Five Unforgivable Things

They found a table in a corner and took off their coats.

‘Wow! It’s real, isn’t it?’ Jenny gazed at Laura’s unfamiliar shape in awe. ‘You really are having a baby!’

‘Of course I am! Did you think I was lying? Or that it was just wishful thinking?’

‘Sorry. Course not. It’s just so lovely to see, after all the previous … Oh, you know what I mean. Let me get everyone a drink. White wine, Beth? And …’

‘No alcohol for me, obviously. Just an orange juice, please.’

Jenny went to the bar. There was a queue, but leaving the others alone together for a while might not be a bad idea. Beth could be very persuasive when she wanted to be. And someone had to persuade Laura to come home, for Ollie’s sake, before he drank himself into a hospital bed, or worse. If only Laura’s new no-alcohol rule applied to him!

When she returned to their table, they were talking about something totally different. A book they had both read, and the TV adaptation of it that had got them both swooning over the leading man. Jenny put the drinks down in front of them and waited for a lull in the conversation.

‘Oh, it’s so nice to be back together,’ she said, taking a sip. ‘It’s just like old times.’

‘No Nat? Kate? I’m surprised you didn’t hire a minibus and bring the whole family.’

‘Don’t be daft. Mum’s gone off somewhere herself for a few days anyway, so she doesn’t even know we’re away from home. And Nat’s up to her eyes in wedding planning. Oh, I do wish you’d come, Laura. We’d all love you to be there. You do know where it is, don’t you? And the date?’

‘Of course I do. Unless she’s done a massive u-turn, the details of this wedding have been set in stone for what seems like years! But … oh, you know. It’s still weeks away. A long way off. Anything could happen. You didn’t tell her, though, did you? Nat? About finding me?’

‘No. Poor girl’s got enough to worry about.’

‘Is that what I am?’ Laura cut in. ‘Just another thing to worry about?’

Jenny put her hand on Laura’s. It was surprisingly cold. ‘Well, we have been worried. All of us. You’ve no idea how hard I had to work to track you down. Finding your aunt, and then twisting her arm to get even a hint of where you might be.’

‘So, why did you?’

‘To start with, it was just curiosity. To find out where you’d gone and to make sure you were okay. But then, when I dragged it out of you about the baby … that changed things. And the truth is that I brought Beth with me because … well, if I couldn’t get you to come back home, then I hoped maybe Beth could.’

‘I haven’t said anything about coming back home.’

‘No, I know. But now you’re having a baby – Ollie’s baby – I thought maybe you would. Or at least think about it. Babies need two parents; parents who stick together whatever life throws at them …’

‘Of course they do. And you know about that more than most. But this is different.’

‘Is it?’

‘You haven’t told him, have you?’

‘Ollie? No. It’s been hard not to, though. I haven’t told anyone at all, not even Beth until this afternoon. I promised I wouldn’t, so I won’t.’

‘So, why haven’t you told him yourself?’ Beth had been saying very little up until now, but she’d finally asked out loud what Jenny had been dying to ask ever since she’d first found out, although she wouldn’t have chosen to come out with it quite so bluntly. ‘Only, I do think he has a right to know, don’t you? Unless he’s not the father, of course.’

There was a stunned silence, broken only by a strangled sob coming from somewhere deep down in Laura’s throat. ‘Is that what you think of me, Beth? Really?’

‘I don’t know what to think, actually. I thought you left because you couldn’t give him a baby, and now here you are, clearly several months gone – which is what you both said you wanted so much – and you’re cutting him out of the equation altogether. It doesn’t make any sense to me.’

‘Beth!’ Jenny turned towards her sister and tried to stop her from saying anything else, but it was too late. Laura was already up and shoving her arms down the sleeves of her coat.

‘I shouldn’t have come,’ she said, pushing through the gap between them as best she could, one hand protectively covering her bump. ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand. Any of you.’

Jenny followed her out into the street. Pregnant women not being the fastest of movers, she wasn’t too difficult to catch up with.

‘Laura. Wait!’

‘What for? I came because I thought it might be good to see you, and maybe to try to explain. I didn’t expect you to start ganging up on me.’

‘That’s not what we’re trying to do. Honestly. Come back inside, Laura. Please. We’ll go easy on you, I promise. And I do keep my promises, as you well know. If I didn’t, it would be Ollie standing here right now, pleading with you. Not me.’

Laura hesitated for a moment, but Jenny could tell she had given in. In fact, there seemed very little fight left in her at all.

‘All right. I’ll come in, but that doesn’t mean I’m coming back home, or telling Ollie. Not right now, anyway. Just because you make all these rash promises doesn’t mean that I have to, okay?’

Jenny slid her arm through Laura’s. ‘Of course you don’t. Whatever you want is fine by me. But I do want to hear all about junior here. Boy or girl? Due date? Possible names? Everything. Wow, Laura, I’m going to be an auntie, aren’t I?’ She laughed. ‘That sounds really funny, doesn’t it? Auntie, aren’t I! But I am. Going to be an auntie. Auntie Jen, the practical one, that’ll be me, opening it a savings account and buying it sensible shoes. And Auntie Beth can take it partying and do its hair, and Nat can … oh, I don’t know, take it for wheelie spins in her chair! It’s going to be just great.’

‘Slow down, Jen. This baby isn’t even born yet, and on my past record it still might not be.’

‘But you’re six months gone. You won’t miscarry this one. Not now. You’re home and dry!’

‘If only I could believe that, but there’s still a long way to go. Anything could happen. Anything could still go wrong. And not a day goes by, Jen, not an hour or a minute when I don’t worry that it will.’

Jenny didn’t know what to say. The sheer misery etched on Laura’s face brought tears stinging into her own eyes.

‘It will be all right, Laura.’

‘Will it? You can’t possibly know that. And it’s what I thought the first time, isn’t it? And the second. And this is the fourth, remember. Four! I hardly sleep, and when I do I just dream these horrible dreams. I can’t settle, or relax, or plan. Ever. It’s like I’m in a living nightmare, Jen, and it’s one I’m not going to wake up from until this baby is born safely, all in one piece, and lying in my arms. Do you think I could put Ollie through all this too? No! Never. It’s best he doesn’t know, doesn’t have to feel what I’m feeling, fret and stress and tie himself up in knots. Best he doesn’t have to go on blaming himself – or me.’

‘Blaming? For what?’

‘Oh, God, Jen, you really don’t understand, do you? Please, let’s go back in to Beth and find something else to talk about for once. Books, clothes, the sodding weather if we have to. But any more baby talk and I think I just might explode!’

Chapter 9 (#ulink_c63d96ba-aeba-54cb-abb6-6c6ee3e4e15f)

Kate, 1979

I packed my pants with a double layer of padding, swallowed three aspirins, and wore the dress back to front. Nobody would know. The neckline was a bit higher at the front than it would have been and the shaping, such as it was, was all wrong (thank God for small breasts), but the giant ribbons attached at the sides had been as easy to tie one way around as they had the other, and I was now eternally grateful I hadn’t gone for something with a train that would have made such improvising pretty much impossible. The small stain, still damp and not quite invisible, despite Linda’s frantic scrubbing, was now at the front of the dress, disguised, along with my bump, by the long trailing bouquet I was clutching so tightly that my knuckles had gone white.

Mum gripped my hand on the step. ‘Sure you’re okay to do this, love?’ she said, looking anxious. ‘Maybe you should have stayed lying down. It might make a difference.’

‘I doubt it. I don’t think babies fall out just because the mother is upright, do you? If I’m going to lose it, there’s not a lot I can do to stop it now. And I will see a doctor as soon as I can, I promise. But I think we all know it might already be too late.’

I took a pace forward to the door and tried not to think about what was happening inside my own body. If I’d thought too hard about it I would probably have crumpled, gone in there crying my eyes out, tripped over my own feet or something. Somehow it was easier to ignore it, pretend it wasn’t happening, tell myself that none of it was true. This baby had not been planned but over the last few weeks I had grown to love it, to want it. And now all I wanted was for it to hang on and live, to become a part of our brand-new family. Baby Blob, that was what Dan had taken to calling her, his hand stroking over my belly, his ear pushed against my skin as if he could hear her breathe. Her? Why did we just both assume it was a she? Little Baby Blob. No, don’t think about it. Concentrate on what’s happening right now. The wedding. Dan. Us …

Peering into the church, I could just see him standing at the front. Dan, with his back to me, hopping from foot to foot and straightening his tie, and Rich standing beside him, fiddling with something in his pocket. Probably the rings. And between them and me, a small rolling sea of heads and hats, a general murmuring of whispered conversation, and an unmistakable air of anticipation.

I was late. Only by ten minutes, which we’d needed to try to sort out the dress, but that was probably enough to get tongues wagging. Where is she? Is something wrong? Is she going to turn up? The flash of an image popped into my head, of that woman Linda knew, seeing it all ahead of her, turning away and running scared, all the way to the bus. But not me. For better or worse, that’s what this was all about. And things didn’t come much worse than this.