Page 47

‘Throw a frog into a pan of boiling water and it’ll jump straight out again. Put the frog in cold water and warm it slowly, and it will boil to death before it notices.’

‘Exactly. I tried standing up to her a couple of times, but the histrionics and temper tantrums very quickly wore me down. It was easier just to go along with what she wanted and, not to be indelicate, she knew how to use her body to keep me onside if she thought I was reaching the end of my tether.’

I have no idea what this Kayleigh looks like, so thankfully, I’m spared any mental images, but the reference to their sex life upsets me nonetheless.

‘Of course, as time went on, the ratio of good times to bad got steadily worse,’ he continues. ‘But what could I do? I was trapped.’

‘Why didn’t you just leave?’

‘How? Kayleigh is not the kind of person who’s going to take, “Sorry, but this just isn’t working,” well and, even if she were, all my money was tied up in the flat. Trust me, there’s no way she’d agree to give that up without the fight to end all fights. I could have moved back home, I guess, but things with Mum and Tess were still frosty, and I was still too proud to admit to them that they were right.’ He pauses and takes a deep breath, and I assume he’s about to tell me more, but when he speaks again, his voice is shaky with emotion. ‘Anyway, I did leave eventually, but as you can see, she’s not quite accepted it. That pizza was amazing, but I don’t think I’ll need to eat again for a week.’

His change of subject almost gives me whiplash. He’s not even got to the part of the story where they get engaged yet. But I try to remind myself not to push it. If he isn’t ready to tell me the whole story yet, that’s his choice. I can’t pretend it doesn’t rile me a little, though, that I shared so much with him and he’s shutting me out.

He gets up to clear the boxes, and I take another sip of my wine – so much for staying in control. Maybe I should call it a night, I think, before I push him too far. I’m hurt, I realise, that he doesn’t seem to trust me the way I trust him. But just as I’m about to get up, I see another message flash up on his phone, and even though I know I shouldn’t look, that I’m overstepping an invisible but very real line, I can’t seem to help myself.

It’s another message from the unknown number, of course, and the contents stop me cold:

We need to talk about the pregnancy.

‘She’s pregnant?’ I say, holding up his phone and waving it at him.

His eyes go wide, and then he seems to visibly droop. He comes back over to where I’m standing and gently takes the phone out of my hand before placing it in his pocket, then we sit back down.

‘It’s complicated,’ he says. ‘Like I said, I was trapped, but she knew I wanted to leave. That’s when she played her winning hand, and told me she was pregnant. She knew there was no way I’d leave her in those circumstances. In fact, quite the opposite. I felt I had no option but to do the honourable thing.’

His use of the word ‘honourable’ sticks in my throat, but I force myself to let it go for now so I can hear the rest of the story. ‘You proposed,’ I say.

‘Yes. Of course, she feigned surprise and turned on the waterworks, but I could see something in her eyes that told me she knew that’s exactly what I’d do. Mum said all the right things when I told her, but I could tell she was horrified underneath.’

‘What about Tess?’ I ask.

‘Yeah. She congratulated us, but it was pretty muted. Meanwhile, Kayleigh threw herself into pregnancy, mainly the bits that suited her. So, she did even less than normal around the flat “because overexertion could harm the baby”. Curiously, she always had plenty of energy for doing the things she wanted to do, but came over very tired and lethargic if I wanted her to do anything. And she closed up – she wouldn’t let me anywhere near her.’

‘It’s not unusual for women to go off sex during pregnancy,’ I tell him. The picture is starting to come into focus now. Sexually frustrated Nathan decides to play the field while he’s on the other side of the world and his pregnant fiancée can’t see what he’s up to. I still don’t understand the blocking of her number, though.

‘I don’t just mean sex – obviously, she had every right to not be in the mood. I mean everything. Cuddling. Holding hands. She’d shrug me off if I so much as tried to put my arms around her,’ he says. ‘Anyway, I was really torn. On the one hand, I was starting to get excited about the baby and being a dad, now that the idea had had time to settle, but I was totally at Kayleigh’s beck and call, and that was both mentally and physically exhausting.’

‘Welcome to fatherhood.’ Although it sounds like Kayleigh is a supremely unpleasant character, his lack of sympathy towards her pregnancy is starting to irritate me even more than his deception. No wonder he didn’t want to reveal this part of the story to me.

‘That’s what Mum told me. I think I’d exasperated her by then and she was taking the “you’ve made your bed so you’ve got to lie in it” approach. Anyway, Kayleigh slowly started to expand as you’d expect, but the further along she got, the more she seemed to be pushing me away.’

I don’t blame her. He sounds like he was being a prize arsehole. ‘How do you mean?’ I ask.

‘For example, she absolutely refused to let me go with her for her twelve-week scan,’ he says. ‘I mean, it’s normal for the father to go to these things, right? But no. She wanted her mum to go with her. She wouldn’t get changed if I was in the room. I had to wait in the living room while she got ready for bed, and then she’d call me in once she was under the bedclothes in the hideous nightie. In the morning, I had to get up first and leave the room until she was dressed. She started locking the bathroom door. We’d never locked the bathroom door before.’

‘Her body was changing,’ I tell him, unable now to keep the annoyance out of my voice. ‘She probably didn’t know how she felt. Maybe she was worried you wouldn’t find her attractive any more and that’s why she covered up. And as for wanting her mum rather than you, I get that you might have felt left out, but only another woman can understand what going through pregnancy feels like, and maybe she wanted that reassurance.’

The Nathan I thought I knew would have accepted this point and maybe even admitted that he was behaving like a dick but, to my surprise and disappointment, he continues not to get it.

‘Yes, poor Kayleigh,’ he says sarcastically. ‘What a terrible time she was having, and what a monster I was being to her. Don’t worry, she never left me in any doubt about my many failings. Anyway, she took her mother to the scan and made a point of sticking the photo on the fridge so I could admire it, and all her friends could coo over the baby and try to guess its gender. The moment she started to show, she went and spent a fortune on a whole new maternity wardrobe which, naturally, she expected me to pay for. Then our flat was too small. I’d come home from work to find her obsessing over property websites and complaining that we, or more specifically, I, couldn’t afford the ones she liked. Nothing I did was good enough. If I suggested looking at nursery furniture when she wasn’t in the mood, she’d accuse me of trying to jinx the pregnancy by doing things too early. If I didn’t show enough enthusiasm when she wanted to look at nursery furniture, I was shirking my responsibilities and proving that I’d probably be a rubbish dad. Every supposed false move from me would have her turning on the waterworks. If I thought things were bad before, this was a whole new level. I was at my wits’ end⁠—’

I’ve heard enough. I don’t know this Nathan and, frankly, I don’t want to. There’s no sign of the man who understood my pain and knew just what to say. There’s no empathy here; I may not like the sound of her at all, but on this subject, I’m team Kayleigh all the way. I don’t want to hear the rest of the story. It’ll just be more self-serving whining about how he couldn’t take it any more so he ran away. I no longer even care why he’s blocked her. The poor woman is probably going through hell, might even be trying to tell him she’s in labour, and he won’t even talk to her? Suddenly, I wish I had a physical copy of the photo of Nathan and me on the boat, just so I could rip it up in front of him.

‘I’m very sorry that you found this all so trying,’ I interrupt coldly, and stand up to leave. ‘Obviously, I’ve never been pregnant myself, but I have friends who have been and, from what I hear, it’s a real hormonal shitshow. I don’t get it, Nathan. Whatever Kayleigh may or may not be like, you don’t just walk away from a pregnant woman and a child you fathered. I thought you were better than that.’

He looks at me incredulously for a moment. ‘Wait… I thought you’d want to be in possession of all the facts before jumping to conclusions.’

‘The facts speak for themselves, Nathan!’ I practically shout. ‘Let’s see.’ I hold up my hands to tick off the points. ‘We’ve got a hormonal, pregnant woman that you freely admit you were unable to cope with. You’re here on your own, pretending to be single and flirting with me – don’t deny it, you have been – even though you’re still fucking engaged to someone else. That’s lowlife behaviour in anyone’s book. And you’ve blocked her number. Not just once, from what I’ve seen, but several times. I thought you were a good guy, but you’re a monster and I’m ashamed that I let myself be taken in by you.’