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  I would bust her arse first, but ultimately I would forgive her. It was eight fifty-eight.

  I sat until I finished my coffee, then we bundled ourselves back out the door and back down towards the flat. Beth and Heather were outside, ready to open for the day.

  “Where on earth have you been?” Beth gasped as Heather made a beeline straight for the pram and her first glimpse of Maggie.

  “Just a little walk,” I muttered, ashamed. Matilda may have been the queen of the holier-than-thou looks but Beth was generally the person who had the tone of voice to match.

  “I went to Morelli’s for a coffee. I felt claustrophobic.”

  “But it’s too early to be out of the house with a baby!” Beth protested.

  “Nonsense – she’s fine!” I snapped. “I’m tired but fine, thank you, and the coffee was lovely.” Bustling past, I left Beth and Heather standing open-mouthed in my wake.

  As I walked into the shop I cast a stone glare in Matilda’s direction. “Don’t you start,” I muttered.

  *****

  I could hear the phone ringing as I climbed the stairs. My heart pounded, a sense of relief and a sense of dread vying with each other for attention. “It will all be fine, it will be fine, it will all be fine,” I repeated over and over with every step.

  “Aoife!” Beth called as I put my key in the lock and went to cross the threshold. “Wait there a moment.”

  “Come on up,” I answered, making my way into the living- room and laying Maggie in her baby bouncer.

  Beth stuck her head around the door, waving a white hanky as she entered. “Sorry if I was a little nutty there. It’s just quite cold and damp out there and she is quite young.” She nodded in the direction of the bouncer.

  “I know, I just needed to clear my head a bit.”

  The phone burst into life again, ringing loudly and causing Maggie to wake – her startled cry immediately grabbing my attention.

  “Do you want me to get that?” Beth asked.

  “No, it’s fine. It’ll only be Auntie Anna. I told her about Maggie this morning in an email. I expect she wants to talk to me.”

  “I imagine she does,” Beth replied coolly. “Shouldn’t you talk to her then?”

  “I will when madam is settled. I’m a little nervous.” I lifted Maggie to my shoulder and shushed her as I bounced her gently in my arms.

  “Do you want me to take her and let you get it over with?” Beth asked, her arms already outstretched.

  I paused, then kissed Maggie and handed her over. “I suppose that would be a good idea.”

  The phone rang again and I lifted it. “Hello?”

  

  Chapter 8

  Aoife

  “Aoife, I can’t believe it. I just can’t bloody believe it.”

  My heart skipped about a million beats all at once. I wondered momentarily if many thirty-one-year-olds in relatively good health suffered coronaries.

  “A girl. I could have sworn you were carrying a boy,” the voice continued.

  It was Elena Kennedy, by far our most valued client. I like her, honestly I do, but I didn’t want to talk to her then. I had been waiting for Anna to phone. The word was out and I needed to talk to my aunt and have her tell me I wasn’t the blackest sheep ever known in the McLaughlin family.

  “Yes, I’m home. Maggie is lovely.”

  “What a beautiful name,” Elena drawled. “You really must pop over when you are feeling more yourself so that we can see her.”

  “Yes, I will do. That would be lovely.”

  “Or I could drop by?” she offered. “I’ve a lovely little gift for the pair of you.”

  “Yes, Elena. That would be nice too. Maybe next week when I’m feeling brighter. I’m still very tired.”

  “Oh yes, you must be. If there’s anything I can do. I can recommend a night nurse if you need a little sleep.”

  I choked back a snort. It was far from night nurses I was reared and while Instant Karma paid the bills, it did not cover nanny expenses – not by a long shot.

  “I’ll let you know,” I muttered, willing her to take the hint from my brisk answers that I didn’t have time for idle chit-chat. If she had been anyone else I would have told her to feck off and that I needed to keep the phone line clear – but I couldn’t risk it with Elena – not when I knew for a fact she wanted her bedroom transformed in the next few months.

  Thankfully she picked up the hint and signed off, promising to call by and see us both and share a coffee and a chat. I looked around my flat. It was a far cry from her Richmond pad and I made a mental note to arrange the meeting for Stanford’s Deli – a swish little bistro at the other end of the street.

  I waited for Anna’s call, staring at Beth with a growing sense of desperation.

  “Do you think she’s so angry that she can’t bring herself to talk to me?” I asked.

  Beth sighed. “Sweetheart, she might be shocked but I don’t think your aunt has it in her to be angry with anyone for any length of time. She might just be busy.

  “S’ppose,” I muttered, walking to the kitchen to make a cup of tea – my fourth of the morning.

  “Do you think I should phone her?” I shouted through to Beth who was still bouncing up and down gently, shushing Maggie even though she had been asleep for five minutes.

  “If you feel you must,” she answered.

  I looked at the phone, staring at me from its cradle, and I realised I could stand there and drive myself to distraction for the next however long or I could dial a simple number and start to mend what I had broken.

  The phone rang three times before Anna’s voice answered – just to tell me she wasn’t in and I was free to leave a message. Fighting every urge in my body to throw the phone through the window I sat down, a little too quickly, and felt the shockwaves dash through my battered body.

  “You could just phone your mum?” Beth offered.

  “And give her a stroke for breakfast? Are you mad?” I snapped.

  Beth looked wounded but I didn’t care. I was in this mess, not her – and she more than anyone should know that you don’t just phone my mother and make grand announcements down the line.

  “It was only a suggestion.”

  “Well, it wasn’t a very good one. You know Mum. That would be entirely the wrong way to tell her.”

  Why I thought telling Anna via email was the right way to start spreading the news, I don’t know – but it seemed the best choice out of a pretty shitty bunch of choices at the time.

  Beth sat in silence and I immediately started to feel guilty. She was once again the victim of my hormonal mood swings and it wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. I started to cry. “I’m sorry, Beth,” I muttered and she came and sat beside me, nestling into me, careful not to drop Maggie.

  “It will be okay. You’ve been through tougher than this.”

  “I guess,” I answered, and at that the phone rang again. Taking a deep breath I lifted it. “Hello?”

  “Are you trying to give me a fecking heart attack? Jesus, some things aren’t funny, Aoife.”

  It was Anna.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know how else to tell you,” I mumbled.

  “Tell me? Isn’t this a wind-up?” She sounded genuinely confused.

  “No,” I muttered. “It’s very real. I have the stitches to prove it.”

  “Jesus,” she said and went silent – totally silent – for at least a minute.

  Then I heard her inhale. Anna always inhaled deeply when she was getting me out of a fix. It gave her time to think.

  “This will be okay. We just have to come up with a plan.”

  I felt reassured. Anna was always able to work things out. She would find the answer.

  “Feck knows what the plan will be, but we will come up with one,” she added.

  “I’m sorry for landing this on you.”

  “Don’t worry about that. How are you, Aoife? How is the baby – Maggie? How are you coping? How did you ma
nage to keep this quiet all this time?”

  “I’m fine. Maggie is wonderful. I’ve Beth here to help me and there just didn’t seem like a good time to tell you all.”

  “And the father? Are we allowed to talk about him?”

  That was a very good question indeed. Were we allowed to talk about the father? God knows I’d thought about him a lot.

  ****

  Jake was 5’10” but he looked taller. Maybe that was because the first time I laid eyes on him I had been staring upwards at a stage and he was standing there, eyes closed, guitar strumming, lost in Paul Weller’s “You Do Something To Me”.

  I remember I laughed, turned to Beth and told her that “Yer man could do something to me any time he wanted.”

  “Oh him? Jake? He’s the one I was telling you about – Dan’s cousin.”

  I couldn’t see a family resemblance. Dan was all clean-cut, sharp-suited and solid-jawed. Jake was balding, stubbly and dressed like your average scarecrow, but he had sex appeal by the bucket-load. His voice was deep, passionate, entrancing and I found myself utterly captivated.

  When he sat with us after the gig for drinks I did my best to act like an interesting and intelligent grown-up – hiding the fact that I felt to all intents and purposes like a silly love-struck schoolgirl. We got talking – or more he got talking and I got listening and by the end of the night my heart had overruled my head and we ended up back at mine having rampant sex. I would like to say we made love, but I knew it was sex to him, pure and simple. I hoped it would change over time, but obviously it was always going to be just sex, to him. He never told me he loved me – well, only in a whiney voice when he wanted something – like a blow job. He once said I was his muse – as we drunkenly rolled into bed after a killer gig – but the “L” word was just not in his vocabulary.

  I was, however, able to convince myself he did, in fact, have feelings for me because he spent so much time with me it would have been impossible for him to be “loving” anyone else. I became complacent, I can admit, because I thought it was only a matter of time before he came round to my way of thinking and realised he was mad about me too. He never did.

  ****

  So were we allowed to talk about the father?

  “Not really,” I told Anna and she thankfully didn’t ask any more about him. She knew enough of me to know that when I was ready she would get the information she wanted.

  “I’m not sure where to go with this,” she said. “If I can’t tell your mum, can I tell Joe? He might be able to help.”

  “Oh God, he would go mad.”

  “Your brother is not the ogre you think he is,” she sighed.

  “No, but he is over-protective and he will be disappointed in me and if Jacqueline finds out it’ll only be a matter of seconds before she is on the phone to Mum.”

  “You had a baby, pet. You didn’t kill anyone.”

  I knew she was making sense but I wasn’t ready to let them know. Not then anyway, not until I’d come to terms with it a little more myself.

  “I know,” I muttered. “Just give me a few days.”

  “The longer you leave it, the harder it will be. If you want me to do the telling I will. Your mum will love Maggie. I know it. Send me a pic, will you? I’ll phone tonight to see how you’re getting on.”

  “Okay, Auntie Anna. Thanks.”

  And she was gone. I wasn’t sure if I was any further forward at all. Anna may have been convinced my mother would be okay with this, but I wondered if Anna really knew her sister at all. Mum hadn’t been okay with anything I’d done for a very, very long time.

  Beth stood up, placing Maggie in her cot and heading to the kitchen to put the kettle on yet again. Despite her presence, I felt utterly alone and put my head in my hands and wept like a baby.

  “Sweetheart,” Beth soothed, rubbing my back and kissing the top of my head, “this will all work out. C’mon, where is your ‘This Too Will Pass’ spirit?”

  “It passed,” I sighed, rubbing my eyes dry on the sleeve of my jumper. “These are just the baby blues,” I continued. “My boobs are like watermelons, my tummy is like a bowl of jelly. My nethers are shredded, I can’t get up and go out anywhere. I can’t even relax in my own house or have a good sleep and,” I spluttered, “and no one loves me.”

  “I love you,” Beth answered.

  “No offence, but that is not the kind of loving I’m talking about. I’m talking about you and Dan and your perfect relationship and your house. If you had a baby you know Dan would be a brilliant dad. He wouldn’t be missing in action. He wouldn’t offer to pay for a termination!” I was ranting, my sentences coming out between gulping sobs. My fingers pointed accusingly at Beth from time to time and yet I couldn’t stop myself from letting the pain out. What did she have that I didn’t? How come she got Mr Perfect and I got Mr Feckwit? “He would be one of those men who buys you a fifty-million carat ring just to say thanks for bearing the fruit of his loins and here I am, alone in my shitty flat with a child whose father doesn’t even want to know she exists!”

  Beth stared at me, dumbstruck for a while, obviously unsure of how to respond and then she muttered something about day three always being a killer and perhaps I would feel brighter tomorrow. She kissed Maggie, patted me on the shoulder and left – just as I started to cry again.

  *****

  By evening I felt exhausted. Between the crying and the trying to latch her on to my boobs which had at least doubled in size in the last twenty-four hours, things were not as easy as I had hoped.

  So I decided to switch off the outside world, unplugging the phone and curling up on the sofa, Maggie in my arms. We spent the afternoon watching Doris Day films and eating chocolate biscuits. (In fairness to Maggie she didn’t do much of the film-watching or the chocolate-biscuit-eating – but she had the good grace to look content when the crumbs frequently fell on her downy soft hair.) I lost myself in Calam and Kate singing all about “A Woman’s Touch”. I felt myself calm down. Beth was right. This too would pass and I made a mental note to phone her later to apologise for my outburst.

  

  Chapter 9

  Beth

  She is addled with hormones, I reminded myself over and over again as I drove home, the cold February rain battering against the windscreen while tears poured down my face.

  I felt my stomach start to cramp. This probably meant my period had arrived but then again it could be a sign of early pregnancy according to the website I had joined to get support while I tried to conceive. I tried not to let a little bubble of excitement swirl up inside me. A quick mental calculation reminded me my period was due two days from now, so it was much too early to get proper period cramps. It had to be implantation. I dried my eyes and allowed myself a little fantasy – one where I presented two little woollen booties to Dan and told him he was going to be a daddy. Parking the car, I took a few deep breaths. I should know not to allow myself these little indulgences. I should always wait until the positive result popped up on the test.

  But maybe Maggie would be our lucky charm? She had settled so nicely in my arms today – her little body just seemed to fit in the crook of my arm. And my, did she smell delicious, so new, soft and fresh. My heart lurched that little bit at the very thought.

  Walking into the flat I noticed that the light was flashing on the answerphone. I kicked off my shoes, poured a glass of water and pressed play.

  “Beth darling, it’s Mum. Just wondering how things are? Daddy and I were wondering if you and Dan might like to come down this weekend. I know you’re terribly busy, but we’d love to see you.”

  I grimaced at the answerphone. There is no way Dan would be up for a visit back home and I doubt very much I’d be up for it either. If anyone was more obsessed with our procreation than us, it was my parents. They were so keen – too keen – to be grandparents. Each visit they dropped heavy hints that it was about time we added to the family line. Dan wanted me to tell them we were trying, and faili
ng, each month, that we were “infertile” in an unexplainable way, but I couldn’t do it. My parents weren’t used to me failing at anything let alone basic biology.

  I sat down and rubbed my temples. I could feel a headache come on. God, I was tired, so I curled up on the sofa and drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

  I woke to a kiss, so soft and so gentle that it took my breath away. Opening my eyes to the now dark room, I reached my hand up to Dan’s familiar face and felt a smile spread across my face.

  “Hey, babe,” I whispered, pulling him close to me.

  “Hey, yourself,” he said back, kissing me – at first gently and then deeply. I allowed myself to melt towards him and as his hand brushed against my breast, I felt myself wince with pain. Tender breasts: another sign. And then I was aware of the cramping again.

  “Just let me nip to the loo,” I whispered. Imagine how much more amazing this could be if I knew I was pregnant for definite?

  Of course, I didn’t need to use the testing kit after all. The answer was clear as day in my underwear. No baby this month. No reason, just no baby. I didn’t even cry, just wrapped myself in my dressing-gown, wandered through the living-room again and told Dan I was going to bed with a hot-water bottle.

  He knew me well enough by now to know what that meant, so he kissed me on the top of the head.

  “Maybe next month,” he said and I nodded, just like I did every month.

  “Maybe. Can you bring me a glass of wine and a king-size Galaxy, please?”

  He nodded.

  The same routine we played out every month. Even I was getting a little tired of it now. Twenty-five wasted opportunities. Twenty-four babies I wouldn’t hold or coo over.

  

  Chapter 10

  Aoife

  Beth and Dan have been together forever. Of course when I say forever I mean since 1994, but in my books that pretty much feels like forever.