JANUARY 2013
24.
KATE
Istand in the toilet cubicle on the Savannah ward of the children’s hospital where I’ve been working again since after Christmas, and my jaw drops open in a mixture of shock and utter disbelief.
‘Kate, are you all right in there, love?’ shouts Molly, one of my fellow nurses in her friendly, rounded Yorkshire accent. ‘You’ve been in a while. Just checking you’re still alive.’
She chuckles as she says it, which makes me wonder what she would do if I didn’t answer, but this is no time for jokes or silliness. It’s the third anniversary this week of David’s return from Haiti and, after giving him a present in appreciation for all he has done for me with Silent Steps (a pair of white and green Nike trainers he’s been harping on about for weeks since he spotted them before Christmas), we enjoyed a delicious dinner prepared by my own fair hands. Now, I can’t believe that when I get home later I will be able to give him another present that will most certainly be the icing on the cake.
I’m pregnant.
I’mactuallypregnant.
I stare at the two blue lines, I shake the stick and blink my eyes three times, but no matter how many times I look away and then look back again, the two lines glare up at me. I put my hand on my tummy and breathe as I imagine the very tiny life that flutters inside me.
‘I’ll just be a second,’ I shout to Molly, resisting the urge to blurt out my most wonderful news, but there’s no way I’m telling anyone, as difficult as it might be to keep secret, until I tell David first. I’ve two more hours left on this shift and, as the snow falls outside, I know it’s going to take every ounce of patience I have in my body to resist the urge to phone him before I get home and spit out the news.
Christmas was truly wonderful, if very surreal, as we sat around the huge dining table at Old Rectory Manor, just as my father had hoped would happen one day, and enjoyed a magnificent dinner prepared by Martha. I couldn’t help but think of him every step of the way.
‘It’s a bloody mansion!’ Mo said when the old reverend was just about out of earshot. ‘I’ve never been in a house like this! Do you think you and David will inherit it?’
‘Mo!’ I exclaimed to her. ‘Thank goodness he is hard of hearing and not as sharp as he used to be! If he heard you swearing within these walls, he’d crock it!’
‘He looks like he might crock at any given moment,’ whispered Shannon. ‘He doesn’t say much, does he?’
‘You’ve no idea,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘Don’t knock it.’
The whole afternoon passed by without any hiccups, and I was delighted to hear my mum and Martha laugh and plan to meet up in the New Year when they discovered a shared passion for reading, even pledging to start up a book club for some of their friends.
‘I can feel your dad is here with us in some way,’ David said to me as we washed up after dinner. ‘Do you? Or am I becoming spiritual in my old age, now that my father isn’t fit to tell me I should be?’
‘I feel him, yes, for sure,’ I told him, and now as I put the lid on the pregnancy test, wrap it in tissue paper, put it back in the box and into my handbag so I can show David later as proof of our impending parenthood, I can’t help but think of my dad again and how he’d have loved to have been a grandfather.
‘Are you happy, my girl?’ I hear him saying, and before I leave this cubicle, I close my eyes for a moment and imagine myself replying.
‘I’m happy, Daddy,’ I say to him in my mind. ‘I’m happy in here and in here.’
I point to my head and then to my heart.
‘Then I’m happy too,’ he says, and his image disappears back into my memory.
I pull myself together, wash my hands, and go back out onto the ward where a 10-year-old congenital heart disease patient called Missy is ruling the roost on the ward andkeeping us all entertained with her rendition of ‘Gangnam Style’. There’s never a dull moment on this ward, through smiles and tears, and that’s how I like it.
DAVID
I take my time to set the table for dinner, placing everything perfectly as the smell of roast beef wafts from the oven. It’s Sunday, my favourite day of the week believe it or not, because it’s the day that Kate and I have learned to kick back and relax, eat a hearty lunch at leisure, drink some wine, watch some old movies and spend time loving each other. Since she moved back here to England a few weeks ago to start her job, having tied up all her loose ends back home, we’ve had so much to make up for and also so much to plan for.
‘You’ll have to propose to me all over again,’ she joked one day when she put her engagement ring in her jewellery box before she left for her shift at the hospital.
‘That’s no problem at all,’ I told her. ‘I might take my time on that one.’
She playfully rolled her eyes, but the cogs of my mind were already spinning and now today, which I’ve calculated as three years to the day when I returned home from Haiti, is a good day for us to officially start all over again.
If I can time it properly and leave the apartment now, I’ll be able to meet her after her shift at the hospital, where Iplan to surprise her with the ring in its original box and a chocolate-box proposal in the snow followed by a delicious lunch at home, just the two of us.
I check the oven as the roast beef cooks low and slow, put on my coat, and set out into the chilly January afternoon.
