Unchained Melanie (30 page)

‘Sorry to give you such a shock. I just thought . . . well, I haven’t been thinking at all for some of the time. I thought if I tell people then it will be true. Then I began to be happy with the idea. At first I thought I’d have an abortion, but then I got all upset about it.’ She
shrugged and gave a quavery grin. ‘I just couldn’t do it. It would have been a real, tiny baby . . . like . . .’

‘Like Daniel was,’ Mel finished for her.

‘I think that must be it.’

‘So what will you do?’

‘Well – I have done some thinking. I could get a job till it’s born, then in September I could do a teaching degree here in London. And Desi wants to stay with me and I want him to as well – would that be OK? You’ll like him, honest, and he’s really tidy! It’s just . . .’

‘Just what? Is there a problem?’

‘I hope not – I mean, you were really looking forward to time on your own and then we all turn up. You will say if you’d rather we found somewhere else?’

Mel hugged her. ‘Somewhere else? There’s plenty of room here. It’s fine. I feel very happy that you want to be here. To be honest, I was beginning to work out that being on your own too much is a bit overrated.’

‘Everything’s in, your ex has gone off in a fury, so I should probably go too,’ Max said. Desi followed him into the kitchen, looking nervous.

‘It’s OK,’ Rosa told him. ‘Mum’s cool.’ She glanced out of the window and gasped. ‘Shit, Mum, what’ve you done to the garden?’

‘What’s wrong, don’t you like it? This, by the way, is Max, and it’s all his brilliant hard work.’

‘Hi, Max.’ Rosa shook his hand and grinned at him. ‘Garden’s great. But . . .’ she stroked her expanded tummy. ‘It could really do with a lawn, space for a swing and a sandpit, something child-friendly, you know?’

‘Oh heavens,’ Max groaned. ‘Right that’s it, I’m off. Happy Christmas, folks!’

He’d been here before, not to this hospital, not to this Special Care Unit, but to one a lot like it. He’d sat staring into a plastic crib, hours on end, marvelling at the fragile limbs. A Christmas Day baby – poor little thing, he’d be complaining about that to his parents for evermore. Roger could hear him now, ‘Only one day for presents! It’s not fair!’

The big difference was that he’d survive, this one, this time. He was early, an emergency Caesarean to save both him and his mother, but he was comparatively big and sturdy and would be out of this plastic box in a few days and they’d be going home, this new family of him, Leonora and . . . well, he hadn’t got a name yet. Perhaps he should get together with Rosa as well and they could make sure they didn’t pick the same ones. It would be funny, this baby having a little niece or nephew only three months younger than him, but it would be good, they could see a lot of each other, be brought up more or less together. Leonora didn’t want any more, she’d said. Once was quite enough. That was OK by him.

‘So that’s that for another year,’ Howard said as he, Melanie and Max made their way on foot to the race track from the makeshift car park by the A316. Everyone for miles around seemed to be on their way to Kempton. ‘Another Christmas, another year gone, another turkey guzzled. Wasn’t too bad, all things considered, was it, Mel?’

‘Well, there were quite a lot of things
to
consider,’ Mel said.

Howard chuckled. ‘Hmm – I wish I’d taken a photo of Vanessa’s face when she realized Rosa was pregnant and not just plump.’

‘That was funny,’ Mel agreed, recalling Vanessa prodding Rosa’s middle and saying, ‘Been overdoing the stodge at university?’ then flicking her hand back as if Rosa had given her an electric shock.

‘Mum was great,’ she added, still astounded at her mother’s reaction to the news of the baby. She’d been unhesitatingly delighted: ‘You’re at a perfect age for having a baby!’ she’d said, hugging Rosa (and the very confused Desi too, assuming it was his). ‘All these older mothers, people leave it far too late these days!’

‘Vanessa liked your present, though,’ Howard said. ‘She was thrilled, she said it was just what she’d always wanted.’

Mel sighed; it wasn’t very noble of her, she’d admit, but accidentally giving her sister the exact thing she’d wanted was not terribly satisfying. ‘I don’t know how the packages got switched. I didn’t at all mean to get her a Tiffany cruet set.’

Max laughed. ‘And someone else must have unexpectedly unwrapped a silver yo-yo. I wonder how that got explained away.’

They’d reached the course, paid their entrance fee and picked up their race cards. Mel looked quickly through the list of runners: several serendipitous names caught her eye – Keen Detective, Big Max, Sweet Baby Blue, The Phoenix. They all had to be worth a good each-way bet.

‘I’m feeling lucky today, Max, how about you?’ she asked.

He pulled her close against him and said, ‘I’m feeling very, very lucky.’

Judy Astley was frequently told off for daydreaming at her drearily traditional school but has found it to be the ideal training for becoming a writer. There were several false-starts to her career: secretary at an all-male Oxford college (sacked for undisclosable reasons), at an airline (decided, after a crash and a hijacking, that she was safer elsewhere) and as a dress designer (quit before anyone noticed she was adapting
Vogue
patterns). She spent some years as a parent and as a painter before sensing that the day was approaching when she’d have to go out and get a Proper Job. With a nagging certainty that she was temperamentally unemployable, and desperate to avoid office coffee, having to wear tights every day and missing out on sunny days on Cornish beaches with her daughters, she wrote her first novel,
Just for the Summer
. She has now had nine novels published by Black Swan.