Chapter 10 #2
‘Poor Sam, though,’ Mimi said, glancing over at him. He was sitting beside Jack, their heads bent over Jack’s school book. ‘He looked pretty gutted.’
‘Do you think so?’ Sive was horrified at the thought of causing Sam any heartache.
But it was for his own good. She was being cruel to be kind.
She couldn’t start dating him now when he didn’t know what he was getting into.
She didn’t even know herself, not for certain.
And if it turned out she was pregnant … then he probably wouldn’t want to be with her anyway.
He’d be relieved nothing had happened between them and he wouldn’t have the dilemma of either dumping her because she was having a baby or sticking by her out of some misguided sense of honour.
The next day her time was up and she couldn’t put it off any longer.
She bought a pregnancy test on the way to rehearsal, burying it in the bottom of her bag and trying to forget about it.
Three hours later, she stood in a toilet cubicle during a break in rehearsal staring at two pink lines in utter disbelief.
She’d thought of waiting until she got home to do the test, and now she wished she had.
There was no way this news was going to help her concentrate on rehearsal for the rest of the day.
Even though she’d thought she was prepared for this, it came as a shock and she realised she hadn’t been as sure of the result as she’d thought.
She couldn’t seem to move, staring dumbly at the test stick while her mind scrambled to make sense of what this would mean for her life, her career, for her and Sam …
for her and Ben. She slumped down onto the toilet seat.
How could she be having a baby? It was ridiculous. She was barely an adult herself.
Well, she couldn’t sit here spinning out for the rest of the day. She heaved herself up with a resigned sigh. She’d just have to put her worries aside and get on with rehearsal. She could freak out about this later when she got home.
She went back to the rehearsal room and tried to act as if nothing had changed. But she knew she was walking back into a whole new world, a tipsily altered reality. It was, in the words of Yeats, “all changed, changed utterly”.
Somehow, she got through the rest of the day on autopilot, and if she couldn’t fool herself, at least no one else seemed to notice anything amiss.
She spoke her lines and danced with the company, joined in carols, flirted with Ebenezer and threw herself into all the jollity of the Fezziwiggs party with gay abandon – or what she hoped looked like gay abandon.
For a few hours she was Belle Fezziwigg, young and in love, and definitely not pregnant.
Only when rehearsal was over did she allow her mind to drift back to those two fateful pink lines and what they meant.
‘Are you coming to the pub?’ Mimi asked her as everyone packed their bags and pulled on coats. ‘I’m just going for one.’
Sive shook her head. ‘I’m going to go home. I’m not feeling great, actually.’
Mimi eyed her with concern. ‘You do look a bit peaky.’
‘I’m just tired. I’m going to have an early night.’ She was desperate to get home and have some time alone to sort out her thoughts. Thankfully, Aoife was going out with Jonathan and staying over at his place, so she’d have the house to herself.
‘Well, let me know if you want to call off the attic clear-out. There’s no rush. We can do it any time.’
‘No, I’m sure I’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep.’
‘Okay. See you tomorrow, then.’ Mimi pulled her into a hug. ‘Sleep well.’
‘You’re not coming for a drink?’ She turned to find Sam behind her as Mimi headed for the door.
‘No, I have … something on tonight,’ she said. She knew that sounded like a brush-off, but she couldn’t think of an excuse quickly enough.
Sam looked disappointed, but he just nodded acceptance. ‘See you Sunday, then?’
‘Yeah, see you Sunday,’ Sive said distractedly as she packed her bag and gathered up her coat. Ice skating – could she even do that now? Would it be safe? What if she fell? She had a little laugh at herself for even thinking about it – ice skating was the least of her worries right now.
She pulled her coat tighter as she left the theatre.
It was an old, elaborately embroidered Afghan of Detta’s and she took comfort in hugging it to herself, almost as if she had her great-aunt’s arms wrapped around her.
Her mind was racing as she made her way home, scanning over everything she’d eaten or drunk in the last few days.
There had been that glass of champagne at the party last week.
Thank goodness she’d only had one because she was getting up early for the strike the next day.
But maybe even one was too much. And there had been soft cheese in some of those canapes.
That was another no-no, she knew. Could she have harmed the baby already?
It was a dank, chilly evening and the house felt bleakly empty when she got home.
She lit the fire to dispel the gloom and made herself a comforting supper of pasta with pesto, which she ate on the sofa in front of the fire.
While part of her longed to have her sisters here to share the burden of her news, another part of her was glad she had the house to herself.
She’d tell Aoife and Mimi tomorrow when they were all together.
Right now she had a lot to think about and she wanted to get it straight in her head first.
Having a baby was a big deal. It was a huge responsibility and she knew her life would never be the same again.
But though it was a big decision, it wasn’t a difficult one.
Sive was a firm advocate of a woman’s right to choose, but personally she believed in going with the flow and taking life as it comes.
And if that meant she was having a baby, so be it.
She’d always seen herself having children at some point.
She wanted to be a mother, to have a family of her own, and who was to say she’d be able to get pregnant at a time of her choosing?
Of course, the circumstances were far from ideal.
It would be better if she and Ben were still together, if she had more money, if she was a little older, if her career were more established.
But when had life ever been ideal? You didn’t need everything to be perfect in order to be happy.
Ideally, she wouldn’t have been orphaned at thirteen years of age.
But it had brought their little family unit closer, strengthening her and her sisters’ bonds with each other and with their Great-aunt Detta.
They had each other, and life was good, despite losing their parents so young and not having much money.
She could give her child a safe, comfortable home and a loving family.
It would have all the things that mattered.
While she desperately wanted to tell her sisters, she was also nervous about their reaction.
Aoife would probably blame herself for inadequate parenting.
Mimi would blame Ben. She laughed to herself at the thought.
If they were all still living in the house together, Mimi was the first person she’d tell.
They were in the habit of running any misdemeanours or transgressions by each other before sharing them with Aoife.
It wasn’t that they didn’t trust their older sister, but she’d done her best to be a mother to them when they were growing up, and they hated to let her down or disappoint her in any way.
As for Ben … how on earth was she going to break it to him?
Just getting in touch with him was going to be awkward.
Their break-up hadn’t been acrimonious, but it wasn’t as if they were still friends either.
They hadn’t been in contact since he’d moved to Lisbon – not since the night he’d told her it was over, in fact.
It was weird, someone who she’d been so close to since her schooldays simply not being in her life anymore.
They used to talk to each other every day, even if it was just by text.
She picked up her phone and pulled up their WhatsApp, thumbing through the long strings of messages going back years.
She’d rarely deleted anything, so it was all there, their whole history in little snapshots – inane late-night conversations when they were only across the road from each other, arrangements for birthdays and nights out and weekends away, selfies and photos they’d shared in their chat.
There were longer newsy messages from Ben while he was travelling, telling her about his adventures in India, China, Nepal and Vietnam, and the people he’d met along the way.
She smiled to herself as she read back his increasingly exasperated texts about a pair of cranky old English ladies who’d joined his trekking group in Nepal and had been the bane of his life – ‘obsessed with biscuits and weeing’ and constantly complaining about everything.
He’d been guiltily relieved when one of them was struck down by altitude sickness and they’d both abandoned the trip early.
Sucked into the rabbit hole of nostalgia, Sive opened Instagram and pulled up Ben’s profile, thumbing back through his grid.
Their history was all there too – nights out, graduation ceremonies, music festivals, weekend breaks, opening nights, New Year’s parties .
.. and then his feed switched to photos from his travels – endless expanses of lush green paddy fields and snow-capped mountains; Ben sitting around a campfire with a group of travellers, his face warmed by the glow of the flames; relaxing outside a teahouse in Nepal, his arms folded, face raised to the sun, long legs stretched out in front of him; a close-up of him slurping noodles at a market stall, his eyes shining into the camera. Sive wondered who had taken that.
There was a photo with the group he’d led on the Annapurna Circuit, Ben at the centre, looking rugged and handsome in his outdoorsy clothes and sturdy, well-worn walking boots.
Sive peered at it, searching the faces and wondering if Anna Purna herself was there among them.
But she’d been a mountain guide herself, so probably not.
It was odd that Sive didn’t even know what she looked like – the woman who was living with the father of her child, the man she’d thought she’d grow old with.
Overcome by a wave of melancholy, she wiped tears from her eyes.
She’d always thought she and Ben would have children together some day.
But she’d never imagined it happening like this, with him living in another part of the world, with another woman.
It was only a little over a month since they’d broken up, but she felt so remote from him already.
She opened their WhatsApp chat again, her fingers hovering over the keyboard.
Ben should be the first to know – apart from her sisters, of course, but that went without saying.
No one would expect her to keep it from them.
She had to tell him as soon as possible.
But how did you even start a conversation like that?
It wasn’t the sort of thing you could put in a text message.
Even a phone call didn’t seem right. Besides, she’d like to be looking him in the eye when she said it, so she could see how he really felt about it.
She’d have to find out when he’d next be in Dublin.
She could text and ask him, but then he’d want to know what it was about, and she didn’t want to get into it on the phone.
He’d probably come home for Christmas, but that was too far off.
Maybe if she stalked his friends on social media she’d find some clues.
Or she could arrange to bump into his mother on the street and ask her?
She sighed wearily. She’d think about that tomorrow. Right now she was ready for an early night and a few hours of escape from her racing thoughts.