“You think everything is okay with the baby and Jenna?” I ask him now Mum’s out of the room. “It’s a bit strange they’re running so late.”
Dad gives me one of his reassuring looks, the kind I never used to notice or value, but the older I get the more I see them and the more I appreciate them. The more I think I need them.
“They’ve probably had to stop for Jenna to go the Ladies. You know what her bladder’s been like recently.”
I nod. “Yeah, that’ll be it.”
My phone lights up next to me on the couch’s arm rest and I grab it, immediately reading the notification. It’s a message from Arabella with a photo of her in her costume forThe Nutcracker.I like it and send a message back saying how smoking hot she looks.
“Was that them?” Da asks, eagerly. Looks like we’re all a little keen to hear the news.
“No, it was Bella.”
Dad nods and then links his hands together over his stomach and closes his eyes. I don’t know why I keep my phone in my hand or why I open up TikTok and the conversation with Loncey but I do. I don’t know why I read their last message to me a week ago, the one I haven’t replied to.
Seven days later and I still don’t know how this message makes me feel. I can’t say if it’s good. I can’t say if it’s bad. But I can say that it makes me uncomfortable and I don’t like uncomfortable. So I haven’t replied. It’s not like that’s eased the discomfort, but I’m not going to think about that now.
Especially not when I hear a set of keys in the door.
Putting my phone down and getting up, I nudge Dad’s arm on my way out of the living room and into the hallway that Jenna and Marty are walking into. I open my mouth, but words halt when I see two sets of red and puffy eyes.
No. Shit, no. Please don’t let there be anything wrong with the baby.I clutch my stomach and feel wet heat in my own eyes. I sends Dad come up and stand behind me.
“Ah, Maeve, we’re fine,” Marty says. “Don’t look like that. You’ll set us off again.”
“But really?” I ask, no,demand. “Is the baby okay? And you, Jenna?”
“I’m fine, honest,” Jenna says but her voice cracks. “And the baby is fine too. Completely fine.”
“Completely perfect,” Marty says, and I see they’re holding hands so tightly his knuckles are pale.
“Well, will we stop standing around like eejits here and come and sit down,” Dad says, moving around me to usher them in. “Kitchen or living room?”
“Kitchen,” Marty says decisively.
I hear the whoosh of the downstairs toilet flushing.
“Ah, that’s where Ma is,” my brother says. “I was expecting her at the window waiting on us.”
“Oh, she was,” I say.
A second later, our mother emerges from the toilet, drying her hands. “See! I told you! I said if I just went to the loo, you’d show up!”
“Come on, Ma.” Marty steps forward and hooks his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go have a cuppa and a chat.”
“I’ve filled and boiled the kettle already,” Ma says and they lead the way for all of us to merge into the kitchen. As I walk next to Jenna, she finds my hand and squeezes it. There are tears in her eyes when I look at her.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask.
“Perfect,” she says. “Everything’s perfect.”
Ten minutes later, we’re all sitting at the round kitchen table that has seen so many epic conversations over the years. It’s where Marty sat us all down and told us he was bisexual. It’s where I told Ma and Da I wasn’t going to apply for university and instead wanted to pursue a career as an influencer. It’s where Ma gave Marty a letter from Arnie, an act that prompted him to goto Crete and claim Jenna’s heart once and for all. And it’s where I sat my parents down and told them I was asexual earlier this year.
And now I have this sense that another epic conversation is about to happen as we all sit with mugs of steaming tea in front of us. Jenna is on my right, with Marty next to her and on my left is Da, and then Ma, who has barely stopped chattering away nervously since we walked in the room.
“So, we have some photos from the scan,” Jenna says, and she pulls a strip of black and white images from her bag.
