Her Little Secret

by Carol Marinelli

  ‘Thanks for the sage advice.’

  ‘You will thank me.’ Ellie beamed. ‘Come on, you’re late and I’m skiving off early.’

  They walked out together, talking much about nothing, and then the world stopped because there at the nurses’ station was Nick, smiling as she walked over. Her heart was in her mouth and her face must have paled but thank God for Ellie, who had ensured she was at least wearing mascara!

  ‘Hi, there,’ he said as she stood waiting for handover.

  ‘Hi.’ Alison could hardly get the word out, her throat was squeezed closed so tightly. ‘How was New Zealand?’

  ‘Great.’

  And he just stood and she just looked and he just waited—and there were so many things that she wanted to say, to ask, and so much she wanted to avoid, so awkwardly she just stood.

  ‘Nick!’ Sheila was far more effusive. ‘What on earth? It is so good to see you—we’ve had to battle through with the most miserable locum in the southern hemisphere.’ She glanced over her shoulder just in case he was around, then shrugged. ‘How long till you disappear?’

  ‘Not sure,’ Nick said. ‘I’ve got a few things I need to sort out.’

  He did change the energy of the place.

  Moira squealed in delight when she came on at midday and though he was holed up an awful lot in Amy’s office, Alison tried not to be jealous, or get ahead of herself and believe that it was them he had come to sort out. And yet, as she showed around a new group of student nurses, she was reminded of a certain matter that needed discussing.

  ‘X-ray.’ The familiar call came from Resus, and Alison moved the group back.

  ‘Just be careful,’ Alison warned. ‘They do call out, but just be aware that there are a lot of portable X-rays taken here.’

  ‘Is Resus lead lined?’ a student asked, and Alison shook her head.

  ‘You just need to keep your distance when they’re shooting, and wear a gown.’ She knew it was safe, had pored over all the information, knew that the safest place to stand was behind the radiographer, and that, really, the level of exposure was tiny, and yet, and yet… ‘If you’re pregnant, or think there’s a chance you might be, it’s best to let us know if you’re not happy to be in there when they’re taking films.’ And then Alison realised just how futile those words were and offered the next best thing. ‘Or just slip away…’

  Which she tried to do when her shift ended, but Nick caught her as she slunk off.

  ‘I want a word with you.’ He was waiting outside the changing room. ‘Several, in fact. If you want to, that is.’ And she didn’t know what she wanted so he spoke into the silence. ‘I know a nice café that does ricotta cheese and cherry strudel—I’ll be there at five.’

  He was there before her again.

  Only her teeth didn’t feel like glass. Instead her mouth felt like it was filled with sand as she made her way over.

  ‘I’ve already ordered,’ Nick said as a waitress came over.

  ‘I might not have come.’

  ‘I’m always hungry.’ They sat in silence as two lattés and two strudels were placed before them and Alison took a sip of her drink.

  ‘What happened, Alison?’

  And she had to tell him, except the words wouldn’t come out.

  So she toyed with her strudel, and went to take a bite, then remembered that soft cheese was on the list of forbidden foods her obstetrician had given her, and as she put the pastry down she saw him frown, almost saw the thought process in his eyes. And then two words were said, presumably by her, because it sounded like her voice and Nick’s lips weren’t moving.

  And then she closed her eyes, because she didn’t want to see all his dreams evaporating, didn’t want to witness him realise that his twelve months of freedom had just delivered him every last thing he’d been trying to avoid.

  ‘When did you find out?’ His voice sounded normal.

  ‘A few days ago.’ Alison swallowed. ‘When I was sick.’

  ‘That was more than a few days ago, that was a few weeks ago, Alison.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Only Nick wasn’t cross with her for not telling him.

  ‘You shouldn’t have been holding this in on your own.’ He dragged a hand through his hair. ‘I knew there was something wrong. I thought it was the promotion, me leaving…’

  It was.

  And it was a whole lot more too.

  ‘You could have told me,’ Nick said.

  Not should, for which she was grateful. ‘I was trying to sort out what I want.’

  ‘And what do you want?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Alison admitted. ‘I won’t have an abortion so I guess it’s not really about that…’ She wasn’t making much sense, but she didn’t care. ‘If you’re feeling trapped, believe me, you’re not alone.’

  ‘I never said I was feeling trapped.’

  ‘Oh, please.’ She was angry, not at him but at the world. ‘Well, I do. I haven’t even left home and guess what—now I probably won’t be able to. I’ll end up renting the flat out. Mum can babysit while I work.’ She could feel the walls closing in, she absolutely could see the walls closing in as she envisaged the future.

  ‘You don’t think I’d support you.’

  That just made her crosser.

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s right, you’re so Mr PC that you’ll send a lovely cheque for his schooling and we’ll fly over to you once year or you’ll come here and we’ll be all civil—’

  ‘Alison,’ he interrupted, ‘did it never enter your head that I’d stay, that we could do this together?’ And that just made her crosser still because, yes, of course it had entered her head, and now he was suggesting it, it just made it harder because she didn’t want it to be that way, didn’t want to force his hand, didn’t want the man who had come here for fun and to find himself, a man who so clearly didn’t want to settle down, to be forced to.

  ‘You’ll resent me,’ she said, shuddered it out, the most horrible of all her horrible thoughts. ‘You might never say it, you might never show it, but I’ll know. I’ll always know that if it wasn’t for the baby…’

  ‘Alison—’

  She didn’t let him finish. ‘Please, do us both a favour, go on your adventure, have your trip, have your fun, and if you have an epiphany somewhere in Nepal—’

  ‘Nepal?’ For the first time he bordered on sounding cross. ‘Are we talking about your dream holiday or mine? Alison, I’m not going to just get on a plane—’

  ‘Please do!’ She struggled not to shout. ‘And if fatherhood and babies and maternity bras and nappies suddenly appeal, I’ll still be here, getting bigger and fatter, and we can sort something out. Or you can head back to London and we can sort something out from there, but right now I want space, I want time, I want to work out my future, so please go and live yours.’

  ‘You really want space.’

  ‘Yes.’ Could she make it any clearer? ‘I want to get my head around this myself, and I can’t do that with you.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  HE GAVE her space and she loathed him for it.

  He spoke politely at work, and he didn’t text, or ring, or email.

  There was one room left to do in the flat and she couldn’t face it.

  Could not go in and again picture a cot, so she opened up her laptop on the disgusting green carpet and logged in as Ellie again and tortured herself with his latest postings.

  He was back to earn more money, apparently.

  And one of the many that jarred was a response to a question from Gillian.

  Bangkok here I come!

  ‘It’s me and you,’ she said to the slight curve on her stomach—and she slapped paint on her baby’s wall and refused to wait for Nick’s epiphany to come. She would keep on keeping on.

  But when she had her first ever ring on her own doorbell, she didn’t feel so sure.

  He was blond and unshaven and looking just a bit fed up with his lot.

  ‘Just how much space do yo
u need, Alison?’ he asked. ‘Because this is driving me crazy. You can’t just ignore it.’

  ‘I’m not ignoring it.’

  ‘No one knows—I saw you lifting a patient, all the X-rays in Resus…’

  ‘I go out,’ Alison said. ‘I wear a lead gown.’

  ‘Does your mum know?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m not keeping it from her,’ Alison said. ‘Well, I am, but she’s going on holiday, I don’t want to ruin it.’ And she burst into tears. ‘Like I ruined yours.’

  ‘You haven’t ruined anything,’ Nick said, and she couldn’t even begin to believe him. ‘I’m crazy about you. I have been since that bus ride.’

  ‘Oh, please…’ And out it came then, all the pent-up insecurity, all the doubts, all the things she’d stored up and tried to pretend didn’t matter.

  ‘You’re single online,’ she flung it at him. ‘Off out, having fun—’ she tossed that word up at him ‘—delivering babies up mountains, climbing bridges, and not a single mention of me…’

  ‘Alison…’ He was trying not to smile, and it incensed her. ‘You’re single, I can see that in the small part of the profile you allow to be visible, and you won’t even be my friend…’ He nudged her, tried to pull her from her tears as if they were in the school playground.

  ‘No!’ She was furious, close, dangerously close, to painting a gloss ochre strip on his suit with the paint-brush she pointed at him. ‘I don’t go on there.’ Well, she did, all the time lately, but she wasn’t actively on there was what she would say if challenged, but she was on a roll now. ‘You say you’re crazy about me, that you can’t stop thinking about me, but you’re on there every night, and I seem to slip your mind every time.’ And then she burst into hears as she recited his latest posting. ‘Bangkok here I come!’

  He laughed.

  He had the audacity to laugh, but not at her, Alison realised, because in the middle of hell she actually laughed too, a laugh that was laced with tears but a laugh anyway. ‘You’re such a bastard.’

  ‘But I’m not.’ He shook his head. He rued his words and the pain he had caused her, but he knew at least that he could put that bit right. ‘I’m not a bastard, Alison, I’m not even a good backpacker, I’m the worst backpacker. That person you’re reading about…’ And she watched him struggle to explain it. ‘Do you know how hard it was to justify taking a year off? Do you know how hard it was to end a very good relationship, for no good reason?’

  And she did, she did.

  ‘It seemed incredibly important to…’ He raked his hand through his hair. ‘To cram everything in, to have a ball, to validate…’ Then he was completely serious. ‘And I’ve loved doing all those things, but the bit I’ve loved most is the photos, is the afterwards, is sitting on the balcony with you. I can’t tell her I’m no longer single on a computer, that’s a face to face, or a difficult phone call at the very least, and I wouldn’t do that to Gillian. I honestly didn’t know you were looking, or I’d have explained…’ She shook her head, sick of his smooth talk, not wanting to be a woman who just believed because it was safer. It annoyed him, she could tell, so much so that he opened his laptop and she ignored him, carried on painting the wall as he logged on.

  Not sure about Bangkok. Alison is pregnant, but she hasn’t told her mum yet and we’re not sure what to do. That bloody ride to Palm Beach was awful. I had meant to tell her I was serious and we spend some time overseas to get to know each other more. She got all stroppy and hitchhiked a lift home, she was completely mental…

  ‘Do you want me to post it?’

  She just stood there and read over his shoulder.

  ‘Do you see that the person you’ve read about isn’t all of me?’

  She could.

  ‘That there are other sides?’ She nodded. ‘I rang Gillian.’ Alison felt her world still. ‘I told her about you, because even though we’re over, even though it ended more than six months ago—’ and she got what he was saying ‘—she didn’t need to read about it first.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And there’s something else you should know,’ Nick said, ‘which you might not like and you might not understand. But I told her about the baby too. I know there are other people we need to tell…’

  And she didn’t like it, because it confirmed her darkest fears.

  ‘It gives you the reason to stay.’

  ‘I’ve already got a reason,’ Nick said. ‘I already had a reason.’ He pulled her close. ‘You.’ Then he ran a hand over her stomach. ‘This one just speeds up the decision-making process.’

  ‘It’s not what you wanted.’

  ‘Not with Gillian,’ Nick said. ‘Alison, I don’t believe in accidents.’

  ‘So I meant it to happen.’

  ‘I don’t mean that.’

  ‘You work in Accident and Emergency, you’re going to be consultant when you get back…’ Her voice was rising. ‘And you’re standing here telling me that you don’t believe in accidents.’ She was incensed now. ‘What? Do you think my father and brother secretly wanted to die, that they deliberately—?’

  ‘I mean this sort of accident…’ He closed his eyes. ‘I’m not saying this very well.’

  ‘No, Nick, you’re not.’ She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘You really think I set out to—’

  ‘No.’ He interrupted. ‘No.’ He said it again.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘We knew,’ Nick said. ‘We, more than anyone, knew. And, yes, we were careful, but not that careful.’

  And she opened her mouth to argue, but nothing came out, because she’d been over and over and over their oh, so careful love-making, except sometimes it hadn’t been. Sometimes passion had overruled common sense and she was very cross with herself for that. With Paul she’d been contracepted to the neck, if there was such a word. With Paul she could have raged at the sky, at the gods, at the injustice, because she had been so very, very careful, but with Nick… She screwed her eyes closed, because the only person she was raging at was herself.

  ‘I knew the risks too.’ He caught her racing brain and sent it on a different track. ‘Oh, I wasn’t actively thinking…’ The words weren’t coming easily for Nick, but he was at least trying, this conversation incredibly honest, dangerously honest perhaps. ‘I’m responsible, Alison, I’ve never not been careful except with you.’ And it was raw and honest and the truth. ‘And, yes, I should have taken more care, you can throw that at me too if you want to, but I guess for the first time passion won. There was someone, you, that I was willing not to be so practical and sensible with…’ And he looked at her then and stated a fact. ‘That’s how babies are made, have been since the beginning of time. The chance was worth it at the time.’

  ‘Is it worth it now?’

  ‘Of course it is.’ He sounded very sure.

  ‘You want to travel.’

  ‘The world will still be there, waiting.’ And then he grinned. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m sick of throwing myself off cliffs. You’ve saved me another bungee-jump, yet another sodding extreme sport to show I’m having a good time.’

  ‘What will your parents say?’ Alison asked.

  ‘Trapped by a colonial!’ He rolled his eyes. ‘They’ll come round. I know you can’t leave her, Alison, and I completely see why.’

  ‘What about your job?’

  ‘I’ve got a job! I’ve been offered a year’s work when Amy goes on maternity leave next week.’ And he gave a little grimace. ‘Keep that quiet—I mean it. She’s adopting a baby from overseas and she’s beside herself—doesn’t want to tell anyone till he’s actually here.’

  And someone was looking after her, because Nick would never need to know how little she had trusted him, how this gorgeous blonde sexy doctor somehow really was just that.

  ‘What about your mum?’

  ‘She’ll be completely and utterly delighted.’ And there was a wobble in her voice, a strange fizz of excitement that had, till now, when she thought of th
e baby been absent, a vision, a glimpse of a future, only now she could see Nick and herself and a beach and a baby…

  And then she admitted something, something she hadn’t dared admit, not even to herself.

  ‘I’m scared.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Alison said. ‘It’s not trapped that I feel, it’s…’

  ‘Scared,’ he offered, and she nodded, sure he didn’t really get it, except it would seem he did. ‘Scared you might love it too much?’ he said, and she nodded. ‘Scared you might lose it?’

  And he shouldn’t say that, Alison thought frantically, because if he said it, then maybe it would happen.

  ‘I think being a parent means you’re scared for the rest of your life.’

  ‘I can’t stand what my mum went through.’

  ‘Then you’ve got a choice,’ Nick said. ‘You can hold back, never fully live, never fully love, just in case…’ Which was what she had been doing. ‘But that doesn’t work, because sooner or later living wins. Look at your mum,’ Nick went on. ‘Look at you.’ He put his hand on her stomach, the result of taking a chance, and he was right because, cautious or not, life threw in surprises whether you liked them or not.

  ‘I got you a present.’

  And out of his laptop bag he produced not a ring but a rather tatty airplane magazine folded on one page. And it was nicer than a ring, nicer than anything actually, because it was a flight map showing all the destinations that airline went to, and Nick pointed a couple of them out.

  ‘There’s Sydney,’ he said, ‘and there’s London, and there’s an awful lot of world in between. You choose the stopovers.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Well, even if they are a pain, even if they are miserable and controlling, I guess I do love my family, and I’m going to be going home once a year, hopefully with you, or we can drop you off somewhere and pick you up on the way back. Me and the baby, I mean. It might take a while to complete your gap year…’ he grinned ‘…but you can do it in stages.’

  And it was the nicest picture. It would be the first on her wall, one she would take to the shop tomorrow and have properly framed, because it wasn’t the red dots, or the destinations, but the generosity that came with it—the acceptance, the space, the future they would create.