As Sophie said the last word of her sentence, she felt a pull in her chest and pictured Louis’s living room, lit only by the electric fire. She felt homesick for a place where she didn’t fully belong yet.
“And perhaps we could have a few minutes to talk things over?” Sophie added.
Sophie again eyed the selection of pregnancy tests on the shelf. She wasn’t exactly sure how Louis would take the news of yet another surprise child at the moment, and suddenly she felt very sad. If she was pregnant, if her body could possibly be playing host to a fledgling human life without having the common decency to drop her a line and let her know she was expecting company, then it should be an occasion for joy, delight, and wonder. A special time for both herself and Louis. But, as it was, the news would have to be juggled with another new arrival, even if he was six foot two. Louis seemed to have a surplus of children right now. And after what he’d said about not wanting any more children, she wasn’t sure that news of another one would give him any kind of joy at all.
“It’s a long way to bring them for a couple of nights, but they would much rather be with you than Mrs. Alexander,” Louis said thoughtfully. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure—and if you and …Wendy need a place to stay, you could stay at my mum’s too. Wendy could have the sofa—although she would have to share it with Scooby and he can get a bit frisky at night.”
Louis did not laugh, and too late Sophie realized that she had managed to sound flippant again.
“Thanks for the offer,” Louis told her. “But I’m not sure what we’re doing.”
Sophie swallowed her irritation at his use of “we” without her being included in it.
She gave him her mother’s address and said, “So I’ll see you at Mum’s then? Call me when you’re nearly here.”
“Thanks, Sophie,” Louis said.
“No problem, and, Louis—I love you,” Sophie said. A beat of silence passed before she realized that Louis had already hung up.
“Right,” Sophie said, turning to look the shop assistant in the eye. “This is ridiculous. I am a grown woman.” She dumped the items she had collected on a display of cough medicine and turned around and picked up the first pregnancy kit she could lay her hands on.
Iris and Sophie stood outside the bathroom while they were waiting for the results of the test.
Iris had suggested Sophie bring the test out of the bathroom with her, but Sophie said that, pregnant or not, she had not yet reached the point in her life where she felt comfortable about walking around with a plastic stick she had recently urinated on. Besides, knowing her mother’s dogs, the odds were high that one of them would make off with it and bury it in the back garden at the first opportunity. “All right then,” Iris had said. “Let’s go downstairs and make tea while we wait.”
“No, I’ve only got to wait three minutes, less than that now,” Sophie said, peering in through the crack she had left open in the bathroom door. She could see the test kit glinting innocuously in the September light. It just didn’t look like it had the power to change your life completely, she thought. The manufacturer should endow them with more gravitas, perhaps a chrome trim and a red flashing light, something that said “Your life will never be the same again.” White plastic didn’t seem to do it.
“Three minutes minimum,” Iris said. “We could have tea and then come and look. Another five minutes won’t make you any more or less pregnant.”
“No, Mum, I’m standing here until the three minutes are up and then I’m going in.”
“I’ll cover you,” Iris said, her smile fading when Sophie didn’t laugh. She crossed her arms and leaned against the textured wallpaper. Miss Pickles trotted up the stairs and eyed Iris for a moment before walking past, no doubt intending to catch a nap on Sophie’s bed.
“I know,” Iris sighed, rolling her eyes as if she and the animal had just had a conversation.
There were several beats of silence, punctuated only by hearing Miss Pickles throwing any unwanted items of Sophie’s off the bed as she prepared for her nap, and then Iris piped up, “Is it time now?”
Sophie glanced at her watch.
“Twenty more seconds,” she said, continuing to study the watch face. “Ten.”
The two women watched each other, reflections of their pasts and their futures, and silently counted down the last ten seconds remaining between Sophie and her fate.
“This is it,” Sophie said and she pushed the bathroom door open.
“I’m not sure you should have out-of-date peppermint tea now that I know you definitely are pregnant,” Iris said, putting the kettle on the stove, which was her stock response to most of life’s ups and downs. On the day her dad had died, Iris must have made a hundred cups of tea. Sophie remembered being sent out to the grocer to get another box of eighty tea bags.
“I’ll just pop out to the corner shop now and get some fresh,” Iris offered, picking up her purse.
“No, just give me a glass of water,” Sophie said. “Don’t go out, please.”
Iris put her bag down and filled a glass, setting it in front of Sophie.
“Isn’t it funny how things can change just like that,” Iris said conversationally, snapping her fingers to illustrate the point.
“I’ll say,” Sophie replied absently.
“Listen, sweetheart, I know it’s a shock—but you know you love Louis and you’re going to marry him. Perhaps a baby now is a little sooner than you might have planned, but I promise you that once you’ve had a chance to get used to the idea, it will be fantastic. It will be wonderful.”
“It’s just so final,” Sophie said slowly. “It’s just so definite.”
“Yes, babies do tend to be quite definite.” Iris looked perplexed. “What do you mean?”
“I meant that up until this point I still had choices. I could still have come back to London, got my old job back or one like it. I could still have flown off to New York and disrupted Jake’s wedding. I could still have told Louis that I’ve had enough of him and his crazy ex and his secret son. In fact, up until this point I could have cut the last year out of my life and never looked back, but I can’t do any of that now. I definitely can’t, because I am that thing. The p word. Pregnant. That is me, I am it. Knocked up.”
“Yes you are,” Iris said, sitting next to her. “And I can see how it seems as if the world is suddenly closing in on you. But ask yourself—if you weren’t pregnant, would you really have done any of those things? Would you have come back to London and worked in an office job that took over your life? Would you really have flown to America to break up the marriage of some man I’ve never heard of, but who I suspect is probably who you went to lunch with today? Would you really have left Louis because he’s got an annoying ex or would you have helped him sort things out with Seth and stood by him because even though it scares you to death you love him? And most of all, Sophie, would you, could you, ever cut those little girls out of your life? Baby or no, I don’t think you would have done any of that. Because that’s not you, that’s not my daughter who I am so proud of.”
“Are you really proud of me?” Sophie asked, surprised.
“Of course I am,” Iris told her, draping her arms around her daughter’s shoulders. “I didn’t understand you when you were working all those hours at McCarthy Hughes, never taking a breath to enjoy life, but I was always proud of you. And now I’ve seen how very brave you were in taking on those girls and how much you fought for them. And how you risked everything to be happy …I thought it would be impossible for me to be more proud of you, but here you are about to give me my first grandchild. Things couldn’t get much better.”
Sophie nodded. “I know,” she said. “It’s just that I’m pregnant. And it probably really hurts having a baby, and if I couldn’t work out I was pregnant in the first place, how in god’s name am I going to deal with it when it arrives?”
“You did know you were pregnant, you just didn’t know you knew,”
Iris told her. “You went off alcohol and caffeine, you put on a little weight. Your body was protecting your baby even if it took your brain a little while to catch up with the signs. And it will be the same when the baby’s here. You’ll be amazed by what you know without knowing you knew it. You’ll learn the rest and you’ll cope and you will be brilliant at it. Look at how you coped when you took in Bella and Izzy. Look at how much love you gave them and how they trusted and respected and loved you back, and you’d had nothing to do with any children before then.” Iris kissed the top of Sophie’s head. “Look, darling, you won’t be a perfect mother because there’s no such thing. But you’ll be a brilliant, loyal, loving, fun, and fair mother, and do you know how I know that?”
Sophie shook her head. “Is it because you’ve been on the dog tranquilizers again?”
“Because you already are, you already are a mother to those two little girls.”
Suddenly Sophie pictured Carrie, with Bella in her arms, her lips pressed lightly to her firstborn’s forehead, the look in her eyes one of shining contentment and joy. Sophie knew that whatever she had learned about love and trust from Carrie’s daughters had been at her best friend’s and Bella and Izzy’s expense. Precious stolen minutes, memories that the three of them would never be able to share together, snuffed out in a few minutes of arbitrary destruction. And as she thought about the tiny spark of life that had begun to burn inside her, she felt overwhelmed with all that Carrie and her children had lost.
“I’m not their mother,” she said. “I never will be.”
“But you’re the next best thing, and you love them every bit as much as you will love your own. And if Carrie could be here now she’d thank you for giving them the love she can’t any longer.”
Suddenly weary and indescribably sad, Sophie rested her head on the table and wept.
“That’s it,” Iris said, rubbing Sophie’s back the way she used to when Sophie was a little girl. “You let it out, you’ll feel better for it. And you wait and see; once you’ve told Louis, you’ll feel so much better. I bet you he’ll be overjoyed.”
“I am very pleased to see you, Aunty Sophie!” Izzy said into Sophie’s hair as she flung her arms around Sophie, who was attempting to fend off a small pack of overexcited dogs as she bent to embrace the four-year-old. Louis must have stopped at some point on the way to change them into their pajamas. Izzy was wearing her favorite pink fluffy pony pajamas with feet and Bella had on the dark red flannel she’d chosen herself, all bundled up underneath a red-and-green-tartan dressing gown that somehow succeeded in giving her the air of a Victorian amateur detective rather than a seven-year-old girl.
“Come here, Bella,” Sophie said, kissing her a little haphazardly on the bangs as Scooby shouldered Bella to one side hoping it was him Sophie was inviting for a hug rather than the child. “Oh, I’ve missed you two!”
“This is Wendy,” Bella said to Iris, screwing up her eyes as Scooby gave her an inquisitive lick on the cheek, pointing at Wendy, who was standing in the living room doorway peering over Louis’s shoulder as if she were using him as a human shield. Louis looked a little awkward standing in the hallway; he had never been to Iris’s house before. And he looked as if he didn’t know what to do or where to stand. “Wendy is Daddy’s friend who used to go to school with him. They did do kissing once but not anymore because now Daddy loves Aunty Sophie. Wendy has a grown-up son who has run away, although he is grown up, so …” Bella shrugged, as if to say “What’s the big deal?” “Daddy has brought us to London because he is going to help Wendy look for Seth. So that is why we are here. And to see you, Aunty Sophie, not to visit you, because you only visit people you don’t see very often, but we are still going to see you very often, aren’t we? Because you are only visiting your mummy, aren’t you? And then you are coming back to St. Ives to be with us.”
“Yes I am,” Sophie said, looking up at Louis and hoping to catch his eye, but he seemed to be studying the floor. Taking a breath, Sophie smiled, hugging both girls to her chest amid a forest of wagging tails. “It’s been years since I’ve seen you!”
“It’s been a week,” Bella informed her, smiling all the same. Sophie dragged her bundle of girls onto the sofa, out of the worst attention of the dogs, and cuddled them to her. Apart from her need to know exactly where she stood with Sophie, Bella seemed quite calm about their unscheduled trip and Sophie knew that was because she thought she understood what was going on. Yet it was clear that Louis had still seen fit to give her only an edited version of the truth and that worried Sophie. Eventually he would have to tell his daughters exactly who Seth was, and Sophie knew that Bella would feel hurt and betrayed, and Sophie was afraid of how she would react. If only she could have a chance to tell Louis all her worries and fears.
“Hello, you two.” Iris appeared with a plate of pink-iced cookies that immediately attracted the attention of all the dogs and the children in the room, so much so that she had to hold them above her head.
“Now I know it’s late, but I thought just this once it would be okay for you to have a cookie and some hot chocolate before bed. Not you, Scooby.” The girls giggled as Scooby made an attempt to balance on his back legs to reach the cookies and Iris smiled sweetly at Louis. “That’s okay, isn’t it, Louis?”
“Of course, Iris.” Louis advanced into the room for the first time, stepping over dogs to reach Sophie’s mother and plant a kiss on her cheek. Sophie tried not to notice that he had kissed her mother before he’d come anywhere near her, but his apparent disinterest in her stung as badly as if he’d slapped her in the face. She dipped her head, burying her face in Izzy’s hair and closing her eyes until the threat of tears had passed. “Thanks so much for having them to stay. They’d much rather be here with Soph and you than anywhere else.”
“It’s no trouble,” Iris said, smiling fondly at the girls. “You know I think of you as family, and you two lovelies are the best little girls I know, yes you are!” Iris chucked Izzy under the chin as if she were one of her pet dogs, which in fairness she did bear a striking resemblance to because as soon as the cookies had appeared, she climbed down from the sofa and stood perfectly still at Scooby’s side, her head not quite level with his, both pairs of eyes fixed firmly on the prize.
“Well, you come with me then,” Iris said. “And you, Bella. We’ll go in the kitchen and let Daddy and Sophie have a few words.” She looked at Wendy and sniffed.
“Come through and have some tea, Wendy,” she all but commanded.
Sophie looked at Louis’s companion. She looked like she hadn’t slept much, as did Louis. His stubble had grown halfway to a beard and he looked a little lost, like he had the first time Sophie met him, on the night he’d flown back from Peru after finding out that Carrie had been killed. He’d been waiting for her outside her flat because he’d been desperate to find the children he had abandoned, one of whom hadn’t even been born when he’d left, and make amends. That night Sophie had mistaken him for a tramp. Tonight though, no matter how disheveled and tired he looked, there was no doubt that he was the man she loved; suddenly she was exhausted by all the thinking and the striving to be certain. All she knew was that she loved him and wanted to do whatever it took to make him happy. And if that meant waiting for him to resolve things with Wendy and Seth, then she would.
“We haven’t got long,” Wendy said, glancing at Louis as she followed Iris toward the kitchen. “I really want to try and see Seth tonight.”
“Won’t be long,” Louis said, smiling reassuringly at Wendy as Sophie herded the last of the dogs out behind the other woman, shutting the door behind her. Finally they were alone.
“I’ve missed you,” Sophie said, standing an awkward three feet from him.
“Really?” Louis asked her. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”
“Yes.” Sophie smiled cautiously. “I know I shouldn’t have just rushed off like that, I was tired and Wendy really did make things difficult and well …Louis, it turns out I
was very hormonal.” She paused, desperate to ask him if he had missed her too, but terrified by what he might say.
“It’s okay,” Louis said, shrugging, directing his attention to the mantelpiece where her mother kept an array of her school photos, from cute and ponytailed five-year-old to awkward teen. “It’s all right that you want some space to think about us. I didn’t want you to go, but I’ve had a chance to think about it and maybe it’s the right thing.”
“The right thing?” Sophie felt a cool wash of fear sweep through her. “What’s the right thing?”
“That we take a breather, have some time apart. Put the engagement on hold.”
“On hold?” Sophie asked him.
“Yes.” Louis redirected his gaze to the ceiling, and then to the toes of his boots, seeming to prefer looking anywhere but at her. “It’s like Wendy said, the timing’s not great. I need to get things sorted with Seth, I need to work out what’s happening there and get it on an even keel. So maybe it is best for you to move in with your mum while I’m doing that.”
“Out of the way,” Sophie confirmed, her tone nudging at anger.
“No, that’s not what I mean.” Louis frowned. “Look, it was you who packed a bag and left without a moment’s notice. All I’m saying is that maybe it is a good idea after all.”
“Because Wendy says so?” Sophie was desperate to bring things back to the point where she felt she could reach out and touch and kiss him and tell him about the baby, but the more she wanted that, the more she seemed to say the very thing that would push him away.
The Accidental Family Page 26
