by Pamela Fudge
It was all I could do not to run full pelt to the kitchen and once there I practically threw slices of bread into the toaster, swiftly sliced off thick slabs of cheese from the block ready to be micro-waved on the toast as soon as it was ready, and finally put the kettle on. I was actually drooling as I carried the tray loaded with toast covered in melted cheese and a large mug of tea through to my work room. Once there I literally fell onto the delicious food like a slathering beast living in the wild.
I still had strands of cheese trailing from my chin, when I looked up to find Jon standing in the doorway staring at me. ‘I just came to tell you that Will is waiting for you to tuck him in,’ after a slight pause he added, ‘I thought you said you weren’t hungry.’
‘I changed my mind,’ I told him flatly, and pushing past him, headed for the stairs.
Will was already half asleep, but I felt no urge to leave my sleepy boy for the cool welcome waiting for me downstairs. I stayed, smoothing his hair back from his forehead, for some time after he had drifted off and then I went straight back to my work room and picked up where I had left off earlier.
I didn’t turn when the door opened and Jon offered, ‘More tea?’
‘No, thank you,’ I said without hesitation, even though a cup of tea would have been so very welcome at that moment and I knew I was just cutting off my nose to spite my face.
‘We can’t go on like this.’
‘I know,’ I agreed, finally turning to look at him, ‘but you have developed a habit of walking away when I – or anyone else – try to talk to you, so nothing ever gets resolved. I can’t change what’s happened, Jon – however hard that is for you to accept – and living like this isn’t the answer no matter how hard we try to make it work for William.’
I couldn’t read anything into Jon’s set expression. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what do you suggest?’
‘That I take Will away for the half-term holiday next week. It will give us both time to think.’
‘You’ll go to London.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘They won’t take sides, whatever you might think at the moment. They just want us to be happy – preferably all together. All Tina was trying to do was to point out that there might be faults on both sides and that everything happens for a reason.’
*
I left at the weekend with a very excited Will trundling his little wheeled suitcase beside me. I did feel a pang, because it was the first time we’d been away without Jon. It felt as if our little family was already disintegrating and I had to swallow deeply to prevent the bitter tears that threatened to fall. It was hard to accept that it was all my fault that this was happening – and I did accept that, whatever I had told Jon to the contrary.
After making us welcome and ensuring Will and I had everything we needed, Tina, Calum and Leanne went about their own affairs and left us to our own devices, but only after Calum had done us proud by securing tickets to various attractions through his contacts, enabling us to enjoy many outings that it would have been impossible for us to gain entrance to at such short notice.
Usually we had Jon and the car to ferry us around, but it felt far more touristy to get to wherever we wanted to go using public transport and, an added bonus was that looking for the correct bus, and following directions on the underground, helped Will with his reading and numbers no end.
Hearing about the marvellous display of poppies there had been at the Tower of London turned into something of a history lesson as I tried to explain simply why they had been there, and following that up with a visit to the Imperial War Museum gave Will a view of life when the country was at war. Far more interesting than history books, I reasoned. By way of a real contrast the following day we spent the whole of it at the London zoo.
By mid-week I confessed, but only to myself, that my energy levels were flagging. It probably wasn’t helping that we were eating fast food on the hoof, so to speak, each and every day, to Will’s obvious delight. However, I managed to keep going and we saw the changing of the guards outside Buckingham Place and went on a tour of the inside – which, if I was being honest, probably interested me far more than it did Will.
Whether it was my lack of a head for heights that did it for me on the London Eye, I don’t know, but I felt quite ill by the time we got off. It took a huge effort to keep smiling and chatting for Will’s benefit, because he obviously loved every single minute of his time in the glass pod and kept pointing to various sights off into the distance for me to admire.
Back at the house I all but fell out of the taxi I had flagged down the minute we climbed out of the Eye in a desperate attempt to get back to the house as soon as possible, despite Will’s acute desire to catch yet another bus.
‘Ring the doorbell,’ I instructed William, quite sharply, as I paid the fare through the driver’s window.
Tina opened the door, took one look at me and rushed down the front steps to help me inside. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said urgently, ‘what’s happened? You look terrible.’
‘Is Mummy all right?’ Will asked anxiously, obviously noticing for the first time that I wasn’t my usual bouncy self.
‘I’m fine, darling,’ I managed, and again to Tina, ‘I’m fine.’
Calum appeared then, took in the situation at a glance, and took William off inside with him, asking him all about the day he had spent out and about and what he had seen.
‘You’re not fine at all, are you?’ Tina demanded, the minute they were out of earshot.
I wrinkled up my nose and confessed, ‘Not really, but it’s nothing that a cup of tea and a sit down to catch my breath can’t put right.’
The tea turned out to be not the best of ideas, because the smell turned my stomach and I just made it to the downstairs cloakroom before the greasy burger from lunchtime made its reappearance.
‘Too much fast food after all that healthy eating,’ I confessed ruefully, when I found an anxious Tina pacing up and down outside of the door. ‘I feel much better now.’
I managed to enjoy the roast beef with all the trimmings that Calum had prepared and a good helping of crumble afterwards, but I confessed that an early night was on the cards.
‘Look,’ Calum said, ‘why not have a quiet day tomorrow and let me take Will to – where was it going to be tomorrow?’
‘Madame Tussauds,’ I told him, but immediately protested, ‘I can’t expect you to give up your time like that.’
‘Why not?’ he was grinning, ‘I’ll enjoy it. No point being my own boss if I can’t take a bit of time off to spend with my favourite god-son. Do you fancy it, Tina?’ he coaxed.
She shook her head, and pleaded, ‘Don’t tempt me. There’s nothing I’d like better, but I have that big corporate event to cater for and a few last minute changes to incorporate.’
‘Perhaps I can give you a hand,’ I brightened at the thought, ‘and then I won’t feel so bad about Calum giving up his valuable time.’
‘We’ll see how you feel in the morning,’ Tina said, noncommittally. ‘You’ve obviously been over-doing it recently, mentally and physically.’
In fact, after a good night’s sleep, I felt one hundred percent better, though Tina and Calum insisted we stick to the plans made the night before and I found myself with my feet up in front of the TV with a cup of coffee and a pile of the latest glossy magazines by my side.
With Will out for the day with Calum, and Tina busy at work, I soon became fidgety. I flicked through the TV channels, and then I flicked through the magazines, but I wasn’t used to sitting around and, preferring to keep busy, I went in search of Tina.
Her business premises – comprising what had formerly been the house next door – were massive compared to mine, but then her home cooking business had really taken off since she’d relocated to London after her marriage to Calum. Hardly surprising that there were far more people in a huge and bustling city after her unique catering services than there had been in a relative backwater like Brankstone.
I pushed open the communicating door and passed through offices where people were busy on computers and telephones and marvelled that my friend was keeping them all in work. I wasn’t envious at all, because Tina deserved every bit of her success. For myself, I had been happy with my one woman business running comfortably alongside my family life. I’d always felt it gave me the best of both worlds – and it had until I messed up.
Pushing the thought away, I asked Tina, ‘Can I help?’ as I walked into a kitchen that seemed to stretch for miles and was usually full of staff wearing white overalls. ‘Where is everybody?’
‘On a break,’ she smiled at my puzzled look. ‘I often send them all off together, just so that I can remind myself that it is my kitchen.’
‘We always used to take our breaks together,’ I reminded her.
Tina smiled again. ‘Yes,’ she allowed, adding, ‘but of course, we were quite different.’
I took it for the compliment it was clearly meant as. ‘So,’ I looked around, ‘where do I start?’.
‘Quiche,’ she said, pointing, ‘over there. The fillings are all ready for the pastry cases.’
The cheese and onion filling proved to be no problem, and I placed six into one of the huge ovens before moving to the next filling. I hadn’t even touched a mushroom when I began to feel queasy, but I manfully ignored the feeling and continued, feeling sure it would soon pass.
When I really couldn’t carry on I left the fillings for someone else to complete and made my way across to where Tina was mashing up a bowl of sandwich filling. It was nothing more harmless than tuna and sweet corn, but one glance in the basin send me rushing from the room and into the nearest cloakroom.
Luckily there was no one in the room, either before or after I was ill, and I stood staring at my pallid complexion in the mirror over the sinks for what seemed like a very long time. Eventually, I made my way back to Tina, who was standing exactly where I had left her. She was staring at the door, obviously waiting for me to come back.
As soon as I stepped inside, she said, ‘You’re pregnant,’ and I nodded and agreed, ‘I’m pregnant.’
Chapter 19
‘You are, aren’t you?’ Tina asked the question needlessly, because we both already knew the answer. ‘You’re pregnant.’
‘Mushrooms and sweet corn,’ I grinned, ‘and I’ve gone off tea – it’s just the same as it was when I was having William. I really must be, Tina. I must be pregnant. Oh, my bloody God – and there is absolutely no doubt about who the daddy is this time. This baby is definitely Jon’s, which probably means that Will is as well.’
We stared at each other and then both burst into tears and flew into each other’s arms – which was when all the other cooks began returning to work, gawping at us as they filtered in.
‘We’re just so happy,’ Tina told them, and we cried some more as she led me away and back into the main house. ‘Now,’ she ordered, after she had tucked me up on the couch once more and placed a cup of milky coffee beside me, ‘you stay put while I pop along to Boots. I won’t be long.’
There was no need to ask why she was going to the chemist and, despite the fact I felt quite sure that I really was pregnant, I still felt quite nervous in case a pregnancy test said otherwise.
It seemed a very odd state of affairs that Jon wasn’t the first person after me to learn we were expecting a child. Another child, I reminded myself, because wasn’t this the very thing I had been hoping and praying for? I finally had the proof I needed that Jon was perfectly capable of fathering a child of his own, whatever the state of his sperm.
Had the circumstances been different I would have been bursting to share the news with Jon face to face. Whether he was at work or out with a client, it would have made no difference. I would have tracked him down, flung myself into his arms, and watched as a joy to match my own spread across his face. As it was, I was so unsure of his reaction that I found myself hesitating about telling him at all – at least for now.
‘You have to tell him,’ was Calum’s immediate reaction, when he arrived home to two very excited women and three positive pregnancy tests - which was understandable given the secrecy surrounding his own child’s birth many years before.
He went off then to watch a DVD with William, who was thoroughly enjoying having his honorary uncle all to himself.
‘Calum is right,’ Tina said. ‘Don’t assume anything about what Jon’s reaction might be. That was the mistake I made with Calum - assuming he wouldn’t want to be tied down with a child - and not allowing him the choice meant he missed the first eighteen years of Leanne’s life. If Jon doesn’t want to be involved let him spell it out to you himself.’
I knew they were right, but I had to be so careful. After all, it had been me that Jon rejected when he became aware of what I had done – not William, never William. I didn’t want Jon to feel obliged to forgive me and try again just because I was pregnant. Another child, however, much as it was wanted, wasn’t going to repair the damage my affair had done to our relationship.
I did feel some regret that I hadn’t managed to continue to keep the affair secret – just as I had managed to do for seven years – because, in my heart I wasn’t totally sure that honesty really was the best policy in every single case.
If only I hadn’t become obsessed with the bloody Adonis who had suddenly popped up from my past. If only I hadn’t allowed his appearance to feed into my insane belief that he was obsessed with me and the child that I had always been convinced was his, I might have been able to do just that. It might not have been honest, but it would surely have been easier.
But secrets, I reminded myself eventually, became harder and harder to keep hidden. Tina had been very lucky that she and Calum had finally been able to work things through – I could only hope with all my heart that Jon and I would eventually be able to do the same - but I really wasn’t at all certain that it was going to be possible.
All the joy in my unexpected pregnancy leaked away as I was forced to accept that this really wasn’t the answer to everything, even though I had once been so sure that it would be. Expecting a baby to heal our marriage was like placing a sticking plaster over a gaping stab wound but, even so, I knew I couldn’t just give up without trying.
‘Can I leave William with you?’ I said suddenly, making my decision. ‘I’m sorry to have to ask, but I know you’re both right. I’m going home to try and sort things out with Jon and, as I’m not at all sure how things will turn out, I think it’s best if it’s just the two of us.’
‘You’re doing the right thing,’ Tina approved, ‘but at least wait until morning. You can’t be travelling home alone at this time of night.’
‘But it’s not even eight o’clock,’ I pointed out.
‘And it will be much later than that by the time you arrive. No, I won’t be happy to see you setting off on your own on a train journey, anything could happen.’ She held up her hand as I went to speak and said, ‘If you’re going to insist, then I will get Calum to drive you.’
That stopped me in my tracks, because as much as I wanted to get home to Jon as quickly as possible to try and sort this whole thing out, I couldn’t put my friends out any more than I already had. Expecting Calum to face the journey from London to Brankstone not once but twice - because he would have to face the return journey in order for him to be back in time for work in the morning - was a step too far. There was nothing for it but to curb my patience until the next day and to appreciate and accept wise advice when it was given.
I put my hand on Tina’s arm as she made a move to inform Calum that he must get the car out again that night. ‘No, don’t do that, Tina, I’ll wait until the morning.’
‘If you’re sure,’ she looked relieved. ‘A few more hours can’t make any difference, can they?’
Those few hours, however, felt like an eternity as the sleepless night passed with me practicing what I would say to Jon in a dozen different ways – and imagining a dozen differen
t responses he might make to each one. None of them were positive.
After all that, and an interminable stop start journey, Jon wasn’t at home, and when I tried ringing him at work and discovered he wasn’t there either, my courage failed me and I couldn’t bring myself to try his mobile for fear he would say he really had left me for good.
I tried to tell myself I was over-reacting, because none of his clothes appeared to be missing when I checked his wardrobe, but Jon never took time off work unnecessarily and the fact that they didn’t seem to know where he was, either, worried me.
I did what I always did in times of great stress or crisis and set to work with a vengeance. At this rate, I was able to console myself, at least my Christmas orders – and all the others, too - would be completed long before they were due to be collected.
When the doorbell rang, my heart actually did skip a beat. It had to be Jon because I’d told my customers and friends that I was going to be away from home at least until the weekend. He had obviously mislaid his key and was hoping I was going to be at home to let him in. The fact that he was here rather than going back to work must mean something surely and I chose to believe that everything was going to be all right.
I rushed to the door, threw it open and only just stopped myself from skidding into the arms of the man standing there on the doorstep, a man who certainly wasn’t Jon.
‘Now that’s what I call a warm welcome,’ he grinned, ‘even if it is a little unexpected.’
‘You,’ I said, staring up into the smirking face of Gareth Montgomery, aka the Adonis and bane of my life. ‘What do you want?’
‘Well now, we don’t want to be discussing our affairs on the doorstep, do we?’ Before I knew what he was about he’d stepped inside and pushed the door to behind him.
I wasn’t sure how that had happened, but I certainly didn’t want the likes of him inside my house. What if Jon were to return? And it wasn’t only that – I didn’t feel comfortable in his company, and there was something about his demeanour that I wasn’t happy with either.
