Must Be Love (23 page)

‘So’m I. I needed to get out. Ben’s been really supportive, but sometimes I wish he’d give me some space.’ Emma flashes me a look as I open my mouth to speak. ‘Don’t ask me how I am. I’m sick of people asking me if I’m all right.’

‘I was going to say how much I like your hair,’ I dissemble. It suits her, makes her look more professional and less – the description jumps unbidden into my head – mumsy. ‘Shall we stop for coffee?’ I’m joking, of course.

‘We haven’t started yet.’ Emma smiles, and I think, That’s more like it. That’s more like the Emma I know and love. I don’t tell her my news because I don’t want to spoil the mood, and anyway, Frances calls me back through to Reception before we get to the staffroom door.

‘Maz,’ she says, ‘can I have a word?’

‘Of course you can.’ I touch Emma’s shoulder. ‘We’ll catch up later.’

‘I wasn’t sure to mention it to you, or go straight to Drew.’ Frances hands me a set of notes. ‘I was getting the microchip details ready to go in the post when I noticed he’s vaccinated Eleanor Tarbarrel’s new kittens against distemper.’

‘Distemper? How are we going to explain that one away?’

‘We?’ says Frances. ‘I think you should. It’s better coming from one of the partners, and I don’t think Emma should have to do it on her first day back.’

‘Thanks, Frances. I’ll deal with it.’ I turn at the sound of someone clearing their throat. It’s Emma.

‘Deal with what?’ she says.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ I say, standing to one side so she can’t see me in profile.

‘I hope you aren’t deliberately keeping me out of the loop. I’d rather keep busy.’

‘Drew’s only gone and given puppy jabs to Eleanor Tarbarrel’s kittens,’ I explain. ‘He’s hopeless sometimes, he really is.’

‘She hasn’t been in touch to complain they’ve started barking yet.’ I thought Emma would be mad, but she’s making light of it. It’s as if she’s come back to work determined to be cheerful. ‘Don’t worry, Maz. I know Eleanor well – she was a great friend of Mum’s.’

‘But I do worry, Em,’ I say stubbornly. ‘Drew can be very careless sometimes.’

‘So what if he makes the odd mistake. It happens to the best of us. No harm done. I’ll get in touch with Eleanor and ask her to make another appointment. I’ll waive the fee to make up for inconveniencing her.’

I listen in when Emma makes the call, a little miffed because she’s taken over when I’ve been managing perfectly well without her, and annoyed that Eleanor Tarbarrel happily books another appointment with Drew, even waiting until he has a free slot later in the week. It seems the womenfolk of Talyton are prepared to forgive Drew anything.

Emma is chuckling as she puts the phone down.

‘One of the kittens thinks he’s a retriever, but he started playing fetch with a ping-pong ball way before he had the jab, so Drew’s off the hook.’ She pauses. ‘I feel so out of touch. What’s the plan for today?’

‘Drew’s on ops. I’m down to consult.’

‘How about I catch up with the paperwork this morning, then take over the appointments this afternoon? It’s your turn to have a break, Maz. You look shattered. You’ve been working too hard.’

‘Yeah, I expect that’s it.’ I’m not sure I want any time off, apart from a couple of hours for my twelve-week scan, which is tomorrow. Like Emma, I’d rather keep busy. Instinctively I touch my stomach, then pull my hand away, hoping she didn’t notice, although I’m going to have to broach the subject of the hospital appointment and the baby somehow. And soon.

‘I owe you. You’ve been great, looking after Miff and everything.’ Emma slips her arm over my shoulder and gives me a squeeze, and I’m swamped by a wave of guilt for misleading her. ‘It looks like your first appointment’s here,’ she adds. ‘Hello, Bev.’

I wonder how Emma knows Mrs King, who’s walking into Reception with a cat carrier, then remember the antenatal classes.

‘Hi,’ I say, relieving her of the carrier and taking it into the consulting room, where I wait for her to finish her chat with Emma. I hear Bev’s exclamation of shock, then whispering, before Emma’s voice rings out loud and clear.

‘I’m doing okay, thank you. Yes, it’s great being back at work.’

‘Better luck next time. You will try again?’

‘We’ll see.’

‘I had three miscarriages before I finally had Thea,’ Bev goes on, and I wince at the idea that sharing such a hideous personal experience can be helpful to Emma in her situation. I also decide not to mention the possibility of attending some of Bev’s antenatal classes, as I haven’t been able to talk to Emma about my baby yet. What’s more I can’t really see the need for them – our cats and dogs seem to cope very well with birth and caring for their young without having training beforehand.

I turn back to Cleo – there’s a strange smell emanating from her carrier.

‘It’s lavender oil,’ Bev says, when she joins me. ‘I recommend it for my pregnant ladies. It’s supposed to be calming,’ she adds, as Cleo hisses and spits inside the box. ‘She’s here for her booster. Oh, and there’s no need to be formal – call me Bev.’

‘I’ll fetch Izzy in to give us a hand,’ I decide, but Izzy’s tied up with Brutus, who’s turned up for his regular weigh-in.

‘Mrs Dyer would like something for fleas,’ she says, and I hand her a box of a spot-on treatment for extremely big dogs from the shelf above the monitor. ‘She reckons Brutus’s weight gain this week is down to the couple of extra passengers he’s carrying,’ Izzy adds, grinning. She sobers up as soon as she heads back out into Reception, and I muse briefly on the fact that if Drew had jabbed Brutus with cat vaccine, Mrs Dyer wouldn’t have been so reasonable about it.

‘Izzy sent me,’ Emma says, putting her head round the other door.

‘Would you mind being nurse?’

‘Cleo’s being a bit awkward,’ Bev says with masterly understatement, for we have to employ brute strength, leather gauntlets and a thick towel to administer Cleo’s booster before she dashes back, yowling, into her carrier.

‘Thanks, Em.’ I start typing the notes into the computer while Bev leaves the room to pay at Reception.

‘It’s no bother.’ She turns to leave again.

My waiting list flashes up empty on the screen.

‘Emma.’ I have to tell her. A pulse hammers in my head as I open my mouth and the words spill out. ‘It’s about me and Alex.’

Emma hesitates. ‘He’s going to make an honest woman of you?’

I shake my head miserably.

‘You’ve split up.’

I don’t like the way she says it, not as a question, but a statement, as if it’s what she’s been half hoping for since we got together. I don’t think it’s because she wants me to be unhappy, more that she’d like to see Alex suffer.

‘It’s nothing like that. We’re – I’m pregnant.’

During the awkward silence that follows, I watch Emma’s expression flicker from incomprehension to painful understanding.

‘I thought – I wanted you to know before it becomes common knowledge. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be, Maz.’ Emma holds up her hands. ‘It’s fantastic news. Really. I’m pleased for you. It’s come as a bit of a shock, that’s all, after all you said …’ Her voice trails off.

It was a mistake, I want to tell her, a stupid mistake.

‘I had an inkling, something Frances said. How long have you known?’

‘I couldn’t tell you before.’ I watch a tear roll down Emma’s cheek, a lump in my throat. ‘I was afraid you might hate me for it,’ I add in a low voice.

‘Hate you? That’s impossible.’ Her face crumples. ‘Oh, you thought –’

‘I knew you’d be upset …’

‘I’m not.’ Emma’s body stiffens. I notice how she stands, her back unnaturally straight, her hands clasped together. ‘I’m happy for you. I am.’ She bites her lip, regaining control for a few seconds before a commotion starts out in Reception. There are children’s voices, dogs yapping, then, above it all, the keen cry of a baby, and that’s all it takes for Emma’s shoulders to collapse. She makes a choking sound, turns and runs off down the corridor.

‘Emma. Emma!’ I follow her, but she runs out into the garden, slamming the door in my face.

‘I should leave her be,’ Frances says from behind me.

‘I shouldn’t have told her.’

‘You had to,’ she says gently. ‘It had to come from you, no one else.’

‘Like you, for example.’

‘I have to admit I’ve found it difficult keeping it to myself.’ Frances smiles. ‘I was right, wasn’t I? I knew all along.’

‘I can’t leave her out there.’ I look through the glass. Emma is sitting on the old swing at the end of the garden, her head bowed. Big drops of rain start to patter down from a lowering sky.

‘Come and see Raffles first,’ Frances says. ‘Lynsey’s got three of her boys and the baby with her.’

I’m grateful for her memory and wisdom. Last time Lynsey Pitt was here with her boys, they trashed the place, ripping open bags of diet food and scribbling rude words on the walls with a lipstick they’d managed to extract from Frances’s handbag behind the desk. Lynsey has no control over them at all. While Frances looks after the baby, I enlist the three boys into helping me look at Raffles, who’s got a sore paw. I give each one something to hold: a pair of tweezers, a saline wipe and a doggy treat. It works – apart from the treat, which somehow gets eaten before I’ve finished. Who eats it? I’m not sure and I don’t ask. I give Raffles another one, in case it wasn’t him.

I catch up with Emma at lunchtime in the staffroom, where she’s sitting on the sofa, picking at a doughnut. I sit down beside her, the sofa sighing at the extra weight.

‘I’m sorry for running out on you like that,’ she says slowly.

‘It’s all right. I understand.’

‘No. No, you don’t understand. No one understands.’

‘Let me try,’ I beg her. ‘Talk to me, Em.’

Shaking her head, she tears off a piece of the doughnut’s crust and squashes it between her finger and thumb.

‘Please …’

‘No,’ Emma says, her voice shrinking behind her grief. ‘I can’t do this. Ben’s right. I need more time.’

‘Take as long as you want,’ I say, disappointed her return has been so short-lived yet relieved she’s strong enough to admit she isn’t ready to come back to work, and the stresses and strains that go with it, because she’s so obviously fragile.

‘Thank you.’ She gets up and drops the mangled doughnut back into the box with the others, and I think she must be hurting really badly to do that, and I’m hurting with her, because whichever way you look at it, the wrong vet is pregnant.

‘Have you heard from Emma?’ Alex asks when we’re on our way to the hospital for my first scan the next day. ‘Has she been in touch?’

‘Not yet.’ Thinking of Emma makes me feel depressed. ‘I wish I hadn’t told her.’

‘You didn’t have a choice, Maz. She had to know eventually.’ Alex smiles as he drives. ‘How were you planning to explain your sudden weight gain? Were you going to blame it on the doughnuts? You and Emma are always eating doughnuts when I drop by to Otter House.’

‘We used to,’ I correct him. ‘I’m not sure I’ll ever see her again.’

‘You don’t mean that,’ Alex says.

‘I know, but that’s how it feels.’

‘She’s been through a grim time recently.’

Yep, I think, staring out of the window, and now I’ve gone and made it ten times worse by telling her I’m pregnant.

We don’t have to wait long at the hospital. The sonographer calls us in within ten minutes and before I know it, I’m lying down with my belly exposed. I glance down, going cross-eyed as I look at my new shape; like it or not, my shape is definitely changing. My breasts are bigger and my stomach bulges just a little.

The sonographer starts talking about the reasons for having a twelve-week scan and the measurements she’ll take to check that the baby’s developing normally as she squirts gel onto my skin. Emma was right – it’s so cold, it makes my hair stand on end.

The sonographer calls me ‘Mum’, which is ridiculous because I feel nothing like a mother. I feel no ownership over the creature that appears on her screen; neither do I feel any surge of affection, which is entirely what I expected and only confirms my doubts that I can ever be a good mother. Whereas Alex’s reaction seems so different. He can hardly take his eyes off the screen.

‘Well, everything looks absolutely fine at the moment, Dad,’ the sonographer says eventually. ‘And of course Mum will have another scan at twenty weeks. It’s routine.’ She holds the piccies out to me, but I pretend to busy myself with fastening the belt on my trousers, so Alex takes them.

‘I thought we’d show them to Lucie and Seb,’ he says when we’re on our way back to Otter House. ‘They’re coming to stay this weekend.’

‘But you had them last weekend,’ I say.

‘I know, Maz, but they don’t want to miss the Duck Race. It’s one of the highlights of the year.’

‘I see.’

‘You’ll be coming with us,’ Alex says. ‘You have got the weekend off?’

‘Yes,’ I sigh, then realise I’m sounding petty.

‘I thought I take the opportunity to tell them about the baby. After the Duck Race, when the parents have gone home and it’s just you and me, and the children. It’s important they have plenty of time to ask questions without anyone else interfering, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose so …’

‘They’ll be fine, Maz. I reckon they’ll be really excited.’

‘Alex, once Lucie knows, she’s bound to let on to your parents.’

‘I thought I’d tell them on Sunday. I want to ask them for lunch. It’s all right.’ Alex holds his hands up. ‘I’m cooking. You don’t have to worry about a thing.’

‘But I do worry. I can’t begin to imagine how your parents are going to take the news. They’ll like me even less, if that’s possible.’

‘It isn’t you personally,’ Alex says. ‘They’ve never really got over Astra. Mother adored her and she had my father wrapped round her little finger. She could ride and shoot and made a charming hostess.’

‘She was a bit of a star, then,’ I say a little resentfully, but Alex doesn’t appear to notice. ‘You must wish you’d never met her.’

‘No, I don’t see it like that,’ Alex says, shaking his head. ‘Without Astra, I wouldn’t have had Lucie and Seb, and they more than make up for Astra’s blatant indiscretions and the way she left me for that –’ He stops abruptly, backing off from mentioning the man Astra ran away with, a footballer several years her junior. She isn’t with him any longer, having since hooked up with Hugo, the banker. ‘There’s no point in harking back to the past,’ Alex goes on. ‘What’s done is done. We have the future ahead of us. You, me and the baby.’