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  “Happy? I’m thirty-two. I don’t want a fucking child messing up my life, not when it’s starting to go somewhere.”

  “It’s not just ‘a’ child, Jake,” I answered, my voice rising. “It’s our child and at the end of the day I’m pregnant and you were the impregnator.” I pointed my finger at him, as if the power of my gesture would awaken his senses and he would realise this could actually be a good thing.

  “Well, you can get rid of it. How much do you want?” He was fumbling for his wallet.

  Can you believe it? He never had money to pay for the cab ride home from gigs to my place, but here he was fumbling for his fecking wallet.

  “I’m keeping it,” I said, shocking myself.

  Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want this baby. I can only think she was a result of a split condom, or a dodgy pill. I had never taken a contraceptive risk in my life. My mother would have killed me if I’d got in trouble, no matter what my age.

  My life had been going somewhere too, but when I thought about getting rid of “it” – my baby – my heart stopped, a mixture of overwhelming sadness and crushing Catholic guilt sweeping over me.

  “Well, don’t expect me to help out,” he said, one foot in his trousers. “You’re on your own with this one.” Two feet in his trousers. “I can’t believe you, Aoifs.” T-shirt on. Inside out. “You’re just like the rest of them – out to fucking trap a man. You are sad.” Shoes on and jacket lifted. “Call me if you see sense, this could have been good.” Door slammed.

  And that was the last time I spoke to Jake Gibson.

  

  Chapter 4

  Beth

  I had coped better than I thought I would. I’d only cried a little and I was able to disguise that as happiness for Aoife. I was happy for her, of course I was. She seemed happy to have her baby and I had wondered over the last few months if she would come round to the notion of motherhood at all. In my weirder, hormonally mental moments I had allowed myself to hope or think that perhaps she wouldn’t bond with her baby and she would give her to me to look after. I never told anyone that I felt that way. I knew those were not the thoughts of a rational woman – but since when did rational thought come into being broody?

  It was strange really – the day I first felt the urge to have a baby. Dan and I had been together for ages, and married for a few months when the notion first hit me. Up until then the thought of parenthood terrified me. I liked our freedom, I liked that we could jaunt off to Brighton for the weekend without worrying about anyone else. Dan was working crazy hours in the law firm and I was busy with Instant Karma. When we weren’t working we were out with Aoife and Jake.

  I had even bought cream carpets for our flat. Babies and children were not even on our radar. So it shocked me to suddenly come over all maternal. Dan and I had gone to Morelli’s for coffee. We were sitting there when a woman – a yummy mummy – walked in with the most gorgeous baby boy I had ever set eyes on cradled close to her in a sling. He had downy soft blond hair and his eyes were closed. He was perfect and I could barely take my eyes off him.

  So I turned to Dan, who was talking about his latest case, and said in a very matter-of-fact manner that I wanted one of those.

  He stopped talking, stared at the baby, then back at me and smiled. “If this means we get to have loads of sex you can count me in,” he grinned and I reached across to him.

  “Do you mean that?” I asked, searching his face for any sign of doubt.

  “I never joke about sex,” he said solemnly, and I sat back frustrated at his jokey manner. He took my hand again, rubbing it gently and simply said: “I can think of nothing I would like to do more than have a baby with you.”

  And that was our decision made.

  I felt nervous as I threw my pills away – replacing those small white tablets with small white folic acid pills instead. I bought a book called Taking Charge of Your Fertility and within a few weeks I knew when the optimum time for our lovemaking was and what position offered the best chance of success.

  I even discovered the “joys” of egg-white cervical mucus. Who would have thought I would ever have been interested in what leaked from my undercarriage? But soon I wasn’t just interested, I was obsessed.

  By some weird twist of fate we seemed to get a shocking number of commissions for nurseries and children’s bedrooms at that time. I started a file – my best ideas – which I kept in the shop, just ready for the time when I would get to design my own nursery.

  God, I wiled away so many hours, lying on the daybed, pencil behind my ears, looking to all intents and purposes as if I was working really hard on the Forbes’ nursery or the Johnstons’ playroom – instead I was choosing the ginghams and voiles that would adorn our nursery – the room where little Lulah or Lucas would sleep.

  I hadn’t looked at that file in three months – not since I finished Maggie’s nursery.

  

  Chapter 5

  Aoife

  I had two pounds in twenty-pence pieces stuffed into a little film canister. Beth had given it to me when she helped me pack my hospital bag. “You can’t use your mobile in the hospital,” she had lectured, “so take this and that way you will have change for the phone.”

  I had nodded, stuffing the film canister in my case along with two packets of gigantic maternity towels, some breast pads and ten pairs of disposable pants.

  Beth had given me a list of everything I would need. She got it from an internet forum where she spent time while planning her Big Day with Dan and she just couldn’t bring herself to leave after the wedding.

  “I can’t believe I need so much stuff,” I had muttered while folding yet another tiny vest into the case, alongside the babygros, nappies, cotton wool and baggy T-shirts for labour.

  “Trust me,” Beth had soothed. “The girls on my site said you need this stuff.”

  I smiled and continued packing, grateful that someone, even if it was only Beth’s imaginary friends on the internet, was taking an interest in this pregnancy. If it had been left to me Maggie would have spent her first twenty-four hours wrapped in a hospital-issue towel.

  I rattled my film canister as Peggy wheeled in the phone, praying that my two pounds would be enough to get some answers.

  “Here you go, lovely,” Peggy soothed. “I’ll take this little one to the nursery to give you some peace and quiet.”

  I nodded, kissing my fingers and pressing them against my daughter’s cheek. Then I started to make some calls.

  The phone rang twice. He always answered on the second ring. Dan was nothing if not predictable.

  “Hey, Dan,” I started.

  “Hey, Irish, congrats on the baby. Beth says she’s lovely.”

  “Thanks. Listen, I need a favour.” I heard his intake of breath and knew that he had been expecting this phone call ever since he had slipped on my broken waters in Instant Karma.

  “I wish I knew where he was,” Dan started, “but you know I haven’t seen him in three months. He’s keeping a low profile.”

  “But surely someone knows? You guys were so close.”

  “He is not the man we thought he was. He doesn’t keep in touch with any of us any more. Too busy trying to make it big. What a dickhead!” Dan’s voice was full of scorn.

  I bit my lip, biting back tears. I knew Jake was a dickhead, but he was also my baby’s father. Dickhead or not, I couldn’t escape that fact. Dickhead or not, I still had feelings for him.

  I nodded meekly at the phone.

  “You okay, Irish?” Dan asked.

  I nodded again, a soft sob escaping from my mouth.

  He took a deep breath. “Look,” he sighed, “I’ll ask around, but I can’t promise anything. Beth and I will come in later, okay?”

  I nodded again before muttering a quiet “Okay”.

  I had used a whole pound of my allowance and still had no answers. Sitting back on the bed, I dropped another coin in and dialled another number.

  The phone
rang three times before a harassed-sounding woman answered: “Hello, McLaughlin residence.”

  Mum. There she was with her airs and graces – Derry’s answer to Hyacinth Bucket. I wondered in that second how she had felt when she’d first held me in her arms. Had she considered me perfect? Had I completed her? She had the husband, the nice house, the perfect son and now she had her daughter. I wondered had she felt happy in those early days, because it seemed to me that ever since I had been a disappointment. Tears sprang to my eyes.

  “Hello?” she repeated, still harassed. “Look, if you are one of those call centres, we aren’t interested.”

  “Mum,” I muttered, my voice cracking with emotion.

  She didn’t notice. “Ach, Aoife, how are you? I was just talking about you today to Úna O’Neill. She’s getting her living-room done and I told her all about you and your fancy shop. You should have seen her face. There she was lugging her paint from Tesco – can you believe it, Tesco? Since when did they do paint? – and I was telling her how you were doing up a pilot’s room.”

  “It’s pilates, Mum.” I didn’t bother to tell her it was a yoga room. There was little point.

  “Well, whatever it is, it is better than the room yer wan will have when she’s done!” Mum sniffed.

  She clearly felt superior. That’s all I was to her – a tool to make her feel superior over lovely Mrs O’Neill who always baked fresh buns for the kids on the street.

  “I’m sure her room will be lovely,” I said. By now I was getting worried. How would I segue from this talk of Tesco paint to the rather life-changing announcement that I had given birth in the early hours of the morning.

  “You’ll never guess the news,” she started.

  “Funnily enough I was about to say the same thing,” I replied, figuring that humour was my best approach now. Like “Ha, ha, Mum, you’ll never guess, but I’ve just had a baby” – that kind of thing.

  “Well, let me tell you first,” she said.

  I could hear her sit down, the cushions on the leather sofa squeak under her. This must be Grade A gossip.

  “Are you sitting down?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you’ll never guess who’s pregnant?”

  And there she was, stealing another of my lines. I glanced around the room, wondering for a moment if it was bugged. I dropped another twenty pence in the slot of the payphone and waited for the bombshell.

  “Who?”

  “Jacqueline! She’s early on, but we’re so excited. Joe is over the moon. Can you believe it? I’m going to be a granny again. Odhran will be a big brother. It’s just wonderful. We couldn’t be happier.”

  Fuck. Perfect Jacqueline was pregnant again. My perfect sister-in-law, hugely successful Jacqueline who could do no wrong, was pregnant.

  “She’s hoping for a girl,” my mother continued. “Well, to be honest, she says she doesn’t mind but a girl would be nice. I’d love a wee granddaughter to fuss over.”

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell her she had a granddaughter to fuss over, but the words didn’t come.

  “Look, Mum, someone has just come into the shop,” I lied. “That’s great news. I’m delighted for them. Talk later, bye.”

  I hung up. I now had only twenty pence left. I got up and walked to the nursery and hugged my daughter so close to me that I feared I might break her.

  “I’ll take her back to our room now,” I told Peggy and walked back to the ward, where I lay down with Maggie on my chest and slipped into my fantasy world again – one where my mother preferred me over Jacqueline.

  ***********

  A sea of blue and pink balloons bobbed past my door. I could hear the occasional yelp of excitement from a toddler meeting his baby brother or sister for the first time and high-pitched declarations from overexcited grannies that the baby they were laying their eyes on for the first time was the most beautiful in the world. I was sitting on my chair, Maggie latched on to my swollen breasts, feeling my body ache, tighten and heal, when Dan popped his head around the corner, turned a shade of crimson and disappeared again. I had the good grace to laugh, as did Beth who could barely control her mirth as she walked into the room.

  “Dan will come in when you’ve put your baps away,” she laughed. “Although between me and you I think he was secretly delighted to get a peek.”

  Beth handed me a huge pink teddy bear, a box of chocolates and a half bottle of champagne. “I thought you might need some sustenance,” she said, stroking Maggie’s back – despite its close proximity to my naked nipple.

  I lifted Maggie to my shoulder and began to rub her back in soft, soothing circular movements, calling out the door to Dan that he no longer needed to avert his eyes.

  He walked towards me, a bunch of flowers in one hand and kissed me on the cheek. “Well done, Irish,” he smiled. “She is a princess.”

  I smiled back, wondering if it was too soon to ask him if he had found out anything about Jake’s location. Telling myself to play it cool, I decided to bide my time with some small-talk.

  I was able to ascertain that the shagfest had been most lovely, and that Brighton had been freezing. I found out that Dan was set to start a new case in the Crown Court that might just make the tea-time news and that Elena Kennedy sent her very best wishes and was only mildly put out that I wouldn’t be completing her yoga room.

  “When do they think you might get out of here?” Dan asked.

  I hadn’t really thought about that before. It was quite cosy here. There was always a nurse on hand to answer my concerns or take Maggie for five minutes if I needed to pee. Going home scared me.

  My flat, or apartment as my mother insisted on calling it, was perfect for me. I had known as soon as we’d viewed the shop downstairs that I would feel at home in this building, so we struck a deal with the landlord to allow us to let both at a reasonable rate. (Well, this is London – when I say reasonable, I do of course mean extortionate.) I had used my flat as a place where I could test my ideas for clients’ transformations. The upside is that I sometimes got to keep pieces that didn’t quite fit with our clients’ vision, the downside was that nothing really matched. The flat was an eclectic mix of multicoloured fabrics, rich silks, gruff Hessian, coloured glass baubles and inventive lighting. I loved it. I felt at home lounging on my sofa, the soft coloured glass of the Tiffany-inspired lamps glowing around me as I looked out of the sash windows, framed in voile and chiffon.

  It was the perfect flat for a woman-about-town. It wasn’t so good for a single mother and her newly acquired love child. Thankfully Beth had made sure it wasn’t totally child un-friendly these days.

  Relishing a challenge she had blagged enough goodies from our suppliers to transform my miniscule box room into a nursery of sorts. Cream walls, a white cot and rocking chair and a chest of drawers filled it completely. She told me she would wait until the baby was born before she bought either the blue or pink gingham to finish the job. I had shrugged her off. I didn’t care about the nursery. I didn’t want to think of someone else invading my space.

  I’d kept the door to that room closed for the past month, hoping that if I’d ignored what was happening it would go away. It didn’t, thank God. Weirdly now I wanted to buy the pink, or maybe red, gingham myself and get my sewing-machine out and make the finishing touches. I wanted to fill the white wicker baskets with nappies and lotions, bibs and vests. I wanted to sit on the rocking chair and coo at my child, singing lullabies. (Admittedly I was going to have to learn some first, Mum was more into singing hymns at us – or the songs of Tammy Wynette.)

  ***

  “We’ve bought you a travel system,” Beth announced, pulling me from my thoughts.

  “A what? I have a car, you know,” I retorted.

  “Not a car – a travel system – you know, a pushchair, car seat and all.”

  “A pram?”

  “Well, it’s more than a pram. It’s a Bugaboo. All the top celebs have it,” Beth said p
roudly.

  “Thanks, though I’m not sure Maggie will be mixing with the Richmond yummy mummy and designer-baby set – any old pram would have done.”

  “Not for this little one,” Dan grinned. “She deserves the best, just like her Auntie Beth.”

  Dan was holding Maggie now, cradling her gently in his arms. I realised this was the first time my daughter had been held by a man and when I saw the look of love and admiration Dan had in his eyes for her, I started to cry.

  “Fecking hormones,” I muttered, drying my eyes with the sleeve of my dressing-gown.

  “Hey, don’t worry about it,” Beth sighed, tears glistening in her own eyes. “I would be crying too if I had such a gorgeous baby.”

  It would have been churlish to tell her I wasn’t crying out of love, but fear and self-pity.

  Dan reached towards his wife and rubbed her hand and I felt jealous of them and their connection. I wanted to feel it too – to feel cherished.

  “So, did you hear anything about Jake?” I asked.

  “Not yet, I made a few calls. Sarah thinks he might be in Germany. She wasn’t sure.”

  “Is she going to find out?”

  “She’ll see what she can do.”

  I sighed. This was frustrating. Why did he not have answers for me? Maggie was almost twenty-four hours old and her daddy knew nothing about her.

  “Do you want me to come and pick you up tomorrow then? You know, if you are getting out?” Beth asked.

  I nodded.

  “You can come and stay with us for a few days if you want,” Dan offered, but no, no matter how much I was dreading it I knew I would have to get into some form of routine on my own sooner or later.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, knowing that I had already dismissed the notion outright. Much as I loved and adored my friends – these two people who had become more of a family to me than my own flesh and blood – I just could not imagine fitting into their perfect home and their perfect existence.