‘I think we must talk,’ he said.
‘We must,’ she agreed. ‘But not here.’
There was no sofa in Pepper’s hotel room, just a single hard-backed chair, so she and Finn had little choice but to perch on the edge of her double bed. Pepper could feel the tension simmering between them – tension that had, up until this point, been driven by their mutual desire. Today, however, that feeling had shifted. There was no trace of the energetic and affable man who had dragged her through the rain in Lisbon now – this Finn was tormented and edgy.
For something to do, Pepper fetched two glasses from the bathroom and filled them with bottled water, handing one to Finn as she sat back down.
‘Danke.’ He drained it and turned to face her.
‘I am afraid I have some bad news.’
She knew from his stricken expression that it must be bad. Someone close to him had passed away, perhaps? Or something had happened with the business?
‘Whatever it is,’ she told him, ‘we can get through it. I’m here for you.’
‘It is Clara,’ he said, so forlornly that it could only be the very worst of news. Pepper was muted by dread as she pictured the tall, strikingly beautiful German woman who had been so kind to her.
‘She . . . she’s not?’ Pepper began.
‘Sick?’ He almost laughed. ‘Nein – of course. She is fine. In fact, she is happy, considering.’
‘I don’t understa––’
‘Clara is pregnant,’ he said, again in the same flat tone.
‘Oh.’ Pepper was so relieved that her whole body seemed to deflate. ‘Well, that’s good news, isn’t it? I mean, I assume she will need to take some time off work, and I guess that also means you will have to stay in Hamburg for a while longer than we planned – but that’s OK. I can fly over and see you more often in the meantime. We’ll find a way. You’re not cross with Clara, are you? It’s wonderful news.’
Finn merely grunted.
‘It is!’ she persisted, increasingly puzzled by his reaction. ‘You should be excited that one of your best friends is having a baby.’
‘Having my baby.’
Pepper went to reply, but the words fused together in her throat and she coughed, hard and loud and painfully.
Finn sighed, his gaze now fixed on the carpet.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘The baby, it is mine.’
This could not be happening.
‘What do mean, the baby is yours?’
This had to be a prank. His weird Anglo-German sense of humour was failing to translate, and in a minute he would explode with that big-hearted laugh of his and tell her that it was all a joke.
‘I mean exactly that.’ Finn sounded frustrated now. ‘Me and Clara had sex – one time. It happened at a festival two months ago. We all went – me, Clara, Otto – there was a lot of beer, a lot of drinking. It was a stupid thing – we laughed about it the next day.’
Pepper hated to ask, hated herself for even entertaining the thought, but she had to be sure.
‘And it’s definitely yours? There isn’t any chance that it could be someone else’s?’
‘Pepper,’ Finn tempered wearily. ‘Clara is one of my oldest friends. She would not lie to me about this – it is not what she planned either. But, you know, she is thirty-eight, she wants to keep it.’
‘Of course,’ Pepper said numbly. ‘Of course she does.’
‘You are angry?’ he stated, as Pepper stood up and began pacing around the room.
‘No,’ she said, managing to keep her voice level despite her gathering tears. ‘I’m not angry. I just need a bloody moment to take this in.’
‘It is a shock, I know,’ he said wretchedly. ‘But me and Clara, we are not going to get married or something. It is not the nineteen-fifties. My life is not going to change all that much.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Finn!’
He stared at her, his eyes the wide of the wounded.
‘Of course your bloody life is going to change,’ she said, gritting her teeth. ‘A baby changes everything – you must see that?’
Finn shook his head in bewilderment, his thick butter-gold hair flopping across his forehead. Pepper wanted to run screaming from the room, but she could not make herself move. What a fool she had been to believe what they had was real – what a fool to think that she could meet and fall in love with the romantic hero she had been holding out for her whole life. She had known right from the start that what they had was too good to be true, and now fate had turned over the cards and played her happiness off the table.
‘Please don’t give up on me, Pepper,’ he said then, attempting to placate her by remaining calm. ‘I thought that you wanted to give things with us a proper go?’
‘I did,’ Pepper snapped. ‘I do! But this is . . . It’s too much . . .’
The air-conditioning unit clanked in the corner, and upon noticing it, she shivered.
‘Here!’ Finn started to pull off his dark-blue hoodie to offer it to her, but Pepper was already reaching for her own cardigan. They stood for a few seconds, both unsure what to do next. Finn spoke first.
‘Shall we raid the minibar?’ he suggested hopefully.
Pepper sighed.
‘I’m not sure getting drunk is going to solve anything.’
‘I only meant one,’ he tempered. ‘To remove this . . . this edge.’
‘You go ahead,’ she told him. ‘I’ve had more than enough tonight.’
Overcome by another need to move, Pepper began pacing around the room again. The butterflies she always had around Finn had been replaced by angry bees – she could imagine them swarming out of her mouth like something out of a horror film.
‘Salud.’ Finn raised his glass of whiskey half-heartedly.
‘What are you drinking to?’ Pepper asked. ‘Impending fatherhood?’
He frowned at that, his forehead creasing.
‘I am sorry,’ he said.
Pepper crossed the room to sit beside him. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I’m being such a bitch. You’ve come all this way. I’m just . . .’ She gestured helplessly. ‘I don’t know. In shock, I guess?’
‘You are not the only one.’ Finn stared down into his glass. ‘I cannot believe it.’
‘If I was a nice person, I would be saying congratulations,’ she said sourly. ‘Having a baby, becoming a parent – it’s an incredible thing.’
‘But?’ Finn looked at her. His eyes looked almost black in the lamplight.
‘But as happy as I am for you both, I’m also sad. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.’
‘I did both things,’ he admitted. ‘At first, I did not believe that it could be true. I accused Clara of lying, of being jealous.’
Pepper’s eyes widened.
‘But that was stupid,’ he continued. ‘She loves me as a friend – nothing more.’
‘For now,’ Pepper murmured. ‘But in time, maybe the two of you w––’
‘No!’ Finn shook his head. ‘Never.’
‘A baby changes everything – will change everything,’ she countered. ‘You have to do whatever it takes to look after it and,’ she added, thinking of her father, ‘support Clara, too.’