by Annie Dyer
His kiss wasn’t unexpected but it did magic my legs into noodles. It was soft, contained no demand but was filled with promises that I was looking forward to cashing in on.
“You need to go back to your party.”
He slapped my ass and gave me a full-of-shit grin, before leaving me staring after him.
Baby-daddy. That could be my baby-daddy.
He’d cringe at that term – and secretly love it.
Two hours later and it was definitely time to find out. Owen had gone to the supermarket with Jackson to stock up on yet more beers, because they apparently didn’t have enough. This gave me enough time to pee on a stick and see if it could tell me my future.
A weird sort of crystal ball.
I sat down on the bed and looked at myself in the opposite mirror. I still looked like me: blonde hair that was slightly longer than it used to be, a forehead that had a few more lines when I frowned. I couldn’t see a glow that pregnant women were meant to have and nothing felt any different.
But I wanted it to feel different.
I knew that if it wasn’t positive, I would be disappointed. An overwhelming tide of needing to see those two blue lines engulfed me.
I was saved from drowning by a knock on the door.
“Payts, it’s me.”
I never understood why someone said ‘it’s me’. If you knew who me was, you wouldn’t need to say anything as you’d recognise their voice. Otherwise, a name would be good.
My twin was at the other side of the door wearing a T-shirt that told me he’d been spending even more time in the gym.
“What’s up? I thought you’d gone to the shop with Owen?”
He shook his head. “I needed to wrap presents.”
I raised my brows and polished the startled look. “I take it you need me to help?”
“No. I wanted to talk to you about Ava… Payton, what’s that?”
I followed the direction of his finger and realised the pregnancy tests were still out.
“Close the door.” This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to be overheard, or even have, but Seph had always been my best friend. My confidante.
Those nine months in a womb together had made us pretty close.
“Payton, are you, you know, preg – having you know, a baby?” His eyes were wide.
“I don’t know, Genius. That’s why I’m about to take a test.” I picked up one of the boxes and glanced at the back. I didn’t need to reread any instructions – I’d already done it several times. They were pretty much memorised by now.
“Shouldn’t Owen be here for this?” He shifted from foot to foot and looked uncomfortable.
I rested against the en-suite door. “Probably. But I need to do the test and know myself.”
“You need to organise how you feel.”
My brother knew me well.
“How will you feel if you are?” He sat down on the bed, the same spot where I’d been a minute before.
“Excited. I don’t even think I’ll be scared.”
“Shit, Payts, I didn’t know you were trying…”
“We weren’t. There was an accident and we knew it could be a possibility, but we weren’t getting it on like rabbits.” No more than normal, but Seph didn’t need that detail.
“Owen will be cool with this?”
I nodded. “If I am, he’ll be over the moon.”
“If you’re not – will you tell him?”
I nodded. “Course. And I’ll tell him you were here and you know. We don’t keep secrets; not knowingly.” It was probably why we hadn’t struggled when we were both busy with work. Our conversations were very honest and open; I didn’t hide my moods, mainly because he could laugh me out of them and after our one big row when he hadn’t told me about his ex, we’d kind of learned.
“I’m not sitting in the bathroom with you while you pee on a stick, Payts.” Seph looked the picture of disgusted.
“Wouldn't expect you to. Wait here.” I turned and opened the en-suite door, clutching the box with the tests in it. I was fully expecting to have an experience now where I couldn’t pee. Total stage fright.
I pulled everything down and sat on the loo, reading the instructions even though I didn’t need to. Procrastination wasn’t something I usually bothered with, but this could be life changing.
“Are you okay in there?” Seph’s voice rang through the door.
“Just trying to pee!”
“You don’t usually have any trouble with that. I remember a trip to the zoo where we had to stop five times because you needed to go.”
“I had a water infection.”
“You’d drank too much before we got in the car and you were scared of wetting yourself.”
I started to laugh, and my bladder relaxed. I aimed the stick and prayed.
I sat on the bed next to Seph watching the viewing screen thing on the stick that could change everything.
“I should be grossed out that you’ve pissed on that.”
He was trying to inch away.
“You are grossed out. You ever watched this before?”
There was no answer.
“Seph? Any of your girlfriends had a scare?”
I turned to him and saw that he was pale, unsmiling.
“Cassie was. She didn’t keep it and I didn’t see the test.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t known that. What I did know was that my brother would’ve taken a baby on his own – or as on his own as he would be with all of us. That would’ve hurt him.
“She didn’t know if it was mine or not, but by then I didn’t know what to believe from her. It was just before you came back from Manchester.”
Around the time Jackson had started seeing Vanessa, Seph had a meltdown. Him and Cassie had just split up and he was partying pretty much every night and turning into a mess. I’d been helping set up the Manchester office and was almost done when Max called and asked me to head back down to London. Because of Seph.
“Was she telling the truth?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I never knew what to believe from her by then. Payts – look at the lines.”
Lines.
Plural.
There were two. The test was positive.
8
An experience day racing supercars – Claire to Killian
Seph
I was going to be an uncle.
I already was an uncle; Claire had Eliza, and Jackson had Teddy, but Payton being pregnant was different. She was my twin; we’d started school on the same day, graduated on the same day, shared birthdays – but we wouldn’t be sharing this.
I’d be a fantastic uncle to her baby. And at some point, I would threaten Owen about what would happen if he didn’t take care of them, I just couldn’t do it at the moment because he didn’t know yet. Plus, he had about two inches on me. I’d probably have to find a reason to sue him instead.
“You in?” Jackson nudged me. “You’re away in dolly-daydream land.”
I nodded and pushed a twenty-pound note into the middle. I’d lost the last hand without any grace, being utterly slaughtered by the stag himself. “I’m in.”
“That’s a nice gift there, Seph,” Max commented on my stake. “I’ll enjoy putting that towards a decent bottle of whisky.”
At the very least, I should have had some sort of come back, but the motivation wasn’t there.
“As long as you let me have a glass.”
Max eyed me but didn’t respond, meaning he knew something wasn’t right but he wasn’t pressing.
I had to get myself out of this funk, else I’d have Max worrying that I was going to go on a bender or something and he had better things to be concerned about, given he was getting married in a couple of days.
“Actually, I’m going to get some fresh air. Consider that a token, because when I’m back, I’ll be bankrupting you all.” I pushed my chair away and headed out of the room towards the external door.
Snow had been falling all day.
There were weather warnings for black ice on the roads and some areas of England were reporting record snowfalls for the decade so far. There were only a couple of people left to arrive: Eli and Shay. Shay was the only Green male, a doctor now based at a London hospital, specialising in paediatrics. He pretty much lived at work, a fact to which I could testify as he was technically living at my apartment, apart from that I rarely saw him. It was mainly his unpacked luggage that was a reminder of him owing me rent.
I yanked on a pair of wellies that I’d left near the door and borrowed a waterproof, deciding to take a walk to the cabin where I’d been stuffed. I didn’t mind giving my room up for Maven, and I got that everyone else was a couple, or sharing a room, like Lainey and Catrin, or my siblings and their partners, but it had already become a joke.
The cold zinged at my skin, nipping at my face instantly. The lights from the house and the outside lamps made the snow glimmer, looking like a sea of diamonds beneath my feet. An owl hooted and there was a shudder in the bushes. I heard a cheer from inside the house, probably someone folding at the game.
I breathed.
Seeing the two blue lines on Payton’s pregnancy test had underlined the fact that I was no longer a child. Yes, I was thirty. I hadn’t been a kid for a bit, but I hadn’t quite made it to adulthood either. Now I felt like it was time.
And that scared me.
The idea of Payton holding a tiny baby – my twin, who I still remembered running round on a beach with her hair in pigtails and yelling because her ice cream had melted – was making me feel as if I suddenly had panoramic vision, that gifted me a bigger picture, one that I wasn’t sure how to be part of.
I walked to the cabin, hearing the crunch of snow, now oblivious to the flakes that were falling on my shoulders. Fresh footprints were at the doorway.
Large ones.
What. The. Very. Fuck?
I pushed open the door and saw luggage that I definitely recognised, mainly because I’d fallen over it several times before.
“Shay?”
I closed the door and looked around. The cabin had three rooms; a sitting room that could be used as a second bedroom with its pull-out sofa bed, a bedroom and a toilet with a sink.
I heard a toilet flush and knew exactly where Shay was. There was running water, a good thirty seconds because Shay was a stickler for hygiene more than anyone I knew, and then the door opened.
“Holy fuck!”
I doubled over and pissed my sides as Shay physically jumped about twelve inches into the air and clutched his hair.
“You nearly gave me a fucking heart attack!”
I continued to laugh, any heaviness on my shoulders lifted as my cousin looked like he’s just shit himself.
“Good job you went to the bathroom first.” I just managed to get the words out before laughing again.
“For fuck’s sake, Joseph.” He started to laugh too, clearly recovering. “You need to make yourself known.”
The hint of Irish accent was still there. He’d not managed to lose it during the last month of doing what seemed like a continuous night shift and sleeping at the hospital rather than coming home, in case he was needed, or banging a colleague.
“I had no idea you were turning up, or staying in here. You’ve got the pull out, by the way.”
He glanced over to the sofa bed. “It doesn’t matter if I sleep on a fucking pallet. I’m dead to the bone. Somehow, the gods smiled on me, and I’ve Christmas off. I think the ward sister realised that if I didn’t take some leave they’d be treating me. I’m going to sleep for a week.” He eyed the sofa like it was a woman holding her arms open.
“Mum didn’t say you were bunking here.”
He shrugged. “I think she wanted to park the bachelors out of the way. Maybe give us a break from coupledom and my sisters.” He shook his head. “Lainey’s been driving me mad about this neighbour of hers who keeps trying to get revenge on her for buying the farm he apparently wanted.”
I laughed. “I heard about that. I don’t think propping buckets of water up over her stable doors so that she gets a soaking when she opens them constitutes revenge though. And I know the bloke – it’s Jake Maynard. He’s sound. He’s probably just pulling her pigtails because he likes her.” I’d met Jake a few times and he was a decent guy, if a bit of a daredevil. Lainey was uptight and very proper, the result of a private school education that was all girls and boarding. She’d been head girl and graduated top of her class, and I could remember Payton saying something about her not having a proper boyfriend until she was twenty-two.
“Won’t do Lainey any harm. It’s my ears I’m worried about.” He sent another longing glance to the sofa. “Is Max’s stag still going ahead? I wanted to get here to at least try and take some money from you.”
“I need to take some from you.” I eyeballed him. Maven had warned me that Shay would dodge paying the peppercorn rent we’d agreed on, but if he paid it, he’d likely spend more time at mine and less sleeping at the hospital, volunteering to take more shifts.
“Yeah, I know. I owe you for two months. I’ll transfer it later.” He yawned loudly.
I shook my head. “You up for a couple of games of poker?”
“I’m definitely up for some whisky. You think Aunt Marie will mind if I spend tomorrow asleep?”
“I think she’ll encourage it. Me, on the other hand, will have a list of jobs to do that’s about three feet long. Let’s go. I know Killian had a couple of speeches prepared – ones he wasn’t going to read out at the reception.” I’d read one already and it was everything I hoped it would be, recalling a lot of incident that I knew Max didn’t want Victoria to find out about.
Shay yawned again. “Let’s get there. And if I fall asleep, just leave me somewhere comfy.”
There was a bottle of opened bourbon on the table, and another of Irish whisky, probably from one of the O’Hara brothers. The current game was down to just Max and Nick O’Hara. Jackson was watching Max’s expression with a grin on his face, and I figured he’d worked out what cards Max had. Killian was cutting cigars, something I was going to avoid smoking as they only made me choke. Owen was sat next to Eli, the two in a quiet conversation, both holding whisky glasses.
Dad had decided to give it a miss; I think he’d wanted to let us have some freedom without his well-meant titbits of advice, but I also knew he was looking after Eliza, giving Killian a guilt-free night off as he wouldn’t know about it until later. Claire was impossibly tired, but the pair of them were too stubborn to think about taking advantage of having so much family around.
“Look what the cat dragged in. You look like roadkill.” Max threw down his cards and avoided looking at Nick as Nick folded the notes.
Shay took a seat at the table. “Thanks. That’s what sleeping for no more than four hours at a time gets you: you look like you should be on a gurney.”
“Why do you need to be doing so many shifts?” Max sat back with his glass now in hand.
Shay shrugged. “We’re understaffed. Two of my colleagues are off on long term sick, and they’re not ones you can replace easily. We have a couple of Juniors that are trying to step up to help out, but certain cases you just know if you don’t step in, you’ll end up being called out any way.” He accepted the whisky from Killian. “That tastes good. First drink for about three weeks.”
“But you’ve time off now, haven’t you?” Jackson topped up his own glass.
“Ten days. Unless they get really stuck and I’ll get a call, but they’ve brought someone else in, and I have to take leave. If I don’t, someone in admin will get their hands slapped.” He looked at the cards spread on the table. “I really fancy a game, but I can’t guarantee I won’t fall asleep during it.”
“You won’t be the only one. Teddy’s decided that he wants to wake up at two every morning and play for about sixty hours before he’ll let me go to sleep again. He ends up falling asleep all happy and I’m wide awake and deciding that I may as
well get some work done.” Jackson stretched out, putting down his now empty glass. “How long does this phase last?” He looked at Killian, who just shrugged and sipped his whisky.
“As long as you manage to look more awake in three days’ time, I don’t care.” Max sat back. “This will be the only time I get married, and I don’t want to think back and remember any of you being asleep.”
Jackson laughed. “I don’t think you’d find another woman to marry you. We’ve already nominated Vic for a sainthood.”
“As you should.” Max just grinned. “She is a saint. Not only is she putting up with me, she gets you lot thrown in and it still hasn’t put her off. She even tolerates Seph.”
It was commonplace for my name to be dragged into it, always had been. It was probably why my tolerance for dealing with idiotic clients was high – I’d learned to turn a deaf ear. And not lip read.
“Claire wanted to know if you needed an instruction manual to help you get through the wedding night?” Killian refilled Max’s glass with another two fingers of whisky.
“I think I’ll be okay.” They clinked glasses. “But tell Claire thanks anyway.”
I watched my brothers, Shay, our friends and then glanced at Owen. I was thrilled for my sister and I knew that in a few hours, Owen’s life would be changed; their coupledom would turn into a family.
I couldn’t wait to watch them grow.
9
A leather-bound version of Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales – From Owen to Payton
Max
“You all set for this?” Jackson had his feet on the table, something that wouldn’t be allowed if Marie was anywhere nearby.
To be fair, he wasn’t wearing shoes, just the most hideous pair of Christmas socks I’d ever had the misfortune to see.
I thought for a moment. I’d never planned on getting married; didn’t think I was the right candidate, given that I was a grumpy-arsed workaholic who would turn into my father. But Victoria had removed that barrier, battered it down with her snark and intelligence, and, if I was being honest, her tits.