
I look down at my vermilion fingertips again, picking up the teaspoon from my saucer and turning it over and over. ‘Don’t say a word. To anyone. Promise.’
‘Of course I promise. Go on – spit it out!’ JoJo’s excited grin makes it obvious she’s guessed what I’m about to say. She knows me only too well.
I glance round the coffee shop, crowded with school-run mummies and their Bugaboos, lowering my voice to a stage whisper. ‘I think I might be pregnant.’
‘You think?’
I open my bag wide enough for JoJo to get a glimpse of a pregnancy test box. ‘I’m going to do the test this evening, before Dom gets home.’ I see something cross her face; a look of concern. ‘What?’
‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?’
‘Of course! I’m nearly thirty-four.’
‘I mean “you” plural. Is Dom ready to be a dad?’
‘Of course he is.’ I’m aware I sound defensive. ‘He’s the same age as I am.’
‘I don’t mean his age. Look, we both know I’m no expert.’ At thirty-six, JoJo is defiantly single, her longest relationship having not quite made it to the twelve-month mark. ‘But you’ve been married… how many years is it now?’
‘Coming up to three.’
‘Exactly. Not that long. And you’d only just met when you married. Since then there have been some challenges, to put it mildly.’ She reaches across the table for my hand. ‘Sweetie, I’m delighted for you if you are pregnant; of course I am. I’m just saying, having a child places extra stress on a relationship.’
I give her a beatific smile. ‘It will be a fresh start. A joint project. That’s how I’m looking at it. And we did put off having a baby for a while, in the early days of our marriage when Dom wasn’t ready. But with me hitting my mid-thirties… well, we can’t put it off forever, can we?’
We pay for our coffee and JoJo sets off to her flat in Notting Hill Gate to pick up her work as a freelance editor with a cheerful, ‘Back to the grindstone for me, chick!’
I wander over to Kilburn High Road, buying a selection of cheeses, salad and artisan bread from the deli, some sea bass from our favourite fishmonger, a bottle of pink champagne and some overpriced chocolates in a heart-shaped box from the supermarket’s express branch. JoJo would scoff at this last purchase, but I see it as a poignant symbol of the new life in our marriage. A heart, just like the tiny new one that could be beating inside me. And Dom has always been a closet chocoholic. I know the best way to sweeten him up.
I trudge back to Waverley Gardens with my purchases in several carrier bags. As ever, my heart lifts a little when I round the bend in the crescent and see the house. My house.
Of course, it’s our house now, but for a few years, it was just mine.
People frequently commented on this. ‘That’s weird,’ they’d say to me, ‘a single girl living in a four-bedroom, three-bathroom house with a huge garden, all on her own.’
Depending on my mood at the time, I might or might not have challenged them. I inherited a large sum of money – enough to buy the house mortgage-free and start a business of my own – when my mother died from breast cancer. At the time, I was twenty-five and my brother David was twenty-seven. The money from Mum’s estate came straight to us because we’d already lost our father to congenital heart disease eight years earlier.
‘You’re so lucky,’ was the other thing people would say to me. Again, depending on how I was feeling, I might simply agree or I might point out that I only had the security of this lovely house in one of West London’s leafier inner suburbs because I was an orphan. Did they consider that being lucky? I’d lost both my parents, whom I loved dearly. I’d lost their protection. And being well-off compared to my struggling twenty-something peers was very isolating. People used the word ‘heiress’ about me in the same way you might say ‘werewolf’.
You’d think owning the perfect party pad would put you at the centre of things socially, but the parties I went to back then continued to be thrown in grotty rented flats. I actually lost friends because of my ‘luck’. My financial status created a gulf, socially. I knew my house was too big to live in alone, and I tried renting out a room to someone – a friend of a friend – but it didn’t work out. She treated the place like a squat, so I stopped. I still planned to fill the place, but with a husband and children instead of lodgers. It turned out that was a lot harder to achieve than I had imagined. Potential boyfriends were intimidated by my having more financial clout than them. It hurt their alpha pride.
But not Dominic. He wasn’t bothered about it in the least. He was different to all the others.
I walk up the tiled pathway, drop the bags in the porch and grope for my key, then kick the door open with my foot, hefting the shopping through the hall and into the kitchen. By the time I’ve made a salad, arranged the cheese on the cheeseboard and prepared the fish, it’s six o’clock. I text Dominic.
When will you be home? X
I head to the bathroom with the pregnancy test kit, having forced myself to wait until I’d prepared supper before using it. As I rip off the cellophane packaging with impatient fingers, Dom replies.
Not long now – maybe 30–40 minutes. X
I position myself over the toilet bowl and pee onto the plastic stick. While I’m waiting the required two minutes, I start running a bath, throwing in a generous amount of scented oil. With the test stick positioned on the edge of the bath, I lower myself into the warm, fragrant water and allow myself a brief, blissful soak, before I reach for the stick.
There’s a single word in the second window: Pregnant.
I stare at it for several minutes with a stupid grin on my face, letting the water cool around me. Then I haul myself out of the bath and go back into the bedroom. I’m about to place the test stick on Dominic’s pillow as the Valentine’s surprise to end all Valentine’s surprises, but my excitement gets the better of me and I send him a photo of the positive test result captioned with just a pregnant woman emoji, a baby bottle emoji and finally a shocked face emoji. We don’t normally engage in text banter during the working day, but today is not normal. Not at all.
I dry myself and moisturise my skin all over, lingering to cradle the slight curve of my stomach. Then I put on some pretty lace underwear and choose a dress from the rail in the dressing room. I decide against pink – too much of a cliché, despite the evening’s clichéd theme – and opt instead for a wine-red wrap dress and nude heels. I carefully straighten my shock of mouse-brown hair, then twist it into a messy updo and create what women’s magazines would call ‘an evening look’ with my make-up. Will Dominic notice? I wonder. Probably. He’s never liked me looking what he calls ‘tarted up’. But lately he’s been making more of an effort with the compliments and positive reinforcement.
I glance over at my phone screen for a response to the test stick picture, but there are no new notifications. He must be behind the wheel of his car and not looking at his messages.
Downstairs, the house feels chilly, so I light the fire in the sitting room, adding a few candles for good measure. There isn’t any food preparation left to do, so I toss some crisps into a bowl and get out the champagne flutes.
But then I hesitate. The problem with opening champagne – especially pink champagne on Valentine’s night – is that it requires an audience. It would look a little odd if I started drinking it before Dominic gets home, and besides, I need to watch my alcohol intake now. Instead, I pull a half-empty bottle of white wine from the door of the fridge and pour just an inch into a glass, topping it up with fizzy water. Not enough to do any harm to the baby, I reason, just a taster. I take the glass through to drink in front of the fire, curling my feet under me on the sofa and flicking through a copy of Elle Decoration.
When I look up again, it’s after seven o’clock. Dominic is now officially late, which is by no means unusual. As finance director of a multinational construction firm, his hours are long and irregular and there’s a good chance someone grabbed him for an informal meeting just as he planned to leave. So I’m not worried, but I am a little irritated. Especially since I’ve let the pregnancy cat out of the bag without waiting for him to get home. And because the option of refilling my wine glass and blocking out the irritation is no longer open to me.
I glance at my phone, but there are no new calls or messages. Sighing, I go into the kitchen, and turn on the oven in readiness for baking the fish. Once the fish is neatly parcelled up, I top up my wine glass with more sparkling water, mix a salad dressing and check my phone again. It’s almost seven thirty. Dominic was supposed to be home around an hour ago. My pregnancy announcement WhatsApp has two blue ticks, but my call to his mobile rings out, then eventually goes to voicemail. Instead of leaving him a message, I cut the call and FaceTime JoJo.
‘Wow – you look great,’ JoJo says as soon as she answers. ‘Pretty dress.’ She indicates her own sweater and leggings combo, ‘Bet you’re glad I made the effort.’
‘I did the test.’
Her eyes widen. ‘And?’
‘It was positive.’
‘Oh my God, that’s amazing! Have you told Dom yet?’
I force a small smile. ‘I messaged him, but I haven’t heard back. He said he’d be home an hour ago.’
‘Have you tried calling him?’
‘He’s not picking up.’
JoJo scowls into the screen. ‘Bloody idiot. Tell you what, I’ll come over and celebrate with you. I’ll eat his share of the meal, too. What are we having?’
‘Sea bass. And pink champagne. Which I can’t really have now, obviously.’
‘Even better: more for me. I’ll get m’coat.’
We both know she’s joking, but I almost wish she wasn’t. ‘It would probably be more fun, to be honest,’ I sigh. ‘I expect he’ll be home soon, but I’ve lost my nerve a bit when it comes to the whole Valentine’s pregnancy announcement thing.’
‘Where do you think he is?’
I shrug. ‘Something’s probably held him up at work. It just would have been nice if he could have told me. It is Valentine’s night, after all.’
‘Are you sure that’s all it is? It’s not like Dom hasn’t got form.’
This can’t be anything to do with her, I think. That’s all over: Dominic dealt with it. I know for a fact he did, because at the time I was standing right next to him at the front desk of the police station.
‘I’m sure,’ I say firmly. ‘We’re fine now. Better than ever. But this is a bit slack, even for him.’
‘Why don’t you call his office? Just to be sure.’
After pacing and fretting for a further half an hour, I take her advice and dial the number for Dominic’s PA. Predictably, she has gone home. Eventually, after trying a few numbers, I manage to get hold of someone on the reception desk, who says that Mr Gill definitely left the building around six fifteen. He drove to work today because of a tube strike, so I ask them to check the car park. Sure enough, his car has gone. It’s now eight fifteen. The drive home from Silvertown doesn’t usually take longer than twenty minutes, thirty if the traffic is particularly bad. I put the fish back in the fridge and go upstairs to the bedroom, where I take off my dress and heels and put on jeans and a hoodie. I return to the sofa and sit there, dejected, no longer wanting to think about the fact that I’m carrying a child.
Why now? I think. Why, when everything’s so great between us, does Dom have to be home late? Why – just for once – can’t he stick to the original plan? Does this mean the baby news has upset him in some way? But why on earth would it?
To distract myself, I pick up my laptop and start going through some of the dozens of unanswered work emails in my Comida inbox.
Finally, at ten past nine, I hear a car pulling up outside. I head to the front door and yank it open. But the person in front of me is not who I’m expecting at all.
I notice his eyes first.
His features are handsome in an unremarkable, conventional way. His dark blond hair is worn slightly long, curling up at his shirt collar, and styled with more product than I care for. But those eyes! The irises are the most unusual colour I have ever seen, and one I would struggle to describe. They are too light to be brown; more a sort of café-au-lait colour. Or taupe, like chamois leather, with a ring of amber flecks around the edge of the coloured part. He has a faint tan and every single cell of his body emits vitality and good health. And confidence.
We’re sharing a lift on the way down from the top floor of the Ellwood Archer building in Silvertown, on the north bank of the Thames. I’ve been meeting an executive assistant to negotiate for my company, Comida, to provide a series of directors’ lunches. If the plan comes off, it will be a major step up for my little catering business. So I’m smiling when the man steps into the lift after me, just as the doors slide shut. Even though it’s not aimed at him, he automatically smiles too.
He’s dressed in a suit that’s a little too small for him, his tie slightly off-centre. This, and the awkward way he manhandles his briefcase, suggests that he isn’t someone for whom business dress is the norm.
‘Where to?’ he asks.
‘Ground, please.’
This should have been the sum total of our interaction, except that the lift then unexpectedly jolts and grinds to a halt. The man presses the buttons repeatedly and, when nothing happens, hits the alarm button.
A disembodied voice comes over the intercom. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Um… we’re stuck.’
‘Which floor, please?’
‘Between 12 and 13, I think.’
‘Hold on one moment…’
There is a brief silence, during which the man and I exchange puzzled glances, then the speaker crackles into life again.
‘I’ve got our engineer looking at it: if you can hold tight, it should only be a few minutes.’
The man turns to me with a dazzling smile. ‘You ever been stuck in a lift before?’ He has a faint accent, which I can’t quite place.
I shake my head, clutching my trench coat and bag primly across the front of my body.
He extends a hand. ‘Dominic Gill. Nice to meet you.’
I shake it. ‘Alice Palmer.’
‘You work here?’
‘No, I’ve been for a meeting. I run a catering company, and I’m hoping to do some functions for Ellwood Archer.’
‘Wow, impressive.’ He smiles at me again, and it’s all I can do to prevent myself from staring at his eyes. ‘Being in charge of your own company, I mean.’
‘Well, it’s only small.’ My default setting, as always, is modesty. The deflection of compliments. ‘I’ve only recently started it.’
‘Even so.’
‘How about you?’ I’m keen to divert his attention and his intense gaze. ‘Do you work here?’
‘No, not yet. But I hope to soon. I’ve just been for an interview.’
‘How did it go?’ I ask, more to pass the time than because I’m really interested. Although, there is something arresting about him.
‘Oh, you know… it seemed to go fine, but it’s always hard to tell. And it’s been a while since I’ve done an office job. I’ve been working on the more… hands-on side of construction.’
I look down at his hands, emerging from the too-small suit jacket. They’re tanned and weathered, with traces of ingrained dirt round his fingernails.
The lift judders into life again, and a few seconds later, we’re on the ground floor. As the lift doors open, I turn to him again. ‘Good luck with the job.’ I begin to stride off through reception towards the street doors, with Dominic in my wake. I sense, rather than see, him hurrying to catch up with me.
‘Fancy grabbing a coffee?’
I hesitate. He looks straight back at me, engaging full eye contact.
‘Maybe just a quick one. I really ought to get back to the office and write up my notes.’
We find a café on Albert Road, near the turning for London City Airport.
‘So…’ Dominic wastes no time in launching into an interrogation, ‘are you married?’
I shake my head. ‘No.’
‘And do you live round here?’
‘I’ve got a house in Queen’s Park.’
‘A whole house?’
‘A whole house, just for me.’ I look down at my hands, at my left ring finger where the engagement ring used to be. ‘I’m very lucky. I inherited some money.’
The taupe eyes narrow slightly. ‘A lot of responsibility for you, though, the upkeep and so on. Not sure I’d be up to it, especially not in this market.’
‘Did you grow up in London?’ A waiter brings over cups of cappuccino and I grab mine, grateful to have something to do with my hands. This man’s directness is making me distinctly uncomfortable.
Dominic shakes his head. ‘Scotland.’
He’s Scottish. That would explain the hint of an accent.
‘I’ve not lived here long – and I won’t be able to stay much longer unless I start making some serious money.’ He smiles slightly, as though realising this sounds crass.
‘Well, hopefully you’ll get the job at Ellwood Archer.’
‘That’s the plan…’ He tugs off his tie, shoving it into his jacket pocket and unbuttoning his collar. ‘That’s better. Hate wearing these bloody things. So, you really live alone in this house of yours?’
Again, the bluntness is unsettling. I look down at my hands again. ‘Yes… Look, sorry but I really ought to go.’ I stand up, slopping my half-drunk coffee into the saucer.
He gives a rueful grin. ‘Me too. Stuff I need to do.’ He gets to his feet. ‘I’d really like it if we could meet up again?’
‘The thing is…’ I hesitate. I’ve already exposed more about myself than I intended. ‘I’ve sort of got a boyfriend.’
‘Only sort of? Is that grounds for hope?’
‘No, I do. I do have a boyfriend.’
This is not strictly true, but since I have no intention of meeting Dominic again, I tell myself the white lie doesn’t matter. I started talking to someone called Richard on Tinder a couple of weeks ago, and since then we’ve met in person, once. One date, but it ended with us agreeing to meet again, soon. But, for all Dominic knows, I could be in an exclusive relationship. With Richard, who is a bit dull and whose surname I’m now struggling to remember.
‘Ah well,’ he sounds unperturbed. ‘Maybe see you around. Meantime, stay away from dodgy lifts.’
I assumed that would be the last I ever saw of Dominic Gill. I was wrong.
‘So you survived the trip to the top floor?’
It’s nearly five weeks later, and Comida is catering its first directors’ lunch at Ellwood Archer. I’ve fully briefed my team of chefs and servers in advance but decide to show my face at the event so that the board have confidence in my commitment. So that they know I’m prepared to be hands-on if required. I’ve just emerged from the lift, and I’m heading towards the kitchen adjacent to the boardrooms.
‘Oh. Hi.’
I become flustered when I look up and see Dominic Gill, partly because I’m trying to balance a huge pile of table linens in my arms and partly because I’ve forgotten just how attractive he is. He’s had a haircut and ditched the gel and he’s wearing a better suit this time – one that fits really well. It makes him seem simultaneously taller and broader.
‘You got the job!’ I say with a delighted smile. ‘Congratulations! I’d shake your hand, only…’ I indicate the heap of linen.
‘I did.’ He fixes his tawny eyes on me. ‘And how about you? I’ve been thinking about you.’
‘You have? Goodness.’ It’s lame, but I’m too thrown to come up with a better response. Colour rushes to my cheeks.
‘How’s the sort-of boyfriend?’
It takes me a few seconds to realise that he means Richard from Tinder. Who eventually arranged a second date, during which the conversation was so shockingly clunky that we mutually decided not to go for a third. ‘Oh, it’s… that’s over.’
Dominic flashes a smile. He has large, square teeth which have been on the receiving end of top-flight dentistry. ‘Good. Then you’ve got no excuse not to have dinner with me.’
‘So you’re going on a date with him?’
I’ve phoned JoJo, crooking the phone against my shoulder as I lay out dresses on the bed in an attempt to make a decision.
‘Well, no, not really. We’re just going to go and grab some dinner.’
‘And that’s not a date because…?’
I don’t think I can explain to her what it is about Dominic that I find so unsettling. Maybe it’s because it’s been such a long time since I’ve met anyone naturally, organically; just by dint of them being in the same space and striking up a conversation. Or met anyone at all, really.
I got together with my first boyfriend, Josh, when I was eighteen and still at school. That relationship lasted nearly three years, until I was twenty-one. We ended it amicably, agreeing that in doing a lot of growing up, we’d grown apart. I’d barely had chance to get used to being single again before I was set up with Alex by a mutual friend.
Alex Lockwood. A junior barrister, he was handsome, exciting, alpha. I was smitten from the start, and when Mum died, I depended on him to steer me through the maze of bereavement. He became the centre of my world. If there had been more space in my brain, space that was not occupied with slowly losing my mother to cancer, and with adoration of my impressive boyfriend, it would have occurred to me that with Alex I was punching above my weight. I wasn’t alpha; I was definitely beta.
But I had my emotional blinkers on and failed to see the signs. On my twenty-sixth birthday he proposed, and we started planning our wedding for the following year. Or rather, I did. Alex wasn’t very interested in when or where it happened. This was another red flag that I failed to spot. Instead, I ploughed on, obsessin. . .
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