CHAPTER THREE
ISABELLA
I buy six pregnancy tests.
The pharmacist looks at the boxes stacked on the counter and then at me. He does not ask anything, but the curiosity on his face is obvious enough that I feel compelled to explain myself.
“Precaution.”
He simply nods. “Of course.”
My face burns as I pay, shove the boxes into an opaque bag, and leave the pharmacy. The cold afternoon air should cool my cheeks, but it does nothing.
I spent the entire lunch pretending everything was fine.
Alexander returned from Edmund’s house only a few minutes after our call and found the dessert I had bought on the way back from meeting the decorator.
I managed to hide the tests at the bottom of my handbag before he came in, but not my agitation.
He asked three times whether I was all right, watched how much I ate, and tried to cancel the rest of my plans for the afternoon.
I escaped by telling him Clara needed my help.
It was the first lie I had told him in two years, although it became technically true the moment I sent my best friend a desperate message.
I cannot take the tests at home. Alexander notices when I change conditioner; I have no hope of hiding six blue boxes from a man who remembers where I leave my earrings and can tell when I have opened a drawer because the contents are no longer aligned.
So I drive to Clara’s flat with the bag on the passenger seat and the distinct feeling that I am transporting radioactive material.
She opens the door wearing grey sweatpants, a green face mask, and holding a glass of wine.
“You look like a criminal,” she says, studying me.
I lift the bag. “I need to use your bathroom.”
“That is a terrible way to begin a visit.”
I hand her the bag. Clara opens it, sees the boxes, and widens her eyes so dramatically that the mask begins to crack around her eyebrows.
“Oh my God.”
“Don’t say that yet.”
“Are you pregnant?”
“I don’t know.”
She looks at the bag again. “You bought enough tests to open a clinic.”
“Different brands have different sensitivity levels. I like reliable data.”
“You’ve been engaged to Alexander Thorne for too long.”
I walk inside without answering. Clara closes the door and follows me toward the bathroom, abandoning her wine on the kitchen counter.
Ten minutes later, six tests are lined up beside the sink.
Two are digital. Four rely on lines that should be simple to interpret but now seem perfectly capable of deciding the rest of my life. Clara stands beside me with her arms folded while I read the instructions for the third time.
“This feels like a science experiment,” she says.
“Shut up.”
“I’m providing emotional support.”
“Then provide it quietly.”
I set the timer and try not to look. Clara talks about anything that comes into her head: the neighbor who stole one of her parcels, a disastrous date the previous night, and the possibility that the face mask might permanently stain her skin green.
I hear barely half of it.
When the alarm sounds, I turn toward the counter.
A line has appeared on the first test, and beside it is another. The same thing has happened on the second, third, and fourth. One of the digital tests displays the word Pregnant. The last takes a few seconds longer, as if granting me time to prepare myself, before confirming the same result.
Every one of them is positive.
Clara takes my hand, but for a moment I cannot seem to draw enough air into my lungs.
“Isabella.”
I shake my head. “No. It can’t be.”
The six results remain in front of me, indifferent to what can or cannot be possible. I sit on the closed toilet seat and try to find somewhere in my mind large enough to hold the information.
There is nowhere.
Alexander cannot have children. That is not an assumption but a fact established by doctors, tests, and years of acceptance. We built our plans around that certainty.
“Maybe they’re wrong,” I say.
Clara crouches in front of me. “All six?”
“They could be from the same batch.”
She picks up two boxes and examines them. “They’re three different brands.”
“Contamination.”
“With what? Fertility?”
I stand too quickly, and the bathroom tilts for a second. Clara catches my arms until my balance returns.
“I need a doctor.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Now.”
“It’s Saturday, Bella.”
“Emergencies happen on Saturdays.”
“Pregnancy is not usually considered an emergency.”
I look at the six tests. “This one is.”
Clara eventually persuades me to sit on the sofa while she calls two clinics. Neither can see me that day unless I have symptoms suggesting an immediate medical risk. My gynecologist, Dr. Patel, is not at the practice, but her secretary manages to fit me in first thing Monday morning.
Until then, there is nothing to do except wait.
Clara sits beside me and takes my hand. “Is there any possibility it could be someone else’s?”
The question is careful, but I still recoil.
“No.”
“I had to ask.”
“There is no one else. There has never been anyone else.”
She nods immediately. “Then it’s Alexander’s.”
“He’s infertile.”
“Infertile men can still have children sometimes, can’t they?”
“His diagnosis isn’t just infertility. It’s azoospermia.”
The clinical word sounds even more absolute in Clara’s sitting room.
I explain the accident, the testing, and the complete absence of sperm. Clara listens without interrupting and then glances toward the bathroom.
“Something happened, because you didn’t produce six positive tests through sheer force of will.”
I place a hand over my stomach.
There is nothing to feel yet. My body is exactly the same as it was when I woke that morning, but knowing changes everything. The nausea, the exhaustion, and the late period stop being unrelated symptoms and begin to belong to someone.
“Don’t tell anyone,” I say.
“Not under torture.”
“Especially Alexander.”
Clara hesitates. “You’re not telling him today?”
“Not until I know for certain.”
“Bella, there are six certainties in your bathroom.”
“I need to hear it from a doctor.”
I also need time to work out how to tell the man who has spent seven years believing this could never happen.
By Monday morning, I am sitting in a white consultation room at Dr. Patel’s practice, gripping my knee to keep my leg from shaking. The weekend has been one long succession of excuses. I avoided wine, coffee, cheese, and any conversation that might force me to reveal what I was hiding.
Alexander knew something was wrong. That night, lying beside me, he asked whether I was having second thoughts about the wedding. I almost told him then, but the fear of turning faulty home tests into hope kept the words trapped in my throat, and eventually we fell asleep in silence.
Dr. Patel has been my gynecologist for four years.
She knows my history, knows about Alexander’s diagnosis, and has been part of some of our conversations about motherhood.
That is why, when she returns with my blood results, she does not immediately give me the warm smile that usually accompanies good news.
She sits opposite me. “You’re pregnant.”
My heart pounds hard enough to hurt. “Are you sure?”
“The beta-hCG was positive. Based on the dates you gave me and your hormone levels, I would estimate that you’re approximately five weeks along.”
Five weeks.
I raise a hand to my mouth. A small laugh escapes before I can stop it, followed immediately by a tear sliding down my cheek.
“Oh my God.”
Joy comes first, bright and enormous, but fear catches up with it almost at once.
“I know,” I whisper.
Dr. Patel waits until I can breathe properly again before continuing. “We should talk about Alexander.”
“He can’t be the father.”
“His diagnosis was azoospermia?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever see the test results?”
“One of the reports. He showed it to me when we began talking seriously about marriage.”
“How long ago were the tests performed?”
“Almost seven years.”
She considers that. “Azoospermia can have several causes. Some forms are permanent, but other situations can change; there can also be residual production, incomplete diagnoses, or laboratory error. Without examining Alexander and reviewing his full medical history, I can’t tell you what happened.”
“Are you saying he could be the father?”
She holds my gaze. “I’m saying the pregnancy exists, which means at least one of the assumptions you’ve been relying on needs to be reassessed.”
My hand moves down to my stomach, and this time I do not pull it away.
This is no longer a late period or lines appearing on pieces of plastic. There is someone inside me, impossibly small and already loved with a force that frightens me.
“He is the father,” I say.
Dr. Patel does not look surprised. “I’m not questioning you, Isabella. I only want to prepare you for the possibility that there will be questions.”
“I’ve never been with anyone else.”
“Then I would recommend that Alexander repeat his tests before either of you draws conclusions. If there are still doubts after that, non-invasive prenatal paternity testing is available later in pregnancy, although it may never need to come to that.”
I smile despite myself. “He’s going to lose his mind.”
“With happiness?”
“First he’ll try to find a scientific explanation. Then he’ll call five specialists, buy the clinic, and demand the results ahead of schedule.”
She laughs. “You seem to know him well.”
“He pretended he didn’t care when he found out he couldn’t have children.”
“And you believed him?”
“Not for a second.”
Alexander watches children when he thinks I am not looking. He does it in restaurants, airports, and parks. Once, while we were traveling, he spent nearly ten minutes watching a man teach his son to ride a bicycle. When he realized I had noticed, he asked whether I wanted dessert.
I never confronted him about it because I know the way he protects his wounds: he treats the things he wants most as though he never needed them in the first place.
“I want to tell him properly,” I say.
Dr. Patel smiles. “Then do.”
When I leave the clinic, I stand on the pavement for several minutes. London moves around me, but everything looks subtly different, as though the entire city has been rearranged around the knowledge I am carrying.
My phone vibrates.
Alexander: Lunch?
I type I’m pregnant, stare at the words, and delete them.
Me: I can’t. I have a meeting.
His reply arrives twenty seconds later.
Alexander: Tonight.
Me: Yes.
Alexander: You’ve been strange since Saturday.
I smile.
Me: Maybe I’m planning to murder you.
Alexander: Wait until after the wedding. The paperwork will be simpler.
I laugh to myself, put the phone away, and walk into a children’s shop two streets later.
Inside, I am surrounded by clothes so small they look as though they were made for dolls.
I do not know what I am looking for until I find a pair of simple white socks, so absurdly tiny that something inside my chest tightens.
I buy the socks and a small box.
I could simply give Alexander the blood test result or one of the home tests still hidden at Clara’s flat, but I want to remember his face.
I want to witness the exact second he realizes that life has created something his money, planning, and pathological need for control could never have produced.
A miracle.
I get home before he does and place the socks inside the box. I tuck one of the tests underneath them and then write a sentence on a folded piece of paper.
Looks like someone didn’t read your test results.
I read it twice and smile. Alexander will say babies cannot read. I will tell him arrogance is hereditary. Perhaps he will lift me off the floor. Perhaps he will be speechless for an entire minute, which would be some kind of record.
I imagine a hundred possible reactions, and none of them resembles what actually happens.
When I hear the front door open, my heart begins to race.
“Isabella?” he calls.
“In the sitting room.”
Alexander appears still wearing his suit, loosening his tie as he walks. “How was your mee—”
He stops when he sees the box on the table, then studies my face. “What happened?”
“Nothing bad.”
“You’re crying.”
I touch my cheek and find tears there. “Hormones.”
The word escapes before I can stop it.
Alexander goes still.
I laugh nervously. “Well. There goes the surprise.”
“Hormones?”
I pick up the box and walk toward him. My hands are shaking so badly that I have to grip it more tightly. “Open it.”
Alexander looks first at me and then at the box. “Isabella.”
“Just open it.”
He lifts the lid and sees the socks. The whole world seems to fit inside the pause between one breath and the next.
Alexander raises his eyes, but he still does not understand. He takes out the note, reads it, and then finds the test beneath the paper.
All the color drains from his face.
My smile falters. “Alexander?”
He looks at the test, then at me, then back at the object in his hand.
“What is this?”
Something cold brushes against my happiness. “A pregnancy test.”
“I know what it is.”
His voice is wrong, far too controlled, with no trace of the man who cut strawberries for me two days ago.
“I’m pregnant,” I explain. “Dr. Patel confirmed it today. Five weeks.”
Alexander says nothing.
I take one step toward him. “She said you need to repeat your tests. There are several possible explanations and—”
“Whose is it?”
The words reach me, but for one second my mind refuses to understand them, perhaps because I understand them perfectly.
My entire body turns cold. “What?”
He does not blink.
“Whose child is this?”
The box slips from my fingers and falls between us. The test slides across the rug, and the tiny white socks roll onto the floor, separating as they come to a stop.