Babyville Page 0,2
shocks her to recognize herself in there; she turns away and blinks, unable to bear the thought that Mark is equally numb, because if that is the case, then what is the point?
A baby is the point, she decided nine months ago, when the numbness threatened to overwhelm her. Because while she may not be entirely happy with Mark; while they may not make each other laugh anymore; while they hardly talk anymore, except to argue, and they don't even manage to do that properly, Mark being the gentle, nonconfrontational creature that he is . . . while she refuses to acknowledge that surely there is, there must be, more to life than this, there are things about Mark that she loves.
She loves the fact that he will make a wonderful husband. A heart-stoppingly amazing father. He is loyal, trustworthy, and faithful. He adores other people's children (even though he always said he wasn't ready for children. Not by a long shot. Not yet), he grew up with three brothers and one sister, and his parents are still married. And happy. They sit on the sofa and cuddle like a couple of teenagers.
“Too Good to be True,” Sam stated firmly, after she had first met him, and been well and truly charmed.
“You think?” Julia was blasé, affecting a nonchalance it is easy to have when you are being chased by someone every single one of your colleagues would kill for, and you are not particularly interested.
“Too Good to be True, and In Love with You.” That was how Sam said it. As a caption. As a statement that would not, could not, be questioned. A short and simple fact of life.
Julia had shrugged but Sam continued. “Don't let this one go,” she warned, and Julia took it to heart. After all, Sam was the expert. Sam had already found Chris, the man she was to marry, so when she told Julia that Mark was a keeper, she took her advice and kept him.
He is a keeper. Sam was right. Julia watches him wash up every night, listens to him whistling as he carries the shopping home, and she knows he deserves better than this. She thinks she might deserve better than this too.
They have found a way of living side by side, without ever really communicating. It had been funny, at the beginning, how different they were. They had laughed and said how lucky they were that opposites really did attract, although even then Julia wasn't so sure.
They told all their friends that the key to their relationship was exactly that they were so different; they thought they would never be bored, each of them having their own interests. Only now can Julia see the chasm that's opened up between them, the chasm that was always there, but, as a hairline crack, was too difficult to see at the beginning.
Mark loves being at home. Julia loves being out. He loves his family, his close friends, and Julia. She loves being surrounded by people, strangers, anyone—the more the merrier. Mark loves puttering around the house and garden, finds true spiritual happiness in Homebase, whereas Julia is at her best in a noisy bar, chattering away over a few Cosmopolitans. Mark would have a panic attack if he ran out of slug pellets. Julia has panic attacks when she can't get reception on her mobile phone.
When they first met he was renting a small flat in Finsbury Park; she owned a tiny, messy terraced house just off Kilburn High Road. Neither of them can quite remember how it happened, but a couple of months after they met Mark had moved in. They don't remember discussing it, just that one day he wasn't there, and the next he was.
And Julia loved it, in the beginning. She'd been on her own since leaving university, and suddenly there was someone to talk to, someone who would listen if she'd had a particularly good, or bad, day.
Mark quickly assumed the role of housekeeper, chef, organizer. The unopened envelopes piled in the hallway disappeared overnight, and Mark dealt with stuff. Grown-up stuff that Julia had never got around to dealing with herself. He fixed the leaking showerhead, a small annoyance she'd learned to live with. He created a terrace out of a courtyard filled with rubble. He turned her house into a home, and when, after a year, it became too small for both of them, he bought a huge house just up the road in what