Sharing Sean Read online

  “I don’t want Knightsbridge. I want to get away from Knightsbridge. I want you. I’ve never met anyone like either of you before.”

  “Us common folk, you mean,” Terry asked.

  “No. No. It’s only…I have been quite…sheltered.”

  “And you want us to help you get unsheltered?” Lily asked.

  “Yes, please.” Jules took a deep breath before continuing. “I want to have some fun. I’ve spent all my life doing what I was told. Being good. Trying to please my family. And I suppose in a year or two I might go back to that. But for now…”

  “For now?” Lily prompted.

  “I want to break the rules. Look at me. I could be forty, the way I’m dressed. Nice navy blazer, proper skirt, my grandmother’s brooch. I want to wear red and green and turquoise and yellow. Look at my hair. I want to curl it, color it, cut it, anything other than tie it back in a ponytail with a tasteful scarf. I want to go to parties and get drunk, I want to meet real people who don’t care about mummy and daddy or doing the right thing or marrying well. I need you. I do. So please, don’t take me at face value. I’m more interesting than this. I promise.”

  Lily smiled. “You sound pretty good as you are. I’ll be back in a second. I’ll just put this in the fridge.” And she headed off to the kitchen, champagne bottle in hand.

  Terry was hard on her heels. “I don’t like her.”

  “Give her a chance.”

  “She’s upper class.”

  “Terry. What difference does that make?”

  “Didn’t I tell you my father’s father was a Communist?”

  “Yes, you did. And that he died when you were a year old.”

  “She makes me feel tense. Like I’m just about to make a huge social mistake. And be laughed at for it.”

  “She sounded as if she was the one who was tense. And desperate to be accepted.”

  “Maybe. But she’s so…groomed. So posh.”

  “What was that it said in the ad about being tolerant?”

  Terry had the grace to look shamefaced. “I can’t help it. Put it down to my northern roots.”

  “Course you can help it. Didn’t you like her speech?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know.”

  “She was being honest.”

  “She’s had everything handed to her on a plate.”

  “Didn’t make her happy, did it? Don’t tell me you prefer the groupie?”

  “No. No. Course I don’t. You’re right. I’m sure she’ll be fine. I’ll get over it.” Terry smiled at her friend. “But only so long as I can call her something other than Juliet.”

  “We’ll think of something. So it’s her. And Mara.”

  “And Mara.”

  LILY REACHED behind her and grabbed Juliet’s bottle of champagne. She leaned forward and poured the last of the wine into her new friends’ glasses. It was late, already past midnight, and they were clustered around the fire in the living room. Mara was half lying on a drab brown couch whose many stains bore witness to decades of other tenants’ thrills and spills. Terry was in an ancient armchair that sagged badly in the middle and was spilling stuffing from both arms. Juliet was perched on one of the rickety, mismatched wooden chairs that accompanied the ancient pine table still covered in the debris from the party. And Lily was sitting cross-legged on the scuffed and scarred wooden floor that someone had once painted white in an attempt to make it look fresh and new but that was now an indiscriminate shade of beige.

  The other guests had left one by one after Lily and Terry promised to call them and let them know their decision. The moment it was only the four of them, Lily and Terry asked Mara and Juliet to become their housemates and the girls had been talking ever since then. Tentatively to start with, but more and more easily as they discovered that, despite their different backgrounds, they had things in common. They were all young, all just starting out on their own. They were all struggling to cope. And they all needed something to take the place of their lost families.

  Lily raised her glass. “To number twenty-four, Bellington Grove.”

  “Number twenty-four,” the girls said, echoing Lily’s toast.

  “Be it ever so humble…”

  “…there’s no place like home.”

  Lily looked around. “I guess ‘humble’ is the word.”

  Terry smiled. “Who cares? It’s ours.”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  “Once we close the door, no one can come in unless we want them to,” said Juliet.

  “No one, no one can make us do anything we don’t want to,” said Mara.

  “No one can force us to live their way,” said Terry.

  “Or tell us off,” said Juliet.

  “Or tell us off,” Terry agreed.

  “‘Never go to sleep angry,’” said Lily. “I remember my mom saying that to my sister when she got married, said it was the best piece of advice she could give her.”

  “Sounds good,” said Terry. “Let’s make it our first house rule.”

  “Never go to sleep angry,” the girls chorused, and raised their glasses.

  Terry took only a tiny sip of her champagne, trying to make it last. “This stuff is amazing. I’ve tasted what they call champagne in the wine bar but this is something else.” She looked over at Juliet. The night’s alcohol and the hours spent talking had eased some of her concerns about her new housemate. She might be posh, she might come from the far-right side of the tracks, but she wasn’t anywhere near as stuck-up as Terry had thought she might be. “Thank you for bringing it.”

  “You’re welcome. Only you should perhaps thank my father. It’s his champagne.”

  “But you stole it.” Terry grinned. “Just like a good working-class Liverpool girl. To Juliet.”

  “Juliet,” the girls replied.

  “But you’ve got to have a nickname. I said to Lils before that we can’t go on calling you Juliet, sounds all stiff and poncy,” said Terry.

  “I know. Every time someone calls me that, I think I’m about to be lectured on my many faults. But my mother insists.”

  “Well, she’s not here. And we are.” Lily looked around at her new friends. “What do you think, guys? Jules?”

  “I like that.”

  “Me too.”

  “Jules it is, then.”

  “Don’t I get a say in it?”

  “No,” the others said.

  Half an hour later, Mara struggled to her feet. When Lily and Terry had made their announcement, she’d been delighted to be chosen, but the longer the evening had gone on, the more concerned she’d become about how she was going to pay her way. She’d tried to ignore her misgivings, tried to join in with the jokes and the laughter, but she couldn’t pretend any longer. She was very worried. Suppose she couldn’t find a job? Her new friends had selected her over older, better, richer, more employable people. “Can I say something?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “I wanted to…to thank you for choosing me. It means a lot. But I…I’ve only got enough for a week’s rent and after that I…I don’t think I can get a job. I’m only sixteen and I’ve got no qualifications and…I’m sorry. I hope you find someone else.” She turned away and walked toward the door.

  “Wait,” Lily shouted. “Where are you going?”

  “I…I’ll find somewhere….”

  “At this time of night?” Lily got up, went to Mara, and led her back to the couch and the fire. “Even if you didn’t look like Miss India, you’d get attacked. As you do, God knows what’d happen to you.”

  “But I can’t pay. And I mustn’t be a burden to you. I mustn’t.” Mara might have run away from home, but even so she couldn’t forget the principle her domineering father lived by and had drummed into his children since they were tiny—neither a borrower nor a lender be.

  “Silly. You don’t have to be. Terry, what do you think?”

  “No problem. She might be too young to be behind the bar, but Dave always needs people for t
he kitchen.”

  “There. We’ve got a job for you.”

  “You have?” Lily and Terry nodded. “You have!”

  Mara stared at her new friends. “I…I don’t know what to say. There I was, round and round on that tube. And then I saw your ad and came here and met you all and…and it’s like I’ve come home. I’ll pay you back, I promise. I won’t let you down, I won’t betray you or be disloyal or anything. If you need me, there I’ll be. For…forever.” Terry, Lily, and Jules looked at Mara, their mouths open in surprise. Mara had been the quietest of them all, always ready to answer questions but never volunteering anything by herself. “I’m…I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Yes you should. It was perfect. I think we should all agree to the same things,” Lily said.

  “To be loyal.”

  “Trustworthy.”

  “Faithful.”

  “Forever.”

  Lily raised her glass. “To us,” she said. “To the beginnings of a long, long friendship.”

  “To us.”

  “Us.”

  “Us.”

  TERRY WALKED around the cedar table, squinting at the sun in her eyes, and found a seat in the shade. She took another sip of her champagne and grinned. “All right, girls, so what’s happening?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” said Lily. She’d wait a bit to tell her friends about Sean. Build up to it. And get ready for them to tease her about it. They always did whenever she found a new lover.

  “Not much,” said Mara, her eyes on her drink. She didn’t want to mention the Moores’ threat to find out about her past; if she did, she’d have to explain to her friends why she was so worried.

  Silence. Everyone looked at Jules.

  “I need some sperm,” she blurted out.

  “Sperm?”

  “Like man kind of sperm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry. Don’t have any on me right now. But we could send Mara out to get some. She’s the irresistible one.”

  “I’m serious, Terry,” Jules said, and then explained about Will’s infertility.

  “What a shit.”

  “I always hated him.”

  “How could he do that?”

  “It’s all right. Honestly. I was furious when I found the letter, but then I realized.” Jules looked around at her friends. “I can have a baby.” Her smile was as wide as the M25.

  “So we need to find you a man,” Lily said, beaming at Jules.

  “No, no. Just the sperm.”

  “Just the sperm? What, like cows? With a giant syringe?” Lily was torn between shock and amusement.

  “If you want to put it that way. Exactly like cows.”

  “No man, no father?” Mara sounded doubtful.

  “That’s right.”

  “Jules, you can’t do this.” Instinctively, Terry hated the idea.

  “Come on. You all know about me and men. I’m a disaster waiting to happen.”

  “It’s not that bad. I’m sure we can come up with someone for you. Lily, Terry, you must know someone.”

  “And if he’s a good person, I’ll reject him. Look at me, I chose Will. I thought he loved me. It took me ages to realize the only thing he loved was the money Dunne Parties was making.”

  “You made a mistake with Will, but that doesn’t mean the right man’s not out there for you.”

  “Will was more than a mistake. He lived off me for seven whole years. And I let him. I believed him when he told me our relationship just kept getting better and better even though I knew inside that it only got worse. And you all know what happened after I stopped paying.”

  When Jules finally noticed that Will’s interior design business constantly lost rather than made money, and refused to continue supporting him, he turned into a different person. A monster. There were no more loving little touches. No extravagant displays of flowers and pricey Belgian chocolates and gourmet candlelit dinners. No more gifts of expensive French lingerie—ultimately paid for by Jules—or classy weekends in the country.

  Instead, as long as Jules kept her checkbook closed, Will shouted at her, told her she was worthless, nothing, ugly, impossible to love. If she paid up—and she did, more than once, unable to stand the insults any longer—he would become the man he had been when she’d met him. For a time. A week, a day, an evening. But sooner or later the cold, abusive Will always reappeared. And it got worse. As Jules found ways to ignore the verbal battering, he began hitting her until she paid up. In the end, she always did.

  “You’re a different person now.”

  “All that’s in the past.”

  “Will is anyway, thanks to you.” Most of the time, Will had been clever, never hitting her anywhere that might show. And she had been too ashamed to tell anyone. Until he completely lost it and she ended up in the hospital with five broken ribs and a badly bruised face. Horrified that they hadn’t realized what was happening before and determined to protect their friend, Lily, Mara, and Terry had stepped in. With their support and encouragement and love, Jules had found the strength to throw Will out and pay him off. In return for the more than generous sum of £100,000, he agreed to a divorce, and had to promise never to attempt to see her again.

  “But he wasn’t the first. And if I’m not careful, he won’t be the last. Apart from Will, I’ve had two other abusive boyfriends and the actor who turned out to be gay and using me as a blind. That isn’t a very good batting average. In fact, it’s no average at all. I was twenty the last time I went out with a normal, honorable, honest man. And I turned him down. My judgment is definitely impaired. I only seem to fancy the bad ones. And I’m terrified that if I go and look for a man, it’ll all happen again. Another Will. More humiliation. More broken bones.

  “So I’m better off by myself. Besides, I want the baby for me. Not for some man I don’t yet know. I’ve spent decades trying to please other people. My family. Will. This is for me.”

  “This is truly what you want?” Lily asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?” Mara questioned.

  “Absolutely.”

  “That’s not the way to have a kid,” Terry said. She understood Jules’s arguments and sympathized, but she knew she was wrong.

  “Why not? I want a baby. Why shouldn’t I go out and get one?”

  “It’s not like going shopping, for fuck’s sake. You can’t just march into Harrods and pick one out, can you?”

  “I may be childless, but I’m not stupid. I know that.”

  “Kids need a father.” To Terry, this was a given, and she couldn’t understand why Jules didn’t see it.

  “Why? The world is full of single mothers. Look at us round this table. All mothers. All alone. What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is, we didn’t choose this. None of us set out to be by ourselves. When we had our kids, we thought their fathers would always be round. We didn’t know Finn would disappear and Clive would betray Lily and Jake would die, did we?”

  “The end result is the same. Well, it is. You’ve brought up your children by yourselves. And they all seem to be doing well.”

  “I hate to defend him, but it wasn’t only down to me. The twins were teenagers when I threw Clive out,” Lily said.

  Jules waved this off. “As far as I remember, he was off working most of the time. He didn’t exactly go to parents’ evenings at school, did he?”

  Terry took a deep breath. “Look at Paul. He’s not doing well. He’s a nightmare right now.”

  “Poor Terry. He’s no better?” asked Mara.

  Terry grimaced. “He never comes out of his room, does he? Walks away if I try to talk to him. Slams doors in my face. Take it from me, Jules. Don’t do it.”

  “He could be just as bad if he had a father. Worse. Anyway, it’s not the same. I won’t even know the name of the sperm donor. You had a relationship with Finn.”

  “If you call that a relationship.”

  “I do. You k
new him. You spent time with him. He existed.”

  “Not for long. Jules, he got me pregnant, then fucked off when I was in hospital having Paul. I had to wait on my doorstep in an ambulance for four hours when my baby was only three days old. Four hours. Bloody Finn had the keys, didn’t he? Don’t you remember?”

  “See? I’m better off without all that. At least sperm can’t let you down.”

  “What’re you going to say to your baby when he or she asks about their dad?”

  “I’ll worry about that later.”

  “Worry about it now, why don’t you? It comes round before you know it.” Paul had wanted endless stories about Finn. Terry hadn’t had many—their relationship had lasted only eighteen months—and so she had made most of them up, talked knowledgeably about Finn’s support for Charlton Athletic, his love of brave little terriers like Minnie, his interest in Indian food. And she deeply regretted it. Paul had deserved better than to have his mother lie to him. Maybe the way he was behaving now was just punishment for what she had done. Terry recognized the traces of her Catholic upbringing and made an effort to push her guilt to the back of her mind. “You can’t ignore it. The kid’s bound to ask. What’ll you say?”

  Jules shrugged. “I don’t know. Do as my friends, I suppose. Lie.”

  Jules sure knew how to hurt when she wanted to. “Fuck off.”

  “I’m sorry. That was below the belt.”

  “Yeah.” Terry made an effort to control her temper. Jules’s attitude, the way she knew all the social rules when half the time Terry wasn’t even aware there were any could still rub her the wrong way. “Jules, think for a second. You say you want this child. That’s great. But don’t jinx things by lying to it. Please. You can’t do this.”

  “Yes, I can. I can. Don’t you understand? I want a baby. I need a baby. It’s as if my body was ordering me to get pregnant. And it’s an order I cannot refuse. It’s all I can think about. When I believed I couldn’t have one, I could just about cope. I had to. But from the moment I found out that Will had lied, I just…It’s overpowering. I can’t concentrate on anything else. I’ve got to do this. I don’t know what I’ll tell the baby about the father. And I can’t worry about it now. I’ll work something out when the time comes. Right at this moment, all I can think about is getting pregnant. I don’t have all that much time. I’m thirty-eight. And the clock’s running down.”