‘Come here.’ Angela pulled her sister into a hug. Beatrice’s legs wobbled beneath her as she stumbled into her arms.
‘So?’ Angela prompted.
‘So, what?’
‘Are we happy, or…?’
Beatrice bobbed her head, a lot. ‘Course we’re happy.’
Angela scanned her sister’s expression. Beatrice was still nodding to herself with huge, wide eyes. ‘OK, I believe you.’ Angela couldn’t help grinning. ‘I didn’t know you guys were trying.’
‘We weren’t. I mean, we were using condoms at first, then I went back on the pill and…’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to tell you.’
‘Shall I go get him?’
‘Who?’
‘Atholl, of course.’
‘No, no, no.’ She stopped her sister leaving. ‘Stay here.’
‘You don’t think he’ll be happy?’
‘I…’ Beatrice couldn’t finish the utterance. She was sure Atholl would be happy. Very happy in fact, and that’s why she was afraid.
Angela pressed on. ‘I’m so glad for you. Mum would be really happy too.’
Beatrice’s smile bloomed then fell when the sadness of it all hit her. How she wished her mum was here. She’d have told her first, before anyone else.
Angela rubbed a hand up her sister’s arm, letting the silence speak volumes about the great hole that had been left in their lives when she died. After a while she cleared her throat and wiped a tear. ‘I can’t believe you’re pregnant again.’
Beatrice’s stoic half smile faltered. ‘Do you mean you can’t believe I’m pregnant again, and to somebody else?’
‘What?No! It sounds to me like that’s whatyou’rethinking.’ Angela gave her sister a level look.
‘Shh, somebody will hear!’ Beatrice hissed. Damn Angela and her sisterly insight. She was right. If anybody in the world knew her best, it was her.
‘Don’t you think they’ll be wondering why we’re hiding in the toilet together?’ Angela said, quietly this time, but Beatrice’s mind was racing elsewhere.
Shewasthinking about what people might think – and what, deep down, Atholl might think after he’d had time to process the news. Here she was, pregnant again, when the baby she’d made with Richard would have been only a few months’ old, had he lived. Beatrice took a deep breath. Pregnant so soon and with another man’s baby? Something about it felt vaguely scandalous to her, or at least she was convincing herself that’s how other people might see it.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Angela warned. ‘And you can stop.’
‘What?’
‘Who cares what the gossips are going to say. You’re having a baby, and that’s wonderful. Do you think me and Vic let the tattle-tales steal our happiness?Hmm?Besides, who here knows about you and Rich’s baby anyway?’
Beatrice ran through the people she’d told when she’d realised it was the taboo nature of her grief that was making her ill, giving her panic attacks, and making her bitter. She’d started talking about her baby in the summer and found it helped her so much. She’d told Mrs Fergusson, Atholl’s little sister, Sheila, Gene, and Kitty. Even Mrs Mair the housekeeper knew. She tried to imagine their reactions now.What? Again?they might say.Already? Except this time it’s not with your husband, it’s with Atholl.
Beatrice overcame her panic to find her voice. ‘Even if other people don’t think it’s weird to be pregnant with another man’s baby, they’ll definitely think it’s too soon. What if Atholl thinks it too? He’d be too nice to say it out loud, but still…’ Beatrice said, her eyes darting around the room, seeing nothing clearly in her anxious state.
Angela was shaking her head, trying to calm her sister. She had met Atholl once before at her and Vic’s Warwickshire wedding back in November, and if she’d had any reservations about him before that day they were definitely put to rest by the sight of him in his kilt holding Beatrice’s hand all through the ceremony, offering her a tissue when she was sobbing happy tears, and bringing hertwoslices of wedding cake and a cup of tea from the buffet because he knew her well enough to understand one wasn’t enough.
Beatrice rambled on. ‘They’ll think I’m mad, tempting fate. Maybe it’ll happen again!’
‘It might,’ Angela said, very gently, and taking Beatrice’s hands in her own. ‘Statistically, it’s more likely itwon’thappen again and you’ll get a take-home baby this time. Three in every four pregnancies work out.’
This definitely helped. Beatrice liked figures and facts, things there was real-world evidence for, things she could research further to reassure herself.
