by Jill Mansell
Dulcie ate another jaffa cake. She knew that feeling all right.
‘Right, Greta. I understand completely how desperate you must be feeling,’ said Nancy cosily. ‘I can hear it in your voice. But first of all I have to tell you what you mustn ‘t do.’
‘What mustn’t she do, Nancy?’ enquired one of the show’s presenters.
‘Yes, Nancy,’ said Dulcie, ‘what mustn’t we do?’
‘Please, please don’t be tempted into thinking all your problems would be solved if you had a baby.’ Nancy sounded sorrowful. ‘Because believe me, Greta, that would be the biggest mistake you could make.’
The jaffa cake was melting. Dulcie licked chocolate off her fingers and conjured up a mental picture of a tiny baby, the image of Liam, wearing tennis whites and waving a miniature racquet.
This was a possibility that hadn’t so much as crossed her mind.
‘It’s crossed my mind,’ admitted Greta from Scarborough. ‘Don’t let it,’ Nancy said firmly.
This was like being told not to think of pink elephants. Dulcie promptly imagined Liam showing off his new son, driving him around in the Lamborghini, proudly telling everyone how fatherhood had changed his whole life .. .
‘I know,’ said Greta, beginning to sound a bit desperate, ‘but it worked for my sister. She got pregnant and her bloke stuck by her. And she did it on purpose,’ she added defiantly. ‘He thought she was still on the pill but she stopped taking it.’
‘Deceit and trickery,’ Nancy looked sad and shook her head, ‘deceit and trickery. Trust me, pet, this isn’t the answer. Getting pregnant – when all you’re trying to do is hang on to a man – is a recipe for disaster. You’re just grasping at straws.’
Dulcie lifted up her white sweatshirt and gazed down at her flat stomach. Then she shoved the biscuit tin under the sweatshirt and surveyed the odd-shaped lump. Nancy had got rid of Greta now. She had moved on to John from Norwich who was forty-four but his mother had never let him have a girlfriend.
Dulcie knew from the tone of Greta’s voice that she would go ahead and do it anyway. You could always tell when people were going to ignore Nancy’s sound advice.
Dulcie pulled the biscuit tin out from under her sweatshirt, opened it and thoughtfully bit into a bourbon. There was no doubt about it, getting pregnant accidentally-on-purpose might not do the trick — but then again, what if it did? It could be a risk worth taking.
What a shame there wasn’t a Predictor pregnancy kit for men, a just-pee-on-this type of thing that would reliably inform you whether the prospective father of your child might actually be quite keen on the idea.
Or, on the other hand, if he was a fully paid-up member of the run-a-mile club.
Minutes later, it came to her.
Brilliant, thought Dulcie excitedly, amazed that a solution so perfect and simple hadn’t occurred to her before. Or, indeed, to Nancy.
Who needed a pre-pregnancy test? All she had to do was bend the truth a bit.
It wasn’t even fibbing, it was ... well, it was research.
Chapter 28
‘You’re what?’ said Liza, horrified, when Dulcie announced her momentous news the next day out in the back garden. ‘You’re kidding!’
‘I found out last week. Isn’t it terrific?’
Dulcie beamed at them both. Pru, sitting cross-legged on the grass, looked dazed. Liza, frowning, swirled the ice cubes around in her tall glass.
‘I don’t know,’ Liza said finally. ‘Is it terrific? How does Liam feel about it?’
Feeling quite pregnant already, and weirdly protective of her nonexistent child, Dulcie decided Liza was jealous.
‘I’m telling him tonight. I bet he’ll be chuffed.’
Pru was shielding her eyes from the sun, peering at Dulcie’s stomach.
‘How many weeks are you?’
‘Six.’ Dulcie was firm. She had consulted her diary and committed the necessary dates to memory. She had learned her lesson from the Bibi fiasco, the lesson being: If you’re going to lie, be thorough, be convincing and above all be consistent.
All the same, she was glad she had her RayBans on. It wasn’t so easy fibbing to your friends.
‘Morning sickness?’ said Liza, giving her a slightly odd look.
‘God, morning sickness!’ Dulcie groaned and clutched her stomach. You didn’t watch as many soaps as she had in her time without becoming something of an expert on the various signs and symptoms of pregnancy. ‘I’ve been throwing up like nobody’s business—’
‘Cravings?’
‘Cravings!’ Dulcie rolled her eyes. ‘Tell me about them! Custard creams, pickled beetroot dunked in chocolate spread, peanut butter and honey sandwiches—’
‘You’ve always eaten those.’
‘I know, but then I just fancied them,’ explained Dulcie. ‘Now I crave them, totally. Morning, noon and night. And cornflakes mashed up with double cream and marmalade.’
‘I read an article in the paper recently,’ Liza went on. ‘Some professor was saying women who crave green olives have boys, and if they go for lemons it’s a girl.’
Dulcie had already decided Liam would prefer a son. To start with, anyway. She patted her stomach and said happily, ‘I’m eating millions of olives. I know it’s going to be a boy.’
Then because Liza and Pru were both still exchanging furtive glances, she wailed, ‘Isn’t anyone going to congratulate me? Come on, I’m having a baby here! Is this exciting or what?’
Pru looked away, pretending to pick a bit of grass off her shirt. Finally Liza spoke.
‘It might be exciting,’ she said drily, ‘if it were true.’
‘But it is true!’
Liza reached across and whipped off Dulcie’s dark glasses. ‘You might be able to do it to everyone else, but you can’t lie to us.’
Oh bugger, so much for subterfuge.
‘Damn.’ Resignedly, Dulcie grabbed her glasses back. ‘How could you tell?’
‘You might be flippant,’ said Liza, smiling at the expression on Dulcie’s face, ‘but even you aren’t that flippant.’
‘Plus,’ Pru added, looking apologetic, ‘if you really were pregnant, you wouldn’t be able to keep it to yourself for an hour, let alone a week.’
‘I made up the bit about the olives, by the way,’ said Liza.
Feeling ganged-up on, Dulcie said nothing. She drank her glass of tonic and pulled a face. At least now the game was up, she could stick some gin in.
‘Sorry.’ Liza was trying not to laugh. ‘What were we, the practice run?’
Dulcie nodded.
‘Thought so. It’s a really sick thing to do, you know.’
Since Liza wasn’t Liam’s greatest fan, this came as something of a shock to Dulcie; it made her sit up a bit. Hang on, was she defending him here? Was she actually on Liam’s side?
‘I thought you’d approve,’ she protested. ‘I’m being responsible, aren’t I? If he’s thrilled, I’ll do it for real. If he isn’t .. . well, then I won’t.’
Pru looked at her.
‘Well, don’t you think it’s a good idea?’ said Dulcie defensively. ‘I’m testing the ground first.
You’d try on a dress, wouldn’t you, before you bought it?’
‘Except we aren’t talking about a dress here,’ said Liza, ‘we’re talking about a baby and that’s a pretty major deception.’ She shook her head. ‘I still think you’re mad.’
‘Some men just need a nudge in the right direction.’ Dulcie hugged her knees; she still thought it was a brilliant idea. ‘Look, how did you really know I was lying?’
‘We know you,’ said Liza with a shrug.
‘Okay, but Liam doesn’t. He’ll believe me, won’t he?’ Dulcie raised her eyebrows, pleading with them to be on her side. ‘So long as you two back me up.’
Pru looked flustered. Subterfuge didn’t come naturally to her.
‘Why don’t you just ask him if he’d like a baby?’ she said with an air of helplessnes
s.
Sometimes Dulcie wondered about Pru. Was she from the real world or not?
‘Because,’ she explained patiently, ‘it just doesn’t work like that.’
* * *
Kit was taking Liza away to the Lake District for the weekend. He picked her up at four o’clock and chucked her case in the back of the Bentley.
‘We’re going to stay at this amazing hotel,’ he told her, ‘surrounded by woodland. The countryside’s fantastic. You’ll love it.’
Liza wondered jealously who he’d taken there before. She wondered how many times he’d been there and how many girls he’d been there with.
‘None,’ said Kit, glancing across at her as they headed for the motorway.
‘What?’
‘In case you were wondering.’
‘Wondering what?’ Liza unwrapped a packet of fruit pastilles.
He grinned. ‘The look on your face. Total giveaway.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she protested, but it was half-hearted.
‘Five years ago, the father of my best friend from school remarried,’ said Kit. ‘The reception was held at Egerton Hall and I was invited along. As soon as I saw the hotel I knew this was the place for me. When I met the right girl I’d bring her here.’ He paused, concentrating on the road ahead.
When they had navigated round a swaying horsebox, he added casually, ‘And now it’s happened.
You are that girl.’
‘I’m thirty-two. Hardly a girl.’
Kit shrugged.
‘Okay, you are that ancient old battleaxe.’
‘Oh God.’ Fearfully she pulled down the sun visor, studying her face in the mirror. ‘What if the chambermaids think I’m your mother?’
They were approaching a lay-by. Kit braked hard and pulled in. As the trundling horsebox overtook them, he took Liza in his arms.
‘Stop it,’ he said firmly. ‘I love you. I don’t care that you’re older than me. And if it bothers anyone else, then they’re theones with the problem. We’re talking nine years’ difference here, not ninety. I mean, so what? Big deal.’
He was still kissing her when the phone rang in the car. ‘Bugger,’ said Kit, then he grinned and flicked a switch. ‘Hooray for hands-free.’
But Leo Berenger’s autocratic voice, booming through the car, stopped them in their tracks.
‘Kit, you’ve gone off with the bloody keys to the safe.’
‘Shit.’ Kit’s hand went to his jacket pocket. He pulled out the keys and gazed at them in disgust.
‘You’ll have to bring them back,’ ordered Leo Berenger. ‘Lucky we stopped before the motorway.’ Kit winked at Liza. To his father he said, ‘Forty minutes, okay?’
‘We’re waiting for them now,’ roared Leo. ‘Make it twenty.’
‘Looks like it’s meet-the-folks time,’ Kit said cheerfully as he swung the Bentley into the gravelled drive. There, waiting for them on the front steps of Rowan House, was Leo Berenger.
Tall, burly and ominous-looking, even from this distance. Liza wondered about hiding herself under a blanket on the back seat – except there was no blanket to hide under. There was no anything. It was an incredibly clean car.
‘You should have dropped me off first.’ She shivered, unable to help herself.
Kit gave her thigh a reassuring squeeze.
‘Come on, he’s only my father. No need to be scared, just because he can’t stand the sight of you.’
‘Ha ha,’ said Liza, because Kit was grinning. She was glad someone found it funny.
Leo Berenger clearly didn’t, when they reached him at last. ‘Keys,’ Kit announced, sliding open the driver’s window and holding them out to his father. ‘Sorry about that.’
But although Leo Berenger took the keys, he appeared not to hear his son’s apology. He was too busy, instead, looking at Liza. Having rather hoped he would opt for ignoring her completely, Liza now found herself forced to return his gaze.
She tried to look friendly but not totally grovelly.
Leo Berenger’s expression, by way of contrast, was on a par with slicing open a peach and finding a nest of squirming maggots inside.
Rapidly, because he couldn’t very well not, Kit performed the introductions.
‘I already know who you are,’ Leo Berenger told Liza. ‘And I daresay my son’s told you how I feel about this ... relationship.’ His eyebrows were like caterpillars, his tone Yorkshire-blunt.
‘But I’ll say it again, just so you get the point. You all but wrecked my niece’s business, and you’re certainly the wrong sort for my son. I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, but the sooner he comes to his senses and finds himself a girl his own age—’
‘Thanks, Dad, that’s fine, we’ve got the message.’
‘Because believe me, the sight of you sitting there in that car where my late wife used to sit—’
‘Right,’ Kit said wearily, ‘I wondered when we’d get to that.’
He switched off the ignition, opened the driver’s door and climbed out. Within seconds, the boot was unloaded. Carrying four cases, Kit somehow managed to open the passenger door.
‘Come on,’ he told Liza without emotion, ‘we’ll go in mine.’
It made a change, anyway. Instead of feeling old, Liza now felt about fifteen. The last time she’d been told off by a boyfriend’s enraged father was when they’d been caught smoking in his garden shed.
‘She might not want to go in yours.’ Leo Berenger’s taunting voice followed them around the side of the vast Georgian house. ‘After all, it’s no Bentley.’
At the back of the house, across a cobbled courtyard, an old stable block had been converted into garages. They loaded the suitcases into Kit’s battered – and spectacularly untidy – slate-grey Peugeot.
‘He thinks I’m a gold-digger,’ Liza marvelled.
‘We could really gee him up,’ said Kit, slamming the boot shut, ‘we could tell him you’re pregnant.’’I’m not.’
Kit’s yellow-gold eyes glittered like a cat’s in the dusty sunlight. He kissed Liza’s warm mouth, then her neck, then her bare shoulder.
‘You’re not yet.’
Oh my God, thought Liza dazedly, marvelling at the effect he was having on her body. How does he do it? How can this be happening to me?
But when Kit drove the Peugeot around the side of the house, Leo Berenger was still standing there next to the Bentley, his arms folded across his barrel of a chest, his disapproving gaze fixed on Liza.
Kit lowered his window and said cheerfully, ‘See? It’s my body she’s after, not your cash. Bye, Dad.’
His father didn’t reply.
Making sure she spoke loudly enough to be heard, Liza said as they drove past, ‘Is he really your father? Sure you weren’t switched at birth?’
Chapter 29
It was one of Eddie’s visiting days. Pru picked him up at five o’clock that afternoon and gave Arthur’s ears a friendly scratch when he scrambled on to the passenger seat ahead of Eddie.
Arthur had formed a passionate attachment to Anita, the golden retriever belonging to the caretaker at Elmlea nursing home; for the past couple of weeks he had taken to yelping with excitement every time he spotted Pru, and hurling himself into the car like a frantic commuter hailing a taxi.
‘It’s love,’ said Eddie with a grin, shoving Arthur through to the back before he drooled over Pru’s pale-green shirt.
Pru was getting used to Arthur now. As dogs went, he was okay. How he’d ever managed to get himself a girlfriend though, was beyond her. Arthur had frightfully bad breath.
‘Down,’ Eddie commanded as the dog’s paws crept over the back of his seat. A long pink tongue lolled wetly, inches from his shoulder. For a mad moment he wished it could be Pru’s tongue.
Pru, extremely glad it wasn’t her shoulder, said, ‘You’re supposed to play it cool, Arthur. Look like you don’t give a damn.’
But with dogs there was no need for all
that. The second Arthur spotted the object of his desire, he would howl with joy and scrabble in desperation at the car door until he was let out. Anita, in her turn, would leap up, eyes alight with pleasure, and race across the grass towards him, Hollywood style.
None of your complicated human stuff, Eddie thought, all this hiding your true feelings, preserving your pride and generally falling about.
‘Speaking of playing it cool,’ said Eddie, ‘how’s it going with Dulcie and Liam?’
He only asked because Liam’s new car was hard to miss and this morning he had spotted it racing out of the club’s car park. Eddie hadn’t paid a great deal of attention but even he hadn’t been able to help noticing that the mane of blonde hair attached to the girl in the passenger seat didn’t belong to Dulcie.
This is it, thought Pru, willing herself to stay calm and unflustered. This is my chance to see if I can pull it off.
‘Actually, I saw Dulcie this morning. She rang Liza and me, asked us to go and see her. She’s really excited’ — eyes on the road, just sound normal, don’t blush, don’t blush — ‘you see, she’s just found out she’s pregnant.’
‘Good God.’ Eddie sounded horrified. ‘What — who’s — I mean, is it Liam’s?’
Pru was hating this already. She felt hot and unhappy. Fibbing might come naturally to some people but she wasn’t one of them.
Except Dulcie had made her promise.
Pretending she was an actress playing her part on a stage, Pru nodded. Actually, it helped.
‘Of course it’s Liam’s. She’s thrilled!’
‘Is Liam thrilled?’
‘He doesn’t know yet. She’s telling him tonight. So don’t say anything,’ Pru warned him,
‘because I shouldn’t have told you.’
Eddie looked at Pru and decided not to mention the blonde in Liam’s car. It was none of his business anyway. If Pru relayed this information to Dulcie — and it all ended in tears — he would only be left with the finger pointed accusingly at him.
Safer not to get involved, he thought. Hear no shenanigans, see no shenanigans, that was the way to deal with these kind of adventures.