The Christmas Surprise (5 page)

They had hugged their secret to themselves for weeks like fairy treasure, bedazzled by what they had created with their love. However many people had done so before them (about nineteen billion, Stephen reckoned), it could not diminish their private joy by an iota. The outside world, on the other hand …

‘Do you think Lilian will guess?’ Rosie had asked.

‘Yup,’ said Stephen. ‘Though it doesn’t matter if she guesses or not, because like everybody else, she asks us every ten seconds anyway. Oooh, when are you getting married, are you going to take on your title, when are you going to have a baby, she’s not getting any younger.’

‘They actually say “she’s not getting any younger”?’ said Rosie, stung. She was thirty-three.

‘Never,’ said Stephen quickly. ‘They never say that.’

‘Hmm,’ said Rosie, who was on her way up to see her great-aunt with a little black bomber jacket, very Mary Berry, that she’d been unable to resist for her in the January sales.

‘The problem is—’

Stephen was there before her.

‘If you tell Lilian before you tell your mother, you’ll be in a heap of trouble.’

Rosie shivered.

‘Can you IMAGINE?’

Angie, Rosie’s mother, was fiercely protective of Rosie, even all the way from Australia, where she lived looking after Rosie’s brother Pip’s children, whom Rosie adored.

‘In my head,’ said Stephen, ‘they would both rise up into the sky and have a great fight.’

‘Then your mother would grow to the size of Godzilla …’

‘Let’s not tell my mother till it’s here,’ pleaded Stephen, stroking Rosie’s soft curls. ‘And maybe not even then. She’ll barely notice. Hide it every time she comes round. If she finds out, tell her we sent it to boarding school in the womb.’

‘That’ll totally work,’ said Rosie. Her eyes widened. ‘Oh my God, does it matter whether it’s a girl or a boy?’

Stephen looked away.

‘Seriously? Screw that.’

Stephen was set to inherit the huge, unprofitable, crumbling estate currently being run by his mother. His elder sister Pamela had quite a lot to say about that.

‘Yes, but …’

‘Oh God, if it’s a boy, Pamela is going to do her nut.’

They looked at each other and started giggling.

‘So,’ said Stephen. ‘Is there anyone who isn’t totally going to do their nut about this poor baby?’

Angie first. If this had been a cartoon, Rosie thought, there would have been heavy hairdryer lines coming out of the phone. All Angie’s doubts over Stephen’s suitability as husband material for her only daughter were blown away in an instant.

‘Oh moi Gawd?’ she shrieked, in her hybrid English/Aussie accent, even though she’d only been in Australia for two and a half years. ‘A boybee!!!’

‘Speak English, Mum,’ said Rosie, pink with pleasure.

‘WANNA SPEAK TO ROSIE.’

Rosie could hear Meridian, her favourite niece, on the other end of the line, and a bit of fumbling as she grabbed the phone.

‘HEYYO, AUNTIE ROSIE. WHEN ARE YOU COMING FOR SLEEPOVER?’

‘Soon,’ promised Rosie. ‘Hello, my darling Meridian.’

‘I JAMES BONG.’

‘Hello, James Bond. Listen up, James. You know I am going to have a little baby for you to play with! She’ll be your cousin and you’ll be the biggest.’

There was a very long pause. If Rosie hadn’t been able to hear Meridian’s noisy breathing down the phone, she’d have thought she’d hung up or wandered off.

‘James Bong?’

‘DOAN HAVE BABY, AUNTIE ROSIE,’ came the voice very clearly. ‘BABIES ARE PIG’S ARSE.’

‘Meridian!’ Angie said sternly.

‘Okay,’ said Rosie. ‘Well, you know I’ll still like you very much.’

More noisy breathing, then Angie grabbed the phone back.

‘I’ll tell her it’s not coming for ages. It’s not, is it? I mean, darling, you were looking quite well-rounded at Christmas …’

Rosie rolled her eyes. Anything larger than a size 8 her mother made a fuss about. She was, and always had been, quite a bit larger than a size 8.

‘No, Mum.’

‘Oh, okay, good! Right, Meridian, don’t worry about the baby.’

‘I WILL KILL THE PIG’S ARSE BABY WITH MY ROCKET CAR.’

‘She’s thrilled,’ said Angie. ‘And so am I, my love. How are you feeling? Are you sick? Have you told that old dingbat yet?’

She meant Stephen’s mother. Rosie had called her worse.

‘Not yet.’

‘Oh man, don’t let her get her claws into the baby. She’ll be sending it out chasing horses and trying to make friends with Prince George and whatever posh people do.’

There was a pause.

‘Can it make friends with Prince George?’

‘No, Mum.’

‘Ooh, I’ll have to come over. Or you guys come to us!’

‘You want me to fly to Australia with a newborn baby?’

‘You’ve got the ticket!’

Her family had given her a ticket to Australia for Christmas.

‘Anyway, babies are easy. Just coat the dummy in sugar water and you can basically pop to the shops.’

‘Thanks, Mum,’ said Rosie, rolling her eyes.

‘Also, on the flight, you give them a little bit of valium …’

‘Mu-um!!!!!!’

‘Oh my Rosie-Posie, this is so amazing.’

‘Well, Pip’s got kids.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Her voice softened, and she sounded English again. ‘But when it’s your daughter, it’s something else. Something a bit special … PI-IP!!!! YOUR SISTER’S EXPECTING!’

‘Bonzer!’ shouted Pip from what sounded like a long way away.

‘Are you out in the garden splashing in the pool this early in the morning?’ asked Rosie suspiciously.

‘Yip,’ said Angie proudly. ‘You’d love it here, Rosie.’

Rosie looked out of the window at the frost-spattered trees and the sparkling garden.

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But here is pretty good too.’

‘Is it as cold as it was at Christmas?’

‘It is FAR worse than it was at Christmas. And there’s not even any Christmas!’

Rosie moved to the front, where Farmer Isitt was walking his old horse. On her back were two of the village children, screaming and laughing, their breath visible on the dark air.

‘Brr,’ said Angie.

‘No, it’s all right,’ said Rosie, smiling. The fire was crackling invitingly down below. ‘And I’m fine. Hungry.’

‘You’re always hungry.’

‘Yes, thanks for that. And my bosoms … Uh, never mind.’

‘I never will know where those came from,’ said Angie wonderingly. ‘Lilian and I are flat as pancakes.’

There was a pause while they both wondered, briefly, about Rosie’s father, a travelling man Rosie had never known.

‘That child is going to have plenty of family,’ said Angie fiercely, putting Rosie’s thoughts into words. ‘Too much probably. You don’t have to worry about that.’

‘No,’ said Rosie.

She rang off promising to send a picture of her bump week by week, though the idea that she would even have a bump seemed very odd to Rosie, some kind of medical miracle that she couldn’t imagine happening.

She went back downstairs. Stephen didn’t quite look up; he was gazing at his laptop, as usual cursing the ridiculous slowness of their rural internet connection. It never really bothered Rosie. Angie posted pictures of the children on Facebook every single day, along with inspirational messages about guardian angels and things you had to ‘like’ if you loved your daughter or your niece or stuff like that, and Rosie normally let it load at its own speed then crawled through it later. It was nice keeping up with her old friends – Mike and Giuseppe both changed their relationship status about once every two days – and she ordered supplies for the shop, but apart from that it wasn’t something she was crazy about. Stephen, on the other hand, liked to read the papers and keep up with rugby teams and so on, and was always grousing about how long it took.

‘So, you know,’ she said, ‘we’ll have to move to Peak House. We’ll freeze our bums off.’

Stephen looked up.

‘I didn’t think of that,’ he said and bit his lip thoughtfully.

When Rosie had arrived in Lipton, he had been living in Peak House, the draughty Georgian pile that belonged to the big house. It was right at the top of the hill, open to the wind and rain, but the views were staggering. Stephen’s memories of it were not, however. He associated Peak House with cold and loneliness; and
Lilian’s little cottage, where they now lived, with cosiness and warmth and coming home, and being happier than he’d ever known.

‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘Babies are only little.’

‘I’ll be sure until the first time it crawls straight into the road and gets run over by Isitt driving his sheep to market.’

‘Well Lilian and her brothers all grew up here.’

‘Yes, and they slept four to a room and had an outhouse in the garden.’

‘Sounds cosy enough.’

Rosie looked at him.

‘Seriously?’ he said.

‘Seriously. Talk to your mother.’ She smiled tentatively. ‘If we’re going to be a family …’

‘Oh, pulling that one, are you?’ said Stephen, smiling, and dragged her over to sit on his lap. ‘You’ve got this all figured out, haven’t you?’

Rosie shrugged.

‘It
does
have a lovely big garden,’ she said. ‘And maybe … maybe we could put double glazing in.’

‘No, it’s good for children to grow up totally freezing in a haunted house,’ said Stephen airily, and she knew she’d won him over.

‘And,’ she pointed out, ‘we should sell this place anyway. Lilian’s home is getting so expensive, and if I’m going to be taking some time off …’

Stephen winced.

‘I hate being skint sometimes, it sucks.’

He turned and kissed her.

‘Would you have preferred it if I’d gone off to London to become one of those banker boys after all?’

She grinned.

‘No! Anyway, you’d have been rubbish. Always staring out the window and thinking about the hills and reciting poetry.’

‘Rubbish doesn’t matter if you’re a banker. They give you millions of pounds anyway. And if you
don’t
make millions of pounds, they get the taxpayers to give it to you.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Rosie. ‘Maybe we should all do that.’

Then they both looked cosily into the fire together and smiled at the same time.

‘Neh,’ they both said, as Mr Dog came up and lapped at their hands.

‘I am the smuggest witch in the entire world,’ said Rosie, getting up to put the kettle on, already feeling pleasantly drowsy although it was only early in the evening. Stephen went back to his computer. She heard him from the kitchen.

‘Hmm,’ he said suddenly.

Rosie popped her head round the door.

‘Hmm,’ he said again, and Mr Dog scampered over in case ‘hmm’ meant ‘I appear to be holding some unwanted treats.’

Stephen was staring at the computer screen.

‘Do you want to tell me, or is it just going to be a mystery?’ said Rosie. ‘Have some aliens landed? Prince William is a woman? A sheep is a bit poorly over in Carningford? They’re introducing a new baby tax and the government is going to want forty per cent of our income?’

‘Sssh,’ said Stephen, not taking his eyes off the computer. ‘My French is rusty.’

‘Ooh, my French is rusty,’ mimicked Rosie. She often teased him about it, but she envied his wonderful education really, even if his own mother thought it had been wasted. He spoke excellent French, had good Latin – though it wasn’t much use – and even though (against his father’s wishes) he’d studied English at university, he had a knowledge of geography, physics and history that Rosie couldn’t remember them even touching on at her school. ‘Dear me. Perhaps I shall first translate it into Mandarin and then work it out from there. Also, don’t shush a pregnant lady! I am not to be shushed! I am extremely special!’

‘Hush,’ he said. Then he looked up. The expression on his face was completely unreadable. ‘Um,’ he said. ‘Would you like to …’

‘I can’t read French,’ said Rosie.

‘I’ll translate.’

‘What IS it?’ she said, completely confused. She didn’t like his face at all; the colour had drained out of it
and his eyes had taken on a fixed, distant look. ‘What is it? Is something wrong?’

Stephen didn’t answer, merely blinked, which made her even more curious and worried. She nudged a protesting Mr Dog out of the way, then crawled up next to Stephen on the sofa and peered over his shoulder at an official-looking email. All she could make out was the Médecins Sans Frontières logo.

Before Rosie had fallen in love with Stephen, she had nursed him back to health after his accident in Africa. Her greatest fear was that he would want to go back there again when he was well, but he had sworn that he didn’t; that he had never been happier than he was here in Lipton with her, teaching at the little local school, the pair of them lunching in the Red Lion, taking long, chilly walks across the moors at the weekends, which Rosie normally would have hated, but because she was walking next to him as he brandished his stick and told her old stories about the hills, with Mr Dog running about like mad, and because it always ended up in the nice tea room two villages over that did great cream teas and Eccles cakes, she actually loved.

But he was still having treatment for his PTSD; still on occasion had nightmares, the terrible sweating dreams that left him pinned to the bed, staring wildly, the sheets screwed up in his fingers, Rosie by him, holding him close, bringing him back home, back to normality.