I'd Like to be Somebody Else

Chapter 44

    I drove to Liverpool without telling anyone, I didn't even take my phone. It was probably a bad idea but I just wanted to surprise Jamie. I hadn't seen him since April and I was sick of being around Noel who was only in Manchester to be able to keep an eye on me.

 "Stacy, what are you doing here?" He answered the door, shocked to see me.

 "I wanted to spend the day with you."

 "Come in, do you want a cuppa?"

 "Have you got cola? I'm off tea at the minute."

 "Course, do you want any food?"

 "No, no I'm fine thanks."

    We stood in the kitchen as he made us drinks and had a bag of crisps himself, prawn cocktail.

 "What do you want to do today or are you just happy looking at my face?"

 "Sorry, I need to go..." The smell of the crisps was overwhelming as soon as he opened them. I got to the sink in time to throw up, not for the first time that day.

 "You're not here to spread a bug, are you?" He asked as he rubbed my back.

    I rinsed the sink and my mouth out. "Liam called it a STD but I'm not ill, no." I put my hand on my stomach as I leant against the worktop.

 "I knew it!"

 "What do you mean you knew it?"

 "I don't know I've had this feeling I can't explain since Sheffield, I thought it was guilt or something but it's not and then your Mum rang."

 "What did she say?"

 "She wanted to know if... If we'd been together again since we split. I told her no and she acted like she'd read too much into something you said or something like that." He shrugged.

 "She thinks it's yours? That's why she went quiet when I told her. Why would she think that? We broke up over a year ago."

 "I don't know but do you know exactly when it happened?"

 "No, the doctors predicted nine to eleven weeks which nine covers Sheffield but I know this is Noel's baby."

 "So your Mum could be right with those dates? I'm not trying to make trouble. I know you're better off with him."

 "Yeah but I'm sure she isn't."

 "How did the lads take finishing seventeenth?" He smiled, completely changing the subject, to football.

 "I don't know, no one was talking and I don't want to bring it up now everything's good again." I shook my head.

 "Okay, what the hell happened?"

 "Liam and Noel had a fight in the middle of recording, it was so bad, Liam was almost knocked unconscious and next time I saw him, he was on crutches."

 "They fight in front of you like that? Doesn't that scare you, especially now?"

 "I'm used to it, it scares me seeing them get hurt but I'm not scared for me or the baby. They'd never do anything to me, I know they wouldn't."

 "Well you know you can come over here if they get too much for you to take."

    We went to Luke's grave and put down new flowers.

 "Do you think he'd hate me if he knew everything?"

 "You can't keep thinking what would he think. He would be chuffed to be a dad if he was here and everything would be different. You'd live over here, you might have gotten into Oasis and secretly fancied one of them. Instead he died, you live in Manchester and you're part of Oasis. You don't know what's going to happen."