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‘Well, I’ll look out for you when I’m next over on Arran. Bye for now, love.’
‘Goodbye and have a lovely time with your grandchildren.’
‘Indeed, I will,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a bag full of illicit goods with me — chocolate and crisps. My daughter-in-law will do her nut.’
‘That’s what grannies are for. They’re lucky to have you.’ It was only as the train pulled away from the station that she realized that if she ever had kids then her mum wouldn’t be there to be their gran. This homecoming was going to be so bittersweet.
Chapter Fifteen
After the doctor’s appointment, Emma had staggered home in shock not quite sure what to do with herself. In a trance she had gone into the kitchen and pulled out flour, sugar, margarine and eggs and baked a cake. She could barely even remember mixing the ingredients together. But as she looked at the buttercream icing in the bowl, she frowned. It had turned grainy. She sighed, annoyed that she hadn’t made it properly despite sifting the icing sugar. Maybe she should have softened the butter more?
Or maybe she should just have made date and walnut loaf instead? Her mum told her the secret of making it work was to toss the chopped dates in flour, so they didn’t sink to the bottom of the tin. She scraped the icing into the food bin and frantically searched the cupboards for walnuts. Of course, there were none. Why would there be? She couldn’t remember the last time she had baked a loaf, never mind a cake. She tipped that into the bin as well. Max would think she had lost the plot if he came home and found their flat had turned into an artisan baker’s.
Baking used to be her go-to therapy and she always smiled when she was in the process of making cakes, but now it felt like a disaster. Anyway, what on earth was she doing at home on a busy workday when she should be in the office trying to clear her desk?
She sat down at the breakfast bar suddenly feeling light-headed. Then she grabbed her phone and started scrolling through a parenting site.
‘Am I too old to be having my baby at forty?’someone had asked.
Emma glanced over the replies:‘No! Not at all! I had my first at thirty-nine and had baby number two at forty-three!’The next response was,‘There are loads of women all over the world having babies after thirty-nine! Age is just a number!!’
The amount of exclamation marks used in the discussions started to annoy her. It made all the comments seem a bit frivolous as if they were talking about something superficial.
‘I had my baby at forty-one. I was really stressed about being old, but she keeps me young!’Then there was,‘Hilary Swank was pregnant at 48!’
Feeling momentarily relieved, she closed the site down and slid her phone across the counter. Maybe she was jumping the gun and blowing things completely out of proportion. She wasn’t definitely in the early menopause so she should hang fire until she had more details and more tests had been done.
Max was in Aberdeen on an urgent case, and she felt a pang of loneliness. How she longed to speak to him. Her mind went full circle at a hurtling pace. How could she just have a casual chat right now? How could she possibly tell her husband-to-be that she may be in the bloody early menopause? She grabbed her phone again and typed into the search bar ‘Is menopause at 38 normal?’There were over thirteen million results.
Menopause before the age of forty is called premature menopause. Approximately one per cent of women have early menopause. You’re not alone . . .
Except she was alone. She wished she could talk to her mum. She would know what to say and do. This was Emma’s own fault. She should have been to see the doctor about this much earlier rather than burying herself in work. She’d had an inkling something was wrong for ages but had ignored it, telling herself that she was simply having cold feet about the wedding.
On some level, she must have known the doctor was going to tell her bad news. That was why she couldn’t let herself get too excited about the wedding. She knew if she did, that would jinx it. Anyway, maybe once she told Max the truth there wouldn’t be a wedding. She curled up on the sofa and reached for the picture of her and Mum in the snow-covered garden of Meadowbank Cottage.
That winter had been awful and there’d been a huge snow dump that cut the islanders off from the mainland. Emma had been home to visit for the weekend and ended up staying almost two weeks. She remembered that time with her mum with great fondness as it had been when they had a chance to bond over food.
Jean always said good food was fundamental in life. She took great satisfaction in home cooking using ingredients that Dad grew in the back garden. Although he tended to be the cook, Jean did love making soup with his vegetables. She made carrot soup, leek and potato soup, fruit crumbles using apples, berries and rhubarb. There were also supplies of kale, green beans and broccoli. Jean’s thinking was that if they were cut off from the mainland due to the weather and ferries were unable to make deliveries then they should be able to be self-sufficient for a while.
There were always plenty of tins in the cupboard and vegetables in the freezer. She always made loads of jam and chutneys and baked their own bread, so they never went hungry. Even when they lost power that year and the island was blacked out, they managed with their camping stove and candles. Many of their neighbours were left completely without heat and lighting and cooking facilities.
Emma and her parents mucked in with the rest of the community and made sure they did what they could to help. With roads impassable, helicopters they had even ended up delivering blankets and flasks to islanders. Something she definitely hadn’t told Ruth! But it was a reminder of the strong community they lived in.
She’d enjoyed life in Edinburgh but now was definitely getting restless; work was all so focused on money and budgets and hourly rates and sad stories. She and Max earned good salaries but rarely had the time to spend their earnings as work took over their lives. Now she wondered what it had all been for. Although she had never been in a desperate rush to have children, she realized she had taken it for granted that it would just happen. Now that she had been told it might not happen, she felt as though she’d been punched in the gut.
And she had to figure out how and when to tell Max.
She tried to convince herself that he would understand. This was Max after all. He knew whenever she was out of sorts, and something was bothering her.
Just then her phone began to ring. It was Max. She snatched it off the counter.
‘Hello,’ she said, feeling a flutter inside her stomach.
‘Hello, beautiful. How are you?’
‘I’m good,’ she lied. ‘I was just thinking about you. How are you?’
He hesitated. ‘Well things are taking longer here than I thought.’
