Chapter 11
MADDIE
Maddie walked out of the staffroom and headed towards the basins on the side wall of the salon.
Jessie was already waiting there to have her hair washed and then styled for the monthly ceilidh in the church hall.
As always on a Friday, the salon had been a steady stream of Jessie’s pals all day.
Moira Chiles, Val, Nancy from Next Door, then there was Jessie’s cousin, Cathy, and her other friend, Netta, too.
Maddie usually loved every minute of the banter and the chat, most of all because her mum had been a lifetime member of that group and they inevitably let a story slip that she hadn’t heard before, but not today.
Today, just like yesterday, and the day before, and several days before that, she’d had to make numerous dashes to the loo to throw up.
‘I just don’t get it. You lot recovered from that bug we all had and mine keeps coming back. I think my immune system is shot. Either that, or the virus has just left me with a stomach that seems to be sensitive to everything these days.’
‘Make an appointment with the GP on Monday, my love,’ Jessie suggested, but Maddie shook her head.
‘I can’t. We’re flying to London on Monday morning, remember? I’m beyond excited.’
‘Aye, I was speaking to our Grant last night and he’s looking forward to seeing you both.
It’s a shame Georgie isn’t there too, but they’re in Bermuda now.
Or it might be Barbados.’ After they’d booked their flights, they’d discovered that Georgie, her husband, Lachlan, and baby, Billie, were going to be on holiday on the same dates, but Alyssa’s half-sister had told them they were still very welcome.
‘It’s so lovely of her to let us stay in her house while she’s away, though. A flash pad and three whole days of drinking, dancing, and hanging out with Grant in places that are far too trendy for me and Alyssa.’
Just as Maddie said that, Alyssa popped her head round the wall that divided the salon from the café. ‘Did I hear my name being mentioned there?’
Over at the basins, Maddie switched on the water and Jessie leant back, ready to be shampooed with her favourite coconut-scented products.
‘Makes me feel like I’m in a tropical paradise instead of Weirbridge on a wet day,’ she would say every time anyone asked why she smelled like she’d been dipped in Malibu.
‘I was just saying that I can’t wait for Monday.
I did a trolley dash of panic around Zara yesterday, but I didn’t have time to try anything on, so I’ve now got seventeen outfits for three days and I’ll still have nothing to wear because nothing will fit me.
I can never get my size right in there. And it’s been so long since I had the dosh to go shopping for clothes, I don’t know what looks cool anymore. ’
She wasn’t lying about that. When she’d been living in Edinburgh and earning great money at the trendy city-centre salon, she’d thought nothing about spending it in flash bars and shopping trips to the St James Centre.
But after six months of not working while she looked after her mum, and then renting a chair in a small village salon for the last few months, her bank balance hadn’t had a chance to creep out of the overdraft.
There had been no big inheritance when her mum died, and of course, Maddie hadn’t expected it.
Her mum had worked in a bakery all her life, barely earning minimum wage, and most of her earnings went on her house rent and council tax.
Whatever was left over, she’d spent on the occasional night out or put by for her annual holiday to Alicante with her pals.
There had been no life insurance either, with her mum choosing between paying the premiums and putting food on the table when Maddie was a kid.
The one thing she’d had was a ‘death’ policy, that paid out 80 per cent of the cost of her funeral expenses.
Making up the shortfall had left Maddie absolutely broke.
However, that had changed over the last few weeks because Val refused to accept any rent for lodging with her.
‘I don’t need the money, pet, so just you keep it to yourself and get back on your feet. ’
Maddie could cry every time she thought about it.
And she probably had, when she was trying to squeeze herself into her usual size twelve jeans in H&M last week.
As soon as she got back from London, she was going on a healthy eating regime.
Working in such close proximity to Alyssa’s cakes had been terrible for her waistline.
‘You’ll look great whatever you wear. Anyway, if we’re stuck for the right outfit, that just gives us another excuse to go shopping. Ah, I can’t wait.’
Alyssa worked twelve-hour days in her café six days a week, and much as she loved it, she was long overdue the break.
The bell above the door dinged, making Alyssa glance back. ‘Oh, better go, there’s the church choir in again and if I don’t serve them quickly enough, they start singing hymns.’
Off she went, leaving Maddie to concentrate on giving Jessie a relaxing head massage as part of her hair wash.
‘You’re so good at that I could sleep for a week,’ Jessie said, making Maddie smile. It was supposed to be an excuse to switch off and completely zone out, but, of course, Jessie was physically incapable of going five minutes without a conversation.
‘Listen, while it’s just us, Maddie, I wanted to talk to you about London.’
Maddie felt a tiny tug of trepidation at the thought of the conversation she had an inkling that they were about to have.
‘I just want to say that if you decide that working in Grant’s salon down there is something you fancy, then you should definitely go for it.
I’ve lived in this village my whole life and I love it dearly, and if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t change a thing, but you’re young and there’s a big world out there. Och, get me sounding like a Fred Talk.’
‘I think it’s a Ted Talk, Jessie,’ Maddie corrected her, laughing.
‘Aye, you could be right, but I mean what I say, lass. Don’t stay here because it’s the comfortable or easy option. Although, if you do, I’ll be delighted to have you here forever.’
‘Thanks, Jessie.’ A little bit of weight slid off her shoulders. She hated letting anyone down and the thought of leaving everyone here definitely made her gut tighten. Talking of which… ‘Jessie, I’m so sorry, but I’ll be right back.’
She flew back into the staffroom and made it to the loo just in time to throw up. This was getting ridiculous. At the sink outside, she grabbed her toothbrush and squeezed on some toothpaste for the second or third time today, then began to brush.
‘Are you okay?’ Maddie hadn’t even heard Alyssa come in behind her, but she couldn’t answer right now because there was an electric toothbrush in her mouth, so she just nodded.
‘I’ll go get you some water. I’ll be right back.
’ Before she could take a step, they both heard a loud and unmistakable sound coming from the other side of the staffroom door.
Alyssa slapped her hand to her forehead.
‘Oh Jesus, the church choir is singing “Ave Maria” again. I bet Jessie is totally encouraging them.’
Alyssa dived out, and came back two minutes later with a bottle of water.
‘I was right. She’s out there with wet hair and a towel round her shoulders, conducting them with a French loaf stick. I really worry about the world we live in.’
Maddie couldn’t even laugh, because she was still concentrating on her physical wellbeing. ‘I’ll be right back out. I just need a minute to make sure it isn’t about to happen again.’
Alyssa shook her head. ‘Take your time, hon. There’s no hurry. I once spent a whole day like this in here with Georgie, but that was slightly different because she was pregnant at the time. She had morning sickness that lasted round the clock some days.’
Maddie groaned. ‘That must have been a nightm—’ Her word got stuck in her throat somewhere between a shocking realisation turning her sympathy to panic.
Alyssa picked up on it straight away and joined the dots.
‘What? Wait. You couldn’t be pregnant, could you? Oh damn, Maddie, what did you do on that couch?’
Maddie groaned again, but this time it was a low, loud wail of horror that ended with her resting her forehead on the mirror.
She stayed there for a couple of seconds before rewinding.
‘No, I can’t be. I’m on the pill. Have been for years.
I even stayed on it after I came here, and my love life became non-existent.
That’s optimism for you right there. So no, I can’t be pregnant. Definitely not.’
Alyssa was nodding and Maddie took comfort that she was agreeing with her. Until she wasn’t.
‘But you and Dylan… When was it? Right before he left?’
‘The day before. Remember Jessie sent me home because I was sick and…’
‘So it was right after we all had that bug. After you’d been throwing up for over a week.’
‘Yeah, that’s right and I came back to work too soon and… Oh.’
Maddie’s words drifted off as she realised where Alyssa was going with this.
She’d been sick. And much as Maddie didn’t pretend to know all the ins and outs of contraception, she had a sudden flashback to a conversation with her doctor from several years ago, when she was prescribed the pill for the first time.
‘Just remember, if you’re sick for any reason, it lowers the pill’s effectiveness. ’
It. Lowers. The. Pill’s. Effectiveness.
No. Surely she couldn’t be that unlucky. Could she?
Outside the room, more singing began. ‘Give Me Joy In My Heart’ this time.
Maddie could do with some of that herself right now.
‘You need a test,’ Alyssa said, stating the obvious.
Maddie threw her hands up. ‘I know, but Jessie is out there in the middle of Songs of Praise, waiting for her blow-dry,’ she wailed.
She could have hugged Alyssa when her friend took charge of the situation.
‘Leave it to me. I don’t quite know what I’m going to do yet, but I’ll think of something. You stay here.’
For the next five minutes, Maddie sat on the staffroom floor, calculating, recalculating, calculating again and trying to work out when she’d had her last period.
How did she not know? Why couldn’t she remember?
Her cycle had gone completely haywire last year with all the stress over her mum, so she hadn’t even given it a thought. How could she be so damn careless?
As the minutes ticked by, she decided that she couldn’t sit there any longer. She had to get up and…
Before she’d finished that thought, the staffroom door opened and in stormed Jessie clutching a Clear Blue box, her hair still wet and the towel still round her neck, Alyssa behind her.
‘I nipped next door to the chemist for this. The rumours that will now be flying round this village don’t bear thinking about,’ Jessie blurted.
Maddie eyed Alyssa. ‘So your “I’ll take care of this” was really “I’ll tell Jessie”?’
Alyssa nodded with just a little shame. ‘Sorry. I had to. The choir was gearing up for “All Things Bright and Beautiful” and I couldn’t take it.’
Maddie decided she had a point.
‘Okay, pet, here you go. Let’s get this over with. I’m sure it’ll be fine and you’ll laugh about this a week from now. Hopefully you’ll have finished my hair by then too, because the dash to the chemist has air dried it.’
Maddie knew Jessie was just doing her usual thing of using humour to lower the stress in a situation, and she appreciated it.
She pushed herself up from the floor, and went into the staff loo, then into the cubicle and peed on the stick. The whole time she was sending up a silent plea to her mum.
I’m sorry to ask, Mum, but if you’ve got any sway up there yet, can you please make sure this is negative.
And yes, I agree it was a daft thing to do, and I should have known better.
And yep, I’ve learned my lesson, I promise.
If you could just take care of this, I’ll never have sex again, I swear.
Okay, that was a lie, but please don’t hold it against me.
When she was done, she realised that she couldn’t time the result because she hadn’t brought her phone with her and she wasn’t wearing a watch. Nothing about this felt like a group activity, but she unlocked the door and went outside anyway.
She was holding the stick in front of her as she sat down on the staffroom sofa next to Jessie, while Alyssa stood guard next to the door.
‘I need to time it. The instructions say one minute.’
Alyssa’s gaze went from Maddie, to the stick, back to Maddie again.
‘Maddie, I hate to say it, but I don’t think you need to wait any longer.’
At that, all three of them took their gazes to the window on the white stick.
‘I can’t see a thing without my glasses,’ Jessie muttered.
‘You don’t have to, Jessie…’ Maddie said, her voice barely above a whisper. Clearly her mum hadn’t been listening to a word she’d said back there in the loo. ‘…Because I’m pregnant.’
And that’s when, outside, the choir channelled some cosmic irony and burst into ‘Oh Happy Day’.