26. Chapter 26
C rispin
Crispin had always been overzealous about contraception.
After their first time together-tender and clumsy, trembling with all the emotion neither of them had yet dared to name-he'd pulled away slightly in the days that followed. It was like he was taking a few steps back from a fire that might scorch him if he got too close.
"We should both run a full panel," he'd said, eyes steady, tone matter-of-factly. "Just to be sure."
She'd nodded. It was the sensible thing to do.
He'd gone to some expensive private clinic in Marylebone.
She'd visited her GP, taken the appointment between shifts, waiting in a sterile-smelling waiting room with chipped posters about safe sex and overdue vaccinations.
An elderly couple sat across from her-the man with a long white beard and the woman in a neat headscarf, her hands folded over a handbag.
They didn't speak, but their eyes moved quietly around the room.
Aria kept her gaze down, thumbing the hem of her sleeve.
She couldn't stop wondering if they had guessed. Were they judging her?
By the time her name was called, her palms were damp .
Mentioning what she wanted felt awkward. Her mouth went dry. She tried to say it clinically, like it was just another formality, but she could feel her face heating as the words left her. The nurse didn't blink. Just nodded, typed something, and asked if she'd had unprotected sex recently.
Aria shook her head. When the nurse had asked if she wanted a prescription for the pill, she'd said yes. The nurse had nodded, printed off the script, and handed it over with a half-smile. "It can take a couple of weeks to be fully effective," she said. "Use condoms until then, just to be safe."
Aria had nodded.
She'd picked up the packet on her way to work, squeezed the foil into the back of her bag, and swallowed the first pill before bed that night, just like she was supposed to.
She lasted two weeks on it.
The nausea was unbearable. Her breasts ached. Her moods swung like loose wiring. She couldn't sleep, couldn't function. There had been no sex during that period.
So, it had been condoms. Crispin grumbled, of course-half-joking, half not-but he'd gone along.
Still, the condom broke that one time.
And Crispin had lost his ever-loving mind .
He'd stood in her tiny bathroom, pacing in nothing but his trousers, hair wild, muttering about pharmacies and emergency contraception, and how "This cannot happen, not now."
Something about the panic in his voice had shaken her. Not the practicality, because he had a right to be cautious, but the sheer terror of it.
She'd placated him, of course. Told him she'd go to the clinic, though they both knew she wasn't ovulating. He knew her cycle better than she did. Still, that moment stayed with her.
It made her feel small.
It made her feel...contingent.
After that, she was even more careful. Hyper-vigilant.
Because she understood something then that she hadn't let herself think before.
She could barely support herself. She was holding her life together with late night cleaning shifts and vacuumed staircases and a hundred small humiliations.
She didn't have a future, and especially not one that included accidents.
And she knew, deep down in the place she refused to explore back then, that if she did fall pregnant, she couldn't rely on him .
But three weeks ago, the nausea had sucked her appetite away. A sick, hollow feeling that curled around her like a curse unfolding. There was a metallic taste in her mouth that wouldn't go away. Coffee made her gag, and everything smelled too strong. Her clothes hung on her rapidly thinning frame.
She thought it might be cancer.
So, she went to her GP again.
She explained the weight loss, the fatigue, and asked for blood tests. They did those, yes, but first, they had her pee in a cup.
She'd waited, tapping her foot against the cracked linoleum floor. Then the nurse returned, holding the stick with a smile too knowing to be innocent.
"Congratulations," she'd said.
And just like that, it wasn't cancer. It was life.
The first emotion had been terror.
The second, clarity.
The plastic stick came home with her, tucked discreetly in a pharmacy box. She hadn't thrown it away-she couldn't.
It lived in her bag now, inside a zip pocket, cradled in a small plastic container like something sacred and quietly burning .
And in that moment, standing outside the GP's, blinking against the sun, her coat wrapped too tightly around her body, she'd known. Her hand drifted to her belly, still flat and unremarkable.
There was nothing to feel.
The baby, if she could even call it that, still didn't feel real. It felt like an idea, a rumour. A change whispered in her blood, too small to grasp.
It didn't feel like he existed yet.
But she would keep him.
No matter what.
She was thirty-five. Back home, her child would have been all grown up if her life had stayed on course.
Crispin could take himself off. She didn't need him if he didn't want to be involved.
She had raised Lule with nothing but a threadbare jacket and an unreliable promise from Universal credit. She'd changed nappies in the dark, chased buses while carrying a child on her back, worked three jobs while fending off landlords and hopelessness.
She would raise this child, too .
She would love him.
He would not grow up invisible, never feeling unwanted. He would never wish for a place at someone else's table.
And she would never, ever, let him feel like someone's secret.