by Jane Plume
But they weren’t working – and Gina couldn’t get his temperature down, no matter what she did. She called me to say she was taking him to the walk-in centre as it was out of hours for the doctor’s surgery and I wished her luck with the appointment.
When she phoned me a short while later, I could immediately hear the concern in her voice.
‘We have to take him to the hospital!’ she told me tearfully. ‘They think he could have pneumonia.’
I did my best to reassure her and promised her I would be at the hospital as soon as I could. I arrived not long after Gina and Shaun, who confirmed that Lewis did indeed have pneumonia and that it was so bad that they were taking him straight to theatre to try to clear his lungs out. They were both distraught. We paced the waiting room with Gina’s mum and dad anxiously waiting for news. After what felt like a lifetime, he was brought back to the ward, wired up to machines, with drips in both his hands and his face covered in a mask from the ventilator, which was helping him to breathe. He looked so tiny lying there, too small to be fighting such a serious illness. My children were with their dad so I was free to offer any support that I could. I didn’t want to leave. I needed to be there for my friend.
A few hours after he came back to the ward, the doctors said they were pleased with Lewis’s progress so they wanted to see if he could breathe on his own. Gina was so terrified she couldn’t watch as they pulled the tubes out of his throat, so Shaun sat by his son’s side holding his hand while I gave a step-by-step rundown to Gina of what they were doing, standing with my arms around her to comfort her. Suddenly, I said, ‘His chest is moving. He’s doing it. He is breathing by himself!’ Gina’s body shuddered as she broke down and sobbed with relief. She had nearly lost her beautiful boy but now it seemed the worst was over.
Sometime later I left Gina and Shaun at the hospital. They promised me they would call me if there was any change at all. Over the next few days Lewis did remarkably well. He was still poorly but would sit up in bed to read a book or attempt a jigsaw. Gina, by her own admission, ‘didn’t do sick’ so I would take over when Lewis was vomiting, or just to give Gina and Shaun a break from the bedside vigil.
At last the doctors said that all the fluid had gone from Lewis’s lungs so they could take the chest drain out. They explained that this wouldn’t be nice and would be painful for Lewis but it was a huge step forward. Gina looked at me and said, ‘He will hate me for this.’ I knew what she was saying: that he was too young to understand why his loving mum would let him go through this trauma while she was there to stop it; that he wouldn’t realise that it was all for his own good. So I took Lewis’s little hand in mine and said, ‘Come with Auntie Jane, sweetheart. We have to go and see the special doctor.’
During the next few painful minutes, I held him tight in my arms with tears pouring down my face as he struggled against me. Then at last it was done and I cuddled him and told him how brave he was. The nurse gave him a sticker, a bravery certificate and a lollipop for being such a good boy, and he walked out of the room with a beaming smile to show them off to everybody. Gina hugged him and, amid tears of relief, she looked at me and mouthed, ‘Thank you.’ I smiled and said, ‘It’s fine.’
A couple of days later Lewis was allowed home and made a complete recovery. To this day, he vaguely remembers being in hospital and has the scars to prove it, but as yet has never asked me why I let the doctors hurt him. At least now he would be old enough to understand.
Mother’s Day fell shortly after Lewis came home and, when I came down in the morning, I was surprised to see three envelopes on my kitchen table. I opened my cards from Marco and Millie, then I got to the third. Inside I found a lovely card with the words ‘Like a mum to me’ across the front. Gina had helped Lewis to write his name inside and there was a simple message from Gina and Shaun saying, ‘Thank you for everything.’
That weekend, it was my ex-husband’s turn to have Marco and Millie so Gina and Shaun insisted I joined them for a Mother’s Day meal with Lewis. As usual, Gina wouldn’t take no for an answer. ‘Like the card says,’ she insisted. ‘You are like a mum to him so it’s only right you come out with us for Mother’s Day.’ Eventually I agreed and the four of us went out for a lovely meal. It just felt like the natural thing to do.
• • •
Shaun and Gina were really happy together the second time around and in time I met a new partner. Kev and I got together that year and when I introduced him to Gina and Shaun (for approval, as Gina put it), he and Shaun hit it off straight away. ‘Perfect,’ thought Gina and I. We would do things together as two families.
Coincidentally, the men were both keen to learn to scuba-dive, so Gina and I encouraged them to enrol on a local course together. They both qualified and soon were going off to different places to dive, leaving Gina and I to have our girly time. Shaun was still a bouncer and worked at weekends, and Kev got a job with him some time later, which meant that Gina and I could have girly nights in most weekends. It all worked out beautifully.
We also spent a lot of time all together as two families, having barbecues, going for a drink or a meal, taking the kids on days out and celebrating birthdays, Christmases and New Year’s Eves together. I come from a family that has always been into racing and Shaun was a big motorbike fan, which meant Gina became a big bike fan too. My nephews Stephen and Paul raced sidecars, and Gina and Shaun would often come along to watch them race.
In the summer of 2003, Gina and I decided to take the kids to Gulliver’s Kingdom, the theme park in Matlock, for a treat. We had to go in two cars as we couldn’t all fit in one and we stopped at a garage for fuel on the way, so Gina and I brought some sweets for the journey. After we set off again, I was driving along chatting with Marco and Millie, munching sweets, when all of a sudden I felt something hard in my mouth – I had pulled a filling out on a toffee eclair. ‘Great,’ I thought. ‘If I have toothache all day this is not going to be fun!’
We pulled into a parking space and Gina opened her car door and held out her hand to me. ‘I’ve only gone and pulled my filling out,’ she said. I couldn’t believe it, what were the chances of that happening to both of us?
It didn’t stop the fun, of course, and we had a great day. The kids loved it, the weather was fantastic. But a week after the trip I got a letter through the post, saying I had been flashed by a speed camera both on the way to Gulliver’s Kingdom and on the way back. I was mortified. I racked my brains, trying to remember if I had been following Gina or she had been following me, then I decided I would blame her anyway (in a fun way). As I went to pick up the phone to call her she rang me. She had received exactly the same letter and was ringing to try to blame me. We couldn’t help laughing. Kev and Shaun were not so amused but joked that, in future, we were not to be allowed out together again unless accompanied by a responsible adult.
Christmas was always a good time. Gina and I had already established that we both loved Christmas and we spent weeks getting ready, and spending far too much money. Now Shaun started a tradition of ringing our house and asking to speak to Marco and Millie, then putting on a voice and pretending to be Father Christmas. Then Kev would return the call to Lewis. None of the kids guessed that it wasn’t really Father Christmas until they were old enough to stop believing in Santa altogether.
Over Christmas, we started to think about holidays. We all spent so much time with each other that it only seemed natural we should go away together and, once it had been mentioned, there was no stopping us. When Gina was on a mission, she was like a dog with a bone and completely engrossed until her task was complete, whether it was a project at work, the weekly shop online, finding an unusual present, or booking a holiday. So when she rang me a couple of days later to say that she had worked out how much it would cost for us all to go to Disneyland Paris, I wasn’t at all surprised. Better still, the dates she had chosen were only a few weeks away! That was it, decision made, we confirmed the booking and got on with the packing.
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It didn’t take long for the time to come around and soon we were off. I honestly can’t say who was the most excited – Gina and me, or the three children. Kev and Shaun, being easy-going guys, just did what they were told and went along with it, as always. It was early 2004 and it was freezing, but that didn’t stop us making the most of everything. We had an amazing time!
To people looking on, if Lewis hadn’t been the double of his mum, I guess it would have been hard to tell which child belonged to which adult. We all treated the children exactly the same as if they were our own. Millie, then seven, spent most of the holiday perched up on Shaun’s shoulders and Lewis, like me, wasn’t keen on the bigger rides so we would go look at other things while the others went on. In the evenings we would all go out for a meal together, then when the exhausted kids fell into bed we would sit in one of our adjoining rooms, chatting and making plans until the early hours. Plans that included other days out, chill-out time together and more holidays!
As far as we were concerned, we had all the time in the world.
• • •
By mid-2004, Kev and I were really happy together and agreed, with great excitement, that we wanted to take our relationship into a new phase. He was a fantastic stepdad to Marco and Millie, and we decided it was time to add to our little brood, so we started trying for a baby. We chose to keep it quiet in case it didn’t happen, but I wouldn’t dream of keeping such a secret from Gina. So one day, over a cuppa in my living room, I confided, ‘I’m not supposed to be telling anyone, but Kev and I are going to try for a baby. If it happens, it happens. What will be will be.’
Gina grinned immediately.
‘I knew you would be excited for us,’ I said.
‘Not just you, us,’ she replied.
I looked at her quizzically. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Shaun and I have decided to try for another one too,’ she blurted out happily.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Gina’s sister Keri had recently announced she was pregnant again, to Gina’s obvious delight, and Gina had never hidden the fact that she wanted more children. We flung our arms around each other and danced around like a couple of toddlers at a birthday party. This was going to be something else that we could share.
After that, we would spend hours trying to calculate the best time to get pregnant – and comforting each other when, month after month, it didn’t happen. But the frequent disappointments never stopped us planning how life would be with a new baby. We kept each other strong.
Eventually, though, it did get a little overwhelming, so it was a welcome distraction when Kev and Shaun announced they were taking us to Dublin for our birthdays, for a joint weekend break. Gina and I had birthdays a week apart; Gina’s on the 24th of January, mine on the 31st. We knew that we would both miss our children but the idea of an adults only weekend was exciting. We added the Dublin dates to our diaries and started to look forward to the trip.
The excitement also put us in the holiday mood and we decided that we would all like to have a proper family holiday abroad, so Gina was on a mission again. After all her research, we decided on the Dominican Republic and booked the holiday for Easter 2005.
Before we could start our globe-trotting, though, there was Christmas. Yippee! Our favourite time of year. Gina and I went into the usual seasonal frenzy, rushing around, shopping together, making plans, but I noticed Gina seemed a bit quiet at times. Eventually, I asked her if she was okay, but she simply said she just felt a bit run-down.
‘You’re too excited about Santa!’ I joked. Then a thought struck me. ‘Or you could be pregnant?’
‘I can’t be,’ she answered sadly. ‘I’ve had my period.’
But I wasn’t convinced. She simply wasn’t herself. I persuaded her to buy a test and we sat looking at the little stick anxiously, jiggling and fidgeting with anticipation. The two minutes we had to wait seemed like an hour but finally we watched two little blue lines appear and we looked at each other with soppy grins – then burst into tears. I was so thrilled for her, even though I will admit that my joy, while genuine, was tinged with the tiniest bit of envy as I was so desperate to be in the same happy position. But, hey, if it couldn’t be me, this was the next best thing!
I watched Gina get in her car, beaming from ear to ear, on her way to tell Shaun that he was going to be a dad again and let Lewis know that he was going to have a little brother or sister. She also couldn’t wait to tell her sister, Keri, who was due to have her own baby in February. I knew how thrilled they all would be and knew Gina was overjoyed at the prospect of being a mum again. A happy tear rolled down my cheek as I waved her off.
• • •
On the day of our break away to Dublin, we arrived at the airport and settled ourselves into a bar to wait for our flight. As the boys got the round in, we were all teasing Gina, because she could only have a soft drink, but she really didn’t care. Nothing was going to spoil this long-awaited weekend.
In Dublin, we found the accommodation we had booked and a very pleasant lady welcomed us and showed us to our room. But her friendly manner proved to be deceiving.
‘Oh my God!’ was all I could say when I opened the door. The room was filthy and we had twin beds, not a double as booked. I ran round to the room next door and bumped into Gina on her way out.
‘I’m going to have words with someone,’ she said, and off she disappeared down the stairs.
‘So it wasn’t just our room,’ I thought.
Gina soon reappeared and explained that the lady had told her housekeeping had not done our rooms yet, as we had arrived a little earlier than expected. To give them time to rectify the situation we had a quick shower, got changed and headed out to explore. After a lovely meal, we rounded off the evening by trying out a few bars. As the night wore on, I noticed Gina was a little quiet but, when I asked, she said she was just tired. She was pregnant, and not drinking, while we were letting our hair down so I thought no more about it.
When we got back to our bed and breakfast, we were horrified to see the rooms were just as they had been before we left – disgusting! It was now the early hours of the morning and we were all exhausted so we agreed to make do for the night and flopped into bed, shattered. I refused to get between the sheets so slept fully clothed on top of the bed – as did Gina and Shaun, we discovered the following morning.
The next day, we ate breakfast and beat a hasty retreat to find somewhere a little more luxurious for our second night. Never mind the money, we weren’t staying there another moment. Shaun remembered a hotel he had stayed in a couple of years previously on a rugby tour. What a difference! The place was perfect and even had a swimming pool and sauna. Naturally, Gina and I decided to take full advantage of the facilities and planned a couple of hours relaxing on our final morning while Kev and Shaun headed off to the on-site gym.
As we sat in the bar area having a coffee and waiting for the men, I asked Gina, ‘Is everything okay? You don’t seem yourself?’
To my alarm, a tear ran down her cheek. I put my arms around her. ‘What is it, babe?’
‘I’m bleeding,’ she replied.
‘Oh Gina, why didn’t you say something?’ I asked. ‘Does Shaun know?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to ruin this weekend for everyone.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I told her, sternly. ‘Let’s go and find him.’
We were due to fly home in a couple of hours and, to be honest, Gina seemed relieved to have got it off her chest. Of course, I was desperately concerned for my friend but doing my utmost not to show it. After we landed, Gina went directly to the doctor’s surgery and rang me as soon as her appointment was over. I picked up, half-dreading the news I could be about to hear.
‘Everything is fine,’ she gushed, happily. ‘The baby’s heartbeat is strong and they just advised me to rest for a while.’
Relief flooded over me and I felt a weight lift from my mind. Then something else occurred to me. How
was Gina being pregnant going to affect our holiday to the Caribbean?
I left Gina to get over her scare for a few days before I broached the subject.
‘Oh, I’ll be fine,’ she said breezily.
But we decided to pop into the travel agent’s to double check.
We didn’t get the answer we were hoping for. The travel agent explained that Gina would be in the second trimester of her pregnancy and wouldn’t be allowed to take a long-haul flight. We were absolutely devastated. The holiday we had dreamed of had gone! The travel agent went on to explain that Gina and Shaun could change their booking to a European holiday so that they didn’t lose any money, but my family couldn’t change our booking as we didn’t have a valid reason. So that was it. There was to be no joint holiday.
We were all a bit down for a few days, but we accepted what had happened. Gina having a baby on the way was, of course, far more important than a holiday. Besides, we reasoned, there would be many more years of holidays stretching ahead of us so we could make up for it at a later date. Gina and Shaun rearranged their holiday for later in the year after the baby was born, while we continued with our plans for the Dominican Republic.
A few weeks later, I had a cold and no matter what I did I just couldn’t seem to shake it off completely. The red nose and sneezing had gone, but I was still horribly lethargic. Valentine’s Day came around and, after weeks of this, I still felt no better. ‘I wonder…’ I thought.
That day, I had a busy schedule of meetings, but I made time to pop quickly to the shop before lunch and then did the test. A grin spread across my face as those tell-tale blue lines appeared. I was pregnant! At last. I was over the moon and my first thought was, ‘I’ve got to tell Gina!’
I had already arranged to meet Gina for lunch at 12.30 p.m. I looked at the clock. Five to twelve I would have to wait for another thirty-five minutes. I groaned inwardly, it felt like a lifetime away. At last the time came, so I headed over towards the building that Gina worked in and saw her walking towards me. By now, she had a little bump showing and, seeing that, I could barely contain my own excitement!