The Christmas Surprise (8 page)

She was based in Harley Street in London, and they often had phone consultations.

Stephen told her everything that had happened, and how painful it was, particularly at school, where they were doing a project on Africa and starting a charity to add money to the fund he was putting together. Rosie also had a tin in the sweetshop. Their first object was to fund Célestine to get to the mission hospital to have her baby. After that, Faustine, Stephen’s ex-colleague from Médecins Sans Frontières, had suggested that rather than just give money to the family, which could provoke resentment, they should attempt to help improve the school, which at the moment was still the large, boiling shed Stephen had known so well. Stephen had agreed with this.

‘But it’s just … ever since … I mean, it was interesting to begin with, with the two babies growing, but now … now it’s all fallen apart and I can’t help thinking about it. And I keep replaying Africa in my head over and over, and it isn’t helping me and it sure as hell isn’t helping Rosie.’

He swallowed hard. There was a long pause. Finally Diane, in her cool tones, suggested something she
believed could work extraordinarily well: facing up to your worst fears, if it could be done, seeing them and taking away their power, had had spectacular success with PTSD, phobias, all sorts of trauma.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘You could visit.’

Stephen had about a million reasons immediately as to why he couldn’t possibly: school term, the cost of getting out there, which would take away from the fund-raising, leaving Rosie.

‘Would you need to leave her?’ said Diane. ‘You could take her with you. A trip somewhere else, away from all her memories and routines.’

‘To see a pregnant woman,’ said Stephen.

‘The world is full of pregnant women,’ said Diane gently. ‘That’s something she’ll have to get used to on her own. And you can always have another baby. Might be a good idea to take the trip before it’s too late.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Stephen. ‘But thank you. As ever, it’s good to talk to you.’

Diane smiled ruefully to herself as she replaced the phone.

‘So, we’re having black napkins for the men, and white for the girls, and mixed black and white almonds …’

Tina was blathering on. Rosie wasn’t listening. Instead she was wondering. She knew, she knew, everyone said, that she should probably be over it by now. She was otherwise well, if worried about the future, but oh, she was still so sad.

Every baby she saw, every advert, every television show seemed to be there to taunt her. Stephen had mentioned Célestine from time to time, and she couldn’t bear to hear about that either. She wasn’t sleeping well, absolutely anything made her cry and she still hadn’t told Stephen about the awful news from the check-up. She had to get a grip, she had to. Lilian was worried
about her, which wasn’t good for Lilian; and she knew she was no fun any more, that it was rubbish for Stephen to get home every night to a tired, washed-out, miserable fiancée.

‘How about,’ he had said the previous weekend, ‘how about we get together and go through wedding plans? Mother wants to know.’

She had been so grateful to him for making an effort; it was so kind of him, and thoughtful, even if the very idea filled her with horror at the moment. She had gone with him, though, up to the big house.

‘So,’ Lady Lipton had sniffed. Tall and broad, she was dressed, as usual, in numerous layers of clothes of obvious quality but dubious age. ‘I think we’ll use the same seating plan from my wedding. So we’ll keep all the Yorkshire families apart from the Lancashire ones,
obviously
, then we’ll put one bishop per table; they get terribly dull unless you space them out.’

Rosie had smiled weakly, doing her best. This wasn’t like her at all, but sometimes with Lady Lipton it was easier just to kind of lean back and let her roll all over you.

‘So
how
many do you think your people will have to have?’ said Lady Lipton, as if everyone in Rosie’s family was a burden that had to be accommodated. Which was, Rosie thought, exactly how Lady Lipton
did
see the Hopkinses, apart from Lilian, whom she adored.

‘Um, twenty?’ said Rosie tentatively, not really
having thought it through. Her mum and that lot, if they could get over … Michael and Giuseppe and her London friends, even though she’d been neglecting them terribly lately. She assumed all her village friends would already be included.

‘
Twenty?
’

Stephen squeezed her hand under the table, as Rosie wondered if this was a lot or a little, and cursed himself. They were both so caught up in themselves these days, he should have taken her somewhere nice or fun, not to sit in his mother’s back kitchen, which was neither.

‘So you don’t want your family there? Or don’t you have many friends?’

Rosie swallowed.

‘Um, is that … I mean, you’re already inviting people from the village, aren’t you?’

Lady Lipton looked over the top of the reading glasses she despised, and discarded around the village at regular intervals.

‘The
village
? No, of course not.’

‘Oh, okay. More, then.’

Lady Lipton had sniffed and said that was all very well, but where were they going to get staff for the event? They couldn’t invite Mrs Laird – her loyal daily – when she’d be needed in the kitchen. Stephen said hotly that not only was he inviting Mrs Laird but she’d be sitting at the top table with him, seeing as she was
just about the only person who’d ever been kind to him as a child, and Lady Lipton had rolled her eyes and said it seemed a bit rich to talk about unkindness when they were going to move into one of her houses. After that, they made their excuses and left, before they’d even agreed on a date.

‘Oh dear,’ said Rosie, as Mr Dog barked a cheerful goodbye to all his pure-bred cousins he’d had to leave behind in the courtyard at the back of the house.

‘Oh I don’t know,’ said Stephen. ‘I thought that went all right.’

They looked at each other and Rosie smiled, reluctantly.

‘You know there’s no rush,’ said Stephen, as they drove a little further up the hill and parked at Peak House to take a look at it. The early evening sunlight illuminated its stern windows; it was a chilly house, but a beautiful one too. As usual, it was unlocked. Rosie thought again about the fact that her period, once more, had come exactly on time. She might dream of a lovely miracle, but as Dr Chang had warned her, there wouldn’t be a miracle. Just a choice.

They had wandered through Peak House hand in hand. The ceilings were high, and the floors original oak and parquet.

‘You could make this place really nice,’ said Stephen doubtfully.

‘With a mere jillion dollars,’ smiled Rosie, and they had kissed one another and stolen upstairs to the bed where they had spent the first, extraordinary few months of their courtship, mostly without leaving it, and as the evening sun poured through the dirty windows overlooking the crags and the astonishing valley on the other side of the house, they both felt better, if only for a while.

Rosie hadn’t mentioned the wedding again.

Tina went off to pick up the children and finalise the stationery patterns, even though the wedding wasn’t going to be till Christmas, seven months away, when the farming work was quieter. She was clearly enjoying being prepared. As she left, she leaned over to give her friend a kiss on the cheek.

‘I’m sorry for babbling on,’ she said.

Rosie shook her head.

‘No,’ she said truthfully. ‘I like it.’

The shop bell tinged. Edison’s mother Hester didn’t often come into the sweetshop. She was opposed to sugar on the whole, and was what Rosie’s mother would have called a ‘knit your own yoga’ type. Sometimes it wound Rosie up – particularly when she made Edison
wear hand-made clothes and denied him television, plastic toys and basically the chance to fit in with his peer group. But other times she admired the entire ethos. Hester and her university lecturer husband were living it, not just talking about it: they lived out in the middle of nowhere without an internet connection, grew their own vegetables and made their own clothes. Terrible, terrible clothes, but the spirit was there.

Edison was allowed to pop in to the shop from time to time because Rosie basically provided free babysitting, as Edison had latched on to her when she had moved there, and she liked him. But today it was Hester who came in, carrying Marie, now five months, who was as round and flaxen and rosy of cheek as Edison was pale and thin. Rosie swallowed heavily.

‘Hello!’ she said, trying to look anywhere other than at the baby. ‘So good to see you!’

Hester looked, as ever, slightly harassed, as though she’d got lots of better things to be doing elsewhere. Marie was wrapped up against her in a complicated ethnic-looking shawl thing that seemed designed to roll the baby out at any opportunity. Rosie had developed over the last two months a sort of eye slip with other people’s babies; as if they were something that she didn’t really want to look at, like a snake. She let her eyes slide away and plastered on a smile and tried to pretend they weren’t there, just in case she couldn’t handle it.

‘Yes, well,’ said Hester, harrumphing. ‘God, you don’t know what work is till you’ve got two children.’

‘Right,’ said Rosie carefully.

‘Listen, I have to run in and see Moray. Can you hold on to Marie for a minute?’

‘Um, not really,’ said Rosie, flinching. She absolutely was not ready to touch a baby. Hester knew what had happened; how could she be so insensitive? ‘I’m not qualified.’

‘Oh for goodness’ sake, I thought you were a nurse,’ said Hester.

‘Well, yes, okay, I’m technically qualified,’ said Rosie. ‘But—’

‘Well, fine. Perfect. Moray is giving me a VAGINAL EXAMINATION.’

Two nine-year-old boys who’d been examining the chewing gum shot looks at each other and started backing out of the shop.

‘To check the stitches on my ANAL TEAR.’

She was holding the baby out now, with a look on her face that said she would simply plop her down if Rosie didn’t take her in the next couple of seconds. Rosie felt her heart pounding through her chest.