Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
Considering that she was a biology student, it had taken Ellen a surprisingly long time to realise that she was pregnant.
Stress, erratic eating and late-night study had sent her cycle all over the place, so she was barely aware that her period was late.
Even the nausea didn’t raise any concerns to begin with.
It was her final year, she was studying every moment she could and she put it down to exhaustion and living off of freeze-dried noodles.
In fact, it wasn’t until she was actually sick one morning, that she began to put two and two together until the possibility of a baby actually made three.
She was terrified about telling Robert. As a chemist, he’d already been offered a really great opportunity with a pharmaceutical company.
Bored of the actual science, he was going into the business side of things and they were willing to fund an MBA while he was working for them.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that his father played golf with the CEO.
Ellen didn’t have a job lined up. She’d thrown all of her energy into studying and was trying to juggle that with applying for jobs. There was a careers fair coming up and she’d had all her hopes pinned on impressing someone there.
Not that she’d be impressing anyone with a green face and a faint aroma of vomit.
Lucy had been the one she’d told. The one who’d bought the pregnancy test on her behalf and had held her hand as they’d waited for the result. When that thin blue line appeared, she’d wept.
Lucy had told her that she didn’t need to have a baby – ‘This isn’t 1950, Ellen. You get to choose’ – but Ellen hadn’t known what she wanted. She’d known, though, that she had to tell Robert.
For him, it would’ve been a regular evening.
He’d met her from the library, planning to catch the bus back together to where he was still living off campus.
All the way back, with every jolt and hiss of the full bus, she felt the tension increasing.
At the stop before theirs, a heavily pregnant lady got on and Robert stood to give her his seat.
Wedged next to her, it was impossible not to consider whether this would be her future. Would Robert be as gentlemanly then?
As soon as they got off, Robert took her hand again. ‘Straight to mine or do you fancy a pint at the pub on the corner?’
There would be other people at his house and she was still unable to tolerate the smell of beer. ‘Actually, can we go for a walk in the park?’
He’d looked surprised but shrugged. ‘Okay.’
There was no easy way to say the words that might change his life forever. No way to soften their impact. ‘I’m pregnant.’
He stopped dead still and paled in front of her eyes. ‘Pregnant?’
She nodded, then pointed at a bench a few steps away. ‘Shall we sit down?’
He dropped heavily onto the seat of the bench and she perched beside him, waited for him to speak first. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’
She nodded. ‘I’ve done two tests.’
Lucy had waited in her room for her while she took both tests at once into the bathroom and did what she needed to do. Then they’d sat and watched them until the traitorous second line appeared.
A little colour came back into Robert’s cheeks. He reached out and placed his hands over hers, which had been nervously shredding a tissue. ‘How are you feeling about it? What do you want to do?’
That was the million-dollar question. ‘I don’t know. I keep going back and forth. Lucy thinks…’
She trailed off at the expression on his face. ‘This is probably a situation where we can live without Lucy’s opinion. What do you want to do? I’ll support whatever you want.’
He still wasn’t giving an opinion. ‘Really? I mean, if I have a baby, what’s that going to look like? For us?’
She’d tossed and turned all night thinking about it, careening from idealised set-ups with the two of them pushing a pram to nightmares of her alone with a screaming baby.
His eyes shone with an honesty that she desperately wanted to trust. ‘We would be together. We’d make it work.’
But she wasn’t sure that he’d actually thought this through. ‘We’re barely twenty, Robert. We were children ourselves not long ago.’
He shifted in his seat to face her. ‘I know. But I also know that I love you and – for me at least – this was always on the cards at some point.’
She was amazed. ‘You’d thought about that?’
He laughed. That deep rich laugh she loved so much. ‘Of course. I’ve considered how I would propose to you, where we might live, how many kids we’d have. Haven’t you?’
She smiled for the first time since she’d taken that test. ‘Yes. I have, too. I’ve even imagined what kind of wedding we might have.’
His smile broadened. ‘Yeah, that part I’m happy to leave to you. Unless you want to run away and get married on a beach somewhere. Then I’ll have very positive thoughts.’
Though they’d talked about their ideal lives during lazy weekend mornings in bed, they’d never talked so openly about their joint future before. It was exciting. ‘What about all our other plans. Careers? Travel?’
‘We can still have careers. I already have a job lined up so money will be okay. With regards to travel, I covered a lot of countries during my gap year, so that one would be more of a sacrifice for you than me. Although we could also just strap the baby to our backs and take it with us.’
The baby. She hadn’t dared to think about the actual baby that was growing inside of her. ‘Do you really think we can do this? What about our parents?’
Her own mum and dad had sacrificed so much for her to be able to come to university. They’d been so proud of her. Would this ruin all their hopes and dreams?
But Robert had an answer for that, too. ‘They’re all going to be shocked, possibly disappointed.
But then they will be grandparents and they’ll love it.
Just like we will. And we can show them that it won’t change anything.
It’s just a bit quicker than we might have planned.
We’ll show everyone it can be done.’ He nudged her. ‘Even Lucy.’
Tears filled her eyes as she looked up into his. ‘So, we’re doing this? We’re having a baby.’
He leaned in and punctuated every word with a kiss. ‘We. Are. Having. A. Baby.’
She giggled beneath his lips. They were having a baby.