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I felt loose and alive. My body was healing, in spite of a flabby stomach, which now came with a scar. I had taken up Pilates and was determined to get myself back into shape.
We were just about to cross the road over to the pier when I came face-to-face with Caroline Lovechilde. I’d never seen her in the village before. Dressed in a green sheath dress with gold dripping off her, she looked like she belonged in Mayfair or Northbridge. Not our sleepy little fishing village.
Ethan’s mother possessed the type of ageless beauty that only a good cosmetic surgeon could produce. Caroline Lovechilde’s dark eyes wore an unshifting stony expression.
I thought she would ignore me, look over my head like she had the last time we’d met. Instead, she stopped and stared me in the face. Without speaking she looked inside the stroller and straight at Cian. Her face went pale, as though she were seeing something extraordinary.
She looked at me then at Cian again. “You’ve become a mother, I see.”
“Good afternoon, Mrs Lovechilde.” I kept my tone cool. After all, she’d treated me like shit the last time we’d crossed paths.
“How old?”
“Cian’s two months.”
“That’s his name?” Her brows moved slightly. She had an opinion, it seemed, as if she were laying claim on him.
Ethan had called. We’d spoken. I’d promised him we would meet so that I could arrange the paternity test. He wanted to drive down from London, where he’d been working. That was two days after I’d returned from the hospital. I’d promised him I would call when the time was right. I still hadn’t called. I didn’t want him to see me like this.
Caroline’s focus remained glued on my baby as though she were looking for a flaw or a mark.
“If you can excuse us,” I said, then we left her standing there.
The following day, I received a call from her. Despite the private number on my screen, I’d taken the call, and when she announced herself, I nearly dropped the phone.
When she asked if she could visit me, I replied, “I have nothing to say to you.”
“I know that I was rather unpleasant when you performed at our soiree, and for that, I owe you an apology.”
She sounded almost human, which startled me.
“I’d like to see Cian,” she said.
“Why?” My cold response echoed her own cool tone.
“He’s my grandson, I believe.”
“That’s unofficial.”
“Please.” She sounded needy. It wasn’t something I would have expected from the tough matriarch.
“I can meet you at Milly’s at one.” I put down the phone, wondering why I’d agreed.
It was for Cian. If anything were to happen to me, I needed to know he would be protected if he was, in fact, a Lovechilde. I was too frightened to really find out. That tiny glimmer of possibility that he wasn’t Ethan’s had me on tenterhooks, despite my heart telling me otherwise. A heavy weight followed me. I knew I had to find out soon, for everyone’s sake.
But for now, I’d fallen into a novice-mother rabbit hole, where time didn’t matter or was forgotten entirely. Lost in this maternal haze, I walked around with my brain in a fog. All I could think about was breastfeeding, staring endlessly at my son, or changing nappies.
Caroline Lovechilde was already there when I arrived. From a distance, I could have been meeting a glamorous actress at a Parisian café. There was something cinematic about the way she looked in a cream silk shirt, sunglasses, and a wide-brim hat, sipping tea.
I put the brakes on the stroller and took a seat. The waitress came over, and I ordered a juice. Cian slept soundly. That boy seemed to suck on my nipples and sleep.
Caroline kept staring at him. “He’s the spitting image of Ethan when he was that age.” Her voice cracked as if she were about to cry.
How could she tell? Babies all looked the same at two months.
I allowed a little time for her to watch him. When Cian opened his eyes and smiled, her mouth curled warmly. That was the first smile from her I’d ever seen.
“Can I hold him?”
