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As Christmas approached, and Rome grew cold and wet, being in the house was like living in tornado season, Aurora mused. She was watching the news at the moment, holed up in the little summerhouse at the bottom of the beautiful garden, but she kept casting anxious glances towards the house.
Soon the husband would travel again, and peace would prevail, but it was like watching dark clouds gather whenever he came home.
Aurora thought perhaps she had heartburn. Certainly the doctor had suggested that she did, but the burning high in her stomach seemed to coincide with the husband’s arrival home and amplified when she saw bruises on Louanna’s fragile arms.
‘What happened?’ Aurora asked.
‘I bumped into the door.’
‘And the door was shaped like fingers?’ Aurora checked, in her usual forthright fashion. ‘Louanna, you have to leave him.’
‘Where will I go?’ Louanna begged. ‘Where willyougo, Aurora? Your baby is due in two weeks.’
‘Don’t stay for me,’ Aurora said.
Yet her heart was twisting in fear at the thought of being out on the streets so close to her due date.
‘He is a good man…’ Louanna was defensive. ‘He just has a lot of stress at work.’
Nico had a lot of stress at work, Aurora thought, and he would never have carried on like that. She had never hidden her smile or her sass from him.
Call Nico, her mind said.
But then she caught sight of her reflection, her ripe body and troubled eyes, and she knew she did not want to land on him like this.
Not like this.
But soon the tornado had left again, and with the husband away on business the last few days of her pregnancy were among the nicest she had known.
She went to church with Louanna and the children, to watch the nativity play that Nadia was in, and it brought tears to Aurora’s eyes. Louanna took the kindest care of her, and Aurora felt so spoiled when she woke to breakfast in bed one morning.
But the storm clouds were gathering again, for tomorrow Louanna’s husband would be home.
That night Louanna made the supper. The children were sweet, and seemed to understand that Aurora was tired, and asked over and over again about her baby.
‘I hope it’s a girl,’ Nadia said as Aurora lay on the sofa, scrolling through baby names on Louanna’s laptop.
‘I hope it’s a boy,’ said Antonio.
‘What doyouwant, Aurora?’ Louanna asked.
‘I want this baby out of me,’ she admitted. ‘I’ll take what comes, but I am ready for my baby to be born.’
‘Have you chosen a name yet?’
‘No,’ Aurora admitted. ‘I still have no clue. Maybe Nico…’ She wasn’t going to call her baby that, but it was such a relief to say his name out loud. ‘Nicole, if it’s a girl, but I love the name Nico.’
Nico.
Nico.
Nico.
She would say it at the end of every breath if she could.
Oh, when would these feelings end? she asked of herself, and foolishly looked him up on the computer.
Nico’s world had clearly carried on very nicely without her. The woman with him just last month was blonde and pretty and petite. Then there was a beautiful redhead, who seemed to be getting him through the Christmas festivities.
