From Here to Maternity
Read From Here to Maternity Online
Authors: Sinead Moriarty
PENGUIN BOOKS
From Here to Maternity
Sinéad Moriarty lives in Dublin with her husband and their two sons.
From Here to Maternity
is her third novel.
From Here to Maternity
SINÉAD MORIARTY
PENGUIN BOOKS
For Hugo
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London
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, England
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First published 2006
7
Copyright © Sinéad Moriarty, 2006
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978-0-141-90670-6
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Patricia Deevy, my wonderful editor, and Michael McLoughlin, Cliona Lewis, Brian Walker and all the team at Penguin Ireland for making the publishing process so enjoyable.
A big thanks to all in the Penguin UK office, especially Tom Weldon, Becke Parker, James Kellow, Naomi Fidler and the fantastic sales team.
Sincere thanks to Gillon Aitken, my agent, Sally Riley, Ayesha Karim and all at the agency for their hard work.
Thanks to my friends for their loyalty and enthusiasm.
I want to thank my nephews – Mikey, James, Jack and Sam – all inspirations for Yuri. Warmest thanks to my sister Sue and brother Mike, and their spouses Jim and Audrey, for being so selflessly supportive, loyal and enthusiastic.
Thanks also to Mum and Dad, for always cheering me on and making a fuss of every achievement, however small.
My biggest thanks go to Troy, my soulmate, for always being there – and to Hugo for making me smile every day.
Hello, I’m Emma. I’m a thirty-six-year-old makeup artist. I married James five years ago. He’s a rugby coach, which means that I spend a lot of time standing on the sidelines of rugby pitches in the lashing rain and howling wind. After a happy first year of marriage we decided to have children. Unfortunately Mother Nature was not on our team, so after a couple of years of post-sex gymnastics followed by fertility treatments – all of which failed – we decided to adopt.
Then we spent a year and a half sitting through a very intense adoption course where everything about us and our relationship was dissected by social workers – including how often we had sex. We were eventually approved and a month ago we flew to a children’s home at the back end of Russia to meet our little son Yuri, with whom we both fell in love at first sight.
We are now on our way back to Russia to make the adoption official in court. Then we can bring Yuri home to Ireland with us and begin our life as a family.
Oh, and by the way, I’ve just found out that I’m pregnant. Seven weeks. Needless to say I’m in shock. I told James last night…
Chapter 1
The day after my best friend Lucy’s wedding I woke up to find James staring at me.
‘What? Do I have dribble on my face?’
‘Was I dreaming last night or did you tell me you were pregnant?’ asked James.
I shook my head and smiled. ‘Nope. I am. Can you believe it, James? After all this time and all those horrible tests and IVF, and now that we finally have a son I’m pregnant! It must have been all the distractions of the adoption. I must have stopped obsessing about getting pregnant and then it just happened. Isn’t it amazing?’ I flopped back into my pillows, grinning.
James leant over and kissed me. ‘You do realize this means we’re going to have two children in the space of seven months.’
‘I know – isn’t it wonderful?’
‘Absolutely! I’m still in shock. How about you?’
‘I’ve actually been feeling really sick lately, but I just presumed it was nerves and stress, with all the adoption stuff. It never crossed my mind that I might be pregnant. If Jess hadn’t asked to borrow my Tampax, I’d still be none the wiser.’
Jess is my other best friend. She has two kids – Roy, named after Roy Keane, her husband Tony is a big Man U fan, and Sally, named after Meg Ryan in
When Harry met Sally
, which is Jess’s favourite movie.
Jess, Lucy and I had all been at school together, and Jess and I were Lucy’s bridesmaids. The guy she married, Donal, is James’s best friend and the captain of the Leinster rugby team that James trains. So James was best man at the wedding. I had set Lucy and Donal up on a blind date and, although their relationship had a tempestuous start, they eventually fell in love, which culminated in their wedding. I took full credit for my matchmaking skills.
Anyway, the day before the wedding, when Jess and I were supposed to be doing helpful bridesmaid stuff but had actually snuck off to have a drink as far away from Lucy’s overbearing snob of a mother as we could get, Jess had asked to borrow some Tampax. I suddenly realized I hadn’t had my period in ages. Normally I knew my cycle inside out, but I’d been so distracted by the adoption that I’d clean forgotten about it. I told her I didn’t have any with me and went up to my room to look at my calendar. I was over four weeks late! I was shocked.
I nipped down to the local chemist and bought two pregnancy tests. They were both positive. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been praying for this moment for so long, but now that I was pregnant, I felt completely numb. It was only when I told James the next day and saw his face that I grasped it was true and we were actually going to have a baby.
‘Gosh, it’s going to be some year. We’ll have a ready-made family by summer,’ said James, shaking his head.
‘I know,’ I said, imagining us walking in the park, James and Yuri ahead while I strolled behind with a little brother or sister in the pram.
‘It’ll be tough going, though. Especially for you, being pregnant and looking after Yuri all day.’
‘Are you planning on going somewhere?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then, why will I be on my own with Yuri?’
‘Because I’ll be at work.’
‘James, you’re going to have to spend less time at the club this year. Delegate more to Jonjo.’
Jonjo was James’s assistant coach at the Leinster rugby club and, from what I could see, he did sod all. James had coached the team to victory in the European Cup a few months earlier, no thanks to Jonjo, who seemed to spend more time socializing with the team than coaching them.
‘Jonjo does his bit. But, Emma, I’m going to be pretty tied up. We’re defending the Cup. We don’t want to give it back.’
‘OK – you can take Yuri to training with you. Get him used to rugby from an early age.’
‘I think ten months might just be a tad
too
young to start him. You do have to be able to walk to play rugby. Mind you, it would be wonderful if he ended up playing for England some day.’
‘You mean Ireland,’ I said, reminding him of where he lived. James was English, but had lived in Dublin for the past nine years.
‘If he’s good enough, I’d like him to play for England – with an English father he can declare for them any time.’
‘But my dad will be devastated. Yuri has to don the green jersey and play for Ireland.’
‘Darling, England won the World Cup last year. I’d rather he played for them.’
I rolled my eyes. As if I didn’t know that England had won the bloody World Cup. For at least three months after the team’s victory in Sydney, every time I walked into the TV room, James was watching replays of Jonny Wilkinson’s winning drop goal and shaking his head in admiration. I thought at one point that he was in love with Jonny.
‘He might hate rugby and be brilliant at tennis,’ I countered. ‘I’d much rather go to Wimbledon than Twickenham. We could sit in the family box, drink champagne, eat strawberries and hang out with the Duchess of Whatsit, Sue Barker and John McEnroe. Mind you, with his Russian roots Yuri might be more keen on ballet.’
‘No,’ said James, sharply.
‘What do you mean, no?’
‘No son of mine is going to ponce around in a pair of tights with his balls round his neck.’
‘Ballet’s beautiful – so expressive.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And athletic! You should see the way they leap about.’
‘He can jump around the rugby pitch.’
‘I hope you’re not going to go all macho, James. I want Yuri to explore the creative side he’s bound to have inherited. The Russians are very arty.’
James groaned. ‘Emma, please tell me you’re winding me up. You’re not going to start booking him into dance classes, are you?’
‘I might –’
There was a knock on our door. It was my sister Babs. Lucy had invited my whole family to the wedding – my parents, Sean, my younger brother by eighteen months, and his fiancée Shadee, and my brat of a sister Babs, the afterthought, twelve years younger than me. We’d all spent the night in the same hotel.
‘Helloooooo, are you decent? I’m hiding from Mum, let me in.’
James scurried off to have a shower and I let Babs in. She was wearing a tiny T-shirt that barely covered her bum.
‘Have you no shame? Where’s your dressing-gown?’
She shrugged. ‘Dunno, and I’m too hung over to care. I just tried to order breakfast but they said it was too late, and I’ve eaten everything in my mini-bar so I’ve come to raid yours.’ She bent down to pull out the Toblerone. Thank God James was in the shower, I thought, as I got a full flash of her arse.
‘Hey, what’s this?’ she said, as she threw her wrapper into the wastepaper basket, which was empty except for –
SHIT! My pregnancy test.
‘Emma?’ she said, looking at the positive result and then at me.
I groaned and covered my head with the pillow. I wanted to get used to the idea myself first. James had only known for about twelve hours – nine of which he’d spent in a Guinness-induced coma.
‘Look, I’ve only just found out and I’m still in shock. Don’t tell Mum, OK?’
‘Don’t tell Mum what?’ asked my mother, coming through the bedroom door, which Babs had left wide open.
‘It’s like Central Station in here. Well, what a wedding! Did you have fun, Mum?’ I said, trying to distract her.
‘What is Barbara not supposed to tell me?’ she asked, glaring at me suspiciously.
Babs, helpful as ever, waved the pregnancy stick in front of her face and shouted, ‘Emma’s preggers!’
‘What?’ said Mum, staring at me. ‘Is she joking? Are you?’
I was suddenly overcome with emotion as I saw tears well in my mother’s eyes.
‘Oh, Emma,’ she said, reaching over to hug me. ‘What a wonderful surprise. How long have you known?’