Cathy Kelly 6-Book Collection: Someone Like You, What She Wants, Just Between Us, Best of Friends, Always and Forever, Past Secrets

‘Don’t you have something to say, Dad?’ Kirsten enquired.

He looked Emma in the eye for the first time. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said gruffly. ‘I wasn’t fair on you the other day.’

‘Apology accepted,’ she said formally. That was as good as it was ever going to get. Her father would never acknowledge that he had more than just the other day to apologize for. But it was her own fault for being such a victim. She’d let him walk all over her. Still, if they could get on well enough to look after Anne-Marie together, that was good enough.

‘Shall we go into the bar?’ she said brightly. She wanted to get this over with. Now that she felt she’d made a new start with her father, she was dying to tell Kirsten her news: that she and Pete were on the baby trail and nothing was going to stop them having one. Nothing.

The results were unexpected. There was nothing wrong with either of them. Pete’s sperm count was excellent and Emma had no blockages, scarring or obvious reasons why she’d never conceived.

‘There is absolutely no reason why you can’t have a baby,’ the specialist said. ‘We call it unexplained infertility.’

It sounded so inconclusive, so unconvincing. Emma found it incredible that in a world of modern science where everything was transplantable and where mice could grow human ears on their backs, infertility like hers could be inexplicable. But unexplained infertility left her with that most precious commodity: hope.

‘Some people in your position wait and hope, but as you’ve waited and hoped for quite a while, you could try the IVF option,’ the specialist said encouragingly.

Outside the clinic, Pete had held her hand so tightly that it hurt. She could see him biting his lip and knew he was afraid to even look at her, afraid that she’d go to pieces. Yet for some unaccountable reason, she didn’t feel upset: she felt relieved. As if a millstone had been cut from the rope where it hung around her neck. Her inability to have a baby was inexplicable, not something she’d done, not some flaw within her traitorous body, not a problem that couldn’t be fixed. The cleverest minds had told her so. The fear and dread of the result was out of her hands.

After years of being scared to discover the truth, she now knew it. And it was cathartic, like a balm to her soul. Because unexplained infertility meant hope.

‘Pete…’ She swung around to face him, stroking his tense face, feeling the soft skin where he’d shaved a few hours before. ‘I’m not upset, love, really I’m not.’

He didn’t believe her; she could see that. His normally open, smiling face was racked with grief for both of them. But Pete hadn’t read every book and magazine article on infertility the way Emma had. He assumed that this result was the worst thing, but it wasn’t.

‘Don’t you see, Pete, we can start again,’ she pleaded. ‘We’ve been messing around for so long, wondering what was wrong, afraid to talk about it and afraid to talk about the future. But now,’ she smiled a smile of genuine pleasure, ‘they can’t find anything wrong. That’s what unexplained infertility means. I don’t have anything they can see. That may mean I can never have a baby or it may mean I can. Let’s try IVF. We’ve as good a chance as anyone else has.

They’ve got a twenty per cent success rate, as you told me. I don’t mind gambling if you don’t.’

For a moment, Pete stared at her, then his face cracked into a beaming smile. Picking her up, he whirled her around, kissing her fervently and yelling, ‘I love you,’ at the top of his voice.

Clinging to him, Emma threw back her head and whooped, not caring that passers-by were looking at the happy couple who looked as if they were re-enacting a movie scene about young lovers.

‘Where do we go?’ demanded Pete. ‘Let’s do it now, right this minute, immediately!’

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#ulink_bc684737-3773-5fd2-8df6-844baab9baf9)

Claudia threw her dummy at Hannah. With the phone still cradled between her ear and shoulder, Hannah picked the dummy up, dumped it in the sterilizer, removed another one and handed it to Claudia. Seeing the look in her mother’s eyes, Claudia, who was very clever for four months old, decided to hold on to the dummy. She twinkled endearingly at her mother, scrunching up her cherub face and letting the liquid brown eyes so like her father’s take the crossness out of Hannah’s expression. Before Claudia had been born, Hannah thought dummies were the work of the devil and lazy mothers. No child of hers would ever have one. After two months of constant screaming, one kind neighbour she’d met in the park had told her to forget her high-principled ideas and hit the chemist immediately for a six-pack. ‘Peace and principles are two very different things,’ the woman had said. ‘I swore I’d never use them, and look at my lot. They’ll be doing college finals with them in their mouths.’ Hannah took her advice and peace reigned.

Now Claudia sucked happily, big eyes watching her mother intently.

‘We need another waitress,’ Hannah said again to the man who ran A & E Catering. ‘One isn’t enough. We’ve got fifty people coming tonight, as you well know because you’re supplying the food. One waitress is ludicrous.’

He gave her the usual bullshit and Hannah rolled her eyes. Why Felix had insisted on using these people was beyond her. Just because his new best friend had recommended them was no reason to entrust their first big party to them. But he insisted it was a good idea.

‘Hannah, I’ve been at three parties lately where they’ve worked, trust me,’ he said bluntly.

As she hadn’t been to the same three parties because Claudia’s colic meant the au pair couldn’t manage, Hannah had no comeback. The au pair couldn’t manage very much. Neither, it seemed, could A & E Catering. Felix had told her grandly about plans for a seafood buffet with splendid raspberry tarts as dessert, like the last party he’d been at. The catering company had said that the woman who oversaw seafood buffets was on holiday and would she not settle for hams, cheese, the odd quiche and exotic fruit meringue?

Now the problem was the number of staff. Somebody had overbooked and there was only one waitress available for the party. Hannah, who thought it was all too expensive anyway and would have much preferred to cancel the bloody party, had no intention of being the second waitress, which was what would happen unless she could twist the caterers’ arms.

‘Look,’ she said finally, ‘I want two waitresses or consider yourself fired.’

She hung up.

‘Mercedes!’ she yelled.

Mercedes was the au pair, an indolent French charmer who could have been on the front of Vogue and was clearly biding her time au pairing until she was asked. A tall, sylph-like nineteen with endless legs, she had long platinum-blonde hair she could sit on and big blue eyes that must have looked wanton from the day she was born. Now she swayed into the kitchen, pink kitten heels clacking on Hannah’s terracotta tiles, a vision in black jeans and a pink gingham shirt with the ends tied carelessly about her tiny waist.

‘Oui,’ she breathed.

‘Can you take Claudia for a walk?’ Hannah asked. ‘I have a few more phone calls to make and she’s restless.’

‘But I must do my nails,’ Mercedes said plaintively.

Hannah’s own nails were unpainted and likely to stay that way because she still had to do so much before the party Felix wanted, a party they couldn’t afford.

‘Mercedes, please,’ begged Hannah. ‘You can have all of tomorrow off.’

For a brief, dizzying moment, Hannah remembered running an office, hiring and firing at will. Now she was reduced to begging the au pair for help. Mercedes was supposed to work for six hours, five days a week, the days to be organized between employer and employee. But after that first month coaxing Mercedes out of the desolation of homesickness for Marseilles, Hannah had crossed the line from employer to mother-figure and Mercedes now behaved exactly the way Hannah suspected she behaved at home: on the phone at all hours, by turn melancholy and jubilant, depending on which boyfriend had phoned, and uninterested in emptying out the dishwasher. She loved Claudia, which was wonderful, but hated nappy-changing and feeding. Getting her to take Claudia out for a walk was like getting NATO chiefs to reach a unanimous decision.

The promise of Saturday off did it. Mercedes liked nothing better than spending Saturdays with her au pair friends, idling away hours drinking coffee in Covent Garden, being eyed up by handsome young men and spending money their parents had sent on flirty little outfits from French Connection and Monsoon.

‘Oui,’ Mercedes said grudgingly, and because she was a kind girl, added, ‘Are you going to the ’airdresser, ’Annah? I’ll keep Claudia for the afternoon.’

Hannah could have kissed her. Once she’d decided to help, Mercedes was generous.

Claudia was the only one who didn’t like this plan. She scrunched up her face and bawled, hurling her bottle at Mercedes this time and making enough noise to frighten the cat.

Hannah picked her up and cuddled her tightly as the wails subsided. As she held Claudia’s heaving body close to hers, she marvelled again at the intensity of her feelings for her daughter. From the very second she’d been born, love for Claudia had overwhelmed Hannah like a volcanic eruption pouring ceaselessly out of a crater. She adored each dark curl on her daughter’s head, was obsessed with every breath she took, even sitting beside the cot when Claudia had been very small, listening to every inhalation, as if watching the tiny chest rise and fall could keep Claudia safe. Under the circumstances, it was a miracle that Claudia had remained so sweet and sunny-natured thus far. But despite her adoration, Hannah was terrified of spoiling Claudia, and the little girl had learned that her beloved mother occasionally had to do things and go places that didn’t include her.

She wasn’t in the mood today. Snuggling closer to Hannah, Claudia sniffed plaintively.

‘I hope she’s not getting something,’ Hannah said anxiously, immediately toying with the idea of cancelling her hairdresser’s appointment.

‘She’s fine,’ Mercedes said, taking a protesting Claudia away from her mother. ‘We’ll go to the common and play. Won’t we, ma cherie?’ Mercedes said in baby-speak to Claudia.

The baby’s eyes lit up at the attention.

She looked so adorable in her red woollen cardigan and blue spotty dungarees. ‘Go with Ruth from next door, won’t you?’ said Hannah. You never knew what sort of weirdo would approach a young girl with a pushchair. She’d become paranoid about security and felt much safer when the next-door nanny went walking with Claudia, Mercedes and her charge, a one-year-old bruiser named Henry who was training Claudia how to have terrible tantrums one minute and smile angelically the next.

‘Perhaps we should get a dog, a guard dog,’ Hannah had said worriedly to Felix when they moved to the house in Clapham. Claudia wasn’t even born at the time and Hannah had read a terrible story about a woman who’d had to run away from a crazed man in a park near her home when she was wheeling her twin boys out.

‘You’re such a worrier,’ Felix had remarked, patting her belly. ‘We’re not Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, you know. Nobody is going to kidnap our baby.’

Even so, Hannah did her best to ensure that when Mercedes went out with Claudia, they went with somebody else. She wasn’t frightened of meeting someone scary when she was on her own with Claudia: mainly because Hannah knew she’d savage anyone, man or beast, who tried to harm a hair of her precious baby’s head. Mother love could be a terribly violent thing.

Claudia grizzled a bit as Hannah put on her red woollen hat and matching coat. It was a glorious Friday in April but Hannah was paranoid about chills and it was a bit windy out on the common. Convinced that Claudia was buttoned-up safely from both the wind and mad men on the common, she let them off, reminding Mercedes to phone her in the hairdresser’s if there was a problem.

It was wonderful to have a few precious hours to herself, she thought as she let herself out of the house ten minutes later. The sun shone on the small terraced white houses on the road, and the scent of next door’s yellow jonquils filled Hannah’s head as she shut the door. Their house wasn’t the large, airy Edwardian mansion in Chelsea that Felix had promised her when he’d persuaded her to live in London. There was nothing airy about it. Tall and narrow, there was a basement kitchen, two pretty reception rooms on the ground floor, and three pokey bedrooms on the second floor. If the attic hadn’t been floored, Hannah didn’t know where Felix would have put his clothes.