Chapter 30
30
If nothing else, Drew had learned this: if they ever had enough money to purchase a new car, it would be a car that came with an inbuilt satellite navigation system. Without his phone, he was completely lost.
‘I’ve already been down this road!’ he yelled, thumping his fist against the steering wheel as he was forced down yet another one-way street. Who designed these roads? That was what he wanted to know. And did they design them with the sole purpose of making life as difficult as possible for anyone who didn’t have a smartphone or a photographic memory? All he wanted was an exit sign. A big EXIT LONDON sign. Would that have been too much to ask for?
Thirty minutes after leaving Polly at the bar and dashing for the car park, he found himself driving once again past the grey stone building of the hotel. ‘You have to be kidding me,’ he said. Inhaling through his nose and trying his best not to beep the hell out of his car horn, he approached the next junction. ‘Let’s try right this time.’
It was the fact that Sarah had gone off with his phone that infuriated him the most. What the hell was she thinking? She was less than four weeks away from her due date. And hadn’t both of the others been born early? Or was it late? They had definitely been either early or late. With a sigh of relief, Drew turned off the one-way road onto something with an inkling of familiarity. When he got home, she was going to get an earful for this. That, he promised.
It was as though a switch had been flicked in her brain and her uterus simultaneously. She was in labour. Actual, physical, baby-on-its-way labour. The thing she had been dreading from the moment she first realised she was pregnant again was here, and she was on a coach.
‘Try the hotel again. It’s been fifteen minutes. He might be in the room now,’ Jenny said helpfully. ‘Why don’t you try the hotel again?’
‘If he had gone to the room, he would have seen the messages by now,’ Sarah replied.
There had been no answer in the room the first time she rang, and the person on the other end of the line at reception hadn’t sounded too happy about going upstairs and crashing the Home Crew Christmas party to find a guest, even when Sarah stressed how important it was.
‘I’m afraid guest privacy is paramount to us here at Eden Garden Hotel,’ the woman had said, all toffee-nosed and elitist. ‘But if you would like to leave a message, we will be certain that it gets to them.’
‘I’m having a baby. I’m having a baby on a rail replacement bus in the middle of a dual carriageway, and I swear to God, if you do not go upstairs and find my husband, then I will be ringing every newspaper from here to bloody Inverness about your customer service.’ She was then put on hold for a full ten minutes before the woman came back on the line.
‘I’m very sorry. He doesn’t seem to be at the party. And there’s still no answer from his room. I can leave a message for him if you’d like.’
‘Yes, if you could leave him a note saying his wife is about to give birth in the back of a bus, that would be great.’
To give the woman her due, it did sound like she wrote it down. Now, of course, Sarah had drained her phone battery entirely. Perfect. Just perfect.
In the madness of realising she was actually in labour, Sarah had failed to notice that the coach had gone from a slow crawling pace to completely stationary.
‘What’s the holdup?’ Brogues called up to the front. ‘Why aren’t we moving?’
‘Road works,’ the driver called back.
The man’s grunt snorted only inches from Sarah’s ear.
‘If I’d known we were going to be stuck in traffic all night, I’d have waited for the next train.’
‘You’re more than welcome to get off at the next stop,’ was the reply that came back.
Beads of sweat had started to gather on the back of Sarah’s neck. At least this one was being born in winter. Those last months with George in her felt like she had a toaster oven inside of her. But still, she had been ready and waiting for him. She had had a go-bag waiting by the door. Snacks and clean clothes for when it all got a bit messy. She picked up her phone and stared at it blankly. There was no point in trying the hotel again.
‘Is there someone else you can call?’ Jenny was back to making suggestions. ‘What about your home phone? Maybe he went straight home?’
‘We keep it unplugged. I don’t like all the cold callers.’ Sarah realised for the first time how ridiculous that was, forgoing one of the key home safety items for the sake of not having to hang up on a salesman of questionable intentions. Still, Jenny wasn’t done with suggestions.
‘How about calling someone using his phone, maybe? You said he was at a party, right? Is there anyone he would be with that you could call?’
Sarah considered it. It wasn’t a bad idea. Just because the woman at reception hadn’t found him, it didn’t mean Drew wasn’t there. He could easily have slipped into the toilet when the woman went upstairs. Or been chatting away and not heard her asking for him over the music. She picked Drew’s phone out of her bag. The stunt with the sat nav meant that the battery on his phone was down to a single line of red. Still, she figured it would be enough to make one phone call. With her heart having inched its way up her throat, she typed in his password. It would have to be Barry. Barry was the one she had known the longest. A second after finding the number, the phone was ringing. Picked up in two rings, a chorus of Wizzard rang down the line before Barry started to speak.
‘Drew, where are you? You haven’t left, have you? We saw you and Sarah have a bit of a barny; that wasn’t to do with the book, was it? You know it’s probably just her hormones playing up. Women and their hormones. Bloody nutcases the lot of them. I don’t know how you do it if I’m honest. Living with a pregnant woman. I imagine it’s like sharing your space with a starving hippo.’
‘It’s Sarah, Barry.’
An awkward silence punctuated the air.
‘Oh.’ She could hear the swallow down the line. ‘I mean… I just meant. You know, pregnancy, hormones. I didn’t mean I wouldn’t want to live with you. I’d love to. Not that Alice and I?—’
‘Look, Barry, is Drew there with you? I can’t get hold of him. It’s rather important.’
‘I haven’t seen him,’ Barry answered. ‘That’s why I thought you were him.’
Sarah’s stomach plummeted again. Or at least it would have done, had it had anywhere to go. Instead, a low groan rattled from her throat.
‘Could you just check? Please. See if anyone might know where he’s gone? He’s not in our hotel room, and I need to get hold of him.’
‘Hang on a minute. I’ll ask if anyone’s seen him.’
While Barry disappeared, leaving a chorus of ‘White Christmas’ buzzing fuzzily down the line, Sarah noticed that the volume in her own environment had increased substantially too.
‘What’s going on?’ She said to Jenny as it became apparent that a large number of people were grizzling and snapping complaints at one another and, most of all, at the bus driver. ‘Did I just miss something?’
‘Apparently, these roadworks go on for another two miles. Means the people getting off from now on are going to miss their connections.’
‘Have they not put buses on for them too?’ Sarah asked.
‘Apparently not.’
She glanced around the coach, noting the annoyance on people’s faces. Two rows behind her, a young girl had fallen asleep on her mother’s shoulder while Brogues now had his phone plugged into the largest power bank she’d ever seen. Unless he was planning a four-day hike across the Sahara, it was difficult to imagine anyone going that long without being able to find a plug socket. A wave of contracting muscles rolled through her when she caught the sound of someone calling her name, faintly, as if miles away.
‘Sarah? Are you still there? Sarah?’
‘Barry.’ Sarah pressed the phone to her ear. ‘Barry? Have you found him? Do you know where he is?’
‘Sorry. A couple of the lads saw him downstairs at the bar about an hour ago with Polly.’
‘Polly?’
‘Yes, but no one’s seen either of them since. They seem to have both disappeared.’
The petulant grumbles from the other passengers, along with the tinny music down the phone line, all drifted into the ether as Sarah repeated what Barry had just told her.
‘Polly and Drew,’ she said. ‘They disappeared together?’ Her chest felt like it had just been attacked by some rib-splitting monster. ‘Barry, is that what you said?’
Whether Barry answered or not, she didn’t hear. The pain shot through her from all points simultaneously. Unable to hold any of it back, she let out an almighty scream.
‘Argh!’
‘Okay.’ The bus driver was looking back through her rearview mirror. ‘That is not sounding good. Is everything all right back there?’
‘Not really!’ Sarah heard Jenny say beside her. ‘Where’s the nearest hospital?’
‘You want to go to the hospital? This isn’t a taxi. This is a rail replacement bus.’ Brogues was out of his seat. ‘Do you want everyone to miss their connections?’
‘Do you want to catch your connection with a sackful of amniotic fluid and a recently ejected placenta all over your shoes?’ the girl replied. It was a good enough question to have him fall back in his seat.
‘Honestly,’ Sarah pushed herself up on her elbows to stop the dizzy spell that followed. ‘I’ll be fine. Honestly. I’ve got plenty of time. I just need to get home. Get to…’
She couldn’t even form his name in her mouth. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t. Drew and Polly. Polly and Drew. They couldn’t have left together. Polly was so young and leggy and beautiful. And Drew was… well… he was hers. He wouldn’t have done that, surely not? But then if he could lie to Sarah about people reading their book, what else would he lie about? ‘I’ll be fine. Honestly,’ Sarah repeated the words, sounding breathless and frail. ‘It’ll be fine. It has to be. It has to be.’
While Jenny responded by leaning over and rubbing her arm, Brogues was on his feet.
‘I’ve had enough of this. I’m not going to sit back here any longer.’
It was possibly the worst timing anyone could have had. A shift of her pelvis, him bending down to get his briefcase. That split second was all it took. It did at least show that on some occasions, waters could break just like they did in the movies; in one massive rush that flooded from Sarah, straight to the ground and all over a pair of perfectly polished brogues.
‘What the f?—!’
‘Well, at least you know your baby’s got a sense of humour,’ Jenny said.