Chapter 12
ORLA
The bench in the front garden was one of Orla’s favourite spots, especially on a warm day in July, when she could smell the roses and the lavender that grew all along the half-height fence that separated her house from Aidan’s place next door.
It was ten minutes before two, and she’d come outside to feel the sun on her face while she waited for Kyle to nip back from work to collect her.
Today was their first antenatal appointment at the maternity unit of Glasgow Central.
Since the day she had started at the hospital, she’d thought about arriving at that familiar front door, and turning right to the maternity wing instead of left to the lifts that took her to work on the Elderly Ward.
Today, for the first time, she’d be making that turn, and just visualising it was making the butterflies in her stomach flutter up a storm.
She closed her eyes and rewound back through the last seven and a half weeks since her life had irrevocably changed on the first day of June.
It was crazy to think that they were at the end of July already and she, by her calculation, was around twelve weeks pregnant.
Maybe thirteen. Or fourteen. Hopefully the scan today would help narrow that down, and yes, after being so rigorous with tracking and monitoring her body for the last few years, it was slightly embarrassing that she wasn’t more accurate on that.
Her hand automatically went to the very slight swell of her stomach as she replayed that moment in the staffroom when she’d found out.
After the initial shocked silence, there had been screams, hugs and definitely some dancing until Yvie yelped that she’d tweaked a muscle in her calf and had sat down for a cup of tea and a celebration biscuit instead.
Emmy and Keli had been equally thrilled for her.
‘Look, you go home and take this all in,’ Emmy told her. ‘Call your mum and work out how you’re going to make this the best day of Kyle’s life by telling him the good news. I’ll stay and do your shift. Cormac is working tonight anyway, so I didn’t have any plans.’
Orla had nodded and tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come.
‘Oh bugger, you’re crying again,’ Keli had chirped, hugging her. ‘Just nod if that’s a yes.’
Orla had laughed through the tears that were indeed streaming and managed to speak. ‘Emmy, are you sure? I would be eternally grateful. My head is so scrambled and I’m so fricking happy that for the first time ever I don’t know that I could concentrate on the job.’
‘I’m sure. Go on. And we want to hear every detail about Kyle’s reaction. Argh, I wish we were there. I’d love to see his face.’ That’s when Orla had noticed that Emmy had a tear in her eye too. This was the best day ever. Best. Day. Ever.
Even now, she still wasn’t sure how she’d managed to drive home without crashing that day.
That whole part was a blur, right up until she’d called her mum on FaceTime and watched as Nula’s face had broken into the widest smile and her throaty laugh had soared towards her from the depths of somewhere in Eastern Europe.
‘Oh my darling, I couldn’t be happier for you. Was Kyle thrilled?’
‘I haven’t told him yet. I just found out at work. The girls were with me, and Mam, they were so happy for me. I can’t believe this is happening. It feels like some kind of surreal dream.’
‘It is a dream, darling. A wonderful one. I can’t wait to see you. My trip home has been pushed back a week, to the beginning of August, but how about I come straight there and spend some time with you? I’d like to see my grandchild as it grows. And I want daily pictures until then too.’
‘I’ll send them over, Mam, and thank you. I can’t tell you how much I love you and how lucky this little person will be to have you as a grandmother. It’ll be the best excuse ever for you to stay home a bit more…’
‘And I will, I promise. You won’t be able to get rid of me. I love—’
Orla hadn’t got the rest of the sentence, because, of course, the signal had dropped out right at that moment. Even that couldn’t dampen her happiness though.
She was snapped out of her memories and back to the present by giggling coming from the open windows of Aidan’s house and it was all she could do not to roll her eyes.
The guy was such a player. He was always pleasant enough, but the trail of women going in and out of his house was truly exhausting.
There were at least four that Orla recognised on sight now and he seemed to have them on rotation, although, slightly worryingly, sometimes two came at once, often late at night, and from the music and the laughter that usually followed, they definitely liked to party.
Everyone to their own. Orla was just jealous because she didn’t have the energy for anything like that anymore.
Between round-the-clock nausea, constant tiredness, restless sleep caused by the warm nights, and Kyle’s work schedule, sex had been off the menu since…
since… She tried to think. Had they had sex since they’d found out she was pregnant?
Maybe he was still in shock. Telling him had been one of the most incredible moments of her life.
She’d watched a million TikTok and Instagram reels, where women came up with all sorts of cute ways to tell their partners the news.
Her personal favourite was a woman who put a You’re Going To Be A Daddy tag on a cockerpoo’s collar.
That one racked up a million views, but since she didn’t have a TikTok following, or a dog, in the end Orla had just put the test on the kitchen table before he came home from work.
‘Hey, gorgeous,’ he’d greeted her, as always, with a kiss, and if she held on to him for a little longer than usual, he didn’t notice. ‘I’m just going to grab a shower and I’ll be back down.’
Again, all completely normal. She’d thought about directing his attention to the table, but held the secret.
Better to wait until he had washed the day off.
She was standing in front of the sink, washing a glass for the tenth time, when he returned, in shorts and a T-shirt, his brown wavy hair still wet and pushed back from his face.
‘What’s for dinner, babe? I thought you’d still be at work, so I was just going to rustle up a Caesar salad and a steak.’
‘I’ve already done it,’ she’d said. ‘The steaks are out on the barbeque, the salad is in the fridge, and I made some garlic bread too. And here…’ She’d handed him a bottle of beer that she’d had waiting for him, and he’d responded with the same easy, gorgeous smile that had made her fall for him on the first night they’d met.
‘What did I do to deserve all this?’ he’d asked, kissing her again, his thumb tracing her cheek as she inhaled the scent of his shower gel.
Oh, that felt good. This felt like… Like it did before sex became something else.
If there wasn’t something so much more important on tonight’s menu, she would forget the steaks and go with some passion instead. But…
‘Kyle, wait.’ As she’d pulled back, she’d seen him flinch, so she’d quickly offered an explanation. ‘Can we sit down a minute, babe? I just want to talk to you about something that happened today.’
Taking his hand, she’d led him to the table, then took a step to the side and watched as his gaze fell on the test, the box, the word in capital letters. PREGNANT.
He’d turned back to her, his gorgeous face now confused, quizzical. ‘You’re pregnant?’
‘I’m pregnant,’ she’d whispered, cheeks aching from the width of her smile.
That’s when he’d picked her up, swung her around, and then quickly put her down, with, ‘Shit, sorry. Shouldn’t have done that.’ His hand went to her stomach. ‘Are you okay? Is he okay? Or she?’
His concern had made her heart melt. ‘We’re fine. And we’re… happy. I don’t think I’ve ever been so completely, over-the-moon, crazy happy. We did it, babe.’
His arms had gone back around her. ‘We did it.’ He’d kissed her again, and they’d ended up eating burnt steak a little bit later, both of them so deep in their own gloriously happy bubble that at times it had felt like they were lost for words.
‘I love you,’ he’d whispered in bed later, as he’d spooned her, his arm over her, his hand resting on her stomach. ‘I love both of you.’
‘And we love you back.’
She’d gone to sleep with a smile on her face that night and that moment was etched in her favourite memories, one that she would replay time and time again, just as she was doing now, sitting in the sunshine outside her house.
The sound of a door opening just a few feet away disturbed her thoughts again, and she checked her watch. Three o’clock. Kyle should have been here ten minutes ago, and if they were going to make it in time for the appointment, they’d need to leave here in the next couple of minutes.
‘Your garden is gorgeous.’ A female voice.
Orla squinted against the sun and saw that two young women had come out of Aidan’s front door. She recognised them as regular visitors. Must have had a long lie-in after their overnight stay last night. She’d heard his door closing at about 2 a.m., so she assumed that was when they’d arrived.
‘Thank you. This is my favourite spot.’ Now that she could see the women’s faces properly, she registered that they were probably in their mid-twenties, maybe even the same age as her, twenty-eight, but without ten years of shift work and with a more expensive beauty regime.
Orla’s skincare regime consisted of baby wipes and whatever moisturiser was on sale at Boots.
‘I’m Kimi. This is Leanne.’ Nice that they were introducing themselves. Clearly, they thought that this wouldn’t be a one-off conversation.
‘Orla. And that… That is my lift drawing up there,’ she said with a relieved smile, as she spotted her husband pulling in, ‘so I’d better get going.’
Kyle’s van had stopped in the driveway and he jumped out, not even registering the strangers on the adjoining path.
‘Sorry, I got held up on a site. Just need to jump in and grab a different T-shirt and—’
‘Kyle?’
It took Orla a second to register that the word had been spoken by the woman who’d introduced herself as Kimi, mainly because she was so stunned by Kyle’s reaction.
He froze. Actually stopped. Then came the slow motion of his head as he turned towards Kimi, an expression on his face that Orla could only describe as horror.
‘You know each other?’ Even as she said it, Orla realised that the answer was plainly obvious, but despite his reaction, Orla wasn’t in any way concerned. Maybe an old friend. Or an ex-employee.
‘Yes, of course we know each other.’ That came from Kimi again, and Orla wondered if she was imagining a hint of a challenge in there. Definitely an ex-employee. And maybe one who left on bad terms.
Orla could have left it there. Could have got up, gone to the van, climbed in and waited while he changed.
She was anxious to get going. If finding out that she was pregnant was the best day of her life, then today, the antenatal appointment, the scan and hearing her baby’s heartbeat was going to be the second.
But there was something about the way that Kyle’s face had flushed, or maybe it was because he was well and truly in rabbit/headlight territory, that made Orla take a breath, to ask the obvious question.
But before she got to it, Kimi gave her more information than she could possibly have ever needed.
‘He’s our workmate’s boyfriend,’ she said, breezily. ‘Is Demi here with you, Kyle?’
Now it was Orla who was stunned into some kind of frozen state on the outside, while fireworks, world-shattering explosions and horrific screams went off inside her head.
This had to be a mistake. Had to be. But…
Underneath all the noise, she already knew that it wasn’t.
She had a soul-crushing feeling that this was another one of those wild coincidences, like the twists of fate that had led to many of the wonderful things in her life.
Only this time, the sliding doors moment wasn’t taking her anywhere good.
That’s why she had what felt like an out-of-body experience, where both her brain and her heart were melting down, but somehow her voice was calm and even.
‘Kyle, do you want to tell me about Demi?’