The Accidental Family

by Rowan Coleman

  “And she loves Daddy a lot, they do a lot of kissing,” Bella added.

  “So before I rocked up, it was all pretty cool for you kids then,” Seth said.

  “Yes,” Izzy said. “We’re getting married to Aunty Sophie and there will be wings.”

  “So you don’t really need me around screwing it all up for you, do you?” Seth said, standing up suddenly, making Sophie’s body tense as she stood in the shadows. Bella and Izzy stood up too, the safe distance between them and the cliff edge shrinking as Seth strode nearer it, the girls in his wake. “What would be best for you little dudes is for me to get out of here and let you get on with your lives.”

  “No! Stay!” Izzy ran full tilt toward Seth and the thin air just behind him, catching hold of his hand at the last second and breaking her speed against his weight.

  “Yes, stay,” Sophie said finally, raising her voice just enough for it to be heard above the sea breeze that whipped through the grass, keeping it calm and friendly. Keeping all the fear and anger and shock at bay. “Stay there, Seth, and don’t go any closer to the edge, please.”

  “Aunty Sophie!” As she had hoped, Izzy let go of Seth’s hand and raced toward her, followed closely by Bella. She clasped them in her arms, pressing their small bodies against hers as if she could somehow fold them into her flesh and keep them safe from harm forever.

  “We’ve been with Seth,” Izzy said. “We had chocolate for tea.”

  “You came for us. Are we in trouble?” Bella asked her, her arms wrapped tightly around Sophie’s body.

  “No, no …no one’s in trouble,” Sophie said carefully, aware of the distant sound of police sirens growing ever louder; she wondered if Carmen, worried about how long she’d been gone, had alerted the police. “I was very worried about you, but you’re not in trouble.”

  “I’m sorry,” Seth said, his back to the sea, his hands in his trouser pockets. He looked like a little boy who’d been caught with his hands in the sweets jar.

  “You bloody stupid boy,” Sophie said, her voice angry and low as she clung to the girls. “You should be sorry. You can’t just run rampant through people’s lives because you’re having a hard time. No matter how difficult or messed up you think your life is, you have no right to drag two small children into it and put them in danger.”

  “Was there danger?” Izzy asked her, suddenly alarmed. “What, monsters?”

  “Leave Seth alone,” Bella said indignantly. “He’s been kind to us, not bad. Not a monster.”

  “I know, darling, but he shouldn’t have taken you away without asking. I was so, so worried.”

  “I’m sorry, Sophie, about everything …” Seth took a step closer to her. “But I would never hurt them. I wanted to meet them without Mum and Louis on my back. Louis said I should meet them, so I decided I would. Today. I didn’t think, I didn’t get how much you’d worry. I thought you’d be cool once you knew they were with me.”

  “You brought them here, to the top of a cliff, and you’re standing there talking about disappearing for good!” Sophie exclaimed. “How on earth would that make me feel cool?”

  “What, you think I’d …” Seth shook his head. “I meant like transferring courses to Manchester or something, not topping myself. Those two are proper cool. I don’t want to wreck things for them. Or you, you seem like a decent kind of woman, taking them on when they had no one. Looking after me when I’d got a bit out of control. I want you to get your wedding with your wings and be happy before me and my bloody mother mess it all up for you. Look, I’m stupid. I’m really bloody stupid, but I’d never …” He paused, the trouble he’d caused just registering on his face. “Oh god, I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry?” Sophie let out a ragged, rage-filled breath. “You bloody, bloody idiot, Louis,” she sobbed, collapsing on the cold, wet grass, the girls still in her arms.

  “Aunty Sophie!” Izzy’s giggles echoed in her ears. “Don’t be silly.”

  “I can’t breathe,” Sophie gasped. “I can’t …”

  “But it’s okay, we’re okay now,” Bella said, placing her palms on either side of Sophie’s face as she lay on the ground, dimly aware of the wet grass on the back of her neck.

  “I feel …I can’t …” Sophie felt the heat of the girls’ bodies in her arms as she pulled them closer to her, determined never to let them go again. And then she felt nothing.

  Then there was nothing.

  Twenty-one

  Someone was holding Sophie’s hand as she came round in the back of the ambulance, its rocking motion as they headed toward the hospital bringing her back to the world. She tried to sit up, but her head spun and her vision blurred whenever she tried to move. She could see the drip in her arm though and feel its cool fluid circulating through her veins.

  “I’m pregnant,” she blurted out. “Please, don’t give me anything that’s going to hurt my baby.”

  “You’re pregnant?” a male voice spoke. “Like with a baby?”

  “Yes, Seth, I’m pregnant, and your antics with my children haven’t exactly helped matters, thank you very bloody much, so just get the hell out of my ambulance …oh, Louis, it’s you.”

  Sophie concentrated very hard, forcing her eyes to focus on Louis’s face. “But how …when did you arrive …have I been out for weeks or something? Is the baby born and I didn’t notice? Where are the girls, are the girls okay—are they here?”

  “Hello,” Louis said, staring at her. “Hello, Sophie. The girls are fine, they are safe, Mrs. Alexander and Carmen are with them at home. The police had a word with Seth, but after I talked to him they let him go home with his mum. You’ve been out for about half an hour, but the paramedic says you’re going to be fine. I got back just a little while ago. Seth had gotten himself into trouble, gotten himself arrested for being drunk and disorderly—trying to pick fights in a part of town where every other kid carries a weapon. He got drunk again and told Wendy he didn’t care what happened to him. Wendy was so frightened for him that she called the police and they kept him in a cell overnight to sober up. We went back the next day to pick him up, but they’d already let him go. I never thought he’d come back down here. Bloody student-rail discount cards, I blame them.” Louis attempted a smile, but Sophie just stared at him, somehow detached from what he was telling her, from everything except the lull and sway of the ambulance, as if she were still unconscious and dreaming, only with her eyes open.

  “Seth called Wendy this morning, told her he was coming back to Cornwall to meet his family. We followed him down, as quickly as we could. But when I got back, the house was empty. Mrs. Alexander said you’d rushed off to find the girls, the school said their brother had them. I didn’t have my bloody phone. But I found James at the lifeboat house. He told me you were with Carmen, and I rang her. I came straight to you, Soph.”

  “You came too late,” Sophie told him, coming around ever so slowly as everything he said to her began to sink in. “Where were you, Louis? You walked out on us!”

  “I know …I know …” Louis closed his eyes, on his face an expression of pain. “When you took Bella upstairs to clean her feet, Wendy phoned back. She said she was really worried about Seth. Said he’d gone off into the night and she didn’t know what he might do …she said she thought he might hurt himself. She begged me to come and help her find him. I kept thinking that it was all my fault, and I knew the girls would be safe with you. I just went. I didn’t know I’d left my phone. I didn’t think you’d be gone before I had a chance to speak to you. I didn’t think and …Sophie, did I imagine it or did you just say you’re pregnant?”

  Sophie turned her face away from him.

  “Listen, mate,” the paramedic told Louis. “We’ll be in Penzance in a minute. The girl’s just fainted. Give her a bit of space, okay?”

  “I’m sorry.” Louis kissed the back of Sophie’s hand. “I’m really, really sorry. We can talk about it whenever you want. But, Sophie, please tell me, are you really pregnant?” />
  Sophie nodded slowly, biting her lip fearfully.

  “I’m just over two months gone,” Sophie told him wearily. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?” Louis asked her. “Why in god’s name are you sorry?”

  “Because you’ve already got three children. And you said you didn’t want any more. And I didn’t realize I was pregnant until my mum told me when I was in London. You’ll have another child with a useless mother who can’t get children to school on time and leaves them to be kidnapped by their unhinged brother.”

  “Listen, that was scary, but it wasn’t your fault,” Louis said. “And the girls weren’t ever really in any danger.”

  “I didn’t know that, and neither did you until you got here,” Sophie said, swallowing as she remembered the fear that had consumed her. She turned to look at him. “And you got here too late, you bastard!” Without warning she punched Louis hard in the arm, making him yelp and the paramedic whistle through his teeth. “You should have been there, you should have been there to look after your daughters and take care of me. That’s what you’re supposed to do, but you left, you bloody left again. Because that’s what you do, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not …honestly it’s not. I know that’s the way it looks, but it’s not how it is,” Louis said. He glanced at the paramedic then unstrapped his seat belt so that he could kneel on the floor next to the trolley she was strapped to.

  “Sophie, you’re pregnant. You, Sophie Mills, are pregnant with my baby—that’s …that’s amazing, it’s incredible. It’s the best, most brilliant news I’ve heard in a long time. I know I’ve screwed up, I’ve screwed up badly, and I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to handle things with Seth and Wendy, and instead of talking to you about it, relying on you like I should have, I shut you out. I let you down, and I let my daughters down—something I swore I’d never ever do again. You don’t have much reason to believe me right now, but I promise that I will look after you and Bella and Izzy and our baby. And Seth, if he’ll let me. And I know I don’t deserve it, but the only news you could give me now that would make me any happier is that you will still marry me despite what a bloody fool I’ve been.”

  Sophie stared at him, chewing her lip.

  “Seth kissed me,” she told him. “That night when he came back to the B and B he kissed me and I let him. It was only a few seconds, but it probably wasn’t appropriate under the circumstances. I’m telling you because I’m trying to think of all the skeletons that could possibly be in my closet before we go any further.”

  “Okay,” Louis said. “That’s a bit weird, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters as long as you’ll still have me.”

  “And when I was in London, I had lunch with Jake and he told me I was incredibly sexy and beautiful and he kissed me too, which was wrong, I know, but it helped me realize that I don’t want to be kissed by anyone but you. Not even a younger version of you.”

  Louis breathed out a long, slow breath.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m pretty ticked off about Jake and I may have to track him down and kill him, but I get it. I wasn’t around. I wasn’t there for you and you were confused. And as for Seth, well, if there is one thing I’ve learned about him it’s that he’s impulsive, he acts first and thinks later. Plus, I’d try to kiss you if I were him. You’re the most beautiful girl in the world. So it’s okay, none of that matters. I forgive you.”

  “Oh, mate,” the paramedic said as they pulled to a halt in the hospital parking lot. “You were doing so well right up until that moment.”

  Sophie stared at the murky mass of shadows on the monitor. Amid the gray, like the churning clouds of a stormy night, lay a small black pearl, perfectly round, a serene, dark world, the world her baby inhabited.

  “It’s too early to see much,” the nurse told her. “But everything looks good so far, and if you squint really hard …you can just about see the heartbeat. See that little flicker there?”

  Sophie peered at the image, feeling as if she were attempting to divine her own future, and then suddenly she saw it, just as images of animals and faces had emerged from the pattern on her mother’s Formica kitchen tabletop, it was there. Just a scrap of life, the merest flicker of a candle that might be snuffed out at any second except that it kept on burning.

  “Wow,” Louis said from the doorway, where Sophie had told him to stand unless he wanted another thump. “Look at that, Sophie, that’s amazing.”

  He edged a little closer and bent over so that he could get a better look.

  “Can we have a photo?” Louis asked the technician.

  “You won’t see much, but you can have one,” the nurse said, smiling at him. Tentatively Louis reached out and picked up Sophie’s hand; she withdrew it immediately.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. “It just sort of came out. You’re the one who should be forgiving me, not the other way round. I know that now, especially after you slapped me. You slap hard for a recently unconscious pregnant lady.”

  Louis rubbed his jaw gingerly.

  “The thing is …” Sophie stopped and looked at the nurse.

  “Don’t mind me,” the nurse said, handing Sophie a wad of tissues to rub the gel from her stomach. “I’ll just pop out and let the doctors know the results. You two have a few minutes to get straight.”

  “The thing is,” Sophie said once they were alone, “if we were solid, if we were the kind of couple who should get married, then things wouldn’t have happened this way, would they? You wouldn’t have cut me out of what was happening with you and Seth and that bloody Wendy woman. I wouldn’t have run away to London at the first possible opportunity and thought about kissing Jake …”

  “And actually kissed Jake,” Louis added, a little darkly.

  “And if we hadn’t been so wrapped up in this bubble of us, and being in love, and thinking that the whole world would just fall into step with us because we wanted it to, then maybe I wouldn’t have gotten accidentally pregnant.”

  “You’re not the first woman in the world this has happened to,” Louis told her. “It’s not as if you’re some kid, on your own without a father on the scene …” Louis trailed off, obviously thinking about Wendy, a fact that caused Sophie’s jealousy to spike. At this moment in time, she didn’t want his thoughts to stray from her for one second.

  “Actually, since the moment I found out I was pregnant there has been no father on the scene,” she told him sharply. “I’ve been coping with this alone, Louis. We’ve all been coping alone because you weren’t there.”

  “I know …I know, and that was wrong, but I’ve been stretched so thin recently. I’ve been trying to do the right thing and ending up getting it wrong all of the time. I should have listened to you about Seth, especially about telling the girls, and I shouldn’t have shut you out of what was happening. But I couldn’t ignore him and Wendy either, could I? You were the one who told me that. You said I had to find out about my son and you were right. You have to see that all the mistakes I’ve made weren’t because I was being a coward and running away. I made them because I wanted to get things right. I want everything right before you and I start our married life together. And anyway,” Louis went on, “so what if we were wrapped up in a bubble of love, that’s what being in love is about, isn’t it? Being happy, experiencing the joy of being with someone who is so perfect and so right for you.” Louis caught Sophie’s wrist as she stood up to button her jeans. He pulled her close to him, entwining the fingers of his other hand in her hair.

  “You make me so happy, happier than I’ve ever been,” he told her. “I thought I made you happy too.”

  “You did, you do,” Sophie insisted. “Most of the time. I’ve never felt so happy, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of everyone else.”

  “What do you mean?” Louis asked her.

  “We thought that because we were happy, everyone else was too—but they’re not. The girls aren’t happy; yes, from day to day they’re okay, but deep down t
hey aren’t over losing Carrie or the trauma they went through, of course they’re not. Their mother died. How could we let Carrie down so badly? You saw Bella when she thought you were going to leave her. She still doesn’t feel safe or secure, Louis. She still thinks you might abandon her at any moment. And did you know that if Izzy is frightened or worried, she hides it by laughing and being silly? I didn’t know that, I didn’t know it until Bella told Seth, someone she barely knows, about it on the cliff top. She told him, not you or me, and now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense. Little sunny Izzy, always so full of fun even in her darkest hour, but that’s not true. All she was trying to do was keep the shadows at bay. Neither one of us noticed that. Because we didn’t want to. We didn’t want reality crashing in and spoiling things for us.”

  Sophie shook herself free from Louis’s grip and went to the door. “And now this, now a baby. What’s that going to do to them? You want me to say that everything’s going to be fine. That I’ll marry you and we’ll have our baby and we’ll all live happily ever after. But I just don’t know if that is possible anymore.”

  “What are you saying, you’re saying you’d consider …” Louis went to Sophie and put his hand on her belly.

  “No, god no—of course not,” Sophie said.

  “Then what?” Louis asked her.

  “I’m just not sure that I can marry you,” she said. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Okay, so the idea of marriage freaks you out, I get that, I think. And if you really don’t want to do it, we don’t have to. We can live together—you, me, the girls, the baby—like one big happy family.”

  “I love you,” Sophie said. “But I don’t know. I don’t know if we are ready to do that yet. It would be easy to say that we are because of the baby, but I don’t want Bella or Izzy or our child to have to go through any more upheaval, any more confusion or loss, because you and I aren’t as strong or as close as we need to be to really make this family work.”