Seven Days of Us(78)
“So is she all right?” Emma interrupted. “What was it? Just a nasty tummy bug?”
“Not exactly. Why don’t you speak to her—she’s right here. I’m going to put you on loudspeaker. She has an IV in her hand.”
He put the phone on the bedside table near Olivia’s face. Her skin was still waxy, but she was smiling.
“Mum?” she said.
“Wivvy! Darling!” came Emma’s voice, muffled. “How are you? What was it?”
“Well, actually I’m, um, I’m pregnant, Mum,” said Olivia. She looked at Jesse, her smile getting wider.
“Pregnant?”
“Yup. Seven weeks. But I honestly had no idea. I’d been feeling sick, but I thought—I mean I didn’t even think of that. I thought I hadn’t got my period because I’d lost weight. It’s happened like that before, and it always comes back when I put the weight back—”
“And it’s, it’s Sean’s presumably?” Emma butted in.
“Of course!” Olivia said, almost laughing. “I’m not that stupid! Jesse said you knew about us. Me and Sean. I know it was a bit . . .”
“Oh, sweetheart. Yes, we did know, we did. But all’s well that ends well. What happy news.”
She was being very cool about it, thought Jesse, considering all they really knew of Sean was that he’d gotten Haag. But Olivia had told him a bunch of stuff about Sean that afternoon, and he sounded incredible.
“And the baby, will it be OK after this morning?” said Emma.
“Yeah, they did an ultrasound in prenatal, and it all looks fine. But it’s still early.” Olivia stopped for a second and then said, “They found a heartbeat,” and her face crumpled into a half-laughing, half-crying grimace, as she tried to say, “Sorry, I think it’s the hormones.”
So that’s what she looks like when she feels something, thought Jesse.
Phoebe
THE KITCHEN, 34 GLOUCESTER TERRACE, CAMDEN, 5:15 P.M.
? ? ?
Olivia was passed around them all. Her mother kept saying, “Oh, Wiv!” before passing the phone to her father, who just said, “Congratulations, old girl,” in his funny, stiff way, and then turned round, away from Phoebe and Emma, to face the window. Phoebe spoke to Olivia last, taking the phone out of the kitchen so their parents couldn’t hear.
“Thanks for stealing my jilted-at-the-altar thunder,” she said, knowing her sister wouldn’t be into squeals.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” said Olivia. “Fainting seemed to be the only option, with all your drama.” She sounded different—her voice was weak, but it had a new brightness.
“God, Liv, it was so stressful! How do you work in a hospital every day? You were like the one person who’d know what to do, and you were lying there being no bloody use!”
“Well, Jesse was there. Seems like he handled it pretty well.”
“True, take bac—” she said, before remembering she was on speaker and chirping: “Shout out to Jesse!” instead. Cringe. “So anyway, you’re pregnant!” she plowed on.
“Yup. I’m that idiot you read about that has no idea.”
“And you’re a doctor! Did you genuinely not realize? Just ’cause you’re such a skinny bitch?”
“I’m always irregular. And we used protection—obviously. If you must know.”
“Nothing’s one hundred percent! Didn’t you read Sugar and Bliss? To be sussed is a must but sex is, um . . .” She couldn’t remember the rest.
“No! I had better things to do. Anyway, it’s still early days. I’m just ‘a little bit pregnant,’ for now—OK?”
“Sure. Am I allowed to be ‘a little bit excited’ then?”
“OK.”
? ? ?
Olivia was to stay in overnight for observation, but Emma insisted Jesse stay at Gloucester Terrace until his flight on New Year’s Day. Yesterday, Phoebe would have been furious. But now it seemed natural—like it would be wrong for him to go anywhere else. Walking back from the corner shop, where she’d been sent for milk and eggs, she broke into a lollopy skip on her good foot. She bounced down the pavements, joyously hard after Weyfield’s muddy paths, buoyed at the sight of so many lighted windows, so many parked cars, so many people packed into one space. The wreath she’d hung on their door in early December had withered, and she yanked it off. Inside, she breathed the smell of the house, always more noticeable after a week away. It was like number 34’s own essence, its paint or its radiators or something, with a hint of Emma’s Chanel and Cocoa’s litter tray.
I’m going to be an aunt, she thought, hanging her coat on the Eames hooks. She could already see herself as Glamorous Auntie Phoebe, a kind of gift-strewing fairy godmother. She’d always assumed she’d be the first to have babies, while Olivia traveled the world. But this way round felt right, after all.
The doorbell rang right behind her—it was a rumpled-looking Jesse.
“The hero of the hour!” said Andrew.
“Where’s the taxi? Did you have enough cash?” said Emma.
“I took the Tube,” he said, pronouncing it “toob.” “I wanted to see the real London. And I got dinner. I figured you’d be craving Japanese after Norfolk. Don’t worry, it’s not all vegan,” he said, holding up an Itsu bag, as if he’d read Phoebe’s mind. She hadn’t really felt like the omelet her mother had suggested.