After the Party by Lisa Jewell Read Free Book Online

of a novel.
    They’d built on the perfection of that moment, let the magic they’d sparked that night grow and multiply and not been afraid of it. They rented a flat in Battersea, they sat in pubs and curry houses, they let in the other bits of their lives—the parents and sisters and best friends and bosses—they went to Bruges, they went to Cornwall, they bought a kitten and called it Smith, they trusted each other, they liked each other, they had couple time, they had friend time, their lives rolled out before them, day by day, like lovely bolts of fabric, glimmering and soft, full of splashes of color and blocks of mellow beige. Life was sweet.
    Until they had a baby.
    Ralph had quite wanted a baby. Jem had really wanted a baby. They talked about it every now and then and each time they’d decide to wait, wait until they could afford a house, wait until Ralph’s terminally ill mother was dead, wait until the big order came in for ten poppy paintings, wait until the housing market slowed up, wait for the right moment. Eventually, as Jem approached her thirty-second birthday, she decided that the right moment had come and gone a dozen times and that they couldplay the waiting game indefinitely. She was not old, but certainly not young if she wanted the option of having a big family, and certainly not young if it turned out for any reasons that conception didn’t happen and that they would need a helping hand.
    It was the first decision in their relationship that hadn’t been reached mutually. Jem, uncharacteristically, but knowing she had no option, had forced the issue.
    â€œI mean it, Ralph,” she’d said, one night over Thai on Battersea Park Road, “I don’t want to wait anymore. I want to start trying.”
    â€œIs that an ultimatum?” Ralph had said nervously.
    â€œShould it be?” said Jem, suspiciously.
    Ralph had shrugged noncommittally.
    â€œYou’ve said all along that you want children,” she said. “It’s not as if we haven’t talked about this.”
    â€œYeah.” Ralph poured the end of his Tiger beer into his glass. “I know, but what’s the hurry?”
    Jem had laughed, in exasperation. “Ralph, we’ve been together for four years! You’re thirty-five! What exactly are you waiting for?”
    He’d shrugged again. “I don’t know,” he said. “To feel ready, I suppose.”
    â€œWell,” Jem had said, “I feel ready and that will just have to do, as far as I’m concerned.”
    Ralph, a gentle soul, and something of a realist, accepted his fate. Three months later Jem was pregnant.

Chapter 7
    S mithy,” Ralph began the email, “the missus says yes! I told her you were having a birthday party so if you happen to talk to her, which obviously you won’t, but just in case, go along with it. And if you did actually fancy organizing yourself a birthday bash, so much the better. Looking into cheap flights now. Will let you know as soon as I’ve booked them. See you in a few weeks!”
    Ralph pressed send and felt a strange cocktail of dread and euphoria sitting in the pit of his belly. He hadn’t really expected Jem to say yes. He’d been ready for a fight, ready to really lay it on thick, and she’d acquiesced, rolled over like a soppy cat, just like that. He was slightly unnerved and it occurred to him that maybe she’d been inside his head, knew the strange and unexpected machinations that had led him to make the decision to go away. Maybe she was sending him away to test him. In what way, he didn’t know, but he could definitely feel something untoward beneath the surface of things.
    But it wasn’t just the unexpectedness and peculiarity of Jem’s acceptance of his trip abroad that was unsettling him, it was also the fact that it meant that he was actually going. In just over three weeks’ time he would close the door