Authors: Andrea Hughes
I ran down the driveway, pulling on my gloves as I went, a big smile covering my face. An answering grin on the waiting man’s face greeted me and I slowed as I approached, falling into step beside him.
“I thought you’d forgotten about me,” I scolded. “You didn’t call.” I glanced back towards my parent’s house, raising my hand in a guilty wave at the figure of my mother standing in the upstairs window. The figure disappeared and I bit my lip; mum wasn’t happy, there would be hell to pay when I returned. Like a rebellious teenager, I put my mother’s wrath out of my mind. Plenty of time for that later.
Angus looked down at me and his grin widened. “Forget about you, Kate? You gotta be kidding.”
We turned the corner and in unspoken agreement slowed our steps, strolling comfortably up the road. Angus offered his arm in amused chivalry and with a smile I entwined my own with his.
“How was your Christmas?”
I shrugged. “Good. Tiring. The kids had a ball. How ’bout you?”
“Quiet.” He looked at me curiously, “how many kids?”
“Two, Kensie, she’s six, and Tom who’s three.”
“One of each. Well done. So, where’s your husband?”
“How do you know there is one?” I teased.
He grinned and touched my gloved left hand. “Saw your wedding ring the other day. So … where is he?”
“Still in Australia. He’s coming over soon.”
Angus nodded and we walked in silence for a time. I smiled to myself, this was exactly what I needed after all the stresses of the last few days; escape. I nudged Angus with my elbow. “What about you? Is there a wife waiting at home?”
Angus snorted faintly, “nope. No-one waiting for me, at home or anywhere else.”
I felt a thrill of gratification and shoved it away. A bit of flirting was one thing; safe, uncomplicated. And if I remembered rightly, there had been a lot of flirting between myself and Angus back in our school days. Danger came when flirting got out of control.
Frank.
Resolutely, I determined to keep my relationship with my old friend purely fun and simple.
No-one
could complain about that.
That’s right. Cool it, Sister.
“What have you been doing with yourself for the past twenty years?” Safe – keep it safe.
“Blimey, how long have you got?”
I laughed, “the abridged version, then.”
“Well, I studied information technology at university, had a flurry of disastrous relationships, then an experimental phase … let’s call it an extended relationship with marijuana. I was out of circulation for about two years until I came to my senses. I went back to college, refreshed my knowledge, got my self sorted out and finally managed to jag an awesome job at the local television station.” He nudged me in the ribs once more, “is that condensed enough for you?”
I giggled, “my life in thirty seconds by Angus Paterson. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.”
Angus grinned, “now it’s your turn, Kate Hunter. Time for your half minute of fame.”
We started strolling up a hill, I took a deep breath. “Well, I also went to university, and studied journalism and communications. I took a year off at the end and went on a working holiday to Australia, where I met Will, my husband. We got married, had a couple of kids and now I’m trying to get back into my career.”
“Ten seconds left,” Angus joked, “what happens next, Kate?”
I paused, “next, I’m going to put my life on hold yet again and have another child.”
Angus looked quickly at me and I kept my face steadfastly facing forwards. He stared for a moment then looked away, steering us safely across the road. We were now walking along the top of the hill and I stopped to look at the view across the city beneath.
“It doesn’t look any different,” I breathed, a small pang of homesickness washing over me.
“It is, though, isn’t it?”
I did look at him now, a sad smile answering the gentle question.
“Congratulations, Kate.” Not quite a statement, almost a question.
I pulled out of Angus’s light grip and wrapped my arms around myself. Angus guided me to a nearby seat and sat beside me – waiting. Finally, realising I wasn’t going to speak, he broke the silence.
“What is it, Kate? What’s wrong?”
I could feel the moisture welling up in my eyes and I blinked furiously, trying to contain the tears and maintain my composure. One tiny drop overflowed, rolling down my cheek, opening the floodgates and within seconds my face was cold and wet, my eyes puffy, and a confused Angus was patting me awkwardly on the shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” I sniffed, hunting for a hanky in my coat pocket. I ripped off my gloves and continued the search, finally coming out with a gaily festooned children’s handkerchief, depicting a lopsided pink duck surrounded by a number of brightly coloured balloons. Startled by the incongruous gaiety of the design, I stared at it for a moment before scrubbing fiercely at my dripping nose, stubbornly ignoring the crusty evidence left behind by the previous user.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, my voice a little steadier now.
Angus patted my shoulder once more and smoothed my hair away from my face with a touch as light as air. “What’s going on, Kate? Don’t you want another baby?”
I blew my nose and shook my head, “I love this baby. If anything ever happened to it, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“Then what? Your husband?”
I sniffed, wiping my face with the soggy hanky. A sudden urge to laugh threatened to overwhelm me and I tried to swallow it back down, but with only two choices open to me it was either laugh or cry, and I wasn’t in the mood for more tears. The laughter bubbled up and, snorting and hiccupping, I looked apologetically at Angus.
“I’m sorry,” I said for a third time, “it’s not really funny. I just –”
“You don’t have to explain,” he retrieved a glove that had fallen on the ground, looking critically at the smear of mud across the palm then passed it to me. “And if you say you’re sorry one more time, I will pick you up and put you head first in that puddle over there.” He gestured with a tilt of his head towards a large and muddy pool of water. He feigned a grab at my waist as if to pick my up from the seat and I slapped his hands away with a soggy chuckle.
“I won’t apologise again but I do have to explain.” I gestured towards the wet patch on his shoulder, the only evidence remaining of my recent emotional outburst. “You asked about Will, my husband, and if we were having problems – well, that’s putting it mildly.”
We continued our walk and I told him in simple words the results of the pre-natal paternity test. He gave a little whistle of astonishment as I recounted the events of the previous day, squeezing my arm gently in encouragement.
“Damn! That must have been tough.”
I nodded soberly, “I thought telling Frank was bad enough, this was ten times worse.”
“You know you need to talk to him about it, don’t you?”
“Which one?” I asked bitterly.
The crunch of our feet was the only sound as we walked through a car park where few families were taking advantage of the respite in the bad weather. A number of hot food and drink vans had appeared as if by magic and I gestured to one of them. “Something to eat?”
Angus shook his head, “don’t let me stop you, though.”
With my cheese sandwich, I followed as Angus led me further along the top of the hill, stopping at a tourist lookout to admire the sea, grey and foreboding, threatening. Dark clouds were building up and I shivered, “I should get back before the next downpour hits.” I waved vaguely towards the gathering gloom and turned to start walking back down the hill but was stopped by Angus’s hand on my arm.
“Has anybody asked you, through all of this mess, what
you
want, Kate?”
“What
I
want?” I snorted, a harsh sound in the fading light, “what I want doesn’t matter, it’s all out of my hands now. The ball’s in their court.”
Angus shook his head, “that’s where you’re wrong. You can’t change the past but the future,
your
future, is still very much in your hands. As soon as you understand that then everything will just fall into place. Trust me.”
I smiled slightly, “when did you get so smart?”
Angus pulled a face, “let’s just say something happened a couple of months ago that changed my life forever. But we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you and
you
didn’t answer my question. What exactly
do
you want, Kate?”
I opened my mouth to answer with all the usual responses:
I want to make sure my kids are looked after and not affected by all this mess; I want everyone to end up happy; I want a healthy baby; and I want my baby to have a father.
But which one? Which father?
I looked at Angus, “I don’t know,” I said simply, “I honestly don’t know. I guess I just want what’s best for everyone.”
Angus shook his head. “Kate, that’s a cop-out and you know it. You need to work out what it is that
you
want. Not
need
or
what’s best
, you need to get clear, in your own mind, what you
want
.”
“That’s a pretty selfish attitude, isn’t it?”
A drizzle had begun to fall and I pulled my hood up as we started walking again. I glanced at Angus, he was walking next to me, hands pushed deep into his pockets, his brain seemingly hard at work. Finally he returned my gaze.
“Thinking about yourself isn’t selfish. It only becomes selfish when everything you do revolves around you and your happiness and you never consider anybody else. Everyone thinks they’ll be happy if they keep the people around them happy. That’s not true.
You
have to be happy too and the only way you can do that is to work out what would make you happy in the first place. Once you know that then you can work it in with the wants and needs of the people close to you.”
We crossed the road in silence, each deep in our own thoughts. After a few minutes Angus continued.
“Of course you have to consider everyone else involved in this, Kate, but don’t make the mistake of forgetting yourself. It’ll all just end in disaster if you do.”
Disaster
, I thought as I got ready for bed that night, the rain pattering hard on the window pane. Funny, I thought I’d already created one of those. I stroked my belly thoughtfully. Will had changed his flight, he was now due to arrive the following week instead of in a little over three weeks, forcing him to pay the extra to upgrade to business class which hadn’t helped his mood. Oh well, he could add it to the list of things he wasn’t happy about.
Disaster
, I thought again and climbed into bed. There was still time. Still time to change the future. But what did I really want? Who did I really want? Where did I really want to be?
“Buggered if I know,” I muttered and with visions of my unborn baby flitting through my mind I fell into a fitful sleep.
4
January
I woke with a start, shivering in the winter chill. The bed covers had been kicked off, no wonder my deep, dreamless (for once) sleep had been rudely interrupted. I pulled the covers snugly up to my chin and tried to put some warmth back into my toes.
Homely sounds of relaxed family life came from downstairs and I tried to block them out. If I could pretend I was the only person here, then maybe I could pretend Will wasn’t due to arrive on the doorstep any time.
Mum was calling up the stairs, ruining my bid for aloneness, telling me lunch is ready. Lunch? Was it really getting that late? I could hear Kensie and Tom playing in the kitchen, getting under their grandmother’s feet. Those poor kids would be wondering what was going on. I really must drag myself out of my haven of warmth and face another day.
I pushed slowly at the quilt, the pleasant smell of roast chicken following my mother’s voice up the stairs, but before I could sit up, a sudden sensation stopped me. Placing my hands lightly on my belly, I waited in awed anticipation. Could it have been? Hold on, there it was again.
A tiny fluttering in my stomach, butterflies, only … different. For the first time in days I felt a genuine smile touch my lips and my hand rubbed gently at the tiny bulge.
“Hello, there,” I whispered, “I’m your mum.”
And the unspoken reply came as the butterfly fluttered its wings again.
*
I’m not sure when dad turned the telly off but I reckon I’d been watching that blank screen for at least half an hour before I realised.
I was expecting the knock on the door but, expected or not, when it came I uttered a startled shriek, making both my parents look at me curiously.
Tom put his hand on my knee, “you a’right, mummy?”
I nodded and patted his head absently. Satisfied, Tom removed his hand and went back to his colouring-in.
“That’ll be him,” Mum announced unnecessarily.
I nodded again, swallowing the stubborn lump that had appeared in my throat. They were all looking at me. Am I supposed to go and let him in? Maybe he’ll go away if he thinks we’ve gone out,.