‘Of course I am,’ she’d said, coming back to the table with two glasses of wine.
She had been about to breathe a sigh of relief when her mum had added, ‘I’ll buy a gun. Right, go on, love.’
Keli had never felt the need for wine more, but she’d left it on the table, an ironic foreshadow of the next part of the story.
After a deep breath, she had fast-forwarded to this morning, to the text from Laurie, then the phone call, then recalled in as much detail as possible the meeting with Laurie and their conversation. Every emotion – horror, sympathy, anger, disgust, love – had crossed Gilda’s face at some point in the revelations.
‘And that’s where we left it,’ she’d finished up the Laurie chapter of the story. ‘So, if she calls, then I might have to dash out, Mum.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ her mum had declared, puffing her cheeks out, absolutely furious. ‘I want to see the look on that man’s face when I tell him exactly what I think of him.’
‘Did you not bring us up to fight our own battles?’ Keli had chided her. ‘I can do this, Mum. Trust me. It’s just… well… my… my…’ Oh damn, she couldn’t say it. The words just wouldn’t come out, no matter how she’d tried to force them.
‘Your period is late,’ Gilda had sighed, as she’d reached across to push Keli’s hair off her astonished face.
The struggle to speak had become even tougher and it had taken her a moment to stutter out, ‘H-how did you know that?’
Gilda had reached for her hand and had looked at her with such kindness and concern that Keli had almost crumbled. ‘Because I’m your mother and I know you, my love. And that’s the only thing that could put that expression of sheer terror on your face. That, and the fact that you haven’t touched that wine. I take it you haven’t done a test? You’ll need to drive, because I’veknocked back half a glass, but let’s go right now to Asda and get one.’
‘No, Mum, it’s okay, I have one in my bag. That’s the thing I mentioned that I have to do. I’ve been putting it off for a week, but Yvie persuaded me to buy it this morning.’
Her mum had pushed the wine away, got up from the table and gestured to the stairs that led to the main bathroom upstairs. There was a small cloakroom in the downstairs hall, but it was so tiny that Keli struggled to get her jeggings up without bruising her elbows, so it was no place to struggle with the intricacies of a pregnancy test. ‘Then let’s go, Keli Clark, because we can’t start figuring out what we’re going to do if we don’t know what we’re dealing with.’
Choked with emotion and gratitude, Keli had risen from her chair, leaned over and wrapped her arms around her mum’s shoulders. ‘In case I’m too busy falling apart after this, I just want to tell you I love you, Mum.’
‘I love you too, my darling. Now go do that test, bring it back down, and I’ll be right here ready to panic with you while we wait for the results.’
It was the push, or the comfort, or the ‘all out of reasons to delay’ that she needed. She’d gone upstairs and, with shaking hands, somehow managed to pee on target, and then replaced the cap and come back downstairs, holding it out in front of her like it was high-grade plutonium that could blow a crater in the earth’s crust at any second.
She’d put it down on the kitchen table two minutes ago and now, that’s where they were, staring at it, waiting for the verdict to appear.
Keli lost her nerve, closed her eyes, prayed to the gods of the pregnancy test to make this one negative.
‘Keli…’
Her mum’s voice, but she couldn’t interpret the tone. Good or bad?
‘Keli, you have to look.’
Still no clue. And still not opening her eyes, because it struck her that she hadn’t given any proper thought to what she would do if it were positive. How would she work? How would she manage childcare and support a baby on her wages, and… She blocked herself from going any further down that baby rabbit hole.
Tress had managed to be a great mum to Buddy despite so much more adversity. Keli had her mum and dad, she had Noah, her other siblings, she had Yvie and she had Tress. She could do this. She could. So it was time to put her big-girl pants on and just look at the damn test.
She opened her eyes, narrowed in on the little box that showed the result.
‘Oh Mum…’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know what to say. Is it definitely right?’
‘Well, love, I’m not one hundred per cent sure, but you’re the nurse. Isn’t this supposed to be your area of expertise?’
Keli shook her head. ‘I’ve never come across a seventy-year-old who required a pregnancy test.’
‘It’s right. It has to be right. Doesn’t it?’
For the first time, a smile began to play on her lips, as she held the test up, peered at it again, read the words in the box. NOT PREGNANT.
‘I think you might find the late period and the nausea were caused by the stress of this man… what was the word you used?’
‘Ghosting me.’
