The Half Sister(69)
‘I can do what the hell I like,’ barks Kate as she storms around the bedroom, throwing things she doesn’t need into her oversized handbag.
‘I won’t let you do this,’ says Matt. ‘I won’t let you ruin this moment, because we will never get this time back again and we’ll regret it for the rest of our lives.’
‘Well you should have thought about that . . .’
‘Please Kate,’ Matt begs, taking hold of her arm. ‘I’ve driven through the night to make sure I could get to the hospital in time.’
She shakes him off as she heads for the door.
‘Please, don’t do this. Let me come with you.’
‘No,’ she chokes.
It feels as if she might break in two as she slams the door shut.
33
Kate
As soon as Dr Williams sees her, his smile dissipates and he looks around, confused.
‘No Matt?’ he asks, clearly surprised. Him and her both. If someone had told her a month ago she’d be attending this scan on her own, she would have laughed in their face. It wouldn’t have seemed remotely possible – not after everything she and Matt had gone through to get here. But that was before Jess turned up.
For some reason, Kate feels obliged to pretend to Dr Williams that everything is fine and dandy in her world. As if, in not doing so, she would be letting him and his team down. They’d all worked so hard to get her pregnant, having been convinced that she and Matt as a couple were worthy of their time and expertise, that she couldn’t bear to tell him that they weren’t.
‘Something came up at work,’ she says, furiously batting away the tears that are so close to falling.
He looks shocked and Kate feels immediately guilty, though she can’t determine whether it’s on behalf of the doctor or Matt.
‘Knowing Matt, I presume it must be extremely important, as I can’t imagine he’d miss this for all the tea in China.’
Kate smiles tightly.
‘Anyway, it can’t be helped,’ he says.
A sense of unease swirls in the pit of her stomach, as she remembers Matt’s words. We will never get this time back again and we’ll regret it for the rest of our lives.
‘Are you excited?’ he asks, as he leads her down the corridor towards the by-now-familiar ultrasound suite.
I was, she thinks. More than you could ever know, but without Matt, it suddenly seems futile, as if none of it is really very important anymore.
‘Of course,’ she says instead. ‘I can’t wait.’
He smiles broadly. ‘Okay, so you know the form.’
Kate slips off her ballet pumps as he rolls a sheet of what looks like oversized kitchen towel down the length of the narrow bed.
‘Make yourself comfortable and we’ll see what’s going on in there.’
He dims the lights as Kate lies down and her hand veers to her side, where it’s normally clutched tightly by Matt. But today it just falls listlessly into the abyss before she places it down on the bed. A single tear runs into her ear.
‘So how have you been feeling?’ asks Dr Williams.
‘Emotional,’ says Kate, honestly.
‘Ah, that is a universal symptom, I’m afraid,’ the doctor laughs. ‘And how’s your diet? Are you eating any better?’
‘Not as well as I’d like,’ comes a breathless voice.
‘Ah, you made it!’ says Dr Williams, through a wide grin. ‘Just in time.’
Matt immediately takes Kate’s hand in his. It feels warm and reassuring – her safe place in a storm – the very thing she needs most right now. He looks down and smiles at her. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,’ he says.
‘Thank you,’ mouths Kate, and Matt catches another tear that escapes towards her hairline before kissing her forehead.
‘Okay, so there’s baby,’ says Dr Williams, as a beating heartbeat reverberates around the room.
Matt’s face crumples as Kate looks up at him and in that moment, she knows that no matter what, they’ll find a way to get through this together. Because now there is so much more at stake than just him and her.
‘Have you got time for a coffee?’ Matt asks tentatively, as they step out into the sunshine afterwards.
Kate looks at her watch. She doesn’t know whether she wishes she did or not.
‘I promised I’d pop to Mum’s,’ she says. ‘Lauren’s meeting me there.’
‘Is it about . . .?’
She nods, neither of them needing him to finish the sentence.
‘Okay, but we obviously need to talk,’ says Matt. ‘Shall we catch up later? If it stays like this, maybe you can get off work early and we can go up to Greenwich Park.’
Kate smiles at the thought. They’ve always enjoyed lazy Sundays there, lying on a blanket, looking down on the ever-changing city they love. Kate can picture her head resting in Matt’s lap as he runs his hand over her swollen belly – the two of them excitedly talking through their birth plan.
They’d not really had conversations like that, not since the very beginning, when they’d naively thought that they’d get pregnant immediately. Though they probably wouldn’t be having conversations like that tonight either, as there were more pressing issues that needed to be discussed.