Unexpected

by Jenny Frame

  Val nodded. “She does. Come with me, Jake.”

  Jake smiled, seemingly happy with that assurance. “Okay. See you soon, Mum.”

  * * *

  “Thank you.” Dale ended the call and threw the phone across the desk.

  She held her face in her hands and repeated over and over, “This is not happening. This is not happening.”

  Dale’s whole body was shaking and she felt sick.

  “Dale? What’s going on?”

  She’d been so engrossed in her own turmoil that she hadn’t heard Sammy come into the office. She raised her head and saw that Sammy’s previously jovial demeanour had disappeared.

  “I don’t know where to start,” Dale said.

  “The beginning is always a good place.”

  Dale let out a big breath. It was so hard to say it. She felt like if she said it out loud, only then would it become real.

  “Remember when you were planning to have Mia? You had all these brochures from private fertility clinics.”

  “Yeah, I remember vividly. It was an exciting and scary time.”

  “You left them lying on the coffee table, and one day I started to flip through them. I was curious.”

  “And?”

  “I came to the section about egg donation and it explained that there was a huge demand for women to donate.”

  Her friend’s eyes went wide. “You donated your own eggs?”

  She nodded. “It was a whim, but something about helping a couple have a baby together really resonated with me. I felt a need I didn’t really understand, and the money came in useful when I was saving to buy this place. It wasn’t much, but it helped.”

  Sammy looked flabbergasted. “You could have told us about it. That’s a big, big decision to take on your own.”

  Dale got up and walked over to the window. “I don’t know why—it just felt kind of personal. But I wanted to help someone have something I knew that I would never have myself, if that makes sense. And then as time went on I forgot all about it.”

  “Until today?” Sammy said.

  “I called the fertility clinic and they said it was true. Their records were compromised at the weekend and they are having an investigation into it.”

  “So that little boy out there is your son?”

  Dale whipped around angrily. “No, I’m just an egg donor. Nothing more than that.”

  Sammy got up instantly, crossed to her, and put her hands on Dale’s shoulders. “Hey, I’m on your side, remember? I know this is a really difficult situation, especially for you, but that little boy is going to be confused and easily hurt. You need to deal with him carefully. Get him home, and then you can face what it means.”

  Dale scrubbed her face with her hands. “You’re right. Okay.”

  “His parents must be frantic,” Sammy said. “Maybe you should phone the police.”

  “No, I’ll drive him home. There must be some reason he came to find me. I think I need to talk to his parents.”

  Sammy pulled her into to a hug. “You’re doing the right thing. I know it’s going to be really hard for you, but even harder for Jake. Be careful.”

  You were a mistake, you weren’t supposed to happen. The words that haunted all her quiet moments floated across her mind.

  “I’ll be careful. I know what being unwanted feels like.”

  * * *

  Dale walked quickly to her car in the garage car park with Jake’s backpack over her shoulder, and with the boy trailing behind in her wake.

  “Mum, slow down. You’re too fast.”

  Jake had insisted on calling her Mum from the moment he saw her, but every time he said it, the title hurt somewhere deep inside her.

  She stopped by her car and opened the door for him. “Jake, you have to stop calling me that. I’m not your mum and your real mum and dad wouldn’t like it.”

  He looked up at her with big, sad brown eyes, so much like her own, and said, “I don’t have a dad. It’s just my mummy and me.”

  Dale wasn’t expecting that. She’d imagined a couple using a fertility clinic to conceive. “Oh, okay. Well, get in the car and I’ll take you home to her.”

  Jake walked up and down the side of her car studying it. “I’ve never seen a car like this. It looks like an airplane.”

  “It’s a 1957 Jaguar. I like classic cars.”

  That didn’t seem to satisfy him as he went on to prod the soft roof. “Why does it have a roof like this and why does it only have two seats?”

  This child was insistent in his quest for knowledge. She could tell he was intelligent, but she wasn’t in the mood for questions.

  “The roof comes down in sunny weather and it only has two seats because that’s all I need. Get in the car please, before the rain gets heavy again.”

  Dale finally got him in and got in the driver’s seat. While she entered his address in her satnav, she watched Jake touch all the retro car knobs and the wooden dash with reverence.

  “It’s like a cockpit,” he said, awestruck.

  “Sit back, wee man, before you break anything.”

  It would take about an hour to get him home to the village of Plumtun, Croydon, although with the rain now battering the roads, she would have to take them slowly and carefully. Her first thought had been to have him call his mother, but he didn’t have his mobile phone, and his mother thought he was safe in school, so the best thing she could do was get him home quickly and walk away without looking back.

  After they set off, Jake was silent for all of thirty seconds. Talking seemed to be his default setting. Dale gripped the steering wheel uncomfortably as she felt Jake’s eyes bore into her.

  “Why did you call me wee man? You speak really weirdly,” Jake said.

  “I’m Scottish, from Glasgow. That’s why I sound different.” Dale hoped that would be the end of the conversation.

  “Scottish?”

  But she was wrong.

  Jake seemed to mull over the word in his brain for a few seconds before he said, “Do you play bagpipes?”

  “No.”

  “Do you eat haggis?”

  “No.”

  “Do you wear a kilt?”

  Dale was starting to get annoyed by the incessant questions. She looked at him and tried to keep calm in the crazy situation this day had brought her.

  “Are you just rhyming off every Scottish stereotype?”

  “What’s Glasgow like? Do you have family there?”

  He didn’t appear to filter his thoughts. If one popped into his head he just said it.

  “Do I have a grandma there?”

  “No!” Dale snapped. “No more questions.” As soon as she snapped she regretted it, but he had touched a raw nerve. She let out a breath and tried to regain control. “I’m sorry, Jake. This is all a bit of a surprise. How did you find me? The clinic told me they had a breach in their files.”

  “I hacked into their database,” Jake said matter-of-factly.

  “You did what? Come on, you’re ten years old. You can’t do that.”

  Jake looked almost hurt she had said that. “Yes, I can. My mummy says I can do anything I put my mind to.”

  “Of course you can. I’m sorry.”

  Jake gave her the warmest smile. “That’s all right, Mum. You don’t know me yet, but I have lots to tell you as we get to know each other.”

  Dale decided just to humour him for the moment, so as not to upset him. “So you hacked and got my name, okay. Did your mummy have a husband or a partner—”

  “No, she used a sperm donor. My mummy couldn’t have kids herself.”

  Jake said it as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a ten-year-old to be saying. Dale’s head was bursting with emotion and information. For the first time in ten years she ached for a cigarette.

  She reached down to the glove compartment and popped it open. Her stash of lollipops, her cigarette substitutes, came tumbling out. She took a cherry one and said, “Help yourself, Jake. Oh,
I suppose you’re not allowed to take sweets from strangers, huh?”

  Jake eyed the lollipops and grabbed one. “You’re not a stranger, Mum.”

  Dale popped the lollipop in her mouth and tried to ignore the M word. “So…why did you try to find me?”

  “My mummy needs help. She’s not been well and can’t work very much just now. I thought if I found you and the man who donated sperm, that you’d both help us.”

  Dale’s mind was whirling with fear and panic. What on earth was she getting herself into?

  “Did you find the other donor then?” Dale asked.

  Jake pulled the lollipop out with a pop. “Yes, but he died two years ago. It’s only you who’s left, only you that can help us.”

  “How can I help you, Jake? I’m a stranger.”

  She caught Jake gazing at her with a look of complete certainty. “You helped my mummy make me. Who else would help us when we are in trouble?”

  That innocent sentiment hit Dale like a kick in the guts. “What kind of trouble do you have?”

  Jake lifted up his schoolbag and took out a notebook. “I made a list so I wouldn’t forget.”

  Dale glanced to the side and saw a neat, numbered list of problems. The facing page was filled with what looked like some complex maths equations.

  “You like maths, Jake?”

  “Yes, I love it. I’m working on some famous maths problems that haven’t been solved yet. It’s fun, like a puzzle.”

  This boy was either delusional or he was the brightest child she had ever met. “So, what’s on your list?”

  “The heating keeps breaking down, and the water’s mostly cold. Mummy uses kettles of boiling water a lot. The car is broken down and the sink is leaking…”

  As Jake went on with his list, Dale realized why Jake was so determined to find her. Clearly his mother was struggling, and he had taken action in the only way he knew how.

  Chapter Two

  “I’m sorry to have to let you down, Mr. Gregson, but my health…” Rebecca Harper was in her home studio trying to placate one of her clients over the phone. Her studio was no more than the large bare attic of the eighteenth century vicarage she had recently bought, but with a desk, chair, computer, and excellent photographic equipment, it sufficed until she could decorate. If her client list lasted that long.

  “Yes, yes, I know how hard it will be to get a photographer so late in the day but—”

  Mr. Gregson clearly had enough and slammed the phone down. Rebecca sighed, then sarcastically said into the phone, “Remember and keep me in mind for next time!”

  She laid her mobile down on the desk, and struck another name off her dwindling client list.

  This was fast becoming a habit. As a freelance commercial photographer, Rebecca relied on getting out to her clients’ premises. Building sites, restaurants, government buildings, all lucrative contracts, but now in her sixth month of pregnancy, and struggling to cope with high blood pressure and doctor’s orders to stay resting at home, her contracts were leaving her thick and fast.

  Very few were willing or able to wait until her health improved, and Becca couldn’t blame them. Her problems were not anyone else’s but her own. She sat back in her chair and gently stroked her baby bump, and feelings of guilt squirmed around inside her.

  “It was never meant to be this way, little one,” Rebecca said.

  She looked up at the large plans of the house that she had pinned to the wall. Rebecca had designed them herself when she had bought the vicarage ten months ago. Everything had seemed so rosy then. She’d always wanted to make a home far from the hustle and bustle of the city.

  Rebecca had been searching for a school that would be able to cope with Jake’s learning needs. Jake had been labelled by psychologists and doctors as a gifted child at a very young age. Now ten, the local school he had been attending struggled to keep up with the pace of his learning, and when a place had opened up in a private school a few miles from here that specialized in teaching gifted children, it had seemed the perfect time to make the move to the farming community of Plumtun.

  The once thriving village, which the vicarage had served, had long since died as people were forced to the city to find work. Now all that was left were a few farms and a handful of houses, with the nearest shop five miles away.

  For Rebecca, who valued privacy above all, Plumtun was somewhere where they could live quietly, yet have a quick commute to London for her business clients. Then everything changed.

  Rebecca gazed at the time on her computer and realized Jake was a few minutes late. Fear, always very close to the surface, spread through her body. She got up as quickly as she could and went over to look for his school bus out of the window.

  Jake was meant to be a bit later this evening, as he had computer club after school, but he should have definitely been home by now.

  Calm down. It’s only a few minutes, Rebecca thought. The bus was probably stuck behind a tractor or something, a common problem in that rural area.

  She checked her watch every few minutes, and the fear started to intensify. If only the car wasn’t on the blink, she would have been able to pick him up as she always did, and would have known he was safe.

  After a few minutes more, she picked up her mobile and called Jake, but soon heard his ringtone coming from his bedroom.

  “Jake, how many times have I told you to remember your phone.”

  Jake had a basic phone she had given him for this exact kind of situation. She hurried downstairs and stood by the front door, hoping beyond hope that the bus would come careening around the corner any second.

  Rebecca waited and waited, and after about twenty minutes, she dialled the number for Jake’s school.

  “Hi, this is Ms. Harper. Jake’s bus still hasn’t come. Was he kept back at school, do you know?”

  The school secretary replied, “I’m sorry, Ms. Harper. Jake never turned up at computer club today. We were just going to call you.”

  Rebecca’s stomach dropped like a stone.

  * * *

  Dale pulled the car into the gravel driveway and saw a woman with light brown hair standing by the front door with a silver haired woman near her.

  “Is that your mum?” Dale asked.

  “Yes, that’s my mum—Rebecca, but everyone calls her Becca, and Granny Sadie from next door. She’s not my real granny but she helps Mummy and me a lot, just like a granny.”

  Rebecca started to hurry to the car and Dale was struck by how beautiful she looked. She had long golden-brown hair, which was perfectly styled with a slight wave to it, and her petite, curvaceous frame exuded femininity. “Your mum’s beautiful.”

  “I know. She’s really pretty. I wish I could make her happy. She cries a lot when she thinks I can’t hear her.”

  “She does?”

  Jake nodded. “When Mummy bought this house, it wasn’t nice, and she was going to get it repaired so we could have a home in the country close to my school, but then the baby made her feel sick and she couldn’t work much.”

  Dale’s head snapped around. “Baby? What baby?”

  “Mummy’s six months pregnant with my baby sister. That’s why we need your help, Mum. Mummy’s not been well.”

  Dale saw the well-defined baby bump Rebecca’s hand was resting on as walked purposefully towards them.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Dale said as the reality of the situation dawned on her. Was that child hers as well?

  “Don’t swear in front of Mummy. She’ll be angry,” Jake cautioned her. “Oh, and remember, you promised you wouldn’t disappear.”

  Dale didn’t know what to say. Her head wanted to drive off into the night and never look back, and her heart wanted to help, to know more about this unusual little family.

  Rebecca pulled open Jake’s door and pulled him into her arms. “Where have you been, Jake? I was so scared.”

  Dale didn’t know if she should get out and interrupt this moment, so she sat and waited for them t
o get reacquainted.

  “I went to get you help, Mummy. I found my other mum and she’s going to help us.”

  Jake handed her the printout from the clinic, and Rebecca went silent. After a few seconds she said coldly, “Jake, go inside with Granny Sadie.”

  That was Dale’s cue to get out and talk, she guessed. She walked around the car and Rebecca still hadn’t looked at her once.

  Jake looked anxiously at Dale, not knowing whether to comply or not. “But, Mummy—”

  “Inside now, Jake,” Rebecca repeated. “Sadie? Could you call the police and tell them it’s a false alarm.”

  The older woman stepped forward and took Jake’s hand. “Of course. Come on now, sweetheart. You must be starving. Granny Sadie will make you a sandwich.”

  Jake looked at Dale with eyes that tugged at her heartstrings. “Remember, you promised?”

  Dale gave him a quick nod and said, “I remember. On you go, wee man.”

  Jake walked away with Sadie. Dale walked close to Rebecca and said, “Listen, Ms. Harper. I’m sor—”

  Becca snapped her head up and her large expressive green eyes were full of anger. “You are not taking my child away from me. You don’t have any legal rights over him.”

  Dale held her hands up in surrender. “Hey, I don’t want your child or any legal rights to him. He found me, not the other way around. He walked into my business with that piece of paper and turned my world upside down, so don’t be angry at me. I just brought him home to you, okay?”

  Becca simply gazed at her as if she was taking everything about her in, and it wasn’t an unpleasant experience.

  Becca was well put together, her make-up flawless, her clothes elegantly stylish. And she had a sexy upper-middle-class accent that made Dale think she must have a rich daddy somewhere and a trust fund, which made Jake’s assertion that they were in such difficulties all the more strange.

  “Then thank you for bringing him home”—Becca looked down at the clinic details again—“Mary, but you have to go and don’t ever think about seeing Jake again.”

  Dale was starting to get angry. All she had done was the right thing and she was getting grief for it.