‘Shit.’ Jenny sounded disappointed. ‘I thought it might be the real deal. You were so happy!’
‘I was. I am! I don’t regret a thing. But that doesn’t mean I have to keep playing boyfriend and girlfriend just because, for one day, I was happy and we had great sex in the Amsterdam equivalent of the Premier Inn!’ Imogen hadn’t meant to shout but the titters running through the bus passengers and the cough from Burger Boy told her that her voice had carried a little further than she had intended.
Jenny laid her head on her friend’s shoulder as the bus finally moved forward. ‘You’re right. It doesn’t.’
‘Thank you for understanding. I’m going to tell him tonight, just get it done.’
‘I found you much more exciting when you were my interesting, exotic friend with a fabulous Yankee boyfriend. Now you’re just back to plain old Imogen from West Pilton.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you. Anyway, I thought I was your adventurous friend who hung off a building on a piece of chewing gum?’ Imogen laughed.
‘Suppose so.’ Jenny sighed; it was going to take a little while for her to recover from the disappointment and to erase the images of herself tripping the light fantastic around Chicago on a visit.
Imogen laughed, but her tummy still flipped at the prospect of the conversation she was going to have to have with Owen.
*
Imogen curled her feet under her on the sofa and pulled her fleecy dressing gown around her shoulders. This moment had dogged her thoughts all day. Her palms were sweating and her breath came shallowly. She dialled the number and waited. Owen’s voice was a sharp reminder of his loveliness; he was happy to hear from her, his tone welcoming and comforting, like the warm back seat of a taxi on a rainy day.
‘Hey, Imi! Well, this has just made a pretty bad day a whole lot better! I’ve left the office, I’m strolling along North LaSalle and it is c... c...c... freezing!’ he laughed.
‘It’s midnight here and just as cold.’ She kept her tone flat, not wanting to mislead him any more than she maybe already had. ‘Owen, I need to talk to you.’
‘Oh-oh! That sounds ominous, is everything okay?’
Imogen shook her head to erase the memory of the flower market and that wonderful time together. This was no time for sentiment however. Far better for them both in the long run to be brutally honest. ‘Not really, no, the thing is...’
*
‘Only me, Mum!’ Imogen called into the kitchen as she stepped into the hallway of her childhood home.
‘Kettle’s on!’ came Isla’s stock reply.
Imogen shrugged her arms from her coat and felt for the square newel post on which she hung it. Her fingers lightly brushed the spindles of the staircase to her right, as they had countless times before, helping her to navigate her way around her childhood home. ‘Hiya,’ she called.
‘Hello, darlin’.’ Isla came over and wrapped her daughter in a brief, but tight hug. ‘How’s you?’
‘Great, tired, the usual.’ Imogen gave the summary as she took a seat at the table and yawned.
‘Work busy?’
‘Yep.’ She rested her head on one upturned hand, her elbow firmly planted.
‘Good god, Imogen, if you’re that tired, why don’t you away to your bed?’ Isla poured the hot water on to the teabags and gave them a little squeeze with the teaspoon against the side of the mug.
‘Sorry, Mum. I’ve just no energy!’
‘Have you got a bug?’ Her mum swept her daughter’s brow with the back of one hand. ‘You feel all right to me.’
‘Don’t think so.’ Imogen yawned. ‘I’m getting my period and I’m just blurgh... you know, sore boobs, bloated, yuck. I’ll be fine in a couple of days.’ She stretched her hand across the table to reach for her tea.
‘Imogen?’
‘Uh-huh?’ She sipped her drink slowly.
‘Don’t quite know how to say this, but there’s no chance you could be pregnant, is there?’
Imogen snorted laughter into her tea, then sat very still. ‘Do you know, Mum, I’ve not considered that. I’ve just assumed that this attempt will fail like the last time because I don’t think I could cope with the disappointment, daren’t hope! And I’ve been so busy.’
‘I know. It’s just that...’
‘What?’ Imogen placed the mug on the table and turned towards her mum, trying to pick up clues from her breathing and movements.
Isla coughed. ‘You look rosy... well, blooming some would say. And your boobs might be sore, but they’re also bigger. A lot bigger!’
Imogen cupped her chest and felt the spill of flesh over the top of her bra. Oh my god!
Her mum continued, ‘And the tiredness. You could be.’
Imogen sat still, thinking of the evening she had spent cloistered in a hotel room with a tall, dark, kind, bespectacled stranger who was incapable of having children, never suspecting for a minute that the procedure she had had weeks earlier might have worked!
‘Oh my god, Imi! This could be it!’ Her mum trod the line between letting her own excitement get the better of her and not building up her daughter’s hopes.
‘I don’t know.’ Imogen swallowed and reached again for her tea, keen to rid her mouth of the metallic taste that had plagued her for a few weeks now. ‘Oh, god, Mum! I just don’t know.’
*
It was three days later, as Jenny stood in the hallway, that Imogen tried the words out for the first time.
‘You are fucking kidding me?’ Jenny yelled as she jumped up and down on the spot.
‘I’m not.’
‘Oh, my good god! But I thought... How? When?’ Jenny lunged forward and squeezed her friend.
‘The second attempt, just before Amsterdam!’
‘Holy shit! Oh my god! No way! You are going to be a mum! Oh my god!’
‘I can’t believe it either, Jen. Turns out my gran was right. A good night out and a bit of hanky-panky to relax me was all it required, in a way.’
‘Shit! Have you told Owen?’ Jenny cut to the chase.
‘No. I don’t see the need. I’ll not see him again and it’s nothing to do with him. It hasn’t really sunk in.’
‘I can’t believe it! I’m going to be an aunty!’
Imogen turned and made her way into her lounge, letting her fingers trail over the familiar surfaces and openings, the dimensions of which were imprinted on her brain like a map. The girls flopped at either end of the sofa.
‘You’re going to be a mum! How do you feel?’
Imogen exhaled. ‘Tired, excited, nervous, shocked, and not necessarily in that order.’
‘Did you do a test?’
‘Aye, four tests, just to be on the safe side. My mum was with me, it was hilarious!’
‘Have you told your dad?’
‘Yep, that night. It wasn’t like we could keep it a secret with my mum squealing the place down and planning her knitting.’
‘How far are you?’ Jenny sat forward.
‘Eleven weeks.’
‘Blimey.’
‘I know. And what’s scaring me more than anything is that if this baby was as premature as I was, it means it would be born in just about that time again.’ Imogen pulled the sleeves of her jumper over her hands.
‘Shit!’ Jenny summed it up.
‘Yep, shit.’
‘When’s the last time you spoke to Chicago Boy?’
‘It was the night I ended it, about six weeks ago now. I’m definitely not going to tell him, Jen. What would be the point?’
Her friend placed her hand on Imogen’s leg. ‘The point would be that he mattered to you and it would be good for this baby to have as many people involved in its life as possible. I think he’d be a better role model than Shay!’
Imogen pictured Owen walking home from work, the way he had sounded when she had ended it, the crack in his voice, his clear disappointment. It didn’t make her a very nice person, but she had been a little gladdened by his response, happy that
he had cared.
‘It’s got to be about my choices too, Jen. Plus I genuinely don’t want to hurt him. I’d hate him to feel that we might have a future. That wouldn’t be fair to him. The important thing is that I’m fine, and this baby and I will be fine.’ Imogen smiled at the thought of her little one, nestling safe and warm inside her. Every ounce of her body was filled with happy anticipation. I still can’t believe it! she thought.
‘But you said the reason it wasn’t working was that you couldn’t move forward, couldn’t progress, because you were too far apart. Surely something like this opens up a whole new topic of conversation, and that will help things progress!’
‘I said that was one of the reasons, Jen. Christ, you are taking this break-up harder than either of us!’
‘I just remember how you looked, in Amsterdam, so happy. And that’s what I’ve always wanted for you.’ Her friend touched her arm.
‘I know and I love you for it, you daft mare. But I’m happy now. I am. This is what I have always dreamt of! And getting hooked up with a guy I don’t know, just for the sake of a neat ending, it’s not fair on anyone. Least of all him.’
‘I’m not sure if you are really brave or really stupid.’ Jenny lay back on the sofa.
‘I think we both know that anyone who dangles off a building on a bit of chewing gum is a bit of both.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Jenny laughed. ‘And if it’s a girl, don’t feel embarrassed about naming her after me. I won’t mind at all.’
‘No, that’d be too weird, having my child and my best friend with the same name. Anyways, it might be a boy.’
‘Well, Shay wouldn’t mind either!’
‘I don’t think so,’ Imogen laughed.
‘You dissing my man’s name?’ Jenny thumped her friend on the arm.
‘Oi! You can’t do that to me, I am with child!’
‘With child? You dafty!’ The two girls collapsed in giggles on the sofa.
10
It was the early hours of the morning, the heating was yet to kick in and the place felt a little damp. With her twenty-week scan picture stuck to the fridge for all to admire, Imogen ran the cold tap in the kitchen. She had slept poorly and her dry throat suggested she had been snoring, open-mouthed. Gripping the tall tumbler in her palm, she turned to make her way back to bed.
It happened in a flash. The glass slipped from her hand and shattered with an ear-splitting crack. Imogen took a step forward and felt the bite of a shard in the soft sole of her foot.
‘Ouch!’ She instinctively stepped backwards and this time the pain was sharp and instant in her heel.
Tears sprang to her eyes as she stood marooned in the kitchen, surrounded by slivers of glass. Turning carefully and trying to ignore the pain in her feet, she reached forward, sliding her hand along the work surface until her fingertips touched upon the phone in its charging station. Thank goodness she had replaced it and not, as was her habit, left it languishing on the sofa or in the bathroom. Her fingers shook as she pressed the pre-set digit that linked her to her parents.
‘Hello?’ her dad’s voice croaked, as he tried to shrug off the veil of sleep.
‘Dad... I...’
‘What is it, darlin’? Are you okay?’
She heard the note of alarm in his voice and wanted to reassure him through her tears. ‘Dad, I’m okay, but... but can you... can you come over?’
‘I’ll be there in a minute, Imi. Hang on.’
‘What’s wrong? What’s happened?’ she heard her mum’s panic-stricken query as her dad fumbled to replace the phone in the darkness.
*
Imogen started to shiver. She had thought she would be returning to the warmth of her bed and had neglected to grab her dressing gown. It was cold in the kitchen and she was too afraid to move. Her cotton nightie shook with the tremors in her body. She ran her palms over her tummy.
‘It’s okay, little one, no need to be afraid. It’s all okay.’
Only minutes later, she heard the sound of a key in the lock and her parents rushed in. ‘Here we are, darlin’,’ Isla soothed as Duncan flipped the light switch.
‘I’ve hurt my foot and I’m too scared to move!’
‘Oh, honey! I can see. Stand very still,’ her mum instructed, calmly, firmly.
Isla went into overdrive, crouching on the kitchen floor, collecting the larger shards of glass, sweeping the smaller fragments into the dustpan and finishing with a good vacuum around the space. Duncan overrode the boiler setting and put the heating on before nipping upstairs to fetch his daughter’s dressing gown, which he placed around her shivering shoulders.
‘There, that’s the last of it,’ Isla soothed. ‘Dunc, can you fetch a chair from the table?’
He duly grabbed a dining chair and placed it by his daughter. Imogen sat and wrapped her arms around herself, feeling the warmth slowly return to her body. Isla lifted her right foot and placed it on her own lap, tending to her cuts, cleaning and cooing, as though her daughter were still a child.
‘Thanks, Mum.’
‘That’s what we are here for. Any time you need us, you just shout and we will be here, always.’
‘You frightened us half to death!’ her dad chimed in.
‘Sorry, Dad.’
‘It was fairly comical. I’m only glad it’s still dark out. There’s your mother and me in our nightclothes and coats, running around the streets like we’d lost our marbles! And what’s even funnier is that the sun is coming up soon and we’ll have to walk home like this! I think we’ll make out we were sleepwalking.’
They all laughed.
Isla placed her daughter’s foot on the floor. ‘There. And the other one.’
Without warning Imogen slumped forward into her mum’s arms. ‘Oh, Mum!’
Isla held her daughter and stroked her hair. ‘Shhhh, it’s okay. Don’t you cry.’ She looked at her husband; this was a rare display of emotion from their child.
‘I’m scared!’ Imogen whispered.
‘No need! No need, it’s all cleared away, nothing to hurt you now. It’s fine.’
‘I’m pregnant!’
‘Yes, darlin’, we do know, and if we didn’t, we might have noticed.’ She placed her hand on her daughter’s full belly.
‘I’m pregnant, Mum, and all I can think about is what would it have been like to have a baby crawling on the floor when that happened?’
Isla and Duncan were silent.
‘How do I keep them safe, Mum? How do I keep my little one safe if I can’t always stop myself from getting hurt? What am I going to do?’ Her sobs were loud and unrestrained. ‘How am I going to do this?’
Isla pulled her into a sitting position and held her by the tops of her arms. ‘Now you listen to me, Imogen Claire, all new mums feel this way to a certain degree.’ Isla sniffed. ‘When you were born I was petrified, we both were.’
‘That’s the truth,’ her dad chimed.
‘The only blind person I’d had any contact with before that was the old man who used to stand outside British Home Stores, playing a harmonica and collecting coins in his upturned cap on the floor. Another man used to walk him there in the morning and then collect him later in the day. He was a poor soul and I...’ Isla swallowed her own tears. ‘I thought a terrible life awaited you. A little life. I was so scared of bringing you home for the first time, scared stupid! I couldn’t imagine how I would care for this baby who couldn’t see, how I would teach you about the world and how I would keep you safe. But the truth is, it was me who had a lot to learn, me who was taught. I watched you blossom into the most amazing child... strong, wilful, determined, inquisitive... your blindness never came into it. I have watched you overcome every obstacle that has ever blocked your path.’
‘We’re so proud of you, Imogen.’
She smiled to hear the tremor in her dad’s voice. Her mum continued, ‘And there was one day when things changed. Actually that’s not true... more accurately, it was the day that I
changed. You were ten and we’d gone on the family jaunt up to Loch Katrine. I’d always been so afraid of getting in the water because you couldn’t see the bottom and the odd bit of weed or a branch might touch your leg. I used to watch the boys and Gran and Grampy bobbing around, having a laugh.’ She sighed. ‘But that day we arrived and unpacked the car and your cousins and all were in the water, screaming and splashing around, while we set the tents up. I watched you step out of your jeans and throw your T-shirt over your head. In your blue swimsuit you walked slowly to the edge of the grass. You didn’t know I was watching you. And when your feet touched the plank of the dock and you felt the wood beneath your toes, you ran!’ Isla stopped to mop at the tears that streaked her face. ‘You ran, Imi! With no idea what lay ahead or how deep the water was or even when the dock ended, you ran!
‘I watched you, powering along the dock with your head back and your arms held high, and as soon as your feet reached the end of the jetty, you lifted your legs and hurled yourself through the air.’ Isla fought for breath. ‘It was magnificent! You had no idea where you were landing or what lay in wait, but you didn’t care. I stood staring at the water and it felt like minutes, but of course it was only seconds, until you popped your wee head above the surface like a seal. I called your dad...’
‘She did, grabbed my arm and said, You won’t believe what she’s just gone and done!’
‘I couldn’t believe it. You were so brave, braver than me, fearless. I realised then I had to let you fly, my fearless girl. I knew on that day that you could do anything. And now you are having a baby, and this child will truly be the luckiest bairn alive to have you as its mum.’
Imogen beamed at her. ‘Thank you. Thank you, Mum.’
11
It was ten o’clock on a cold, rainy Thursday when Leah Mary McGuire arrived in the world, weighing a very respectable seven pounds and two ounces. Screaming and crying, with legs flailing and fists clenched, she was a little battler, just like her mum.
Stories From The Heart Page 18
