Chapter 9
The smell of apple blossom tickles Kate’s nose as she stands beneath the tree in her garden, watching the sun set over the valley beyond. There are bees and butterflies circling lazily around the messy flower beds, landing on the petals of foxgloves, delphiniums and wild, rangy roses. It’s in moments like this that she remembers why they moved. The sight of fields and trees in the distance calms her, quietening the questions that have been swirling around her mind ever since her mum and sister left.
‘Kate, where’s Rosie?’
Jay’s voice snaps her out of her thoughts. She looks up as he crosses the garden towards her, coming from the direction of the studio where he has been working all day. His anxious expression jolts her.
Rosie. She realises that standing under the apple tree feeling the evening sun on her face, she hadn’t been thinking about her at all.
‘She’s in her Moses basket inside, I just stepped outside for a second to …’
Why did she come out here? And was it really only a second ago? She suddenly realises she has absolutely no idea how much time has passed since Erin and Miriam said goodbye. After they’d left she had pinged a quick message to her Work Wives group: How’s it going there?
But there’d been no reply. They were probably busily making calls and typing at their desks, or heading out if the breaking story required field research. With no response from her friends, she had left her phone on the kitchen table next to the Moses basket where Rosie lay fast asleep. She had only stepped outside to catch her breath. But guilt rips through her now. How did she let herself get so lost in thought that she completely forgot about Rosie?
Jay is already heading in through the kitchen door and Kate follows anxiously. But Rosie is fast asleep in her Moses basket on the kitchen table, just where Kate left her. As they step inside, she stirs, though, and Jay reaches swiftly to lift her up to his chest, cupping her bottom in his hand and nestling her in against his shoulder. Kate watches, thinking how it looks as though Jay’s shoulder was made for this. How the two of them fit together perfectly.
‘How were your mum and sister? Sorry I didn’t come and say hi, I got totally caught up sanding the floorboards.’
‘They’re OK, thanks. Erin left us food and Mum hoovered.’
Jay smiles above the top of Rosie’s fluffy head. ‘Of course they did.’
‘Mum mentioned a mum and baby group she’s seen advertised in the village. I might take Rosie tomorrow morning while you’re on your shoot.’
The way Jay’s face lights up makes something inside Kate ache.
‘I think that sounds a brilliant idea! You haven’t really seemed … yourself. I’m sure it will help to meet some other mums.’
Kate wants to tell him that she doesn’t even know who ‘herself’ is anymore.
But then she pictures her sister’s face. In a rush of memories she recalls the day she told Erin that she was pregnant.
Her sister was the second person she told, after Jay. She hadn’t planned on telling her the news in the middle of a soft-play centre on a Saturday morning, but it was hard to pin Erin down since she had her boys. It was 10.30 a.m. and Erin was eating a full lunch in the café as they watched Ted and Arlo thrashing about in the luridly coloured ball pit. Kate felt nauseous and couldn’t believe that her sister was about to tuck into a tuna sandwich. As Erin lifted the bread to her mouth, she caught her eye across the table as Kate sipped her tea and raised an eyebrow.
‘I’ve been up since five,’ Erin explained, wiping mayonnaise from her chin.
Kate had lifted a hand subconsciously to her stomach, thinking about how she would soon become part of the sleepless-night brigade and feeling strangely excited by the fact that she would finally be joining her sister’s club. Kate had spent most of her life trying – and failing – to catch up with her sister. Now they would be on the same page at last.
But telling her sister hadn’t gone at all how she’d intended. When Kate made her announcement, Erin’s face had dropped.
‘I didn’t even know you were trying.’
‘Well, we weren’t really trying trying. But I stopped taking the pill a couple of months ago.’
It happened when she and Jay were on holiday in Slovenia. One morning, they woke early in their little cabin and headed down to the lakeside beach. They were the only people there, except for a couple and their young baby. She had tiny pigtails and chubby cheeks and kept lifting handfuls of sand and attempting to eat it, much to the despair of her parents and the amusement of Kate and Jay.
‘I think we’d make cute babies,’ Jay had said teasingly and Kate had smiled. But then his face grew more serious. ‘Honestly, though, what do you think? I know we’ve talked about it before, but it feels like now could be a good time? I love being a team with you, but maybe it’s time to allow an extra member? A really tiny and cute one?’
Later, when they got back to the cabin, they reached for each other with an added fervour, as though making a decision without even saying the words out loud, and Kate knew that the next day she’d throw her pills in the bin.
‘You’ll make an amazing mum,’ Jay had whispered into her ear. And, back then, she hadn’t even thought to disagree. She’d felt ready. She loved this baby that didn’t even exist yet …
‘Just a couple of months?’
Erin’s eyes had filled with tears and, in a horrifying rush, Kate’s memories from back when Erin was trying for a baby had flashed through her mind. Her sister crying on the phone to her because her period had come yet again. About the pain of having to buy another gift for another friend’s baby shower. The scrimping and saving to afford IVF treatment and then all the terrified waiting that came after.
‘We’ve been really lucky,’ Kate replied quietly, her earlier excitement replaced with guilt. How could she have been so insensitive? She should have found a better way to tell her sister the news, but then, was there ever an easy way to tell your sister that while you might share fifty per cent of the same DNA, when it came to the fertility lottery, you’d been the one to win the jackpot?
‘Yes,’ Erin had replied. ‘You’re really, really lucky.’
Over the past few months, whenever Kate has considered telling someone, anyone, some of the dark thoughts that have been circling her mind, she pictures her sister’s face and hears those words repeating over and over in her head. You’re really, really lucky. And she shuts her mouth again, because she knows that her sister was right. She is so lucky. She has the very thing she desperately wanted.
‘I’m looking forward to trying the group,’ Kate says now, as much to herself as to Jay.
Because, instead of sneaking out to the river every morning, maybe she should take the advice of her family and the health visitor. Instantly, she decides that she won’t be going to the river tomorrow. Or the next day. She can’t keep running away from her life like that. Going to a mum and baby group will be good. It’s the kind of thing other mothers do, isn’t it?
She glances at her phone on the counter. Still no reply from Emma and Leonie. She gets it. They’re busy. They have their own lives. But maybe Erin was right about needing to make friends here, too. It might still feel strange, but this is her life now and it’s time she started treating it that way, rather than feeling as though she’s on some weird holiday that she will surely come home from eventually.