‘Hate you? That’s impossible.’ Her face crumples. ‘Oh, you thought –’
‘I knew you’d be upset …’
‘I’m not.’ Emma’s body stiffens. I notice how she stands, her back unnaturally straight, her hands clasped together. ‘I’m happy for you. I am.’ She bites her lip, regaining control for a few seconds before a commotion starts out in Reception. There are children’s voices, dogs yapping, then, above it all, the keen cry of a baby, and that’s all it takes for Emma’s shoulders to collapse. She makes a choking sound, turns and runs off down the corridor.
‘Emma. Emma!’ I follow her, but she runs out into the garden, slamming the door in my face.
‘I should leave her be,’ Frances says from behind me.
‘I shouldn’t have told her.’
‘You had to,’ she says gently. ‘It had to come from you, no one else.’
‘Like you, for example.’
‘I have to admit I’ve found it difficult keeping it to myself.’ Frances smiles. ‘I was right, wasn’t I? I knew all along.’
‘I can’t leave her out there.’ I look through the glass. Emma is sitting on the old swing at the end of the garden, her head bowed. Big drops of rain start to patter down from a lowering sky.
‘Come and see Raffles first,’ Frances says. ‘Lynsey’s got three of her boys and the baby with her.’
I’m grateful for her memory and wisdom. Last time Lynsey Pitt was here with her boys, they trashed the place, ripping open bags of diet food and scribbling rude words on the walls with a lipstick they’d managed to extract from Frances’s handbag behind the desk. Lynsey has no control over them at all. While Frances looks after the baby, I enlist the three boys into helping me look at Raffles, who’s got a sore paw. I give each one something to hold: a pair of tweezers, a saline wipe and a doggy treat. It works – apart from the treat, which somehow gets eaten before I’ve finished. Who eats it? I’m not sure and I don’t ask. I give Raffles another one, in case it wasn’t him.
I catch up with Emma at lunchtime in the staffroom, where she’s sitting on the sofa, picking at a doughnut. I sit down beside her, the sofa sighing at the extra weight.
‘I’m sorry for running out on you like that,’ she says slowly.
‘It’s all right. I understand.’
‘No. No, you don’t understand. No one understands.’
‘Let me try,’ I beg her. ‘Talk to me, Em.’
Shaking her head, she tears off a piece of the doughnut’s crust and squashes it between her finger and thumb.
‘Please …’
‘No,’ Emma says, her voice shrinking behind her grief. ‘I can’t do this. Ben’s right. I need more time.’
‘Take as long as you want,’ I say, disappointed her return has been so short-lived yet relieved she’s strong enough to admit she isn’t ready to come back to work, and the stresses and strains that go with it, because she’s so obviously fragile.
‘Thank you.’ She gets up and drops the mangled doughnut back into the box with the others, and I think she must be hurting really badly to do that, and I’m hurting with her, because whichever way you look at it, the wrong vet is pregnant.
‘Have you heard from Emma?’ Alex asks when we’re on our way to the hospital for my first scan the next day. ‘Has she been in touch?’
‘Not yet.’ Thinking of Emma makes me feel depressed. ‘I wish I hadn’t told her.’
‘You didn’t have a choice, Maz. She had to know eventually.’ Alex smiles as he drives. ‘How were you planning to explain your sudden weight gain? Were you going to blame it on the doughnuts? You and Emma are always eating doughnuts when I drop by to Otter House.’
‘We used to,’ I correct him. ‘I’m not sure I’ll ever see her again.’
‘You don’t mean that,’ Alex says.
‘I know, but that’s how it feels.’
‘She’s been through a grim time recently.’
Yep, I think, staring out of the window, and now I’ve gone and made it ten times worse by telling her I’m pregnant.
We don’t have to wait long at the hospital. The sonographer calls us in within ten minutes and before I know it, I’m lying down with my belly exposed. I glance down, going cross-eyed as I look at my new shape; like it or not, my shape is definitely changing. My breasts are bigger and my stomach bulges just a little.
The sonographer starts talking about the reasons for having a twelve-week scan and the measurements she’ll take to check that the baby’s developing normally as she squirts gel onto my skin. Emma was right – it’s so cold, it makes my hair stand on end.
The sonographer calls me ‘Mum’, which is ridiculous because I feel nothing like a mother. I feel no ownership over the creature that appears on her screen; neither do I feel any surge of affection, which is entirely what I expected and only confirms my doubts that I can ever be a good mother. Whereas Alex’s reaction seems so different. He can hardly take his eyes off the screen.
‘Well, everything looks absolutely fine at the moment, Dad,’ the sonographer says eventually. ‘And of course Mum will have another scan at twenty weeks. It’s routine.’ She holds the piccies out to me, but I pretend to busy myself with fastening the belt on my trousers, so Alex takes them.
‘I thought we’d show them to Lucie and Seb,’ he says when we’re on our way back to Otter House. ‘They’re coming to stay this weekend.’
‘But you had them last weekend,’ I say.
‘I know, Maz, but they don’t want to miss the Duck Race. It’s one of the highlights of the year.’
‘I see.’
‘You’ll be coming with us,’ Alex says. ‘You have got the weekend off?’
‘Yes,’ I sigh, then realise I’m sounding petty.
‘I thought I take the opportunity to tell them about the baby. After the Duck Race, when the parents have gone home and it’s just you and me, and the children. It’s important they have plenty of time to ask questions without anyone else interfering, don’t you think?’
‘I suppose so …’
‘They’ll be fine, Maz. I reckon they’ll be really excited.’
‘Alex, once Lucie knows, she’s bound to let on to your parents.’
‘I thought I’d tell them on Sunday. I want to ask them for lunch. It’s all right.’ Alex holds his hands up. ‘I’m cooking. You don’t have to worry about a thing.’
‘But I do worry. I can’t begin to imagine how your parents are going to take the news. They’ll like me even less, if that’s possible.’
‘It isn’t you personally,’ Alex says. ‘They’ve never really got over Astra. Mother adored her and she had my father wrapped round her little finger. She could ride and shoot and made a charming hostess.’
‘She was a bit of a star, then,’ I say a little resentfully, but Alex doesn’t appear to notice. ‘You must wish you’d never met her.’
‘No, I don’t see it like that,’ Alex says, shaking his head. ‘Without Astra, I wouldn’t have had Lucie and Seb, and they more than make up for Astra’s blatant indiscretions and the way she left me for that –’ He stops abruptly, backing off from mentioning the man Astra ran away with, a footballer several years her junior. She isn’t with him any longer, having since hooked up with Hugo, the banker. ‘There’s no point in harking back to the past,’ Alex goes on. ‘What’s done is done. We have the future ahead of us. You, me and the baby.’
Chapter Thirteen
The Duck Race
As soon as Alex’s four by four pulls upon the pavement outside Otter House, I grab my bag, run outside and jump in beside him.
‘Have I kept you waiting?’ he asks.
‘I’ve only just finished. My last one wouldn’t stop talking.’ Normally I don’t mind, but it’s Saturday and I wanted to get away. ‘Where were you last night?’ I lean towards Alex and press my lips against his.
‘Sleeping.’ He slips his hand under my jacket and strokes my belly. ‘Like a baby.’
‘You cou
ld have rung me. I called you.’
‘I didn’t get round to it. I’m sorry, Maz. You know what it’s like.’
I’m beginning to fear that I don’t. All he had to do was pick up the phone.
‘Are you going off me?’ I glance towards his check shirt and bottle-green cords, and back to my canary-yellow jacket and navy crops, wondering if he thinks my outfit’s a bit over the top for a trip to one of Talyton’s bizarre annual gatherings. I don’t dig deep and ask the difficult questions. Is it down to how I behaved over the funeral, because he didn’t approve of the way I chickened out of it and let Emma down? Is it because I’m not as excited and happy about our baby as he is? ‘Is it because I’m getting fat?’ I go on, instead. ‘Is it because I’m not wearing wellingtons and tweed?’
‘Maz, I like you just as you are.’ Smiling, Alex touches my nose, a gesture that reassures me that he doesn’t think that badly of me after all. ‘Which poor animal’s been under your knife this time? You’ve got blood on your face.’
‘It was a Dobermann that had cut its pad on some glass. I thought it was never going to stop bleeding.’ I grab a tissue and rub it off. ‘Where are the children?’ I say, noticing they aren’t in the back.
‘Mother’s bringing them with her. Seb was having a snack and Lucie wanted a few minutes with her pony. I’m sure she misses him more than she misses me.’ Alex looks at his watch. ‘We’d better hurry. They need a vet down there to check on the welfare of the ducks before they can run the race.’
‘Really? I hadn’t thought of that.’ It occurs to me that I’ve never been presented with a duck before. ‘How do you tell if a duck is unhappy, or if it doesn’t want to race?’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Alex says. ‘They’re my department, not yours.’
I might not know much about duck welfare, but Alex and I stop on the way to check on the welfare of a hedgehog that is lying in the middle of the road. It’s dead and so badly squashed I don’t think it suffered. At least it isn’t Spike – Frances is feeding him up in a run in her garden.
‘My grandmother used to take the dead ones home,’ Alex says, driving on. ‘She was very much of the waste-not, want-not generation.’
‘What did she do with them?’ A vision of vol-au-vents stuffed with roadkill enters my head. ‘No, don’t tell me. I don’t think I want to know.’
‘She tied them to poles and used them to rap the horses’ legs when they were jumping to make them jump higher – they never dropped a foot out hunting, never dared.’
Not for the first time, I find myself worrying about the baby’s gene pool.
I gaze out of the window at the changing scenery: the hawthorn blossom emerging from the hedges, bright yellow celandines and pale primroses scattered about at the feet of the twisted oaks, which are coming into leaf.
‘I love this time of year,’ Alex says, as if reading my mind.
He pulls in and parks on the verge outside the Talymill Inn – the car park is overflowing with cars, camper vans, Land Rovers, a tractor and a fire engine.
‘Won’t all these people frighten the ducks?’ Grabbing my bag from the footwell, which is positively rustling with old syringes and sweet wrappers, I slide out of the passenger seat.
‘They’re well trained.’ Alex turns his attention to finding a sweater in the boot. It might be sunny, but a cold breeze raises goose pimples on my exposed skin.
‘I can’t imagine why they don’t fly away,’ I say, recalling the moment when the Captain stretched his wings as if he was about to take off from the roof of Otter House. ‘Where do we go now?’
‘Let’s go and grab some lunch,’ Alex says.
‘But I thought you said you were in a hurry?’
‘There’s time for something to eat.’
I follow Alex inside, to order.
Clive and his wife have thrown their life savings into restoring the pub – every brick, every tile – and the grounds too. Out in the beer garden behind the mill, I sit down with Alex at one of the picnic benches on the lawn, which slopes down to the river, admiring their work. The food’s pretty good too. Alex has a ploughman’s and I have chips with mustard to satisfy my sudden craving.
Although he’s on call for the weekend, Drew is here, surrounded by a crowd of teenage girls: Shannon and her friends. Izzy’s here too. She gives me a wave from where she’s sitting on a blanket under the branches of a weeping willow closer to the water. As I wave back, a man in his forties with blond curls and a compact muscular body, dressed in jeans and a khaki shirt, joins her. It’s Chris, her sheep-farmer fiancé.
He kneels down beside Izzy, handing over a glass of wine before blowing kisses up her neck. She casts him an adoring glance, then he whispers into her ear, making her laugh, and I envy them, being a couple so obviously in love and – I stare, somewhat resentfully, at my stomach – free of the responsibility of bringing a child into the world.
I can understand why Emma decided not to join us. I did ask her, but she said she’d prefer a long walk with Ben and Miff down at the coast. There are babies in prams and backpacks, and older children everywhere, clambering on the rustic frames in the small play area well away from the water.
A fire crew – the same one as hoisted me into the air to catch the Captain – is setting up a table with a banner above.
Annual Duck Race. Sponsor your duck here. All money goes to this year’s charities: Jacky’s Days Out and SANDS.
(Jacky’s Days Out is a charity devoted to providing fun days out for sick children. I know about SANDS, the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society – I sent them a small donation in memory of Emma’s baby.)
Other members of the crew are paddling across the river in wetsuits and waders to suspend a net from one bank to the other, along with a sign reading, Finish. Then Clive turns up, dragging a net filled with yellow plastic ducks with metal rings sticking out of their heads.
‘I thought you said they were real ducks,’ I say, disappointed.
‘April Fool!’ Alex chuckles. ‘You didn’t really believe we’d use real ones? I’m sorry, Maz, I can’t resist winding you up sometimes. You can be so gullible. And,’ he adds, leaning across and brushing my cheek with his lips, ‘I mean that in the nicest possible way.’
‘Hi there, Alex. And Maz.’ It’s Stewart with Lynsey behind him, baby in one arm and a kicking toddler in the other. ‘When are you going to make an honest woman of her, then?’ His eyes twinkle as he looks at me. He’s a charismatic character, I suppose, but with his balding scalp and beginnings of a beer belly I can’t really understand why he’s apparently so desirable to women. Today he’s wearing one of his trademark vests with ‘British Beef’ on the front, Bermuda shorts, along with black socks and steel-capped work boots.
‘Stewart, you didn’t get Frances a duck,’ Lynsey cuts in before Alex can respond. Frances is their youngest, the baby, named after our Frances, who practically delivered her when Lynsey went into labour at Otter House last summer. She drops the toddler onto the grass and lets him scream there. ‘He’ll get over it in a while,’ she says. ‘He’s always having paddies, just like his dad.’
‘Well, the baby doesn’t need a duck,’ Stewart says. ‘She doesn’t know any different.’
‘Tightwad,’ Lynsey says, her face turning beetroot under a battered hat.
‘I can’t afford all this, Lyns. I’ve just had last month’s vet’s bill for the cattle.’
‘Actually, it was the month before the month before last’s,’ Alex says with a grin. ‘Never mind, though, I know where you live.’
I’m aware that Lynsey is throwing black looks at her husband, who tells us he’ll see us later to talk about finding photos of some bed race he and Alex took part in with Chris, to use when he does the best man’s speech for Izzy’s wedding; then he and Lynsey continue their argument over ducks and money further down the lawn.
‘He loves her really,’ Alex says. ‘Lynsey knew what she was taking on and she can be pretty fierce. They’re
always having domestics. One time I was on the farm when a bag of Stewart’s belongings appeared on the step outside the dairy.’
‘I’d hate to be rowing all the time,’ I say.
‘I think they thrive on making up.’ Alex looks past me towards the back door to the pub. ‘Ah, there they are. Lucie! Seb! Over here!’ Alex pops a pickled onion in his mouth and waves them over.
It isn’t the mustard that sends a sharp pain searing through my chest, but the sight of Alex’s parents with them.
‘Daddy!’ Lucie breaks away from where she’s holding Sophia’s hand and comes cantering over in a flowery sundress, cardigan and jodhpur boots. ‘Can I have a duck?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Alex says slowly.
Lucie gathers up her dress and tips her head to one side. ‘Please, Daddy, I really need a duck.’
‘I wanna duck.’ Seb joins us, scrambling up onto Alex’s lap. He’s wearing jeans and a Bob the Builder sweatshirt. Alex wipes his nose with a paper napkin.
‘Grandpa will buy you one each,’ Sophia cuts in. She wears the collar of her coat turned up and her hat pulled down over her head as if she’s embarrassed to be seen among the common people of Talyton St George. ‘Won’t you, Fox-Gifford?’ she adds severely, turning to her husband.
‘I don’t know about that.’ He hooks his stick over his arm and pats the pockets of a threadbare blazer. ‘I didn’t bring any cash.’
‘Yes, you did,’ Lucie interrupts. ‘I saw you take some money out of Humpy’s purse.’
‘So that’s where it went,’ Sophia says darkly.
‘Let’s forget about the bloody ducks, shall we?’ Old Fox-Gifford thunders, aiming this towards Alex. ‘Son, we’ve been hearing rumours, vicious ones at that, and we need to know they aren’t true.’
‘I’ll get the ducks,’ Alex says, hurriedly. He takes out his wallet and hands it to Lucie.
‘Run along, Lucie darling,’ Sophia says, ‘and take your brother with you. We need to have a word with your father. He’s been very evasive recently.’
‘Yes, you can count yourself out of the inheritance if this goes on,’ Old Fox-Gifford says, doffing his deerstalker and revealing the veins standing proud of his temple.
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