Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
The next couple of weeks pass in a simple and summery blur. The weather holds fine, warm to the point where I am starting to be glad that I won’t be at my biggest for a while yet. The combination of the heat and pregnancy would be highly sweaty indeed.
I’m definitely showing a little now but have yet to feel the baby move.
Ella assures me that this is completely normal in a first pregnancy, or at least a first pregnancy that made it this far, but I am still desperate for it to happen.
To feel the tangible evidence that he or she is in there, doing somersaults and flips in their cosy watery home.
‘Don’t worry,’ she’d told me, ‘it’ll happen. And it’ll be amazing. The very best butterflies in your tummy.’
I’ve been calling in to see Ella on a regular basis, often just for a chat.
The fact that she is both a doctor and a woman who has suffered the loss of a baby herself means she is the perfect sounding board for many of my irrational fears, niggling doubts, and ‘what if’ moments.
She has endless patience with me, and I always leave her company feeling so much calmer.
In other exciting developments, I have started holding a sunset yoga class on the beach, which is proving extremely popular.
It’s a gentle and meditative thing, with stretches, breathing, and sitting still with our thoughts.
That’s the hardest bit for many people, including me.
I do love it, though, and enjoy meeting the new people who turn up to join in – locals, men and women from the surrounding villages, tourists who are staying in Starshine.
It’s nice to feel useful, to feel like I’m contributing to life here even if it is in such a small way.
My dad has even come along to one of the sessions, though he did bring a deck chair. ‘If I sit on the sand,’ he told me, ‘I’d need a crane and a hoist to get me back up again.’
I think he’s enjoying having me around, and I am enjoying being with him. That sounds straightforward but it was by no means always that way, and I never took it for granted that we would both settle into our current state of gentle ease.
He has never pushed, never prodded, only very delicately raising the issue of living arrangements once the baby is born by asking what colour I’d like to paint the nursery.
‘I know, I know,’ he’d added, looking sheepish, ‘that sounds like I’m being presumptuous!
But I’m not, really – if you decide to move on, which is totally fine of course, then I like to hope that you will at least come and visit occasionally.
And when you do, I’d like my new grandchild to always feel at home here.
Would that be all right with you, sweetheart? ’
It made me a little sad that he was being so careful not to pressurise me, but also grateful. He is giving me space, letting me know that he will support whatever decision I make – and by giving me that freedom, he is showing me love.
I hugged him and gave him a kiss. ‘At the moment, Dad, I’m not planning on going anywhere. And in fact it’s me who should be asking you what you want, not the other way around. I don’t assume that I can just turn up out of the blue after donkeys’ years and expect you to look after me.’
‘Why ever not?’ he asked, frowning and looking genuinely confused. ‘I’m your dad, and that’s what dads do! How would you feel if it was your child?’
‘I don’t really know yet, but… Okay, I take your point.
I’d probably forgive it anything, and love it even if it grows up to be a bit of a pillock.
But thank you anyway. I want you to know that I appreciate it, Dad.
When I was younger, I was so rude! Rude and ungrateful and constantly resentful. I’m so sorry.’
He waved the comment away, making light of it.
‘You were much better once you’d left for university, Suzie, which your mother knew all along would be the case.
I never understood that, but I didn’t need to – your mum did, and I just loved you regardless.
In exactly the same way you will love your child, no matter what. ’
‘Is this that unconditional love malarkey I’ve heard about?’
‘Indeed it is,’ he said firmly. ‘And you can rely on it. You have a home here for as long as you want one. I adore having you here, and I’m a dab hand at baby-wrangling.’
I thanked him and left it at that. I don’t suppose it’s part of anybody’s life plan to move back in with a parent in their forties, but I am not exactly a life plan kind of person – plus I seem to be doing everything back to front.
Besides, I missed so many years with him that the thought of leaving again feels insane.
I also have practicalities to think of. I might be independent, but this is the real world, and I am a middle-aged woman about to have a kid.
I will need help and support and understanding, and I’d be crazy to turn down help with baby-wrangling.
There is a lot to think about, for sure.
My dad has asked a few questions about the baby’s father, and never once so much as raised an eyebrow at the unorthodox situation.
For a man who was born in the 1930s, he has a remarkably open mind.
Alex himself is in South Sudan for the foreseeable future, but we have been in contact.
I’ve sent him a picture of the scan photo, and he is cautiously excited about the prospect of being a father, albeit a long distance one for now.
His suggestion for a baby name is Jose, after the brand of tequila we were drinking the night we magically and accidentally created a whole new human life.
Naming your child after booze seems like a bad omen, though.
Neither Alex nor I have any illusions that this is a love match, and we are both too old and too experienced to think we need to try and make it more than it is.
So while there won’t be wedding bells or even sharing space on the same continent at the moment, it does at least feel like a solid collaboration.
I’ve always liked him, and we’ve both committed to navigating our way through this unexpected maze with honesty and integrity.
As accidental baby-daddies go, it could have been far worse.
He is a doctor, and a rather handsome devil too, so the genetics are good.
At least on the surface. I don’t really know much about his family, other than his dad being Spanish and his mother British.
I briefly considered asking him to send a DNA sample for the gene-mapping project Dan has been working on, but the logistics might be tricky – Dan has prowled around the village pouncing on everybody with his little sample sticks, but South Sudan seems a long way to go to collect evidence.
I do spend time wondering what our baby will look like. Will he or she have my red hair and blue eyes? Or his more Mediterranean appearance? I don’t really care, I decide. Though if it’s a girl, I do hope she doesn’t have his beard.
Thinking about beards reminds me of Guy, who has started to sport some rather fascinating golden stubble recently. It makes him look even more rugged and manly, and I occasionally find myself wondering what it would feel like against my skin if he kissed me.
This, of course, is a totally off-limits concept, and I always give myself a thorough telling off when I allow my dirty mind to drift off in that direction.
I am the one who made the choice for us to just be friends, and that really is enough for me.
In fact, it’s amazing – a blessing, a completely unexpected boon from the universe – finding this man here at exactly the time I needed him.
Yes, I also find him deeply attractive, but that’s just physical.
That’s just sex, which frankly I could get elsewhere.
Our relationship is something bigger than that, better than that, and I know I made the right choice.
We have been there for each other over the last few weeks, always ready with pep talks when needed, always on hand for blowing off steam, for walks along the beach and emergency drives along the coast.
We’ve both had our wobbles. Mine came when I was clearing out a cupboard at my dad’s and found a photo album from Sandy and Archie’s wedding.
I’d been there on a flying visit but spent the whole day waiting for the moment that I could escape.
Being there had been too raw, too painful, the wounds of losing my mum reopening and bleeding out.
Now, I wish I’d tried harder. It was the last time I saw my sister, and in some ways that was good – she was blissfully happy, which is not a bad way to remember somebody.
But I missed so much and will always feel the sting of that loss.
I sat on the sofa, staring at the pictures, silently crying.
The sadness threatened to swallow me whole, and I know from bitter experience that when that happens, it takes me a long time to find myself again.
I’d sent Guy an emergency SOS, and within half an hour we were away in the van, heading for an iron age hill fort so secluded that only sheep ever find it.
We walked, and talked, and sat for hours looking out at the landscape.
It was what I needed – a safety valve, a way of wiping the emotional slate clean so I could carry on with a sense of peace.
He had a low point when he got a phone call from an old friend, offering him a job in Tanzania.
Being offered the job wasn’t the issue – it was how Miranda reacted when he told her about it.
Apparently she’d barely reacted at all, simply shrugging and telling him he had to do whatever he felt was for the best.