Xian made moves to go and Ella took the cue. ‘Okay then, well, we’ll have to see what I can do with Jill. I'm really not sure I’m promising anything.’
A few minutes later, Xian and Holly were pulling away in the Range Rover. Nina and Ella got back into Ella’s car.
Ella let out a whoosh of air and raised her eyebrows. ‘They were full of surprises.’
‘Told you.’
‘Umm, what was going on with that hip flask?’
Nina laughed out loud. ‘I wondered if you’d spot that.’
‘How could I not? The woman must be half-cut all the time. Gold.’
‘What do you think their chances are of actually buying?’
Ella pondered for a moment, ‘I’m not sure, but they do seem serious. And they have the means, which is always a good start.’
Nina smiled, looking back at the hotel. ‘Maybe The Summer Hotel is about to start a new chapter after all.’
33
It had been a month or so since Nina had returned from Bangkok. After taking off more time than she had first anticipated and juggling her commitments, she was on her first day back. She wasn’t coughing much, the muscle pains were no longer around, her chest now felt fine-ish, and the headaches had gone, but she hadn’tfullyrecovered. This was mostly because she was still monumentally tired, even when she’d spent most of the day doing nothing much at all.
She’d even spoken about the unrelenting tiredness to Birdie when she’d been helping out in the back of the chemist for a couple of hours to get her out of the house. Birdie had raised her eyebrows and told her that it was normal to feel exhausted after a bad case of influenza. Birdie had also reiterated how real, bona fide flu was not a common cold and that it often took a good three months for the body to fully recover. Nina had taken it on the chin and continued not to do much at all.
She was now, though, back at work, albeit part-time. She’d decided to get back to work for a few reasons; one, she was bored out of her brain, and two, having to keep pushing clients back wasn’t doing much good for her small business. She was working in a huge house not far from The Summer Hotel, clearing out thecupboards in a spare room. The job was a big one. Every room in the house needed to be decluttered and cleared out, ready for it to be styled for sale. She’d thought she’d seen it all, but this job had come with the owner’s clear case of consumerism and overspending hidden in just about every nook and cranny of the place.
Nina lifted a bag full of junk from the spare room and took it down the stairs, through the integral garage and around to the area where the owner had told her to stack things to go to the dump. Going back into the house, she walked around, assessing what to do next. The four bathrooms were all in a poor state and packed to the rafters with toiletries, cleaning products, and all sorts. With cleaners booked in, she made her way to the bathroom off the main bedroom, determined to get stuck in.
Flicking the downlights on, she twisted the switch to turn them up to full and as the bathroom flooded with light, she stood with her hands on her hips, wondering where to start. It wasn’t often that Nina was stumped, but there were all sorts of things in the bathroom she had never come across before. She shook her head at the amount of products and packaging everywhere. Never had she seen such an insane amount of products. She looked around and shook her head; more skincare and little jars of things than she’d ever laid eyes on in one room, many bottles of shampoo, discarded LED masks, deodorant in every shape and form, skin cleaning gadgets, half-opened cans of shaving cream, piles of flannels, and to top it all off loads of cleaning products that definitely looked as if they had never been used.
A few hours or so later, Nina was finally making some progress in the bathroom. As she’d got stuck in it had dawned on her that not only was the place full of clutter, but it was also filthy. As she’d cleared and sorted, she’d wondered about how, in her job, you never knew how people lived behind closed doors but you soon found out. The woman who owned the houseappeared to be a high-flying go-getter at the top of her game. Inside her house, however, it was a whole different scenario altogether.
After clearing out the built-in cupboard beside the bath and finding multiple packets of business shirts still in their packaging, little skin gadgets that claimed to give their owner a new lease of life, and thirty-seven bath bombs, Nina closed the door, went down to the garden with a black sack, and went back up, wondering what she’d find next.
Deciding to tackle the cupboard under the sink, she pulled open the door and shook her head at more clutter. After counting six different bags of Epsom salts, teeth whitening kits by the dozen, and hundreds of unused toilet rolls wrapped in their own little paper casings, she was getting towards the back. Again, she was surprised; pregnancy tests and many of them. She raised her eyebrows and wondered how long they’d been there. Scooping them onto the bathroom floor, she methodically went through the boxes, looking at the expiry dates, and one by one, threw them into the box for the bin.
Then something strange happened. Nina Lavendar found herself pulling out a little packet, ripping it open, and following the instructions. What in the world was she doing? She washed her hands, stared out the window, and waited. She looked down and there was a frown. Must be wrong. She checked the side of the packet again. Yes, long out of date. She tossed the test into the bin, rummaged around at the back of the cupboard, pulled out another box and did exactly the same again. She opened the second box, waited, shook her head, and dropped the stick as she saw the result in the window again. Both tests had the requisite positive little lines in the correct windows. Despite what was in front of her eyes, she simply didn’t believe either of them. The sensible part of her brain questioned the reliability of the expired pregnancy tests. There was no way she couldbe pregnant, could she? She didn’t feel anything. She hadn’t even thought about it apart from being sad that it might never happen. She hadn’t really been practising. It hadn’t been top of her agenda. All she’d done was stare at sleepy newborns on Instagram with gigantic bows on their heads.
Putting both of the tests back in the boxes, she washed her hands again and then went and put them in her handbag. As she continued to finish off decluttering the bathroom, she didn’t really know what to think. She kept wrinkling her nose and shaking her head as her mind mulled over whether or not the testscouldbe correct.
The more she mused and assessed her brain flip-flopped back and forth. As she sorted through the vanity over the sink and threw things out, she reasoned that, technically, shecouldbe pregnant. However, because of the Thailand trip and influenza, she hadn’t even really taken much notice of that side of things at all. Getting pregnant had been put to the side and it hadn’t been part of her radar since the flu in Thailand. On top of that, she’d been so determined not to let her fertility, or lack thereof, rule her life that she’d forced herself to put it to the back of her mind.
Now, back at work, it was definitely front and centre. She kept going over the two little lines again and again, thinking that, bizarrely, both of them were incorrect. By the end of the afternoon, when she was ready to go home, she’d convinced herself that the tests were completely and utterly wrong and that there was no way that she could be pregnant. She’d been stupid to even do the tests in the first place.
Nina had driven home in a bit of a tizzy, not really sure what to think about the results of the two out-of-date tests. Despite having convinced herself that she wanted a baby more than anything else, now that the possibility had seemingly arrived, she wasn’t sure how she felt. She did know that she felt as if someone had picked her up by her waist, held her upside down, and given her a jolly good shake. As she drove back towards the house, she felt as if she was in a complete and utter daze.
She was so distracted by the possibility of being pregnant that she found herself pulling over to the side of the road in Lovely Bay and gathering herself for a bit. She just stared out the window, watching a man in a white cycling helmet start to cycle up the hill, a black fancy Porsche sports car whizzing past way too fast, and a woman in white jeans and a beige top walking along with her shopping in her arms. She just sat there, staring, letting the traffic flow by her. Car after car after car, nearly all of them white, grey, or black. The cars streamed past on their way to the crossroads in front of her, all in a line on their way towards Lovely Bay as she thought about the tests.
She kept wondering what was next. She didn’t really know what to do. She undid her trousers and looked at her tummy for ages. She felt inside her bra. She pulled the rearview mirror down, opened her mouth, and stuck out her tongue. Nothing to be seen. She didn’t know whether to say anything to Robby or not.
Just as she was thinking that she would stop fannying around and would go home, do another test that would show her that she wasn’t pregnant, Robby’s name lit up the dashboard. She pressed the button on the steering wheel, and his voice filled the car.
‘Hey, how are you? What’s happening? How was the house, how tired are you after putting in all that work?’
Nina shook her head; if only he knew how tired she was. If only he knew what she now appeared to. She heard herself saying that she was okay when, really, she was far from it. As she answered Robby’s questions about her day, a penny dropped. Everything now made sense; theincessanttiredness that she’d thought was the remaining remnants of the flu was clearly nothing of the sort. She shook her head as she chatted to Robby and thought to herself that she didn't have any other pregnancy symptoms. Nothing. Not a sausage. She’d read so many possible symptoms, but she’d had nothing at all apart from the exhaustion.
She tuned back into the conversation with Robby. ‘What do you fancy for dinner tonight?’ he asked. Nina shook her head; dinner was the last of her worries. She didn’t give a hoot. ‘Yeah, don’t mind, really. Up to you.’