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It was a Sunday afternoon and they were on a peaceful walk by the River Dane when she told him. They had just reached the field by the viaduct, and Harry was looking up at the vast brick arches and muttering something about the marvels of Victorian engineering when she interrupted, ‘Harry, I’m having a baby.’
‘What?’ Harry stopped dead in his tracks, ‘You’re doing what?’
‘I’m having a baby.’
‘With who?’ Harry looked incredulous and slightly hurt.
‘It’s yours.’
‘But that’s not possible,’ then he paused, ‘Oh shit it is...’
Suddenly Harry sat down on the wet grass, for possibly the first time in his life not caring about the damage to his jeans.
As Harry covered his face with his hands the events of three months ago replayed in his mind, a kaleidoscope of reckless decisions.
They had been at a party – one of those chaotic occasions where some foolish parents with more trust than sense had allowed their offspring to fling their home open to half of Holmes Chapel. Harry and the rest of his band, the mysteriously named White Eskimo, had just finished performing, and it had gone fantastically. For once in their brief career White Eskimo had totally smashed it. Afterwards Harry had leapt down from the dining table (where he had somehow ended up at the finale of his act) into a crowd of congratulations.
And among the horde of girls squealing and simpering around him, there had been her – the girl he had lusted after for three whole years, ever since he noticed her in the dinner queue at school.
But she wasn’t simpering. Instead she stood there quite still in a black dress, one hand on her slim hip, the other holding a cigarette, just about to flick ash onto what had (at the start of the evening) been a cream coloured carpet.
He caught her eye, ‘So what did you think?’
‘Not bad,’ she paused for an instant then added, ‘For a boy from a bakery.’
Harry burst out laughing.
Then his friend Will rushed over with a couple of bacardi breezers and dragged the pair of them outside to the patio. A few bacardis and several cans of Tennants later, Harry and his crush were snuggling together on a bench in a darkened corner of the garden. From there the ending was almost inevitable.
Except, as it turned out it wasn’t the end, just the beginning – the beginning of an absolute nightmare. Harry lowered his hands from his face and looked round at the muddy field blearily, almost as though trying to work out how he got there.
‘What are we going to do?’ He asked.
‘I’m going to keep the baby.’
‘Fuck, really?’
‘Yeah, really.’ She seemed cross, and Harry realised he had said the wrong thing, but some inner demon encouraged him to persist.
‘But what about your career? You want to be an actress!’
She laughed bitterly, ‘Some things are just dreams. I daresay one day even you’ll find that out.’
Harry was irritated, of course some dreams were unrealistic, but it didn’t mean you had to give up without trying at the grand old age of sixteen. Especially as up until five minutes ago so many seemingly unobtainable dreams were on the verge of coming true. He was on X Factor, he had survived Judges’ Houses (admittedly as part of a rapidly manufactured group), but still, things were looking good. With Simon’s backing soon their name would be on everyone’s lips.
‘Oh God, Simon’s going to kill me!’
For a moment she did not reply, but stood looking at the river, arms folded across her chest – a chest that was larger and fuller than Harry remembered. ‘It’s alright Harry, you needn’t worry.’
‘Of course I’m going to worry.’
‘No, it’s really none of your business. I don’t know why I told you, except to be polite.’
A wave of relief, and then guilt, washed over Harry.
‘It’s fine. I’ll help when I can.’
She looked at him as though he was something rather unpleasant she had stepped in, ‘You know, I think I’d rather you didn’t.’
And that was that. Harry was off the hook, and able to go back to the X Factor and all the rest, as though nothing had happened. It was just her whose dreams were changed.
Or at least so it seemed. In hindsight Harry was not quite sure when he started thinking about his unknown baby. Perhaps it was all the questions about future children that interviewers flung at One Direction, or maybe it was his hairstylist Lou Teasdale’s kid that got him wondering, or possibly it was just the natural result of time and growing up.
When One Direction released their second album he attempted to set things right. He’d already bought his mum a new house, and he tried to send a cheque to the girl and the baby (who was probably a toddler by then), but the letter was returned unopened.
So he put it behind him. He dated Taylor Swift, he dated a string of models. Never quite acknowledging that the girls he liked most were the ones who reminded him of the girl, the one he left in Holmes Chapel. Cara had her recklessness, Taylor’s cattiness held something of her sarcasm, Kendall – well he dated Kendall because when they met she had on a black dress and the tilt of her head echoed that of another girl at a party years ago.
Even Nick, whatever it was he had with Nick, could it have been in some way a reaction to the girl? Once with Nick he had joked that at least they wouldn’t have any unexpected babies! Then he hated himself for it. For the baby hadn’t really been her fault. She had wanted to go find a condom, and he, drunk on adulation and alcohol, had overruled her.
It wasn’t at all like that American of Louis’s, who said she was on birth control when she wasn’t. Yet all the same, when Louis was raging about it, Harry had turned round and asked him concernedly, ‘You’re going to be there for the kid, aren’t you?’
And Louis, who hadn’t listened to a word of advice he’d given for the last three years, said, ‘Yeah, of course,’ as though there wasn’t any other possibility.
Not long afterwards One Direction went their different ways, and Harry returned (briefly) to Holmes Chapel. Carelessly, he picked up strands from his former life. He visited the bakery, bought pints for old school-friends in country pubs, and went for a walk down by the viaduct.
When Harry got back from the viaduct he locked himself in his room and started writing:
I’m having your baby, it’s none of your business...
The words echoed through his head, through his life. Harry wanted to scream in rage. Frustrated he pushed out an arm, and knocked over a precariously positioned ornament. It was a tacky little thing, a rather ugly glass dog, yet Harry’s grandmother had been fond of it, and as he cleared up the fragments of coloured glass he felt ridiculously guilty.
Harry stared at the glass in the bin, then went back to the desk, pulling another piece of paper towards himself, as he tried to define in words and music the unseized possibilitiesthat haunted him.
But as Harry wrote he found that his memories of the girl, the original girl, blurred with all the ones who came after. He started writing about New York, and actresses, and the girl with all the cacti. Which one had that been? He couldn’t even remember her name now, but she’d occupied an idle evening.
He had his guitar by him to try out melodies, he improvised a beat on the surface of his desk. He even went and got a saucepan and wooden spoon as an impromptu drum kit, but his mother came into his room furiously asking how he expected anyone to sleep with that racket going on?
At last Harry had a rough version worked out, and he collapsed back on his bed. For the first time in weeks he fell asleep immediately.
The next day his mum (who had more than a trace of Harry’s impulsiveness) suggested they went on an outing.
‘Can we go to an ice-cream farm?’ Harry’s sister Gemma pleaded.
‘That’s so unhealthy!’ Harry complained.
But his objections were over-ruled, and the three of them set off up the A50 in Harry’s Porsche to an ice-cream farm on the edge of Knutsford.
Forgetful of the bends in Cheshire roads, Harry missed the sign for the farm and had to do a three-point turn in a nearby lane (greatly to the annoyance of a waiting tractor). Eventually, though, he pulled onto the farm’s cobbled drive and parked on the grass under the trees, grumbling at the damage it would probably do to his car.
It was a weekday and the ice-cream parlour was quiet. Just a few other families were indulging themselves with an afternoon treat. Gemma found a table in a secluded corner and they ordered. Harry, who had originally insisted that he wouldn’t eat any ice-cream, succumbed to the temptation of a scoop of honeycomb.
They consumed their ices slowly, preoccupied by the strange desultory chit-chat that families often share. They were in a gentle world of their own. Even the sound of the children playing at the far end of the room barely impinged on their cosy corner.
They had all finished their ices when Harry went up to the counter to pay, while Gemma and his mum wandered outside to enjoy the tentative Cheshire sun.
As he strode up to the counter, Harry, always clumsy even at the best of times and perhaps especially oblivious that afternoon, walked straight into a small boy holding a cone of virulent green ice-cream.
The ice-cream fell splat on the ground between Harry and the child. Harry looked at the kid in horror.
The boy had curly hair, hazel eyes, and a cherubic bottom lip which was beginning to tremble at the tragedy which had overtaken his ice-cream cone. He looked almost familiar, but Harry couldn’t quite place where he’d seen the face. Besides, this was no time to be recognising the offspring of long-lost acquaintances, the child was starting to cry.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Harry, genuinely meaning it.
The little boy looked up at him despairingly, ‘It was my favourite.’
‘Don’t worry,’ consoled Harry, ‘I’ll get you another one. What flavour was it?’
‘Kiwi.’
‘Kiwi, that sounds delicious. And would you like two scoops this time?’
The child looked at him consideringly, then nodded decisively. Harry seemed to be part way to forgiveness.
The waitress served the ice-cream, and Harry settled up. As he did so he watched the boy return proudly to his mother, carrying the cone extra-carefully to avoid further disaster.
The mother seemed quite young, and she briefly looked towards Harry. Instinctively his heart leapt. It was her. Plumper, more tired-looking, but definitely her. The girl he left behind.
Harry began to move across the room intending to speak to mother and child. Yet before he could reach them, the woman smiled and shook her head.
For a moment Harry was unsure what to do. Then he took a final look at his son and left, going back his Porsche without saying a word.
After all, it was really none of his business.