Five Winters(94)

She arrived, breathless and emotional. “You just had to upstage me, didn’t you?” she joked. “Couldn’t help yourself.”

“Sorry,” I said, sniffing to try and hold back the tears.

She hugged me, and I did my very best not to get snot down the embroidered beading of her bodice.

“I can’t believe you’re going to do this huge thing without me,” she said, sniffing herself.

“You just did a huge thing without me,” I reminded her. “Congratulations, kiddo.” Then a fresh wave of pain gripped me, and I cried out.

Rosie backed off sharply. “What are you waiting for?” she asked her brother. “Get my best friend to hospital pronto!”

Being laid-back was kind of Mark’s trademark—the reason for the success of his first term as a qualified maths teacher. But I doubted whether his students would have recognised this version of him as we made our way to the hospital. The nostril-flaring, wide-eyed, hand-on-the-horn, sweating man in the driver’s seat beside me wasn’t the cool, wisecracking, make-maths-interesting-for-everyone man they were used to. Hell, he wasn’t the man I was used to.

But he was the only one I’d got to get me to the hospital safely.

“Please, Mark, can you slow down a bit?” I said. “I don’t want to puke on top of everything else. I’m sure we’ll get there in plenty of time.”

“Sorry. Yes, okay.”

For about a millisecond Mark drove at the speed limit. But then I had another contraction and couldn’t help crying out.

“Jesus,” Mark said, pressing down even harder on the accelerator.

We were almost there when the traffic came to a complete standstill. A bus had stopped at a bus stop on the other side of the road, and a fleet of taxis was parked outside a restaurant on our side, blocking the road. Absolutely nothing could get past in either direction.

“Come on!” shouted Mark, hooting just as a group of what looked like drunken work colleagues—all wearing Santa hats—congaed out of the restaurant, kicking first their left legs and then their right, singing and screaming at the top of their voices.

“Buffoons!” shrieked Mark hysterically, but I burst out laughing. Especially when I caught sight of two of the Santas locked in a passionate embrace they were bound to regret when they went back to work in the morning.

Mark was oblivious. “Why do all the significant events of my life happen at Christmas?” he lamented.

I had no answer for him to that, but fortunately, the bus pulled away from the stop just then, and we were back on our way.

At the hospital, there was a wheelchair bay in the car park, which was just as well because the car park was packed, and we had to leave the car a long way from the entrance. Mark nabbed a wheelchair. I sat in it, and we set off like a steam train. But just before we reached the entrance, I spotted a familiar face on her way out of the building. It was Clare, the social worker. And she was carrying . . . a baby.

“Stop!” I yelled to Mark.

“What d’you mean?” he asked, puffing onwards. “I hate to break it to you, but there’s no way to stop this thing now.”

Realising he was speaking about childbirth, not the wheelchair, I said it again. “Stop, Mark. Stop!”

He stopped. A matter of feet from Clare. I couldn’t take my eyes off that bundle in her arms.

“Clare. Hi.”

“Oh, hello, Beth.” Clare’s gaze swept over my baby bump and my hands clutching at it. “It looks as if congratulations might soon be in order.”

“Yes,” I said vaguely, aware of Mark pawing the ground like a stallion behind me. “This is my partner, Mark. Mark, this is Clare, my social worker.”

The baby was a girl. I could tell that from the pink hat and booties emerging from the white blanket she was swaddled in. She was fast asleep, her eyes and rosebud mouth closed. Completely perfect.

I could guess why Clare had her. Somewhere inside the hospital—possibly somewhere close to where I was about to end up—a woman had most likely just given birth. A woman deemed unsuitable to be a mother. Clare had just removed her child—very possibly right from her arms—and now she was taking her into care. Sometime soon, the baby would be adopted.

Another contraction arrived. I gasped and clutched my belly harder.

“Looks as if you’d better get inside,” Clare said. “I’m so glad it’s worked out for you, Beth.”

“Thank you,” I managed to grind out. Then Mark was pushing me through the doors, and Clare and the baby were gone.

I hadn’t expected to see Clare again after our last meeting. I’d hoped not to see her, in fact. Not because I had anything against her but because if I did see her, it would mean my fertility treatment had failed.

It had been so scary waiting for my final appointment with her. I’d made my decision, and I was confident fertility treatment was the right choice for me. But I still had to tell Clare about it, and the finality of speaking those words provoked a myriad of fretful questions in my mind. What if it didn’t work out? What if I had the treatment but didn’t get pregnant? Would I still be able to adopt? Or would my rejection of adoption now be a rejection of adoption forever?

All those weeks of scrutiny and questioning while Clare made up her mind whether I was right for adoption. She was hardly going to be impressed by someone who thought of adoption as a consolation prize, was she?