Babies in Waiting (21 page)

There was a soft knock at the door. She turned, and he was standing there. ‘Kettle’s on,’ he said and smiled. ‘And I got some lemon cake in town today to celebrate your moving in.’

‘Ah, Adam,’ she grinned, ‘you know the way to a woman’s heart!’

What a thoroughly stupid thing to say! She found herself blushing like a schoolgirl, so she put her head down and walked towards the door as if she was headed briskly for
the kitchen. But he didn’t move out of her way. He laughed, and said lightly, ‘Funny, I’ve always been told that the way to a woman’s heart was through her sternum with a bone saw.’

She looked up, shocked, and saw he was grinning from ear to ear. ‘Kidding,’ he said softly. ‘I have all the lines, don’t I?’

He still wasn’t moving. Louise couldn’t get past him, so she just stood and looked into his lovely face. And then, finally, he kissed her.

She’d imagined that kiss every night since she’d met him. She’d lain in bed at Simon’s flat like a breathless teenager, and thought what it would be like to kiss Adam’s full, firm lips. She’d never fantasised about a man like that before. It was so unlike her that she’d put it down to raging pregnancy hormones. She’d imagined a splendid, blood-roaring-in-her-ears, fireworks-going-off-behind-the-Disney-Castle, full-orchestra-playing kind of kiss. But it wasn’t like that. It was better. Dear God, the man should write a bestselling book about kissing. He should get the Nobel Prize for kissing. He should be granted the Freedom of Kissing City. It was gentle and tender, but probing and sexy, and kissing him meant being pressed against his lovely body and smelling him and running her hands over his broad, muscled back. She felt a melting, pulling sensation between her legs, and then the tattoo of tiny limbs deep inside as the baby moved within her.

He pulled away first. His eyes were unfocused and his face looked blurred and changed with lust. But then he
shook his head and took another step backwards. ‘I’m so, so sorry, Louise. That’s the most unprofessional thing I’ve ever done. I’m . . . oh my God.’ He turned and walked quickly away, and she heard him go into the kitchen and start bustling around making tea.

They both needed a minute, that was clear. She went back into her room and combed her hair and took a few deep breaths. He had certainly been excited – there was no doubt about what she’d felt when she pressed up against him, and she was sure he would want a few minutes for things to . . . calm down. She sat on the bed for a little while, but she couldn’t hide in her room forever. She smoothed her clothes and walked briskly into the kitchen.

He was sitting at the table, his hands around a mug of tea. He’d put her tea at the far end of the table, and put slices of the lemon cake on a plate in the middle. It made her smile: neither of them could reach the cake if she sat where he’d put her tea. Well, that wouldn’t do. She scooped up her mug, walked around the table and shoved the cake plate towards him, then sat down beside him. Neither of them spoke for a while. She decided to be brave.

‘Please don’t feel awkward . . . you didn’t do anything that I didn’t . . . want you to do.’

‘Well, that’s a relief. I just . . . well, this is possibly the most complicated situation I’ve found myself in in a long time.’

‘I agree. I mean, I’ll be here, running your business, and you have to feel you can trust me . . .’

‘That’s not what I mean. Louise, I trust you completely.

You’ve shown that you’re more than equal to the task professionally. It’s just that . . .’

‘I’m pregnant?’

‘Well, yes. That’s part of it, and I’m going away . . . and when I come back you’ll have the baby . . . not that I mind . . . oh God. This is all coming out wrong. I’ve just wanted to kiss you since the moment I saw you, and I’ve told myself every day that it’s a terrible, terrible idea. But today I just . . . well, I didn’t want to go away without telling you how I feel.’

She left a pause, and asked quietly, ‘How do you feel?’

He thought about it, and then spoke hesitantly.

‘I feel like . . . like meeting you was significant. Very, very significant. Like I drove up to the station to pick you up that first day, and when I saw you, I felt like you were coming home.’

Well, there really was nothing to say to that. Louise drew a ragged breath and put a hand over his. His skin was warm under her palm, and he flipped his hand gently so their palms were pressed together.

They talked until the sun went down, then she cooked them big bowls of pasta with chilli and tomato. Then they went into the living room and talked some more. They sat close together on the sofa, and Millicent came to sit on his knee. She purred and extended one paw on to Louise’s knee, almost as if she were offering a truce.

Later, much later, they went to sleep together in Adam’s big bed. They didn’t have sex . . . they’d both agreed that no matter how much they wanted to, it would make things
even more complicated than they already were. She fell asleep with her hand in his.

The room was still dark when his alarm bleeped softly, and he got up and walked quietly to the shower. Louise lay on her side, looking at the mountainous piles of bags and backpacks arranged against the wall of his bedroom. He was going, and that was it. They had made no definite plans. He’d asked her to wait for him to come back from the sailing expedition, and they’d agreed to see where they stood then. No promises, just a door left open.

Their last few hours together were quiet. So much had been said the night before, and so much could be said to damage the tiny, fragile beginnings they had built. They held hands over cups of steaming coffee at the kitchen table, and then he loaded up the car. He came into the kitchen and held her, at first gently, as if she might break, then fiercely, as if he needed her strength to be able to go. They didn’t say goodbye.

Once he had driven away into the grey, early morning light, she crept back into his bed and let herself cry a little, resting her head on the pillow where he had slept. It hurt that he was gone, but at the same time it was a good pain, if there was such a thing. She had so much to deal with at the moment . . . the baby, running a new business . . . amazing though Adam was, it wasn’t the right time to be falling in love and losing her head. After a little while, she fell asleep again. It had been a long, emotional night and she was very tired.

The knocking sounded like someone hammering on a
castle door. She began to dream a confused dream about being in a palace under siege, hiding in the kitchens. It took several minutes to realise the knocking was real and that she was in Adam’s house in Surrey. She stumbled out of bed, looking around wildly for something to put on. She found a ratty old dressing gown of Adam’s on the back of the bedroom door and ran barefoot through the house. The hammering and doorbell-ringing was coming from the front door. She’d never come in through the front door, it didn’t look like it had been opened in ages. She struggled with the locks, yelling pointlessly, ‘I’m opening it! Don’t go away!’ Then she wrenched the door open to reveal . . . Brian.

She would have stood there, shocked and dumbfounded, but he started yelling the moment the door was open and pushed past her to get into the house. All she could do was follow him into the living room as he ranted. He’d obviously been working up to a boil on the drive down from Yorkshire, and the steam was going to have to escape somehow.

It took a while to work out how he had found her. Toni had mentioned in an email that the day they’d met for lunch in town she’d seen a woman staring at Louise as if she knew her. It transpired, from Brian’s rant, that that woman had been Jane, his PA. She’d been in London to see a show with her sister and had delighted in going back to Leeds to tell everyone that worked for Barrett and Humphries that she’d seen Louise Holmes in a coffee shop
and she was ‘wearing her apron high’. The news had reached Brian’s ears, and he had quizzed Jane about how far along Louise was. Jane, along with every other staff member at Barrett and Humphries, had suspicions about what had happened between Brian and Louise at the awards ceremony in Manchester, so she was more than happy to fan the flames.

Brian had heard through the management grapevine that Edward had helped Louise to get a job near London, so it took one phone call to get an address. And here he was. Louise couldn’t help thinking that if he’d got there a day, or even a few hours earlier, he’d have been yelling at Adam, not her. There were some small mercies.

There wasn’t a lot for her to do or say. Brian was in full flow. The gist of what he was saying came down to three words: ‘How could you?’

And to be fair, in the chilly grey light of that early April morning, what Louise had done seemed fairly appalling, even to her. She stood in the living room, naked under Adam’s dressing gown, her arms crossed over her body, and looked at Brian. She’d persuaded herself that she felt nothing for him other than disgust, that what had happened between them had meant nothing to him, and that his moving on to another affair was justification enough for leaving without telling him that he was to be a father. She had begun to believe that the baby she was carrying was hers and hers alone, nothing to do with him. But that wasn’t true. It wasn’t his anger that persuaded her . . . it was seeing him. Looking at his familiar face, she
thought for the first time that her child might have Brian’s blue eyes, or coppery hair. Would the child be tall and slim like her, or chunkier, like Brian? Genetically, the baby was half his, and that meant he had a lifetime’s emotional claim on this child, and a lifetime’s link to her. She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t thought this all through. And, insanely, not three hours before, she’d parted from a man she thought she might be falling in love with. A man who was not the father of the baby she was carrying.

She felt a bit weak, and sat carefully on the edge of an armchair. Brian was saying, ‘And what about Lisa? And my girls? How am I going to tell them?’ He kept talking, but Louise found she was fighting an overwhelming urge to go back to Adam’s bed and fall into a deep sleep. If she was asleep, none of this would be happening. But then, out of the torrent of Brian’s rant, one word rang out – ‘abortion’.

‘What?’ she said. It was the first time she’d spoken since he had arrived.

‘I think you should have an abortion. This is ridiculous. We’re middle-aged people. This is going to ruin our lives.’

‘Brian, I’m nineteen-and-a-half weeks pregnant, almost at the limit for a legal abortion. I doubt I’d find a doctor in England who’d condone it. And, secondly, no. I want this baby.’

And, suddenly, Brian sat down on the sofa opposite her and started to cry.

Brian was tough, businesslike and practical, often a bit dogmatic, to be fair. In a work context, he was known to
be quietly forceful, and sometimes, very dramatically, he yelled. He didn’t cry. Yet here he was, sitting on the edge of Adam’s faded gold sofa, with his head in his hands, sobbing like a child. She hesitated, then went to sit beside him. She patted his back awkwardly and felt his sobs heave through him. It was absolutely awful to watch. He did stop eventually and excused himself to go to the bathroom. She used the time to dash to her own bedroom and put on some clothes. She heard him blow his nose like a trumpet, and then heard water running as he washed his face. When he came out, his eyes were red, but he looked relatively normal.

They sat down again in the living room, side by side on the sofa. After a long silence, Brian said, ‘I’m sorry. That’s not like me at all.’

‘I know.’

‘I just feel so totally out of control. Like you’ve put my life under the wheels of some juggernaut and you’re going to destroy it.’

‘That was not my intention, Brian, believe me. I left Leeds, hoping you’d never find out, that I’d just be gone. I’m just trying to make the best of the situation.’

‘Like I’d believe that.’ His face twisted into an ugly sneer.

She was too shocked to say anything more than, ‘What?’

‘Look at you,’ he said. ‘You’re nearly forty. Biological clock ringing like a fire alarm . . . you did this on purpose.’

‘I . . . what?’

‘You were trying to trap me. I see that now.’

‘Oh, for the love of God, Brian, listen to yourself! You sound ridiculous. If you remember, you came to my room, that night, not the other way round. It was your condom we used, and you knew then that it split. Was that my fault? Do you think I did a speedy Ninja trick where I cut it with a razor blade I had concealed somewhere? Don’t be absurd.’

He looked stung, and it slowed him down for a minute, but he was soon back on the attack. ‘You didn’t have to keep it though.’

‘No, you’re right. I didn’t. But I decided to. And I knew you’d want no part in this baby’s life, so I left, hoping I could make it easier for you.’ She paused, and then said hesitantly, ‘In hindsight . . . in hindsight I should have told you. And I’m sorry. I suppose deep down I just couldn’t bear the thought of having this very argument with you.’

‘But now I know, and now we’re having the argument. And it’s too late to change what’s happening.’

‘You’re right. But I’ll do my best to make things okay. I’m willing to sign some kind of legal document absolving you of any involvement, financial or otherwise.’

‘Does such a thing exist?’

‘I don’t know. Can we find out?’

‘I’m sure it doesn’t. But anyway, it wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on. One phone call to Lisa and you could destroy my life.’

‘To be fair, Brian, one phone call to Lisa and I could have destroyed your life at any point in the last four months. I gave up everything. My job, my home . . . I moved
hundreds of miles. I know you don’t feel like trusting me now, but I really, really don’t want to ruin things for you.’

‘And what about . . .’ he gestured in the direction of her belly. He clearly couldn’t bear to say ‘the baby’, or ‘the child’. ‘You can’t promise me . . . it . . . won’t come looking for me.’

‘No. I can’t promise that, you’re right. But I would discourage that, if you want me to.’

‘Of course I’d want you to discourage it,’ he said, as if any other choice was crazy.