What became of us

more.
    ‘The condom broke. I even got myself the morning-after pill, but I’d taken it before and it made me sick. I didn’t think there was much of a risk,’ Manon explained.
    ‘But why did you sleep with him?’
    She looked up. The plaintive tone of his question sent a tremor of terror through her that made her shrink like a snail poked with a stick by an inquisitive child.
    ‘Roy, I have slept with a lot of men.’
    ‘I know that, but why him, if you did not like him much?’ he asked, trying to convince himself as much as her that his question was an entirely reasonable one. He could not be jealous of someone he did not know.
    ‘He’s attractive, very sure of himself,’ she began. ‘Very unlikely to kill himself over you?’ Roy interrupted with cruel directness.
    She was startled.
    ‘I did not know that you knew about that.’
    ‘I didn’t, until quite recently.’
    ‘Penny told you?’
    ‘It just came up in conversation.’
    She wanted to know when, but she knew it wasn’t important. Was that really the reason she had been attracted to Frank, she wondered. Was that why she had felt safe with Rodolfo? Had everyone been able to see that except her?
    ‘When’s the baby due?’ Roy asked softly.
    Baby.
    ‘I don’t know. I only did a test yesterday, no, Friday. I haven’t decided what to do.’ She found she could not say the word abortion. ‘I can’t even give it a home.’
    ‘Why did you tell me?’ Roy asked.
    ‘I don’t know.’
    In the bathroom it had seemed absolutely necessary to tell him, and now it seemed complete stupidity to have involved him at all. It made it look as though she was asking him to do something about it. She couldn’t believe that everything had gone wrong so quickly.

    Roy ’s mind was churning with questions he was frightened to ask. Was she asking him to be the father? Was this to be the beginning of a life together? Did she want to be with him? Did she want to have the baby? He pictured her face again as Lily and Saskia hurtled towards her and thought that he knew the answer to that one.
    ‘If you are asking me to be the baby’s father, I would be delighted to oblige,’ he said. His nervousness made the statement sound pompous, like something from a Victorian novel.
    ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I sound like a complete prat.’
    ‘No, it’s a very generous thing to say, and chivalrous...’
    ‘Nobody need know that I’m not the child’s biological father,’ he interrupted, to show that he meant it. ‘Not that it matters anyway.’
    ‘Doesn’t it?’ she asked.
    ‘It’s the person who’s there who counts,’ he said. ‘I still call myself a Marxist, so I must believe it’s your environment that makes you what you are.’ He paused. ‘Hell, Manon, you know that I love you, don’t you?’
    The bright boyish innocent smile again.
    Manon got up off the floor and stretched up on tiptoes to take his jacket from the curtain rail. Light flooded into the room. She turned round. Roy raised his forearm to shade his eyes. She smiled at him. He stretched out both arms to her. She knelt down between his legs and he half sat up and hugged her chest down onto his. They held each other tightly for many minutes in the pool of sunlight. Her cheek was pressed against his and she could feel that he couldn’t stop smiling.
    So this was it, her future. It was simple and light after all. In this empty room in this empty house, it felt as if they were the only people in the world.
    Then his grasp loosened very slightly, and he began to kiss her face, and she could feel his erection hard against her tummy, and suddenly she began to panic.
    Things didn’t work out like this. It was crazy to think that they could just become a family. It wasn’t real life. She hardly knew Roy, she realized, and he knew her even less, and they were not the only people in the world.
    She drew her head away from his. He was looking at her as if he expected her to say, Fine, that’s settled, Let’s live happily ever after.
    ‘I love you,’ he said, trying to pull her towards him again, disappointed when she made herself rigid to resist him.
    She rolled off him and onto her back a little way away from him. ‘You wouldn’t love me if you knew me,’ she said, looking at the ceiling.
    He sighed.
    ‘You said that before, a long time ago,’ he said, putting his arm under her shoulder and drawing her stiff body close to him again. ‘Explain.’
    ‘Frank paid me money to sleep with