When she first told him they were going to have a baby, he had gone very quiet and she feared he was unhappy about the impending addition. As it turned out he had been just a little stunned by the news and once he had calmed himself down, he hadn’t stopped smiling since.
‘From the size of you, it looks like it’ll be twins,’ Alice said from the seat next to her.
‘Well, let’s make a pact, if you have a boy and I have a girl we’ll pair them up,’ Liz said, smiling at her equally pregnant friend.
‘Oh, it’ll be a boy’ Alice replied, absentmindedly rubbing her own stomach.
She had already decided to call the child Charlie, no matter which sex it was. It was her gift to the memory of a great man. When Liz and Imran had returned from the Chamber with a hysterical Anne but no Charlie, she knew the worst had happened. She had broken down and although she and Charlie had only gotten together recently, she had loved him completely in that short time and would never forget him.
‘Imran, what are you still doing here?’ Sister Rebecca asked, as she walked into the Refectory. ‘You’re meant to be doing a fighting class with the Justin and Anne before it gets too dark outside?’
‘Oh crap, so I am,’ he replied and with a quick kiss on Liz’s belly and then her mouth, he ran from the room.
The rescued children had fitted in very well to life at the Convent and despite what they had gone through, Liz thought they were surprisingly happy.
‘Children often bounce back given the chance and a loving environment,’ Sister Josephine had told a few weeks after they had returned.
A loving environment was certainly what they were given here at Lanherne. Everyone had welcomed the new arrivals with open arms, especially Sally who had surprised everyone and not only taken them under her wing but blossomed from it. Nadine and Lars had even started up a school at Lanherne, much to the vocal disappointment of Justin, although Liz thought he secretly enjoyed it and it was more about being the oldest boy and having a reputation to keep up among the other children.
‘Ouch,’ Alice said, as her baby gave her a kick from inside.
‘Sign of a healthy baby,’ Sister Rebecca said, smiling at the two pregnant women. ‘What you need to do is loo….’
Liz and Alice looked at Sister Rebecca her mouth open, frozen mid word. Following her gaze they saw what had shocked her into silence. There on the wall, a simple thing from a time gone by, a thing that they had walked past countless times without giving it a second glance. This thing that they never thought would work again, had been transformed into an unbelievable object of hope.
‘Oh my God!’ Alice said, looking back at Liz. ‘What does it mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ Liz said quietly, as she stared at the glowing light bulb on the wall ‘but I think things are going to change.’
***
I hope you enjoyed ‘Six days with the Dead’. If you did, perhaps you’ll follow the characters of the Lanherne Chronicles in their fight to survive in the world of the Dead in the sequel: ‘Five more days with the Dead’
Keep up to date with future releases in the series on www.facebook/sixdayswiththedead
Six Days With the Dead Page 36
