ONE
Friday, June 16, 1989
I walk into the pharmacy on Union Street for two things: my photographs and a pregnancy test. As I stand at the counter I feel lightheaded and thirsty. Nerves, I suppose. Or the heat. There was a piece on the radio this morning about a hosepipe ban and water rationing, and Oscar leaned forward in his chair, pushing his glasses up his nose.
“You hear that, Mina?” he said, cutting his toast carefully. “You’ll be grateful I put that water butt in the garden last winter now, won’t you?”
The temperature on the big digital clock hanging outside the chemist reads 35°C and already the armpits of my T-shirt are dark with sweat. I take my package and walk quickly to the public toilets with my head down and sunglasses on, panting like a dog by the time I duck inside. The toilets are dingy and smellof urine and cigarette smoke, the metal tang of cold tiles. The light that punches through the grimy windows is the color of nicotine. I open the test with shaking fingers and hover over the seat, trying to hold the flimsy cardboard stick steady between my legs.
The insert tells me it will take ten minutes to see a result. I sit with my hands neatly folded in my lap and wonder what I will tell Oscar, how he will take the news. He’ll be surprised, I think. He’s normally so careful.
Last night, we passed a roadblock at the site of a traffic accident. The blue lights of the police cars pulsed in the growing darkness. I craned my head around to see the wreckage. An ambulance rolled past; no siren, slow moving. A funeral pace. Oscar inched the car forward, frowning.
“Car accident,” he said, nodding toward the scene. Glass chips glittering. Hot, bent chrome. He fanned himself with the road map, one elbow hooked out the window. “Looks bad.”
“That corner’s a death trap,” I replied. My skin was sticking to the leather seats. God, it was so hot, still.
“It’s not the road, it’s the driver.” Oscar was frowning. “I’ve told you that.”
I looked at him sideways.
“You don’t know that. Maybe a dog ran out into the road, or a child. Maybe the driver fainted. You don’tknowwhat happened.”
He snorted, shaking his head. I knew what was coming. I steeled myself.
“If you’re careful, you’re safe,” he said firmly.
Six minutes have passed,by my watch. I drum my fingers.If you’re careful, you’re safe.Well, on that last night of the holiday,we hadn’t been safe, had we? We had one too many ouzos and now here I am, sitting in the cubicle of a stinking public toilet with my head in my hands waiting for the little stick to tell me whether I’m to be a mother. I look down at my engagement ring, wondering where the thrill of excitement is. My mother told me that stuff was for storybooks and young lovers in movies.
“In real life you just want someone who can remember to descale the kettle, pet,”she said, giving me a knowing look.“If you want excitement, take up skydiving.”
I glance down at my bag, remembering the photographs I collected. I’d taken a roll of film to be developed a couple of days ago, mostly pictures from our holiday to Crete and the tour we took to see the Palace of Knossos. Now I pull them out and flick through them, marveling at the blue depth of the sky against the whitewashed houses, the umber-colored alleyways.
I feel something then, an unexpected warmth between my legs, that heavy, sinking sensation low down in me and I know, I justknow.After all, hadn’t I felt that deep cramping in my stomach as I got out of the shower that morning? I wipe myself anyway, surprised but not disappointed to see the smear of dark blood on the tissue. I don’t even need to look at the pregnancy test now to know that it is a negative. I snatch up the pictures and cram them back into the envelope, suddenly desperate to be away from this cramped cubicle and the grim fluorescent lighting, cursing as a photo slips from my fingers and slides over the tiled floor. I pick it up and turn it over. It’s a photograph Oscar took of me one night in a restaurant high up in the hills. I’m wearing a pale yellow dress, looking beyond the camera to where the swifts were nesting in the rafters of an old barn. A little way behind my right shoulder, partly shadowed, a young man is standing and looking directly at me. His face is slightlyblurred, as though he was in the process of turning away as the flash went off, turning his retinas into blank silver pennies. Something sinks in my stomach, as cold and solid as a stone.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, brushing my thumb over the figure in the picture. “Oh my God.”
TWO
“Did you look at it?”
Oscar doesn’t lift his head. He bends over his crossword, long fingers pressing the newspaper flat. His face is hard and angular and built from strong lines; long straight nose, cheekbones like knife blades. He sighs loudly.
“Yes.”
“Well?”
A beat. My heart quickens.
“It’s him, isn’t it?”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
He moves as if to write something, counting the boxes with the nib of his pen. Then he sighs again, loudly. It’s a tricky clue, five across.Frighten, as a horse (5).I snuck a look at the crosswordthis morning, before he got out of bed and came down for breakfast. I push the photograph over the table again, forcefully.
“Have a proper look. That’s Eddie. I’d know him anywhere.”
Oscar looks up at me. I haven’t told him about the pregnancy scare or the unmistakable relief I felt when I saw the tissue spotted with blood. He wouldn’t understand.