Page 56
‘I agree. When you put it like that, it is shitty behaviour of the first order. But it doesn’t sit very well with the guy you described before all of this kicked off.’
‘Yeah, well. I think we can both agree that I’m a pretty poor judge of character where men are concerned.’
‘That could play either way,’ she says enigmatically.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I’m fully riled up now. I was looking for her to back me up and tell me I’d done the right thing. The way she’s casting doubt on my judgement is surely in breach of some clause of the sisterhood code.
‘I’m just struggling to reconcile Nathan the bastard with the Nathan you trusted with your most intimate secret. I guess it just leaves me wondering if there’s more to the story than you allowed him to tell you. Perhaps he found out the baby wasn’t his, for example.’
I’d never even considered that, and the thought floors me.
‘But…’ I begin, before words fail me.
‘Yes?’
‘You can’t tell something like that until after the baby is born, can you?’
‘I don’t know, but let’s look it up.’ She reaches for her laptop, a sleek silver thing that screams ‘expensive’. After tapping at the keys for a while, she turns the screen so I can see.
‘Here you are,’ she says. ‘The earliest non-invasive test can be performed seven to nine weeks after conception.’
For a moment, I feel like I’m drowning. Have I got Nathan completely wrong?
‘Hang on a minute,’ I say, after my slightly addled brain has had time to process the information. ‘Why would he demand a paternity test, though? He never mentioned that he suspected she was seeing someone else. In fact, the way she was behaving would indicate the opposite. She wanted to get her claws as deeply into him as she possibly could. Why do that if you’re unfulfilled enough to be seeing someone else on the side?’
‘Who knows the complexities of a woman’s mind,’ Trudi answers, looking enigmatic again. ‘But if he had any reason to suspect she was being unfaithful…’
‘She’d have to agree to the paternity test though, wouldn’t she? And, from the little I know of Kayleigh, hell would freeze over first. Either it would show that he was the father, in which case she’d punish him from here to next week for doubting her, or she risks losing everything she’s worked for when he finds out he isn’t.’
‘Yes, but that’s not relevant to your story. What’s relevant is whether Nathan is a dick or the wounded party here.’
‘And how am I supposed to find that out now?’
‘Have you got his number?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you could ring him or text him.’
I laugh. ‘Hi, Nathan. My friend Trudi thinks I’ve made a massive mistake, but I still believe you to be a bastard. Which is it?’
‘I don’t necessarily think you’ve made a massive mistake. I just think there’s a huge discrepancy between the Nathan that you were telling me about on the phone and this one. Something isn’t adding up.’
‘I don’t know, Trudi. Maybe the discrepancy is the red flag I should have been looking for, or maybe he and Kayleigh have patched things up. There’s nothing to see here. He’s just a guy, at the end of the day.’
‘A guy you fell for, which makes him pretty special in my book.’
‘I didn’t fall for him. I liked him, yes, and there was a spark. But I didn’t fall.’
Her laughter fills the kitchen. ‘Of course you didn’t. That’s why we’ve just spent all this time picking his motives apart.’
‘Hey, you started that.’
‘No, you did with your whole “No pizza for me because it reminds me of Nathan” routine.’
* * *
I was in a pensive mood as I drove home from Trudi’s on Sunday afternoon. We didn’t discuss Nathan any more, as the rest of the weekend was filled with wedding stuff, but her interpretation of his story has definitely rocked me. She’s right; up until he started telling me about Kayleigh, Nathan was kind, sensitive and (let’s not beat about the bush here) very attractive. There’s no doubting that Kayleigh treated him extremely badly, if his story is anything to go by, but Trudi is right. Even if I don’t buy her infidelity theory, which I’m not sure I do, the Nathan I thought I knew would never behave in such a callous manner. I cast my mind back, seeing his look of incredulity when I called him out. That wasn’t the expression of a man who felt any guilt about his actions at all. What was it he said? ‘I thought you’d want to be in possession of all the facts before jumping to conclusions.’ Shit. Did I miss something vital? And what does it mean if I did?
