Authors: Kay Brooks
44
Waiting for our wedding had felt like an eternity but on the morning, I remembered Theo’s Parisian proposal like it was only yesterday. I awoke alone to the sound of knocking on the hotel room door. It had been decided that I would stay at the luxurious but small hotel for my last night as Miss Gordon while Theo stayed with his parents. Tonight, he would join me and we would begin our honeymoon together in beautiful Karia. I placed my fingers to my lips in anticipation of what the day would bring.
“Come on, sleepy-head. It’s your day!” my mother called through the door. I had been too excited to sleep but, regardless, I leapt out of bed and opened the door. “Breakfast will be up soon.” My stomach growled at the thought. “Then it’s shower-time. The hairdresser will arrive at 8:30, the make-up stylist at 9:30 and…”
“Mum, stop!” I took a deep breath and cupped her flushed face. “I want to enjoy every second of today, ok? Let’s just take it step by step.” She nodded and another knock at the door announced the arrival of our continental breakfasts.
With the wedding taking place so far away, we had only invited close friends and family. It was to be a small, personal ceremony, with some of our guests staying in Karia for the week and others departing for home tomorrow. My only family attending was my mum, so I was overjoyed when Morgan and Hazel agreed to be my bridesmaids. They joined us in the bedroom as the hairdresser was arriving. There were hugs and shrieks of joy but then, it was down to business. The hairdresser tended to my tresses first, pinning most of it up, but leaving a few dangling tendrils to make sure it looked natural. He then attended to my bridesmaids while the make-up artist began creating what was to be a fresh-faced look.
Over the course of the early morning, there were many giggles. Mum insisted on taking photos constantly, trying to capture every moment. She had been disappointed when I hadn’t wanted the professional photographer to be present throughout the whole day. I had explained that I hadn’t wanted to feel like I was on show all day. As I watched Morgan’s wide smile as she watched her hair being curled in the mirror and Hazel falling back on the bed laughing at something she had said, I knew I wouldn’t forget any of this. I would have all the images I needed stored away in my mind.
The last thing on the to-do-list before we left for the church was to dress the bride. Despite the dress being quite simple, it was heavy. Luckily, Martina, who had travelled over to stay with my mum in her room, was only too happy to join the others in lifting it over my head without causing a crease. Next, my simple but stunning diamond jewellery set, kindly loaned by Sofronia, was added. The hairdresser then carefully attached my veil to the top of my hair, making my mum shed her first tear of the day. It was the same veil she had worn to marry my father in. “You look beautiful, Gilly-Bean,” she said, before wiping her face and picking up my satin low heels.
“Hold on a minute,” Martina said, holding up her hands. We’ve got the something old, something new and something borrowed but what about the something blue?”
“Ah!” I cried. “I almost forgot. This is the one thing I’ll be wearing that Theo knows about.” I fished around in the drawer next to my bed and came out with a blue garter, decorated with diamantes. “He bought it.” There were cries of, ‘typical man!’ and laughter all round while Morgan lifted my dress and Hazel pushed the garter into position.
I stood up and slipped into my shoes, then looked in the full-length mirror. For a moment, there was silence in the room. I smiled as my mum broke it with a loud sniffle.
Outside, Will and Dean were waiting, along with a fully-decorated donkey and its owner, a pleasingly Greek-looking older man, who was to escort me the short distance to the church. He tipped his hat at me and helped me to sit sideways on the donkey. Having claimed I only wanted the donkey for the photographs, Theo had been pleasantly surprised when I changed my mind. I wanted the day to be perfect and, for Theo, I knew from our long conversations, that Greek tradition was important to him. In keeping with this, the local florist approached and handed me my bouquet, complete with a single twig of ivy to represent everlasting love. The hotel staff had gathered outside to watch me leave and a few locals had joined them.
As the donkey, slowly and gently, began moving, the small gathering began to follow. By the time we arrived at the church, a sizable crowd had developed. With help, I dismounted. The old man kissed my hand and the crowd cheered. My mum stepped forward and took my hand as the guests, and some of the more brazen locals, went into the church.
Once we were alone, my mum linked her arm though mine. “I’m so proud of you Gilly-Bean and I know your father would be too. I wish he were here in body, but I feel as though he is in spirit.”
“Me too, Mum,” I said, fighting back tears. It wouldn’t do for the bride to be crying on entering the church. I thought of Theo and how overwhelming the love I felt for him was. I couldn’t imagine a better way of spending my life than being Mrs Arnold.
Then the music sounded, I took a deep breath and we began our walk in.
Epilogue
For our second wedding anniversary, Theo booked a holiday to New York. It was somewhere that we had both expressed a wish to visit and this seemed like the perfect occasion. For weeks our evenings were spent perusing the Internet, researching must-see sights, and reading reviews of different restaurants. It couldn’t come soon enough. I spent every waking moment imagining what we were going to do with the five days we had booked for. I was looking forward to seeing Coney Island and the Statue of Liberty. Theo was looking forward to trying the pizza and spending one night at the Marquee nightclub, dancing and drinking, which he insisted we needed to do before we got too old!
Bad luck struck three weeks before we were due to fly when I got sick. At first, we assumed that it was going to be a twenty four hour bug, but a full week passed and I was still struggling to keep any food down. Anything with a strong flavour and I was rushing to meet with the toilet. Theo insisted that I go to see my doctor for some tests. “It could be just a stomach bug,” he said, “but I’m not an expert. You might just need some help fighting it off.”
After a difficult day at work, talking to a woman who had been assaulted and mugged by a man wearing a balaclava on a girls’ night out, I set off to the doctor’s surgery. I’d been driving again for a while now. Being able to control the visions definitely had its perks and they had been more than useful at work. I’d started as a police aide, having been recommended to the local station by Roxie James who had become a close friend. She had encouraged me to apply for all the courses the station would fund and it wasn’t long before I officially became a police officer. Unfortunately, ‘police psychic’ wasn’t an official role, but between myself and Roxie, that’s what I was.
Roxie and PC Johnny Green were both aware and appreciative of how many law-breakers were being caught due to my presence, but the rest of the office assumed that I was simply very good at reading crime scenes and teasing out information from witnesses and victims. Over the past few weeks, though, focussing on the visions so that I could choose what I saw had become painstakingly exhausting. In the past, I’d envisioned what I needed to, brought myself straight out of it, and written up all the necessary details before they slipped from my mind. After that, I would often be able to take part in ensuring the person was arrested. This gave Roxie and Johnny understandable peace of mind; they both had faith in my visions, therefore they felt confident that they were arresting the correct assailant if I was on hand to identify them. My days of teaching were well and truly gone! Now though, thanks to the exhaustion that seemed to accompany the visions, I was often in need of a cup of tea and a few minutes to compose myself before any further action was taken involving me.
During the drive, I pondered over the sickness. It reminded me of when I’d been struck with food poisoning, but that had been over and done with after two days. This felt like that but came and went.
The doctor looked at my records carefully, asking a few questions here and there about how I’d managed with the recovery after the car crash and the stabbing. Then she took my blood pressure and felt my stomach. “When did you have your last period?” she asked.
I thought about it. I was unsure. “It could have been due this week, maybe the last or it could even be the one before that. I’ve never been one hundred per cent regular.”
She looked at me carefully. I knew before she suggested a pregnancy test. Of course. I was pregnant, I realised with joy.
“We’ll do a test here, but it will need to be sent off to the hospital so the
results won’t come in until Wednesday. I would suggest that you also do a test at home. The modern tests are just as accurate as ours these days, anyway. Obviously, if the tests are negative, we’ll start to look at other reasons for the sickness…” The rest of her words went unheard. I smiled and nodded as she talked, but I didn’t need the test results. I just knew.
Sure enough the test showed a positive response. I couldn’t wait to share the good news with Theo. I knew he would probably be disappointed that our drunken night at The Marquee would have to be sacrificed, but it would be well worth it. A wave of sickness hit me, but now I didn’t bother. I was carrying mine and Theo’s baby. That was a sublime thought.
Theo took the news with jubilation, picking me up and spinning me round, then panicking in case that had made me feel more sick or could have hurt the baby.
The test from the doctor’s surgery came back and I went in for another appointment. We were six weeks pregnant and two weeks off our holiday to New York. We agreed not to tell anyone until we were three months. I quite liked the fact that the baby was our little secret for now. It felt exciting to have long conversations about potential names and decorations for the nursery, but then watch what we said when we were in anyone else’s company! My doctor assured me that I would be able to fly without any complications, advising only that I move around frequently during the flight to keep my circulation going, but Theo said that was advisable for all aeroplane passengers. We started to look forward to our holiday, still planning activities, but now it was going to be a different type of holiday from the one that we had anticipated.
New York was amazing, to say the least. We were so busy during the day and
so exhausted by night-time that I didn’t have time to acknowledge my nausea. We went to the top of the Empire State Building and then paid to look back at the ground where we had been originally, which made us both laugh when I pointed out the irony. I had my photo taken with David and Victoria Beckham in Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks. We went on the Rockefeller Center Tour, where I was fascinated by the art and Theo equally entranced by the architecture. We had to pass on the Coney Island Tour; the thought of watching Theo ride all the rollercoasters while I stood there being pregnant was not too appealing. He tried not to let on how disappointed he was, which just emphasised how endearing he was!
As a consolation, we booked on to the Shearwater Cruise, which took us around Manhattan, pointing out all the sites whilst riding the waves. Theo was in his element, photographing the Statue of Liberty from every angle possible. For me, however, it was a different story. I spent the majority of the experience with my head in a paper bag. People looked at my sympathetically, but then moved away with their cocktails, leaving me with an unoccupied circle around me. On the bright side, it was the least claustrophobic I had felt on any of the activities we’d taken part in, but it was not the enjoyable experience I’d hoped for.
That night in the hotel, Theo went through the photos he’d taken, in an attempt to show me what I’d missed, but it made me feel miserable. For the first time in the pregnancy, I felt hormonal and had an inexplicable urge to sob my heart out. Theo looked devastated, which only made my urge stronger. “Tomorrow we’ll spend the day doing something that you would like. No rushing around,” he insisted, rubbing my shoulder.
“I want to go to Macy’s. It’s supposed to be an amazing department store.”
“What about Bloomingdales?” Theo asked. He picked up our collection of
tourist documents and leaflets, fishing through them for information. “Apparently that’s where the celebrities go for their designer clothes. Look.
It’s like no other store in the world!”
He laughed at the slogan.
“I don’t really want new clothes. I mean, I’m going to get bigger, aren’t I? There’s not really any point in buying designer dresses when I’m going to have a baby bump.”
“I can’t wait!” He rubbed my flat stomach and I suddenly didn’t feel like crying, anymore. “Macy’s it is, then.” He rummaged around for some information on that department store instead.
Macy’s was huge. It simply could not be held in comparison to any department stores that I’d encountered back home. Theo took the lead, holding my hand and leading us through the crowds of shoppers. Everybody looked so well groomed and glamorous that, had my feet not been sore from the days of frantic exploring, I might have wished for a smart pair of heels over my low, comfy wedges. “Let’s go to the home department,” I suggested. “I want to get something for the house to remind us of our time in New York!”
“How about the baby department?” Theo added. “We could get something for the baby. It will be a while until we’ll be coming back for our child to see all this.”
“Oh, how about a pram?” I asked, getting all excited.
“Who’s getting ahead of their self now?” Theo teased. “We can have a look, but that kind of thing won’t fit in our suitcases! I’d have to add it onto the flight.” He looked down at me. I was still beaming in anticipation.
“But imagine; when people ask where we got our pram from, we’ll be able to answer, Macy’s in New York!”
“It does sound better than Mothercare!” he agreed. “If we’re going to do it, I
want to do it properly, though. I like the idea of having a travel system pram. I’ve read that those are the safest ones to use and the most convenient when you want to transfer it into the car, too.” I turned to beam up at him as we wound our way through the throngs of shoppers. At that moment, I was unbelievably happy.
“I like the patterned ones.”
“I’m sure we’ll find a compromise.” He pointed up towards a sign hanging from the ceiling next to an escalator, stopping beneath it. “Baby Department, second floor.” He led me on to the escalator, where I had to grab the moving handrail to catch my balance. The movement made me feel disorientated and I smiled, recalling what I had seen in a vision much earlier in our relationship, sat on a park bench after feeding ducks at the park.
The vision seemed to only last for a second. We were at the top of the escalator when the vision had faded, but Theo realised something was amiss. “Are you ok?”
“I’m fine,” I smiled. Some things were worth not sharing. I wondered whether I would be able to hide my preference for the pink prams.