“Where’s Robyn, Tam? Where’s your nurse?”
“Oh, fuck off, Cam, why’d you want to speak with her?”
“Because I don’t like the way you sound. It’s getting late. You should be in bed.”
“I’ll go to bed when you get here.”
“Tam, I’ve not been in your bed for over four months and I won’t ever be again. Please stop all of this. I’ll look after you. I’ve told you this. I’ll look after you, and when the baby comes, if it turns out to be mine, then I will look after the both of you, but we are not, and will not, ever be together. Now I need to go. Tell Robyn to call me. If she doesn’t, I will call her anyway, so I’ll find out if you’re playing up.”
“Don’t go. Don’t go. I love you, Cam. I love you. Be with me, not her, why her, be with me,” she screams like a deranged person down the phone. He ends the call and looks up at me. I’m still in the kitchen leaning back against the dishwasher.
“I swear to God, I have never had sex without a condom with anyone other than you and my wife.”
He sits on the edge of the sofa again, his eyes wide and pleading; his hand runs over his jaw and then through his hair.
“So why are you giving her the time of day, if there’s no possible way the kid can be yours, why are you taking her calls?” He leans forward and takes a gulp from his wine glass.
“She has a coke habit. What if, by some chance, that baby’s mine? What if the condom split and I did get her pregnant? I can’t take that risk, George, just in case that baby is mine. Then I have to do everything I can to keep it safe.” I nod, totally understanding that.
“So is she using now, while she’s pregnant?”
He shakes his head. “She was in the beginning. I had to get her on a specialist program so they could monitor the baby while they got her off the shit. Now I pay for a nurse and a minder to be with her twenty four seven, one to look after her and one to make sure she doesn’t get the opportunity to get her hands on gear of any kind.”
I shake my head in disgust. I’d do anything to be able to carry a baby again. I’d give anything to be a mother, yet here’s this pathetic excuse for a human, snorting lines of Charlie and taking untold risks with the health of her baby. I’ve no idea what the effects of cocaine are on a developing foetus, but I’m pretty sure they’re not good.
Without realising it, I’ve crossed my hands across my belly, protecting something that’s not there, something that will never be there again.
“Come over here, Kitten. Let’s talk.” I go and sit at the opposite end of the sofa to him.
“I didn’t know you’d lost two babies. I’m so sorry you went through that.” I don’t want to hear his words of sympathy. I’m fine until people start telling me how sorry they are.
“I had an ectopic. I’d only known I was pregnant for a day or so.” He nods, but doesn’t say any more for a few seconds. I reach over to the coffee table and pick up my wine glass. He tops it up for me and then puts the cream throw back over me. “How long have you lived here?” I ask.
“A couple of years. I bought it when we started work on K, and when we started work on… the club in Shoreditch, I needed to be closer. I was sick of battling traffic so I bought this place.” I notice he stopped himself saying the name of the club and I wonder if it’s true that the two K’s stand for Kitten and King.
“Do you still have the other place, above the wine bar?” He nods.
“I still own the wine bar. It does well. My sister runs it and the restaurant. They’re both doing well. She lives in the flat now.” I can’t help but smile as I think of the things we did in that flat, every room, every surface, but then I remember the last time I was there.
“You were a mess the last time I was in that flat. You really scared me.”
He nods his head. “I was. I’m sorry you had to see me like that.”
“I’m sorry I made you feel you had to get like that.” I want to go to him and show him how sorry I am, but I stay where I am. “What happened? Did your brother get you the help you needed?”
He nods slowly. “I was a mess for about six months. I was off the drugs but suffering from depression. I just couldn’t function and you seemed to be everywhere. Every time I turned on the telly, opened the paper or a magazine, there was a story about you and your amazing love story and I just felt like I couldn’t escape it.” I cover my mouth to try and hold in a sob.
“I’m so sorry, Tiger, I treated you appallingly. You were so good to me. You put me back together and I just walked back to the man who broke me.” He folds his arms across his chest and shrugs.
“That’s why I need to be sure this time. I can’t let that happen again. I’m in too far now. End of the day, Kitten, I’m always gonna love ya, no matter what happens between us. It just hurt so much before coz I thought we were good. I thought I had it all worked out and we’d be together. I just never realised that I was inconsequential to you once he was back on the scene.”
I ache. My throat, my chest, my insides ache. I’ve been there. I know the agony of being left and I hate that I was guilty for making him feel like that, that I caused him that much pain.
I wipe my eyes on the back of my hand.
“Do we stand a chance do you think? Will you ever be able to forgive me for what happened back then?” He shakes his head and I feel like the floor has been pulled away from me.
“I’ve already told you I don’t know. We can try, Kitten. That’s all we can do.” I nod.
“I need to ask you something. If the baby’s yours, what will you do?”
“I haven’t got a fucking clue. I can’t look after a kid with my lifestyle, my work, and she certainly can’t.” He finishes his drink and then pours the last of the bottle into his glass. “Tamara’s just two years older than you. I’ve known her since she was eighteen. We were at some charity dinner thing. We spent the night together and that was it. She was just starting out as a model and she was doing some television presenting, and for a while, she was gonna be the next big thing.”
“She’s the redhead, the one I’ve seen you out with a couple of times,” I interrupt him.
“Yeah, yeah, she was a good-looking girl when she was younger. We always worked together coz she didn’t want anything more than a fuck. That’s all it’s ever been; that’s all it ever was for me. Then when she was about twenty-two. It started to become apparent that she wasn’t gonna make it as a model. She went a bit off the rails and I didn’t see her for a few years. Then we bumped into each other about two and a half years ago and we’ve just got together every now and then since, just for a fuck, or if either of us needed a date for an event, we got together, no strings.” He takes a sip of his wine and looks down at his glass, as though he’s thinking about what to say next. “I always thought she was happy with that set up. She never mentioned that she wanted more. She’s a nice enough girl, good looking, nicely turned out, never wanted anything. Then, within about a month of us bumping back into each other, I noticed she was becoming needy, clingy and a bit erratic.” He looks at me and shrugs. “I don’t bring birds back to my place, Georgia. I’m quite a private person. It’s either a hotel or their place, and apart from my wife, you’ve been the only exception to that rule.”
I’m not sure if his statement makes me feel better or worse. I drain my glass and look at him across the top of it. Without saying anymore, he gets up to go and get another bottle from the fridge and tops me up.
“Anyway, I did a bit of digging and found out she had a habit, an expensive habit. I tried to help her out. I’ve been there. I felt sorry for her so I paid off her debts and paid for her rehab.” He shrugs as he seems to be thinking about this. “Again, I didn’t hear from her, except the odd phone call or text for a couple of months once she’d straightened herself out, then she turned up at my club opening in Ibiza in August. We went to a hotel and fucked, and next thing I hear from her is that she’s pregnant and the baby’s mine. It was also apparent that she was well and truly off the wagon. I didn’t know what to do at first. I didn’t believe her, about the baby I mean, so I went with her to the doctors and then for a scan and all the dates match up, so like I said, I got her on a program. They seemed to think she’d been taking worse shit than coke, probably heroin, but they straightened her out and everything seems to be okay with the baby, but we won’t know for sure until he’s born.”