The Two of Us Read online

‘With the woman in the courtroom? The judge?’

  Again I nod, and it practically echoes in the deflated silence.

  ‘He did Mr Bogeyman,’ says Ivy. ‘Didn’t you, babes?’

  ‘I saw that!’ says Carrie. ‘When he goes to the funfair?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, feeling an unexpected flush of pride.

  ‘Won an award,’ says Ivy, rubbing my shoulder.

  ‘Is that how you met?’ asks Steve.

  ‘Never seen it,’ says Keith, his bottom lip curling downward, dismissively.

  ‘Yes,’ I say to Steve. ‘But not on Mr Bogeyman. On a Wine Gums shoot.’

  ‘The one with the little vampire?’ says someone else.

  ‘I loved that,’ says Carrie. ‘The little girl was soo cute.’

  I glance at Ivy and see that she, too, knows what’s coming next. And, wouldn’t you know it, it’s coming from Keith.

  ‘Hold on,’ he says. ‘They were on recently, weren’t they?’

  ‘Last summer,’ I say.

  Keith looks at me through narrowed eyes, like a TV detective closing in on the killer. He looks at Ivy, at her enormous bump. ‘So . . . how long have you two been together?’

  ‘About twenty-nine weeks,’ says Ivy.

  The background chatter amongst the group has died away. All eyes are on Ivy. She is blushing and it’s making her scars stand out against her cheek, neck and lips. Ivy’s hand goes to the left side of her face, but she catches herself and continues the motion of her arm, brushing her hand over her hair.

  ‘And how pregnant are you?’ pushes Keith.

  ‘About twenty-nine weeks,’ says Ivy.

  There is a beat of silence before everybody laughs. It’s good-natured laughter, though, and if anything it feels like our cachet has just risen.

  ‘You dirty dog,’ says Keith, slapping me on the shoulder. ‘You dirty, dirty dog.’

  After the clamour and questions and awe die down, the group fragments and we find ourselves in a cosy foursome with Steve and Carrie.

  ‘Plans for the weekend?’ asks Steve.

  ‘Wedding,’ I say.

  Carrie’s eyes widen.

  ‘I’m the best man,’ I say.

  Carrie glances at Ivy’s naked ring finger.

  ‘Keep your eye on that bouquet,’ says Steve, winking.

  And again, Ivy blushes to her hairline.

  Week twenty-nine in the baby book marks the start of a new section: ‘Late Pregnancy’. The chapter opens with a description of the increasing physical discomfort the mother may be experiencing. Her organs are pushed out of place by the growing babies. Her bladder is compressed, her stomach forced upward, she will feel increasingly tired and fatigued. As per the book’s description, Ivy’s feet, ankles and hands are swollen with retained fluid. The book advises removing any rings and, not for the first time today, I am acutely aware of our unmarried status.

  We drive to the New Forest tomorrow for Joe’s wedding; I have polished my shoes, ironed my shirt, and – perks of living with a hair and make-up artist – Ivy has given me a haircut. My best-man’s speech is written, rehearsed and reduced to five cue cards, now sitting on the bedside table. Ivy must have suffered through the three-minute monologue ten times or more. There is a paragraph about love and soul mates, and whilst I’m sure Joe and Jen are indeed ‘made for each other’, I describe a passion and romance that I can’t in any honesty claim to have witnessed first-hand. Ivy smiles whenever I read these sentences, she looks me in the eye and I am speaking these words directly to her. Twice, it has made her cry. And then I move on to a bawdy anecdote, compliment the bride and invite the guests to raise their glasses. Ivy raises her invisible champagne flute, claps a small theatre clap and gives me notes on where I can tighten the speech. And every time we do this, I feel one increment sadder that Ivy and I are not married, and one degree more convinced that we should be. But at least Ivy doesn’t have any rings she needs to remove due to her ballooning fingers.

  The book says we should have started attending antenatal classes by now, and I laugh a little because this must be the first time we have done anything with conventional timing. Ivy swapped phone numbers with Carrie, and we both agree that she and Steve are the top candidates for the position of new best friends. They aren’t due until five weeks after us, but they live nearby and don’t seem to be insurmountably more affluent than the Fisher-Lees.

  An acorn squash is around 16 inches long and looks like a cross between a pepper and a pumpkin. I have never heard of an acorn squash before today, but the twins are now the size of this strange-looking vegetable. Our babies are still active, the book informs us, but they will turn less frequently now as the womb becomes more cramped. Our babies’ eyes can focus, they can blink, make out shapes and silhouettes through the membranes and skin and fat of Ivy’s stomach. If I fly a shadow bird across Ivy’s belly, the babies can see it. The babies are growing by as much as one centimetre a week, laying down fat and flexing their muscles. You may already have names for your new baby, the book speculates. But all we have is a list of rejects.

  ‘I like Evan,’ says Ivy. ‘I think.’

  ‘Bit Welsh?’

  ‘That’s Evans, isn’t it?’

  ‘Both probably. What will they be – the twins – Fishers or Lees?’

  ‘Well, if we have an Evan it’ll need to be a Fisher.’

  ‘Why?’

  Ivy looks at me as if this should be obvious. ‘Evan Lee?’

  ‘Wh— ah . . . as in all the Evan Lee angels, I see.’

  ‘Exactly,’ says Ivy. ‘Which, by the way, is another one.’

  ‘Another what?’

  ‘Lee, Zack Lee.’

  ‘God, I’m slow, so your mother is—’

  ‘Eva Lee, and my brother is Frank Lee.’

  ‘That’s mean. The other two don’t have daft names, do they?’

  Ivy shakes her head. ‘Dad wanted to call Peter, Brock—’

  ‘Brock Lee . . .’

  ‘But Mum wouldn’t let him. Then Geoff was nearly a Sylvester.’

  ‘Don’t get it.’

  ‘Sly, Sly Lee. He wanted to call me Belle but, again, Mum with the veto. And then when poor old Frank came along, I think Mum either threw in the towel or was simply too distracted to notice.’

  ‘So if they’re Fishers, can we have Brock?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sylvester? I like Sylvester.’

  ‘How about Dan, Danny?’

  ‘I like it. Good boy’s name.’

  ‘Or Danielle.’

  I cup my hands against Ivy’s belly. ‘What do we think about Danny in there? Any take—’

  ‘Quick, look!’ Ivy lifts her T-shirt, revealing the bare dome of her stomach. For a moment nothing happens. Then the most weird and wonderful thing I have ever witnessed: a smooth protrusion forms on the surface of Ivy’s belly. The blunt point – which I’m hoping is the knee or elbow of a twenty-nine-week-old baby – travels from north-west to south-east on a curving trajectory then vanishes like a seal beneath the surface.

  ‘That’s Topsy,’ says Ivy.

  ‘Topsy?’

  ‘Yeah, the one on the bottom’s called Turvy. Here . . .’ She takes my hand, holds it against her bump and something ripples beneath my palm. My baby – no more than two centimetres away – pressing against my hand.

  ‘Are you a Danny?’ I say to the bump and, boy or girl, it moves again.

  Chapter 25

  Not that I’ve been to more than five or six, but I have never yet failed to enjoy a wedding. I’m a sucker for the romance, the vows, the ceremony, the dress, the tears, the free-flowing booze, the flowers, the silly dancing, the cake and the uncoupled bridesmaids. But this is the first time I’ve been on the staff, and it’s a different story when you have a speech to deliver, taxis to coordinate and a dipsomaniacal photographer to marshal.

  ‘Brilliant speech,’ says Joe, patting me on the back. Although he’s had a good deal to drink, and it comes out more like
Brilyanspeesh.

  My speech was fine, I remembered my lines, got everyone’s name right and the guests laughed in most of the right places (Bob popping a hernia in a strip club, for example). But it’s never going viral on YouTube. I’ve been carrying a small deck of index cards in my back pocket all day, a constant reminder that at some fast-approaching moment I would have to stand up in front of two hundred guests – half of them boozed-up advertising wankers – and deliver five hundred words on love, life, hurried sex and the effects of depilatory cream on the male nipple. The prospect was terrifying enough, but made all the more ominous by the fact that I have one current and two former girlfriends at this wedding (although the term ‘girlfriend’ is a woefully inadequate one for the mother of my babies, and a spectacularly glorified one in regard to my former squeezes: Pippa and I slept together half a dozen times over the course of a few weeks; Fiona and I screwed once, over the course of her sofa).

  I had neither the time nor the nerve for a drink until I finished my speech, but Joe has been knocking them back since eleven this morning. It’s now something past eight and he is running his words together and having difficulty walking in a straight line. Three times during the first dance (The Carpenters’ ‘Top of the World’), Joe came close to falling and dragging his new bride to the ground, and every time he did, the guests brayed and clapped and stamped their feet. You might be tempted to describe the whole day as ‘Bacchanalian’, but I’m not sure the Romans had access to as much cocaine and Ecstasy.

  At a guess, there are one hundred and ninety-six people dancing to ‘Agadoo’ on and around the dance floor. Jen’s centenarian grandmother is slumped – dead or asleep – at a table in the corner, Bob (propping up the bar) is off dancing duty under medical advice, and Joe and I are taking a breather at a table on the periphery of the action. Periodically, someone (friend, colleague, mother of the groom) attempts to drag us into the fracas, only to be told to ‘fuck the fuck off ’ by Joe. Jen or Joe thought it would be cute to give the guests jars of old-fashioned penny sweets as wedding favours and – among my many other chores – I had to place two hundred of them on the tables this morning. Joe is holding one now, rummaging around inside until he finds a sherbet lemon. He holds it towards me. I decline and Joe pops it into his own mouth.

  ‘Did I tell you, you’re my best fucking mate?’ he says.

  ‘About ten times, and twice, using those exact words, during the speech.’

  ‘Good, ’cos you are. Best. Fucking. Mate.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, as Joe kisses me wetly on the ear.

  ‘Here,’ he says, sliding his closed fist across the table-top.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Take it.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Fisher, just take it.’

  Joe places something into my hand. I assume it’s some sort of sweet, but when I look at my palm I’m holding a blue, diamond-shaped pill.

  ‘Viagra,’ says Joe, loud enough to wake Jen’s granny from whichever variety of slumber is dragging her head inexorably towards the table top.

  ‘What the hell is this for?’

  ‘Stupid question,’ says Joe.

  ‘I don’t want it!’ And I slide the pill across the table to Joe. ‘And what the hell are you doing with Viagra?’

  Joe shrugs. ‘Wedding night, innit. Didn’t want to take any chances. Take it.’ He pushes the pill back to me.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Oh, I suppose you don’t need it.’ Suddenly Joe looks mortally offended.

  ‘No. I mean . . . well, as it happens, I almost certainly don’t need it. You’ve seen Ivy, right?’

  ‘Course I have; she looks amazing.’

  ‘I know she does. Thank you.’

  ‘I’d do it in a heartbeat,’ says Joe.

  And before I have a chance to be offended, Ivy drops into the seat next to Joe.

  ‘Do what?’ she says.

  ‘Beg pardon,’ says Joe, visibly flustered.

  The Viagra tablet is sitting on the table, hidden from Ivy’s view behind my wineglass. Very slowly, I place my hand on top of it.

  ‘You said you’d “do it in a heartbeat”,’ pushes Ivy.

  ‘Did I?’

  Ivy nods. Today is the first time I have seen her in a dress, and despite the beach ball shoved up the front of it, Joe is right – she does look amazing. Her hair is coiffed onto the top of her head, and – another first for me – she is wearing full make-up. The funny thing is, though, she doesn’t look like Ivy. I prefer the version with no make-up, no hairspray and a man’s shirt. But it seems impolite, foolish even, to say so.

  ‘Can’t remember,’ says Joe with a shrug. ‘Right, I need a drink, see you two later.’ And he gets up and leaves me hanging.

  Ivy slides across into Joe’s chair and places her hand on top of mine on top of the little blue pill.

  ‘I just had a very interesting conversation with someone called Fiona,’ she says.

  ‘That’s nice.’

  Ivy looks me in the eye. ‘She was very interested in me and you – when we met, how long we’ve been together, how far pregnant I am.’

  ‘Some people,’ I say, shaking my head.

  ‘One of your conquests, I take it?’

  ‘Wh . . . me? I . . .’

  Ivy raises one eyebrow, purses her lips. I shrug.

  ‘God help that poor bloke she’s with,’ Ivy says, smiling.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ I tell her.

  ‘You scrub up okay, too. Want to dance?’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘And you’d better bring that Viagra,’ Ivy says. ‘There are unattended children running around.’

  Ivy is a terrible dancer, but, as with so much in our life together, I have no idea whether this is a product of her pregnancy or a fundamental truth. Shuffling about the dance floor, though, stepping on each other’s feet and rebounding off the other careening guests, with our arms around one another and our two babies between us, I can’t remember feeling happier in my life.

  For whatever reason – oversight, most likely – the throwing of the wedding bouquet doesn’t happen until early evening. And as such, the jockeying women waiting to receive the hurled flowers, are drunk, excited and utterly without shame as they elbow, bump and jostle each other for position. They are so frantic, in fact, that I’m genuinely concerned for Ivy and the twins’ safety. From the centre of the mêlée Ivy glances over her shoulder and grins at me with an expression that’s hard to read. I flash her a pair of crossed fingers and goofy smile that could be ironic or encouraging depending on what you’re looking for.

  ‘Scary, isn’t it,’ says a man beside me.

  ‘Yours in there?’ I ask.

  The man points at Fiona, at the front of the pack. She rolls her shoulders and shakes out her fingers, loosening up. Pippa, standing beside Fiona, bounces nervously on the balls of her feet.

  ‘Nice girl,’ I say.

  The man glances at me sideways and smiles. ‘You’re old friends, I believe.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Eight stilettoed strides from the scrum, Jen braces herself to launch the fateful flowers. Ivy takes a deep breath, bellows her cheeks outward then exhales. Fiona removes her high-heels and tosses them aside.

  ‘Good luck,’ I say to Fiona’s fella.

  ‘Something tells me I’m going to need it,’ he says, not taking his eyes off his girlfriend. ‘I’m Hugh, by the way.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Hugh.’

  Hugh is drinking beer from a small brown bottle. He’s holding it in his left hand, dangling at his side between us, and I wonder if it would be possible to drop the Viagra into the neck of his bottle undetected.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ I say.

  And it’s a lightning-fast, alcohol-assisted decision, involving none of my brain’s higher departments. And as the pill drops silently into Hugh’s beer, I feel exhilaration at my audacious panache, followed immediately
by guilt and panic and, what the fuck are you thinking, Fisher!

  ‘Let me get you a fresh beer,’ I say, reaching for his bottle.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  ‘Here,’ I say, grabbing the bottle.

  Hugh pulls against me. ‘I’m fine.’

  I’m still holding the bottle, but then Hugh yanks it from my grasp, looking at me like I’m some kind of moron.

  Fair enough.

  And Jen swings the flowers between her legs and up and over her head. From where I’m standing, their trajectory looks to be carrying them directly to Ivy. Pippa jumps first. Fiona waits until her adversary is airborne before initiating her own leap and driving her shoulder into Pippa’s midriff. As Pippa is knocked violently off course, Fiona rises like a prop forward, takes the bouquet with both hands and immediately draws it to her chest before landing neatly on her feet. The crowd goes wild.

  ‘Cheers,’ I say to Hugh, raising both my eyebrows and my gin and tonic.

  Hugh smiles at me graciously. ‘Cheers,’ he says, tapping the neck of his bottle against the rim of my glass.

  And what the hell.

  A hand drops onto my shoulder and I turn to see Pippa’s boyfriend, Gaz.

  ‘Hey, Fish,’ he says. ‘Brilliant speech.’

  I roll my eyes. ‘Well, no one threw anything.’

  Gaz laughs.

  ‘Lucky escape,’ I say, nodding towards the huddle of disappointed women pretending to be happy for Fiona.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Gaz, but his smile isn’t very convincing.

  It’s another couple of hours before Ivy and I finally get back to our room. In the intervening time, I’ve broken up a fight and seen three different women and one guy in various degrees of tears. There are more drugs floating around the place than there are in an old lady’s bathroom cabinet, and I’m glad to be out of it. Or not, as the case may be. I must have consumed close to my blood volume in beer, and it’s a toss-up between who’s unsteadier on their feet – me, or my heavily pregnant, high-heeled girlfriend.

  And it’s that damned word again – ‘girlfriend’ – growing increasingly inadequate as the twins continue to grow inside Ivy’s belly. She is the mother of my children, we live in the same flat, we are connected at the chromosomes, and ‘girlfriend’ seems a little insipid for the situation. ‘Partner’ is the word people default to, but I hate it – too practical and pragmatic, too much like an arrangement.