Watching You: A Novel

Rebecca was home when Joey got back from work on Tuesday evening. She was in the living room, a laptop on the table in front of her, her ears plugged with buds. Joey stood for a moment just at the door and took in the scene. She rarely saw Rebecca in the house. When she was home she was almost always locked away in her office on the first floor.

Where had she come from, this woman? Where once there had been the nebulous, thrilling concept of the person her brother might one day end up with, there was now Rebecca. She didn’t quite seem to fit the bill. It felt somehow as though she’d wandered into the wrong room at an audition and been given a part in the wrong play. Not that her brother appeared to have noticed. For him it could have been no other way. But Joey felt cheated out of another outcome, another sister-in-law, a cool girl who liked a drink and a club and the occasional lost weekend. Or someone maternal and cuddly who might have plugged the hole in her life left by her mother. Joey had been invited to her hen night. Rebecca and a couple of friends had spent a day at the Thermae Spa in Bath and then had dinner at a posh hotel. She’d passed. Not worth leaving Ibiza for. But maybe she should have made the effort. Maybe they’d have bonded over some foie gras and things wouldn’t feel so awkward between them now.

‘Hi,’ she said loudly.

Rebecca didn’t hear her.

‘Hi!’ she said again.

This time Rebecca turned. ‘Oh,’ she said, pulling out an earbud. ‘Hi.’

‘You’re home early.’

‘Yes. I had a hospital appointment, so I came straight back.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Everything OK?’

‘Yes. Just a routine check-up. They took some bloods.’ She showed Joey the bloom of a dark bruise beneath a small plaster on her inside arm. ‘But it’s all good.’

‘Good,’ said Joey. ‘That’s good. How many weeks left now?’

‘Twelve. Ish.’

‘Wow,’ she said, in the absence of any more meaningful response.

There followed a short silence. Joey could see Rebecca’s fingers playing with the earbud she’d removed upon Joey’s entrance. She saw her gaze return to the screen of her laptop.

‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ she said.

‘No.’ Rebecca shook her head apologetically. ‘Thank you.’

‘You sure?’

‘I’m sure,’ she replied, the earbud now held halfway to her ear. ‘Thank you.’

Joey was about to leave the room, but turned suddenly towards Rebecca. ‘I was just wondering,’ she said, ‘how did you decide? That you wanted to have a baby?’

Rebecca let the earbud fall again and blinked at Joey.

‘I’m asking,’ she continued, ‘because Alfie wants us to have a baby.’

‘Oh!’ Rebecca put a hand to her collarbone. ‘That’s …’

‘Well, it’s great. Of course it’s totally great. I love Alfie so much and I want to make him happy and I’m going to be twenty-seven this year so it’s not as if I’m too young or anything. And imagine how cute our babies would be? But I just … I don’t think I’m cut out for it. I’m not mother material, you know. When I see women with kids it’s like looking at people from another tribe, you know? I just think, I’m not like you. And if I feel like that now, then I’m scared that maybe I’ll always feel like that, and then what?’

‘Well, have you told Alfie?’

‘No. I mean, how could I tell the man I just married that I’m not sure I want to have his baby?’

‘For what it’s worth, Joey, I’m not a baby person either.’ She put her hand to her stomach and looked down, then up at Joey. ‘I never wanted kids. I still don’t want kids.’

‘But—’ Joey started.

‘Jack wanted a baby. I want Jack to be happy. So.’ She smiled sadly and rubbed her stomach.

‘You’ll love it when it comes,’ said Joey, slightly desperately.

‘Ha! And if I said to you, have a baby with Alfie, you’ll love it when it comes, what would you say?’

‘I’d say …’ She paused. ‘Fair point,’ she said.

‘Do you think you’ll still be living here’, said Rebecca, ‘when the baby comes?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Do you want me to still be here?’

There was a brief silence. Joey thought for a moment that Rebecca was trying to find a way to ask her to move out. But then she lowered her eyes to her bump and said, ‘Yes. I think that Jack … and I … I think we’re really going to need you.’