by Katey Lovell
Cautiously I moved my whale-like body, keeping a firm grip on Max’s arm as another zigzagged flash of light sliced through me.
“I’d help you up to bed but it’s not made yet,” he said as I rested my head against a cushion. “You’d hate that.”
I could hear the fond teasing in his voice, because he was right. I did like my bedclothes to be just so.
I laid against the fabric of the cushion, aware of the grid-like imprint that the weave was leaving on my cheek, and turned to face the back of the sofa. I could have sworn what little light there was in the room was finding its way through my eyelids, even when they were as tightly closed as humanly possible.
The weight of a blanket fell over me and Max tucked it around my body. My nose tickled, so I buried myself, like a mole digging its way deeper and deeper underground, until I was confident my head was covered and no light could disturb me.
Concentrating on my breathing, the “in-for-five, out-for-five”, I’d been practising on and off for years through my YouTube yoga guru Leo, I began to relax. My head still felt as though it might explode, but this was nothing new for me. Migraines were an inconvenient but ever-present part of my life, waiting in the wings for an inopportune moment to strike.
I had no idea of how long I lay there. Max was tiptoeing around in that way that people do where they’re trying so hard to be completely silent that they make more noise than they ever would if they were moving naturally.
I stayed on the settee, wrapped up like a burrito, until my head stopped pounding. Slowly emerging from the safety of my bubble I pulled down the “blanket” – only now my vision was clearer and my mind less hazy did I realise it wasn’t a blanket at all, it was my coat, a thickly padded khaki maternity coat that Rachel had given me as she no longer needed it. ‘It’s silly to pay out for one when I’ve got one that’s barely been worn,’ she’d said, encouraging me to accept the hand-me-down.
The fake fur trim around the hood grazed my nose and I realised that must have been what I’d felt tickling me earlier. I pushed it away.
“You’re awake,” Max said gently as I pulled myself up into a sitting position.
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
“You dozed off for a while, you were snoring.”
“I don’t snore!”
He looked up from behind the TV stand. “You were snoring the other night.” I knew he was probably right. Breathing had become more challenging since my bump had increased in size, the pressure on my internal organs making every gasp more laboured. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. If anything, it’s quite cute.”
I rolled my eyes. “Thanks.”
“How are you feeling?” he asked, clambering out from his hidey-hole.
“Tired. I’m zapped of energy.”
“That’s understandable. I’ve found it tough today with everything going on and it must be ten times harder for you.”
“I’m pregnant, not incapacitated.”
“Exactly, you’re pregnant. That’s our baby you’re carrying around, that you’re keeping warm and fed and healthy and you’re doing great. I’d share the load if I could.”
“Not long to go and then you can,” I said with a smile.
He caught my eye. He was wearing a serious expression.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come across as more grateful when your dad gave us the cheque, and I’m sorry if that’s one of the things that got you stressed. I’ll send him a text and tell him how kind it was for him and your mum to do that for us.”
The sincerity was obvious in Max’s eyes, but I detected something else too – a glimmer of shame, maybe?
“He’d like that,” I said. “They want to help us, Max, and that money will come in really handy. Even if we don’t spend it all on renovations it can go towards the baby or bills. I know you say we’ll manage the mortgage, but we don’t know how much everything else will cost yet either. Heating this place is going to cost double what it did to heat my old house.”
That had been a big advantage of the square new-build house I’d rented – it hadn’t been much to look at, but it made economic sense. A good location with excellent transport links to the city centre, easy to maintain and cheap to keep warm.
“Speaking of heat, do you want me to have a go at starting the wood burner?” he asked.
He looked like a little kid on scout camp as he placed the wood the previous owners had left behind in the stove and carefully lit it. The amber glow of the flames caused me to squint, but the room immediately felt warmer.
“This is nice,” I said, nuzzling my head against his chest as he sat beside me, proudly watching the product of his efforts. “I like watching the flames.”
“Me too. It’s relaxing.” He didn’t tear his eyes away from the flickering glow, hypnotised by the dance of the flame. “It’s been one hell of a day. The rain’s still belting it down.”
“I hope my dad got home alright. The roads must be carnage.”
“More likely it’ll be at a standstill. He’ll be fine, he’s a careful driver. But you should call if you’re worried. I don’t want you getting stressed and having another migraine.”
I reached for my phone, which was balancing precariously on the arm of the settee, relieved to see there was a text from my dad.
Home safely and Mum’s got tea on the table. Fish pie.
Enjoy your first night in your new home. Stay warm. Love you. X
My heart soared as I hurriedly typed back my reply.
Xxx Fire burning so lovely and cosy. Thank you for today. Love you too. Xxx
“Everything okay?”
“He’s home,” I confirmed. “He’d sent a message earlier telling me he’s about to get stuck into a helping of Mum’s fish pie.”
“Lucky man.” Max grinned. “But not as lucky as me. Right now I feel like the luckiest man in the whole world.”
“Oh shush,” I said, batting playfully at his arm. “You don’t need to spout lines. We share a mortgage now, you’re tied to me. You don’t need to turn on the charm.”
“I wasn’t! I was only speaking the truth. This is everything I ever dreamed of.”
I looked around the room, taking in the boxes – some still sealed and others flat-packed and leaning against the wall, the fire, the floor lamp that Max had presumably lit to save my delicate head, instead of exposing it to the glare of the bare bulb hanging from the light fitting on the ceiling, the now-established fire, with the flames growing taller as the wood caught properly. My trousers pinched around my middle, even though they had an elasticated waistband and as I placed my hand on my stomach our daughter wriggled within me, the sensation like a washing machine on a quick wash. And Max, my beautiful Max, with his hair ruffled after a day of manual labour, his hoodie grubby from lugging boxes.
It was everything I’d ever dreamed of too. Everything I ever dreamed of, and more.
Chapter 26
We’d made a pact to have the living room as organised as possible before bedtime so when we came downstairs the next morning we’d have one room already set up, and slowly but surely the room was taking shape. The shelves were full of items from our pasts – photographs and knickknacks, CDs and DVDs – items which were living alongside each other for the very first time. Seeing them together felt momentous, every aspect of our lives colliding.
Each box that we emptied and dismantled was a relief, one step closer to our much-needed bedtime. Not only had it been a long day, but our plan to go to the local chip shop for a celebratory takeaway tea had been scuppered by the Tyne bursting its banks and causing chaos, so instead we’d been running on the cup-a-soups I’d fortuitously packed in the same box as the kettle and half a packet of Hobnobs that the removal men had left behind.
“How many more?” I asked, unable to disguise my weariness. I might have had a snooze earlier on, but the day’s events had caught up with me. Migraines always wiped me out.
“Five more boxes of books and then we’re done. Oh, and whateve
r’s in the white one in the corner.”
My face crumpled into a frown. All the boxes were the same, tan cubes that we’d got from a storage specialist that had been recommended by Mia. There were no white boxes, or at least, there shouldn’t have been.
“I thought that was yours.”
“Nope, I didn’t have any except the ones we bought. All my stuff was in those and the grey suitcase. Except the towels and bedding in those black sacks.”
An uncomfortable feeling rippled through me as I edged towards the box. If neither Max nor I had packed it, then who had?
There was a sticky label, printed with my name and the address of our new home, along with a sticker with a logo I immediately recognised. It was the logo for Jessie’s mum’s shop.
I hadn’t changed the address on the wish list, the superstitious side of me not wanting to take any chances in case the sale fell through at the last minute.
So how on earth had a parcel with my name on got here? I had a nasty feeling that even if I opened it, I’d be no closer to getting answers.
Chapter 27
“I don’t want to open it.” Panic was eating me up from the inside, so much so that even looking at the box was making me anxious. “We could take it to the post office and return to sender.”
“Except we don’t know who that is,” Max said, twisting the box around to check. “It’s got a postcode for where it was sent from, but I doubt it’ll be the sender’s. Unless they’ve written a letter to go with it we’ll be no closer to finding out who’s sending this stuff.”
I could tell he was rankled from the tone in his voice, and even though he was trying to hide it from me, probably because I was a nervous wreck myself when it came to these mystery gifts, he wasn’t doing a very good job.
We both eyed the box suspiciously. It was as though now we were aware of its presence we weren’t going to be able to think of anything else until we knew what it held. It was goading us, taunting us with its very existence.
“Let’s see what’s inside.”
I waited for Max to take the lead, to pull back the thick brown tape that sealed the box, but instead he pushed the box across to me, the sound of the cardboard sliding along the polished wooden floor setting my teeth on edge.
Taking a deep breath, I fumbled for the end of the tape, using the tip of my nail to scrape the adhesive from the box. A corner loosened and I pulled the tape off in one long strip. It was almost a flourish.
Max bent over to get a better look as I tentatively peeled back first one flap and then the other to reveal a mass of shredded paper. Pulling it apart and digging into the depths of the box my hands met with something soft and furry. Although I’d only touched it once previously, I knew what it was before I laid eyes on it. The snowsuit from Iris’s mother-in-law’s shop. As my fingers skimmed the bear ears that were sewn on to the hood I knew for sure.
“So?” Max looked at me impatiently. I’d forgotten that he was none the wiser, that his fingers weren’t feeling what I was, and that even if they were he wouldn’t know what was inside. He’d had no part in making the wish list.
“I know what it is. It’s an outfit I liked in the baby shop.”
My heart leapt in my chest as I pulled the item out of the box. It was just as gorgeous as I remembered, from the incomprehensibly tiny foot holes, which were surely too small for an actual human being, even a baby, to fit into to the teddy-bear soft hood.
“There’s nothing else?” he said, pulling out the packaging in desperate search for anything that might give a clue to the sender.
“Not that I can see.”
I placed the outfit on the settee, my head throbbing again. It was the last thing I needed after the day I’d had.
“I’m going to go to the shop myself and ask some questions. Surely they can’t let just anyone buy something off a gift list? Didn’t you have those cards with a code on?”
I’d forgotten about them; lemon-yellow business cards with a hand-written six-digit code so that Iris’s mother-in-law could pull up the list of items I’d coveted for any potential gift-buyers. I’d joked at the time that I might give them out to anyone on the street who looked like they had cash to throw around, to see if they’d buy anything for me. I’d never actually expected to receive gifts from someone I didn’t know.
“Yes,” I managed finally. “And only friends and family were given those.” That ruled out Darius, who I’d still been harbouring suspicions about being the secretive giver. This kind of gesture was his style, overblown, ostentatious and showy.
“So it’s got to be someone we know,” Max said, sinking onto his bottom. He sat cross-legged, like a primary school child on a carpet at story time. “But why would they not tell us if they’re buying all these things?”
“Because they don’t want to be found out?” I snapped, the pulsing in my head worsening.
“But why?” Max pressed.
“I don’t know!” I was all but shouting. “And I don’t want to talk about it now. This is supposed to be a special milestone, the first night in our new home. All we’ve done so far is fight.”
I didn’t want to give in to the tears that were forcing themselves from behind my eyes, but I couldn’t help myself, once the first solitary tear made its break for freedom I was gone, full-on sobbing.
“Hey, hey.” Max’s arm was around me. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have kept asking questions when you don’t know any more than I do. I hate seeing you cry.”
“I don’t understand it. If people who love us are sending us things I wish they’d just tell us. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It freaks me out too, if I’m honest, but I’m clinging on to the thought that it’s someone doing it for the right reasons. They probably think it’s nice for us to get gifts when we’re not expecting it.”
Trust Max to be seeing the good in people rather than being suspicious. It was one of the things I loved about him, but sometimes it annoyed me that he was so damn nice all the time. Times like this for example.
“I’m going to have to ask everyone again. It’s eating away at me, even if it is meant as a nice gesture. Who do you think it’s most likely to be?”
Max shrugged. “If it was just one item then I’d say it could be anyone, but with it being so many I’d say it’s family. Your parents or mine?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so, especially as they’ve been so generous helping us out with the house.”
“One of our siblings then?”
“Maybe.” I thought of my sister and her husband in Austria, unless they’d been phoning the shop that seemed unlikely. The baby shop was only small, it didn’t have an online outlet. “Nick and Chantel, perhaps? Although I still get the feeling Chantel’s not happy that we’re going to have the youngest grandchild.”
“Or one of my brothers. Not Dale though, he’s never got two pennies to rub together and buying baby gifts wouldn’t even cross his mind.”
I smiled at the thought of Max’s youngest brother. Twenty-two and straight out of university, Dale was struggling to find a job that his degree in geology had prepared him for. He was the embodiment of the twenty-something barista dreaming of something more.
“We’ll ask them tomorrow at the family get-together.”
“If we’re not flooded,” I joked. “Look at it out there! It’s still coming down.” Without so much as makeshift curtains covering the windows, the storm beyond the panes of glass made me doubt we’d be able to make it to Max’s parents.
The firewood smouldered in the background, the room warming. But I couldn’t shake off the uneasy chill I got every time I thought of the gifts. Knowing it was someone we knew should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t reassuring at all.
Chapter 28
The weather remained typically British – unpredictable. When Max pulled back the spare bedsheet we’d flung over the curtain rail in the bedroom to block out the bright glare of the previous night’s lightning (after a much-nee
ded and well-deserved lie-in) we’d expected to be met by a stream flowing down the green. What had faced us was the opposite end of the weather spectrum, powder-blue sky and brilliant sunshine. The trip to Andrea and Hector’s was on, and hopefully we’d get closure on the mysterious packages.
“Don’t rush,” Max instructed, as I stepped out onto the driveway. I’d never lived in a house with a driveway before. “The ground’s still slippy. You’ve got precious cargo on board, don’t forget.”
Max hadn’t been kidding. Despite selecting my flattest, most sensible boots it was a challenge to stay upright on the cobble drive. Yet another case of my centre of gravity shifting throughout pregnancy. My body no longer felt like my own, at least, not the pre-pregnancy body I’d recently begun to accept as “not exactly banging, but all right for a woman in her thirties”. It wasn’t my own, it was my unborn child’s home, the blood pulsing through my veins keeping the pair of us alive. Wherever I went, she went, whatever I did impacted on her too. Struck by the enormity of that realisation, I penguin-waddled to the car, happy when my hand connected with the door handle.
“Coo-eee!”
A woman with a tight perm and a gigantic smile waved frantically at me from the other side of the road. I’d guess she was around the same age as my mum, but she looked older – her hair greying around the temples where my mum wasn’t ready to say au revoir to the hair dyes that covered the salt and pepper flecks that stubbornly fought back against her styling regime.
Holding tightly to the car with one hand, I gave a small wave to the lady. That was all the encouragement she needed to make her way across the road to strike up a conversation. Although the rain had stopped I wasn’t sure the slippers she was wearing were up to the job and I watched on with bated breath, fearful of any slippy patches that lay in waiting to catch her unawares. Relief surged through me when she made it across unscathed.
