A Home for Her Baby

by Eleanor Jones

  Ali thought about their conversation after Lily left, remembering the “moments” between her and Tom. The way his lips had felt against hers when he kissed her that day, warm and soft and so tender; it seemed so long ago now. The way her heart raced when she saw him. She hadn’t been totally honest with Lily, she knew that now, but there again she hadn’t been totally honest with herself either. She wasn’t divorced and Bobby’s death was still so raw... The timing just wasn’t right...yet. One day though she really hoped it would be and until then...until then she had to take one day at a time. Finish her book, see a solicitor about the divorce...and maybe take out a longer lease on the cottage.

  * * *

  OVER THE NEXT few weeks Ali did just as she’d promised herself, taking one day at a time and seeing where life led her. She and Tom fell into a comfortable routine of walking the pups along the shore, more often than not accompanied by Lily, who brought Pip along, having been dissuaded by her mum from having one of the pups herself.

  “Now that Tom has Snowy,” she explained. “Pip really is my dog and I don’t need two to look after, do I... Anyway I can always come and play with Freckles.”

  “Whenever you want,” Ali told her. “You know you’re always welcome.”

  Ali loved her walks with Tom alone, but having Lily along helped keep a distance between them. Somehow she knew that getting too close to Tom would probably be the quickest way to drive him away and that was the last thing she wanted. She also loved the time they spent working on her book, or rather she worked while he just talked. The moments when he dropped his usual guard and let his love of fishing and the sea take over were rare. She’d just sit and listen, sometimes taking notes but usually absorbing the atmosphere he created, storing it inside her head to recreate when she started to write.

  “I remember the first time I took Bobby fishing on my own,” he began one early evening in late March, after a brisk walk along the shore.

  Ali sipped her coffee, watching the dogs play chase around the room and waiting patiently for him to go on; if pushed, he sometimes changed the subject so she just waited patiently and hoped he was about to expand on the story.

  “It was about the same time of year as this,” he went on. “I was about fourteen or fifteen so Bobby couldn’t have been more than five or six. It terrifies me now to realize just how crazy I was then, to take a five-year-old out on a boat, but our parents were busy and it was my job to look after him for the day. I wanted to go fishing so I took him along in my little dingy.”

  He stopped for a moment then, recollecting the experience; his dark hair was curly with the damp spray from the sea and his cheeks were flushed from the bracing wind outside. To Ali he looked ruggedly handsome and more approachable than usual. Her heart did a slow flip as she remembered his kiss and for a second she closed her eyes.

  “When we set off the bay was calm,” he went on and she opened her eyes again, watching the expression on his face as he relived the moment and wishing that she’d known him as a young boy.

  “We were around the point, near to a small island I liked to go to, when the wind came up. If I’d been a better fisherman then I’d have checked on the weather but I guess you just get on with it when you’re fifteen. We’d caught a few little tiddlers. Bobby cried, I remember, when I made him put them back. He just kept shouting ‘crabs, crabs, crabs.’ It was all he wanted to catch. So to keep him happy I decided to row to the island and look for some there. I pulled the dingy up onto the sand, gave him a bucket to put his crabs in when he caught them and we set off on our search. He was so excited and we both totally ignored the wind, except for when I had to grab hold of him to stop him being blown into the sea.

  “We walked for ages that day, around the edge of the large sand bank I thought was an island, stopping now and again to dig in the soft sand for crabs. Bobby found two tiny ones and he was pleased as punch. Then the rain started and I decided we’d better head back for the boat. By the time we got to where we’d left the dingy a full-blown storm had set in. Waves were washing all over the place and the dingy had disappeared. Bobby started to cry and I just yelled and yelled for help but no one came. We sat on the sand shivering with cold and wet right through to our underwear for what felt like hours. It was Bobby who spotted the dingy about twenty feet out. The sea had taken it but now it seemed to be blowing it back to us and there was only one thing I could do...”

  “You didn’t try to swim out to it, did you?” Ali gasped.

  “Well I was about to,” Tom said with a smile, “but Bobby was too quick for me—he just waded out and then suddenly he disappeared under the water. If he hadn’t had his crab bucket with him I’d never have found him, but it bobbed up out of the water and I waded in to chest height, dragged him out and then retrieved the dingy. All he cared about was whether he still had any crabs left.”

  “And did he?” Ali asked.

  “Fortunately he still had one,” Tom told her. “Or he’d have cried all the way home. We never told our parents about that outing but I guess they’ll know now when they read the book.”

  “Sure will,” Ali said. “And thanks for that, it was a lovely memory.”

  Tom grinned. “I’m not so sure my parents will agree. It’s kind of nice though to remember times like that without tears—stories about him growing up seem to bring him back to life...but in a happy way.”

  “Oh Tom,” Ali cried. “That is exactly what I want the book to do.”

  “So do I get to read it now?” he asked, but she shook her head.

  “When it’s finished,” she promised. “You’ll be the very first person to read it.”

  After the shared emotion and closeness between them that evening Ali felt as if their relationship had moved to another level; she couldn’t wait to see him again but to her disappointment he seemed to avoid her for the next few days. Determinedly she got on with her book, trying to focus on the words in front of her. Obviously their shared emotion that evening had frightened him off and she’d just have to live with that.

  * * *

  THAT EVENING WITH Ali had awakened him to feelings he didn’t want to face. He was, first and foremost, a fisherman and he’d always said that he would never let a woman sit at home in trepidation, wondering whether or not he was going to return from his latest fishing trip. Bobby’s drowning had not only strengthened that resolve, it had also made him feel even stronger about his passion for the sea. He felt that he owed it to his brother to keep their way of life alive. Otherwise what had he died for? Admitting to his feelings for Ali would serve only to confuse things even more. He needed to talk to her, to explain how he felt and make her understand.

  Tom knocked on her door around eight thirty on a Friday evening, just as the sun was going down after a fresh, blustery day. She opened the door, greeting him with such a radiant smile that the breath caught in Tom’s throat. Fresh from the shower, her damp hair curled around her face and her skin glowed with the warmth of the water.

  “Hi,” he said awkwardly.

  “Hi,” she responded, surprised to see him.

  “I’m on my way home and I wanted to talk to you...the lights were on.”

  She held the door open, standing back to let him through. “Coffee?” she asked heading for the kitchen, “Or would you rather have a glass of wine?”

  He shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “Wine it is then,” Ali said, walking over to the cupboard for two glasses.

  “Let me,” Tom insisted.

  He lifted the glasses down from the top shelf and then hesitated. She was still standing in front of him, so close that he could feel the heat of her body. She turned to face him, looking up to meet the intensity in his dark eyes, and all his good intentions were forgotten.

  “Oh Ali,” he murmured, lowering his lips to hers.

  After placing the glasses down he took her in his arms, holding h
er hard against his chest as his lips finally claimed hers. She kissed him with such warmth and softness that he never wanted to release her. And when he finally, reluctantly, let her go, she reached up to stroke his cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I came here to talk to you, to be honest, and...”

  Curling her hand around the back of his neck she drew his lips down to hers again, cutting off his sentence. “Perhaps this is you being honest,” she murmured. “And don’t be sorry.”

  It was Tom who pulled away first. “What happened to the things you said, Ali, about wrong timing and taking one day at a time?”

  “Impulse overcame good intentions.”

  He took hold of both her hands in his, gripping them tightly. “What just happened, Ali...was it a sudden impulse, two confused people reaching out... Or was it more than that?”

  She stepped away from him, reluctantly pulling back her hands. “I don’t know...perhaps you should go now.”

  “Do you want me to?”

  She shook her head, still holding his eyes with hers. “No... I don’t. I just think it might be best, that’s all, you know, to give us both a chance to think.”

  “No wine then?”

  “Better not.”

  As he walked past her toward the door he stopped midstride, taking her arm and pulling her toward him again. “Tomorrow then,” he murmured, brushing his lips against hers again as if daring her to forget. “Tomorrow I want you to tell me how you really feel.”

  “Tomorrow...” he heard her murmur as the door closed behind him.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  AFTER TOM LEFT Ali’s head was all over the place. What had just happened? What was she thinking? Then again, why not? They were both free and single. It was over five months since Bobby’s death and she had nothing to be ashamed of. After all, no matter what Ned thought there was never anything more than just friendship between her and Bobby. The guilt was still there though, dragging her down. If only she’d realized how Bobby felt about her maybe she could have handled things differently. And despite everything, would Bobby really begrudge her and Tom happiness... Knowing him, somehow she didn’t think so.

  Leaning back in her chair she allowed herself to dream; did she and Tom have something special, she wondered, maybe even a future together? Oh how she hoped so, for her feelings for him made a mockery of what she thought she’d felt for Jake; back then she’d just been playing at love. So did she love Tom? The answer was too scary to contemplate. Besides, her divorce hadn’t come through yet, her future was vague and she didn’t have time for love, she told herself, already doubting her own dream.

  Waking from sleep the pup, Freckles, pulled at her fluffy slippers with its needle-sharp teeth and she laughed, scooping the little creature up into her arms. “Well you certainly know how to bring me back down to earth with a bump,” she said, walking down the hallway to take her outside. The painting on the wall near the door seemed to jump out at her, as if she’d never really seen it before. She stopped to look at it, remembering the story Lily had told her just the other day, about Ali’s landlady, Elsa May Malone Evans; seemingly she’d found love in Jenny Brown’s Bay and then she thought she’d lost her love, Bryn Evans, when he was swept away by the sea. That must be him in the painting, throwing a stick for a yellow dog way out on the huge expanse of sand while a woman with gold-streaked curly hair was watching from the shore...and the woman must be Elsa. According to Lily she’d found him again eventually, her Bryn, but not before she’d had a baby right here in this cottage.

  Something rang in Ali’s head...a jolt of recognition. She’d been so busy and stressed lately that she hadn’t even thought about her period. Of course she had always had been erratic, and with all the stress of her split from Jake it wasn’t really surprising that it had been a while since she’d had one. Then again she had missed taking her birth control pill a couple of times, she remembered with a surge of panic. It was during the emotional time after she’d accused Jake of seeing someone else and he’d managed to talk her round. Walking outside into the clear crisp air she put Freckles down, trying to remember how long it had been since she’d had her period; it must be well over five months, she realized, and that was worrying, even for her, especially since she’d felt so tired lately...

  Sleep evaded Ali that night; she tried to relive those moments with Tom but they felt like a lifetime away now. All she could feel was a tingling fear and a fluttering anxiety that held her heart tightly in its grip. There was only one thing to do, and that was to go to the chemist in town as soon as possible; she had to put her mind at rest before she saw Tom again. Jumping out of bed she glanced at the clock. Eleven thirty, would there be anywhere open now? Asda, that was it, they were open all night.

  It was weird, thought Ali half an hour later, walking around the quiet store in the middle of the night. A group of teenagers were giggling together by the doors, a couple with a baby were wandering sleepless and bleary-eyed around the children’s section and an elderly man, looking lost and sad, was reading a paper. She quickly selected a pregnancy testing kit from the variety on offer, thinking that she must be mad and tomorrow she’d be laughing about it.

  She drove home too fast, wanting to put her fears to rest so that she could let Tom back into her heart. Tomorrow, he’d told her. I want you tell me how you really feel.

  This couldn’t be happening, it really couldn’t, and how could she have been so naive?

  Freckles whined with delight when she let herself back into the cottage, but for once she ignored her, running straight up the stairs to the bathroom. The clock in the hallway said one forty-five. Before 2:00 a.m., she told herself, this nightmare would be over.

  One fifty-eight and she stared at the stick. It seemed to take forever...and then, suddenly it changed and her whole world changed, too... Pregnant! She must be over five months pregnant and she hadn’t even suspected. What a fool she was...and what to tell Tom.

  By morning, she was sleepless, worried and confused. She stood naked at the mirror as the first light of dawn filtered into her room, running her hand across the mound of her stomach. Why hadn’t she noticed it before, that new swell? And as she pressed gently down against it she felt a movement, just a gentle flutter but enough to know. It didn’t matter what she wanted anymore; this was going to happen and it was her responsibility.

  Something twisted inside her heart as she thought about Tom. Last night she’d asked herself if she loved him and now she knew; the answer was yes, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She’d just keep this to herself, she decided, until she’d manage to get her head round it. At the moment it seemed like a crazy nightmare. She’d have to see a doctor, too, and put the whole thing into motion. It might be scary but it was going to happen no matter how she felt about it; she was going to be a mum; she, Ali Nicholas, a real mum. A prickle of excitement cut through the fear.

  * * *

  ALI RANG THE doctor at eight thirty and arranged an appointment for ten o’clock. One and a half hours to kill...and what if Tom called in the meantime; what would she say?

  As it happened he knocked on her door at nine fifteen, just as she was about to leave. She peered out at him from an upstairs window. Tomorrow you are going to tell me how you really feel, he’d said, believing that he already knew. And he did know, she just couldn’t admit it now. Holding back her tears she sat on the bed, frozen with fear and doubt. What if she just told him, what would he think? He knocked again, harder this time and tried the door, standing back to look up at the windows when he realized it was locked. Was she imagining it or were his shoulders slumped with disappointment when he walked away?

  * * *

  HEADING DOWN TO the small harbor where The Sea Hawk was docked, Tom went over the events of the night before again and again, reliving every moment. He’d tried Ali’s door but it wouldn’t budge. Where could she be... Walking Freckles? No, that couldn’t
be it; she never locked the door when she just went for a walk on the shore. Disappointment and doubt flooded in as he turned away. What if she’d changed her mind, what if he’d misread the situation. He hadn’t misread the look in her eyes though. He knew he hadn’t. She felt the same way he did, he was certain of it, but where was she now?

  Common sense prevailed; perhaps she’d needed something from the shop. After all, they hadn’t really arranged a time for today... Or she might be having doubts, said an inner voice, a voice he tried to shut out.

  “We’ll call in later,” he said to the little white pup that wriggled and squirmed in his arms. “Today I am going to introduce you to the love of my life...a beautiful sturdy vessel that’s never let me down. You need to get your sea legs you know, if you’re to start coming out with us.”

  As Tom approached Ned, he was happy to see a smile on his brother’s face for once. “Bit young yet to be a fisherman isn’t he?” he called from the deck of The Sea Hawk.

  “Got to start somewhere,” Tom responded, pleased to see his brother looking more carefree again. He and Ned were finally getting some kind of normality back—or as much normality as they could manage after the tragedy of losing Bobby. When Ned found out about him and Ali, Tom knew that his bitterness would kick off all over again and he wasn’t looking forward to it. But there was nothing definite yet so they might as well enjoy each other’s company today.

  * * *

  ALI WALKED INTO The Station House doctor’s office filled with trepidation.

  She stared with surprise at the small blond woman who sat on the other side of the desk. The woman’s youthful looks lent Ali no confidence at all. “Er...” she began awkwardly, looking around expectantly. “I have an appointment with a Doctor Moss...”

  The woman smiled. “Yes...that’s me. I am Doctor Moss. What can I do for you?”