Even through my nausea, it was curious that James had never brought this up. Maybe he didn’t even know. Was Dr. Byrne really so in love with James, or was he just a balm for his ego? Did having a young lover and the hatred of the press make him feel like Oscar Wilde, or something?
“The sales have been a bit…well, book sales overall have been down. As you know.”
Another wave of sickness passed over me. I felt like I had been riding in a too-hot car for too long, over bumpy concrete and twisting roads. “Can you open the window or something?” I said, putting my hands over my eyes. “Sorry, this is embarrassing. I just feel…”
Deenie opened the sliding door of the kitchen. The air was dead and didn’t offer much relief.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said at last, and the words were a surprise to me. I was not a vomiting person. I was a headaches and diarrhoea sort of person. The last time I had vomited was the night before Carey left, and the time before that was at a birthday party when I was twelve.
I went into the bathroom and kneeled in front of the toilet. But I got terrible stage fright. I couldn’t stop thinking about Deenie in the kitchen, listening to me abuse her lovely bathroom. I stayed on the floor for ten minutes then heard Deenie go out into the garden, obviously trying to give me privacy.
At this point, it was habit to go through Deenie’s bathroom cabinet. It was as instinctive as washing my hands. Sudocrem, more ovulation strips, a box of hair dye for covering greys. That was quite exciting. I had seen it before, but never inspected it properly. I was quite fair, so hadn’t ever considered the drawbacks of Deenie’s dramatic dark brown locks. I took it down and revealed another rectangular box hiding behind it.
There, with a thin film of dust coating the cardboard, was a Clearblue pregnancy test.
It had obviously been there a long time. When I took it down, the dust around it left a fine imprint, like the chalk outline of a body.
Digital results—five days early!
It was the first pregnancy test I had ever seen outside of a pharmacy shelf. I had never taken one, never had a friend who asked me to buy one for her, never held a hand while she waited for the results. I knew you pissed on them, and that was all I knew. You always rush past these things in Boots, never wanting to appear too interested in the sexual health section.
I don’t know when the realisation dawned on me, except that I felt a cold trickle of sweat slide from the hair underneath my ponytail and down my neck. My heart started to beat, hard and heavy in my ears. It was like my body knew before I did. I started counting weeks. The sickly wave came over me again.
“Rachel! Are you okay? Do you want some water?”
“Fine!” I called. “Two minutes!”
I opened the box and slid out the packet and the instructions. I stuffed them in my bag, then replaced the box and the hair dye in front of it, closing the mirrored cabinet as gently as I could.
I came out of the bathroom, my face red.
“You poor thing,” Deenie said. “You know, I think there is a bug going around. Do you want to lie down?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I stumbled. “Deenie, would you mind driving me home?”
“Of course, of course.”
Dr. Byrne and Deenie shared a car, a silver Golf, and I was surprised by how messy it was. There were crumbs in the creases of the seats. She seemed to clock this, despite all of her concern. “He always eats in the car,” she said, sounding fed up. “One time I found a Wagon Wheel in here.”
I rested my head against the open window and feigned sleep. My brain could not have been more awake, groping at my last period memory. I was coming up with nothing. My memories don’t tend to work unless they involve other people: people I talked to, people I drank with, people I complained at. Not only could I not remember my period, I could not remember talking about it to anyone either. Back in secondary school, we were constantly talking about our cramps and our cravings, and even at the bookshop I could nudge Sabrina and ask her for a tampon. But my life was filled with men now, and I never mentioned my period to any of them.
I finally unearthed a memory. One of sunbathing in the churchyard by the Shandon Bells, and feeling the unmistakable dampness of a tampon deciding it had seen enough. “I have to go,” I remember groaning to James. I stumbled to my feet, resentful of having to walk the five minutes home just to get a fresh Tampax.
That was early August, or perhaps even the end of July. It was October now.
I was on the pill, and while I was usually good at taking it, I wasn’t exactly Old Faithful. I could take it at 9 a.m. one morning, and then not remember until midnight the following day. Did that kind of thing really matter? Then I remembered the night with Carey. The night where I was so drunk and anxious that I must have vomited up the pill that I had probably only taken a few hours before.
Calm down, Rachel. You’re diagnosing a problem that might not exist.
“Where do you live, Rache? I know you’re on the north side, but…”
“Just off Shandon Street,” I murmured. “By the old Butter Exchange.”
I didn’t register her silence as anything particularly strange.
“Which house is it?” she said, five minutes later. Her voice was peculiar, but far away. Distant and interrogating, like a policeman in the next room.
“Oh, never mind,” I said drearily. “I’ll just get out here.”
I thanked her and got out of the car. I walked slowly, dragging my feet. Sick and full of dread, knowing that the second I got home I would have to take the pregnancy test, and that it would confirm something that was so extremely obvious.
I didn’t look back, but if I had, I’m certain about what I would have seen: Deenie Harrington’s world coming apart as I put my key in the door.
21
LONDON IS FIVE HOURS AHEAD of New York. James has started texting me when the show finishes, the last few months, knowing that my sleep has been all over the place.
The morning after the Toy Show at 6 a.m., James is getting off work. He messages me:
How’s my best girl?
I look at the message, blinking at it. How do you just tell someone that their ex-lover is in a coma?
How’s the baba? James Jnr?? xx
I write back. I’m not calling him James.
You should.
How was the show?
Grand. Except the second guest didn’t show up and we had to put on some random woman and her pug.
Her pug?????
The pug is a big deal!
I start to type. I was out tonight and met someone who heard Dr. Byrne was sick and is in a coma.
I delete it quickly. Go on, I send instead. What’s the pug’s Instagram?
It’s an exaggeration to say that James and I never talk about Dr. Byrne. But the talk is limited to a certain time and place. That time and place is my living room, at about 3 a.m., on the second night of a three-night visit. When we’ve chewed through all the old nostalgia, updated each other on everything we can be updated on, piled on a few fresh memories so the old ones don’t get stale. When we have tended to our friendship like the rare orchid that it is, he will nudge me with his foot, top up my drink, and say: “What do you think is going on with Fred Byrne? Where do you think he is now?”