The Mother of All Christmases

by Milly Johnson

  ‘You are pregnant, Mrs Pandoro. There’s no doubt about it. When was your last period?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know. They’ve been all over the place. I didn’t have one for nearly a year and then I did and . . .’ Stupid – why didn’t she have her diary in her handbag. She always carried a diary in her handbag but her brain was cabbaged at the moment. She’d marked all her irregular period dates down there. She dropped her head into her hand hoping the dark might pull the answer forward. ‘Let me think.’ She’d had to buy tampons because she’d thrown them all out months ago, when was that? She should remember; something about the date was memorable.

  It came to her. ‘St Patrick’s Day. My last period was on St Patrick’s Day.’ She’d had tampons and Guinness in her shopping basket. She’d bought a four-pack for them to drink as a traditional touch.

  ‘And presumably you’ve had sex since then?’

  Annie nodded, feeling a small heat blossom in her cheeks.

  ‘Ah, so you’ll be expecting a Christmas baby in that case,’ said Dr Gilhooley with a smile. He pulled out an A5-size cardboard chart from his drawer. ‘December the twenty-second, although your dating scan will firm that up. Congratulations, Mrs Pandoro. I understand you’ve been trying for some time.’

  This wasn’t real. This was not real. The receptionist had called her name, she’d taken the first door on the left and there the doctor had greeted her with the usual opening question: What seems to be the problem, Mrs Pandoro? She’d told him all her symptoms, he’d sent her off to do a urine sample in the toilet next door to give to the nurse whilst he saw another patient, and then she’d returned to his consulting room expecting him to tell her that he was referring her to the hospital.

  ‘I can’t be pregnant. I really can’t. We’ve been trying for so long, years . . . nothing . . .’ She reached up to scratch an itch on her cheek and found a teardrop. More followed.

  ‘I can assure you that you are. Unless you’ve swapped urine samples with someone,’ came the reply from the doctor. ‘Any other symptoms, like sore breasts, food cravings or aversions, mood swings, headaches, constipation?’

  ‘Oh my, all of those.’ Annie was laughing and crying at the same time. She’d blamed her tender nipples on a new bra, constipation on lack of fibre in her diet, those headaches on needing new reading glasses. She fished in her handbag for a tissue. Dr Gilhooley put the chart back in his drawer and took out a tri-fold pamphlet which he handed to her along with a pack of booklets in a plastic sleeve.

  ‘I’m trying out a new initiative and I hope you’d like to be part of it. It’s for mothers with babies due either side of December. It’s a club where you can meet and talk through what might be worrying you, get a drink and a bun, learn about nutrition and smash some of those old wives’ tales around pregnancy, for there are many. Rather than have parentcraft classes right at the end, this allows you to mix with other mums for longer, build up a support network. I’ve called it the Christmas Pudding Club.’ He grinned, rather pleased with himself. ‘If it works, I’m thinking about having a Summer Pudding Club.’

  He could see that Annie was only half-absorbing all this.

  ‘Read the pamphlet at home, Mrs Pandoro. You’d really be helping me and, more importantly, yourself if you decide to participate.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you, I will.’

  ‘There’s a lot of information in there too about what to expect and your rights and all sorts of useful stuff. The midwife will talk through anything you don’t understand at your first ante-natal appointment.’

  Ante-natal. Her ante-natal appointment.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

  ‘I expect you’ll want to ring the father straightaway.’

  ‘I’m not sure my fingers will stop shaking long enough to press the numbers on my phone.’

  Dr Gilhooley laughed.

  ‘I’m delighted for you, Mrs Pandoro, I really am. Why don’t you sit in the waiting room for a few minutes until you feel calm? Are you driving?’

  ‘Yes.’ Annie stood to go, surprised that her legs could carry her. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Congratulations, Mrs Pandoro. You take it easy now.’

  Annie walked to the car and sat there for a few minutes before pulling her phone out of her bag. Then she put it straight back. No, she wouldn’t ring Joe because she wanted to see his face. She wanted to stare him in the eye and make a memory by telling her husband that she, Annie Pandoro, was in the Christmas Pudding Club.

  Chapter 12

  ‘What the heck’s the matter, Annie love? You’re as grey as my mother-in-law’s whites,’ said Gill, as Annie walked into the factory just as she and Iris were waiting for Joe to serve up their morning brew.

  Joe came rushing out of the small kitchen. His jaw fell open on seeing the ashen colour of his wife’s face; Gill wasn’t exaggerating.

  ‘I thought you were going to ring me when you came out of the surgery,’ he said.

  Annie looked at the three faces with their concerned expressions, the worried set of their eyebrows and she wanted to laugh. Laugh like she never had before.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she blurted out because the words were too big to keep in. It wasn’t what she meant to say, which was Joe, can I have a private word with you, but somehow the delivered words raced past the intended ones queueing in her voice box.

  Joe didn’t ask if she was joking because it wasn’t something she would have lied about. The only thing he managed to say was, ‘How?’

  ‘Well, if you don’t know by now, lad, you never will,’ said Iris, rising out of her chair. Her arms opened wide. ‘Come here, love.’ And Annie walked into them, all the time staring at Joe over the old lady’s shoulder. Iris passed Annie over to Gill who hugged her then said:

  ‘Well if ever there was some good news to fly off to on Friday, this is it. I want regular updates. I want to see you swell up like a barrage balloon, ripe and plump as a peach.’ Gill pushed Annie towards her husband. The pair of them stood in front of each other, stock-still. Then Joe grabbed her, squeezed her tight and when he pulled away, tears were thick in his eyes and in his throat. Tears of joy, good tears.

  ‘I’m due at Christmas, Joe.’

  ‘I thought something serious was wrong with you.’

  ‘I thought something serious was wrong with me. But something serious is right with me, Joe.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Joe, going into planning mode. ‘You have to stop work immediately and stay at home. We can’t risk—’

  ‘Whoa, hold that thought, Joe Pandoro, because if I stop working, one: I’ll go stark raving bonkers and two: we’ll go under.’

  Iris gave a haughty sniff in Gill’s direction. ‘You’ve picked a right time to swan off to Spain, you. You should be ashamed of yourself. You an ex-nurse an’ all. Deserting someone in their hour of need.’

  ‘Oh aye, heap all the blame you can on me. Here, let me find a spade for you so you can add a bit more,’ Gill threw back.

  ‘We’ll manage, we’ll cope,’ said Annie. ‘If this is possible, anything is possible.’

  And it was. Stresses about how they were going to fulfil all the orders on their books with Gill leaving them weren’t even on the radar today. The little Pandoro baby growing inside Annie was all that mattered.

  *

  Clint did come in handy for something, thought Palma, as she waited outside Tesco scanning for Christian’s flash sports car. He hadn’t picked up the phone to any of the calls she had made to him yesterday after she’d walked away from Ladybower Gardens, or replied to the voicemails she’d left or texts she’d sent, which hadn’t surprised her but had begun to really annoy her. Well, he gave her no option but to roll out the big guns, she thought as she lay in bed, so the first thing she did that morning was to text again to say she needed to talk to him immediately or she’d make sure that Clint was at his workplace at eleven o’clock. She didn’t think he’d like Clint turning up at his swanky Cheshire Holdings office in Leed
s and embarrassing him in front of the thousand-plus workforce. Funnily enough Christian had rung her back within ten minutes. He said that he couldn’t talk now but he would pick her up outside Tesco that evening at eight – only her, not Clint.

  And so here she was with her pregnancy tests in her bag as proof and some pepper spray and a paring knife as insurance. She didn’t think that Christian was the murdering kind, but in this day and age it didn’t do any harm to cover your back. Especially as she was probably the worst news possible in his life at the moment.

  And here he comes, she said to herself as she saw the brag-red car turn right towards her and brake sharply when it drew level. She opened the door; he was staring straight forward. She got in and barely had a chance to click herself in before he sped off. She was thrown so far forward that she almost banged her head on the windscreen. He didn’t apologise.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘They’re building a car showroom a couple of miles away. It’ll be deserted. I thought we could talk there.’

  ‘Well don’t try anything funny,’ she warned him, ‘because Clint’s following to make sure I’m okay.’

  ‘What do you mean “okay”?’ he said, flicking his eyes up to his rear-view mirror and then out to the wing mirrors. ‘What does he think I’m going to do?’ He sounded insulted by that and ever so slightly panicked, but she didn’t care.

  ‘Clint presumes everyone thinks like he does is all I’m saying,’ she said, not even sure if she knew what she meant by that. It sounded like a real threat, though and that would do.

  Christian muttered something under his breath, and though she couldn’t work out exactly what he said, she could hazard a guess at it not being complimentary. She also bet that he could have made the Guinness Book of World Records for the number of annoyed sighs per linear mile. Or eyes darting to the mirrors looking for his ‘tail’. No one looked at their mirrors as much as that once they’d passed their test, she thought.

  They didn’t speak again until he parked up. To Palma’s relief, the area was well lit and he hadn’t sought out a dark corner near the overgrown bushes. He unclipped his belt, rubbed his forehead, turned half towards her and said, ‘So.’

  Palma took that as a cue to get out one of the pregnancy tests. ‘I did two to be certain. They’re both positive. I’m definitely pregnant.’

  ‘I suppose she gave you my mobile number,’ Christian said, his head jerking slightly in the direction where it thought she might be.

  ‘Yep. I went to deliver my good news to you both yesterday only to find her delivering bad news to me,’ replied Palma. ‘I’ve fulfilled my side of the bargain.’

  Christian’s head dropped and he gave a small laugh out of one side of his mouth. A laugh that had anything but humour in it.

  ‘She told you that she threw me out, I presume,’ he said.

  ‘Well . . . I figured.’

  ‘And what did she say about . . .’ he pointed to her stomach.

  ‘That she wanted nothing to do with it, and to see you.’

  Again he swore under his breath; she heard the ‘f’ and ‘x’ sounds clearly enough to know that he wasn’t overjoyed.

  He thought for a moment and then said, ‘How do I know you’re telling the truth?’

  Palma felt her jaw tighten. ‘Because I am,’ she said. ‘Because that’s what you are paying me to do for you.’

  ‘That could be anyone’s,’ he said, nodding at the test wand.

  ‘It’s mine. Drive me back to Tesco and I’ll do another in front of you if you want,’ snapped Palma.

  ‘I mean anyone’s child.’

  That stung. The cheeky bastard.

  ‘It always could. This was a trust arrangement. I know you’d have had a DNA test done when the baby was born to prove it was yours anyway. I’m not thick and I’m not a liar. It’s not my fault you . . .’ got caught with your trousers down and your wife chucked you out ‘. . . broke the deal. I never would have.’

  Palma could imagine the cogs whirring in his head. Very shortly, he would tell her to go and get rid of it. Just like her mother had done with an inconvenient goldfish once. She was right.

  ‘You’ll get rid of it now, obviously,’ he said.

  ‘What, and not get paid the five grand you owe us?’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t be stupid. Why would you want to go through with it?’

  ‘I don’t particularly,’ said Palma. ‘But I do want the five grand. A deal is a deal.’

  He reached down to his side and produced an envelope which he held out to her.

  ‘There’s a thousand pounds in there. Take it and do what you have to.’

  When Palma’s hands didn’t budge from her lap he poked the package into her arm as if to further bring it to her attention.

  ‘And the rest?’ she asked.

  ‘No more. Why would there be?’

  Was he joking? ‘Because all the way through this, you’ve expected that if anyone would break the deal it would be me. But it wasn’t. I kept my side of the bargain and that bargain was five thousand pounds.’

  Christian dropped the package into her lap, a gesture of disdain. ‘Here, take it. It’s yours. Five thousand if you carried it to term, which you won’t now, will you? Have a nice convenient abortion on the National Health and we’ll never have to think about this again. Now be a good girl and take the money.’ He reached over his shoulder for the seat belt. It was done as far as he was concerned.

  No no no. It wasn’t money he was cheating her out of but a new life. She had her foot firmly on the first step of a ladder now and there was no way she was about to take it off again and sink back into the rancid waters of dreadful familiarity.

  She played her trump card.

  ‘Clint wants the full money.’

  ‘Oh for . . .’ Christian’s fist thumped the steering wheel hard. ‘It’s not difficult to understand. I don’t want the bloody baby. She doesn’t want the bloody baby. No one wants the . . . fucking thing.’

  Palma stayed calm, but her hand crept into her bag, curled around the canister of pepper spray in readiness.

  ‘You owe us four thousand eight hundred.’

  ‘Tell Clint O’Gowan to . . .’ Christian pulled up his words before they found their way into the air and couldn’t be unsaid. His stupid wife had rushed in and arranged all this and he’d gone along with it. Tabitha was desperate for a baby and had worn him down with her persistence. Now he couldn’t understand why the hell he had agreed to it, but then, he’d been preoccupied with other things. Twenty-year-old other things with massive knockers.

  ‘Let me put it this way,’ said Palma. ‘If you don’t give me the full five, then I’ll have the baby and come after you for child maintenance. I haven’t slept with anyone for over two years. There’s only one person who could have fathered what’s in me so that will be an expensive option for you. I bet even Tabitha would back me up if needs be. She certainly looked mad enough to yesterday.’

  She watched the mottling pattern form on Christian’s neck as quickly as if it was powered by a halogen bulb inside him. ‘You really are a fucking little bitch, aren’t you,’ he said nastily, more angry with himself than her – and that really was saying something.

  Palma’s lips shrank away from her teeth, the gloves were fully off now. ‘No, you fucking bitch. This is your fault it all went sour, not mine. I was prepared to give you what you wanted for a fair price. If you want to play unfair, then I will as well. And I’ll be much better at it than you because I’ve got Clint watching my back.’

  Christian thudded the heel of his hand into his forehead but no amount of bruising to the skull would get him out of this one. He was a lone king on a chessboard surrounded by threatening pieces of the opposite colour. He was unsteady, rocking on his square but not check-mated yet and he’d not go down until he was.

  ‘You do know blackmail is a criminal offence?’ he tried.

  ‘So is buying children,’ Palma
parried. ‘Newspapers love stories like that. But the bottom line, Mr Stephenson, is that if you decide to call my bluff then it would be a big mistake, because this is your baby and Clint will beat the crap out of you. And he’ll keep doing it until you give him what he is due. And I’ll bleed you dry for the rest of your life. And I’ll go to the papers.’

  Christian felt himself toppling. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit,’ he said, not under his breath.

  ‘Seven grand,’ Palma suddenly said, the two words surprising herself as much as him.

  ‘What?’

  Yes, sod it. Go for it. An extra two for having to put up with this crap.

  ‘I want seven grand and I’ll sign a legal form to say that I won’t come after you ever for any child maintenance,’ she said, astounded at how calm she sounded. ‘Full and final settlement.’ She remembered the expression from a drama about a divorce which she’d been watching on the telly and hoped it was the right one to use here.

  ‘You can’t keep it.’

  ‘I can if I want. It’s half mine.’

  ‘Why would you? Oh . . .’ The question swung to enlightenment. ‘Benefits.’

  That’s how he sees me, Palma thought with an inner growl. Well, let him, she’d make it work for her. She’d swallow all pride if it meant she could get away from the Ketherwood estate.

  ‘Got it in one,’ she spat. ‘So we’ll both get what we want then, won’t we? Or rather all three of us will, because if Clint isn’t happy, then none of us are. You want to think yourself lucky you’re getting me so cheap, because I could cost you a lot more.’

  ‘You’re cheap all right,’ said Christian, with a sneer. If he’d punched her it would have hurt less than his tone did.

  Christian turned the key in the ignition and the way he drove back mirrored his annoyance because she’d cornered him and men like Christian hated that. They wanted to be the ones calling the shots.

  He pulled up so fast in front of Tesco that his brakes squealed horribly and drew the attention of several people.

  ‘Give me two days. I’ll be here on Wednesday at the same time,’ he said, not looking at her.