Impossible To Forget, page 13
And Angie decided that she was right. Life wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t bad, either. Unless you were Princess Di, of course.
21
THE NEW MILLENNIUM
2000
Angie lifted the little plastic stick and peered at the tiny window. One line for not pregnant. Two for . . .
Was it there? Could she see the faintest shadow of a thin blue line in the second window? She wouldn’t like to testify to its presence in court but, in her heart, she knew the answer with or without the line. She was closely enough in tune with her body’s energy to know when something was different, and this was most definitely different. Her heart rate was higher than usual and her breasts were sore for no reason that she could see. But even putting the meagre physical symptoms aside, Angie just knew that she was carrying a tiny little embryo inside her. She couldn’t explain why, but she was certain.
She examined the stick again. The second line was faint, there was no denying that, but it was most definitely there. She was pregnant.
Feeling slightly dazed, she began to wander around the flat, picking things up without purpose and then replacing them. Pregnant. With child. A bun in the oven. It didn’t matter which way you put it. In approximately eight months from now, all being well, she would be a mother. A mother!
The fact that she found herself here wasn’t a total surprise, however. She had stopped taking her pill a while ago. It had never sat well with her, pumping artificial hormones into her system. Taking it had begun as a matter of convenience around the time of the Newbury protests. Living up a tree was hard enough without having to worry about periods on top. Then she had met Jax and the pill had really come into its own. After that, continuing to take it had been more habit than anything else. But in recent years, as her interest in holistic healing had grown, she had become more uncomfortable with the idea of swallowing a chemical every day. And as she had sex so rarely, it hardly seemed necessary.
So, she had taken a chance, played fast and loose with Mother Nature; Russian roulette against the chances of everything being in alignment. And she had lost.
Or maybe she had won?
Angie would have been lying if she’d said that the chance of finding herself pregnant had not occurred to her. Of course, there was a risk that sex without contraception might lead her there. And yet she had proceeded exactly as before, making no attempt to reduce the risk, and this suggested to her that in her heart she thought a pregnancy would not be so disastrous. She was thirty-three years old and she had always fully intended to have a child at some point. It was just that that point had never arrived.
But it was here now, stomping down the street with a full ticker-tape parade and trumpets blaring. This was the moment when Angie Osborne was to meet her destiny and have her child.
She went to stand in front of the mirror and turned sideways, pulling her yoga pants down to her hips to reveal the place where the egg had lodged itself. There was nothing to see, no outward indication of the frantic multiplying and remultiplying of cells inside. She let her fingers trace across her skin with the lightest of touches, the wonder of it overwhelming her. It was like magic, an alchemy of sorts. From the least prepossessing components, her body had created a living thing. It was nothing short of miraculous.
A baby.
Jax. She would have to tell Jax and she knew that he would take a little longer to come round to the idea. Theirs was a very ‘in the moment’ kind of relationship, the future being something that rarely came up in conversation. They had floated happily from one encounter to the next as the years drifted on. From time to time, she had suggested that things might work better if they lived in the same county at least, even if not the same building. Her holistic health business was thriving and that tied her to York, but Jax moved from job to job as opportunities arose. He was, as he liked to tell her, location-independent, and yet there seemed to be a certain reluctance to head much further north than Birmingham.
‘Being apart is what keeps us together, babe,’ he had said the last time she suggested that he might want to look for something a little closer to her, and she had accepted that because she thought he probably had a point. There was a lot to be said for independence and Angie treasured hers. But if there was to be a baby? Well, that would change things, surely?
She wouldn’t tell him just yet, she decided. After all, it was very early days and she might set the cat amongst the pigeons for nothing. And they weren’t due to be seeing each other for a couple of months. He had only just been up to visit her – as her current state attested; this must be a Millennium Eve baby, or thereabouts, and January was barely two weeks in. There was no harm in keeping her news to herself for the time being, whilst she got her head around it.
Well, maybe not entirely to herself.
Later, after the last client of the day had gone home, Angie picked up the phone and dialled Maggie’s number.
‘Are you busy?’ she asked. ‘Do you fancy meeting up for a drink tonight? Or tomorrow?’
There was a slight hesitation before Maggie spoke that might have been interpreted as reluctance, but Angie knew was simply the sound of Maggie reconfiguring her plans for the evening.
‘That would be great. Usual place? Eight?’
They tried to meet once a month or so, although sometimes that stretched a little. Whilst Maggie had the fuller diary, it was actually Angie who cancelled the arrangement most often, usually because she was too tired after a day on her feet to make the trip back into town. Of course, Maggie would only cancel if the four horsemen of the apocalypse trit-trotted through her office, but then that was Maggie all over.
The ‘usual place’ was a wine bar on Goodramgate, more Maggie’s kind of place than Angie’s to be honest. It had a smug, self-satisfied air about it to Angie’s way of thinking, and seemed to be frequented by the type of people who wore a suit and tie to do their important job and then talked loudly about it in public. The stench of heady perfumes and aftershaves could sometimes be enough to floor a rhinoceros. Angie always made sure that she wore her brightest, least conventional outfits and then enjoyed the turned heads and elbow nudges as she made her way through the wall-to-wall Boss and Armani to join Maggie.
Maggie was there first – of course – and had already been to the bar. A crisp gin and tonic and a pint of snakebite sat on the table in front of her.
‘I assume that’s okay,’ she said as Angie sat down, nodding in the direction of the pint glass.
Angie looked at the glass, then back at Maggie and twisted her face.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Maggie, getting quickly to her feet. ‘I just assumed. I’ll go back to the bar. What do you want?’
‘A pint of orange juice?’ replied Angie.
‘Hungover?! On a Wednesday,’ said Maggie, but then she must have seen that she was wrong. ‘Oh my God! You’re pregnant!’
The routes that Maggie’s mind followed never failed to impress Angie. She would never have leapt so deftly to that conclusion. In fact, she doubted whether it would even have occurred to her. And yet Maggie had nailed her news in one shot. It was almost disappointing.
She nodded.
‘And . . . ?’ Maggie continued.
She was being asked whether this was a good thing or not, Angie understood. Here she was, not four hours since she had discovered the truth for herself and she was having to jump one way or the other.
But she found that this was not a difficult answer to give.
‘It’s good,’ she said, nodding as she spoke as if confirming the fact to herself. ‘Yes. Definitely good. A surprise – it’s most definitely a surprise – but a good one.’
Maggie beamed; a big broad smile that held nothing but joy at the news.
‘I’m delighted for you,’ she said. ‘Congratulations. Let me go and get you that orange juice and then you can tell me all about it.’
She returned a few minutes later with a pint glass full to the brim of orange juice, ice cubes clinking against the side as she put it down carefully on the table next to the abandoned snakebite. Angie thought that the snakebite actually looked far more appealing. She’d had a shock, after all. But she dismissed the thought. This could be the first of the very many sacrifices that would follow.
‘So?’ said Maggie. ‘Tell me everything.’
‘Not much to tell. I did a test this afternoon and that’s pretty much it.’
‘And what did Jax say? I assume it is Jax’s?’
Maggie knew about Jax now, although she had never met him. He wasn’t the kind of partner that you paraded at a dinner party, and their time together was so rare that Angie guarded it preciously.
She stretched her face into a look of mock horror. ‘What are you saying?’ she said.
‘Okay.’ Maggie smiled. ‘But it’s always best not to make any assumptions. So, what did he say? Is he pleased too?’
Angie scratched at her dreadlocks. ‘He doesn’t know yet. In fact, no one knows but you and me.’
The look of flattered delight that appeared on Maggie’s face touched Angie’s heart. But then Maggie returned to her pragmatic self.
‘How come?’ she asked. ‘Are you worried he won’t be as pleased as you are?’
‘It doesn’t really matter what he thinks,’ replied Angie, a tinge of defiance in her voice. ‘It’s my body.’
‘Yes, obviously,’ said Maggie. ‘But it’s his baby. He has a right to be consulted.’
‘And I’m not saying that I won’t tell him. I’m just saying not yet. I’m barely four weeks pregnant. There’s no harm in keeping it to myself, and you,’ she added, ‘for a couple more weeks whilst I think through all the implications.’
Maggie gave a little nod in recognition of the validity of the point.
‘And how do you think he’ll react?’ she asked.
Without having met him, Maggie had no way of predicting this for herself, Angie realised. Then again, Angie wasn’t entirely sure she could call it, either.
‘I think he’ll be shocked at first,’ she replied. ‘But then I think he’ll like the idea.’
‘And if he doesn’t . . . ?’
Maggie always did this – asked the question that Angie would rather not know the answer to.
‘If he doesn’t then he can swivel,’ she said with more vitriol than she had expected. ‘But I think he’ll be okay with it.’
Maggie nodded, accepting this. ‘And what about you?’ she asked more gently. ‘How do you feel?’
‘I’m excited,’ Angie said. And as she said it, she realised that she really was.
‘Well, I have news too,’ said Maggie with a smile, ‘although it’s pretty paltry by comparison to yours.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Angie, taking a slurp of her drink and pulling a face as she tasted orange juice and not the alcohol that her brain had clearly been expecting.
‘I’ve been asked out. On an actual date,’ said Maggie, one eyebrow raised.
Maggie’s love life was quiet, to say the least. In all the time they had been friends, Angie had never known her go out with anyone for more than a couple months.
‘My life is my work,’ Maggie had said more than once. ‘When I’m busy there isn’t time for a relationship and when I’m quiet I just want to sleep to get ready for when I’m busy again.’
‘But don’t you get lonely?’ Angie had asked. She had stressed the last word, the question really being about the apparent lack of sex in Maggie’s life, but Maggie had batted the question away.
‘Not really. I have all I need.’
Angie wasn’t sure how this could be true. Then again, didn’t she survive for most of the time on her own, Jax only making the trip north every few months? She wasn’t pining away from lack of human touch. But then she knew that it was there for her, however infrequently. Angie had difficulty believing that Maggie was quite the island that she made herself out to be, and yet Maggie just kept proving her wrong.
‘Who’s the lucky bloke?’ Angie asked now.
Maggie’s cheeks bloomed and Angie grinned at her. Here they were, thirty-three years old and Maggie still blushed when she talked about boys. It was sweet really.
‘His name is Adam,’ Maggie said, ‘and he’s a pension lawyer. He lives near Thirsk and he has a golden retriever called Charlie.’
‘I hope he’s more interesting than he sounds,’ Angie said, laughing. ‘Pensions! Christ. Is he sexy?’
Maggie contemplated the question for a moment.
‘Define sexy,’ she replied eventually.
‘You know. Does your heart race when you see him? Does he make you want to pull him into the nearest stationery cupboard and bonk the arse off him?’
Maggie contemplated further.
‘No,’ she concluded. ‘But he is perfectly pleasant, and he doesn’t talk about pensions the whole time.’
‘Oh, well he sounds practically perfect,’ said Angie sarcastically.
Maggie gave her a stern look. ‘It’s just a dinner date, Ange. I’m not about to marry him.’
‘Bloody good job,’ said Angie. She let a beat go by and then she said, ‘Tiger rang last week. He’s in Andalucía, near Granada somewhere. He says the Alhambra is beautiful and that I need to get myself over there. Practical to the last, eh?’
Angie knew it was wicked of her to tag Tiger on to a conversation about sexy men, but she couldn’t help herself. She watched Maggie carefully for the reaction that she knew would come.
Maggie set her face into an expression of feigned indifference and said, ‘Oh? How is he?’
‘Same as ever,’ replied Angie. ‘The happy wanderer.’
Maggie nodded, and Angie let a pause punctuate the conversation. Maggie would never be drawn on her feelings for Tiger. Angie had thought it was something to do with not wanting to step on her toes, and she had tried more than once to make it clear that her own friendship with Tiger was almost totally platonic, but still Maggie kept her counsel.
‘Is Adam the Pensions Lawyer as sexy as Tiger the Nomad?’ she teased.
Maggie gave her a withering stare. ‘I’m sorry I mentioned Adam now,’ she said. ‘I shan’t next time and you’ll need to get your gossip fix from somewhere else.’
She was grinning.
22
Business was brisk at Angie’s wellness centre. As well as the reiki, she was now offering energy psychology and well-being coaching. She had also taken on a reflexologist, Kate, who she had met on a training course, and the pair of them had moved into premises off Fossgate and rebranded the place as Live Well. It was a world away from working out of her lounge. The centre had a little reception area and two treatment rooms, and there was even a tiny shower room that had been craftily shoehorned into what had once been a storage cupboard. Her clientele was growing all the time, and mainly by word of mouth, which Angie found very gratifying.
Of course, things would have to change when the baby was born, but Angie was certain that she could take the baby to work with her. Babies were small and portable, weren’t they? And they slept a lot. So, by reshuffling her hours a bit and maybe taking someone else on part-time, she could keep things ticking over until she was ready to go back full-time. She wasn’t fazed by what lay ahead. Like everything in her life, she would just make it up as she went along.
What was currently taking her attention were the difficulties that came with working through her constant nausea. Whilst she had been mercifully spared full morning sickness, the waves of low-level queasiness could come upon her at any minute, which she found just as stressful. She had tried ginger in all its forms – raw, crystallised, tea, and even just as a plain ginger snap – but it did little to quell the fear of constantly being on the brink of disaster. Acupuncture was also supposed to help, so she had booked herself an appointment with a practitioner that she knew. The results, she had to admit, were mixed, despite her strong desire for this to be the panacea she sought, but it had given her something else to focus on for a while. She had just been on the verge of having to tell Kate what was happening to her body and why she had caught her devouring a packet of salt and chemical-laced prawn cocktail crisps at eight in the morning, when the sickness finally lifted, and she began to feel more like herself. It was such a relief to feel normal again, and she congratulated herself on having made it through the first three months relatively unscathed.
But Jax still didn’t know.
Angie had told herself that this was because she wanted to tell him face to face and was waiting for his next visit before she broke the news. It was a perfectly reasonable stance to take, and so it had allowed her not to examine her motives too closely. The Easter holidays were almost upon them and Jax had managed to swing the bank holidays off, so he was planning to come north for a long weekend. Angie’s excitement at seeing him was barely tainted by the apprehension of how he might react to their news. The longer she had to get used to the idea of the baby herself, the stronger her conviction that Jax would be fine with it. There was even the tiniest hint of a bump now for him to relate to. How could he not fall in love with the idea when he could rest his hand on his growing child?
And if he didn’t? Well, that no longer mattered that much. Angie had moved beyond those concerns. She was happy. If he was too, then that was perfect, but if not, she would just manage without him. She was under no illusion that he would up sticks and move to Yorkshire, and so whatever he said, she knew that she would be pretty much on her own anyway.
When he rang the doorbell on Good Friday and she bounded down to open it, it took him less than a minute to realise what had happened. Something about the look on her face, perhaps, her glowing skin, her serenity. Whatever it was, Jax could see it in her straight away.
He looked into her eyes, holding her gaze a moment longer than he might have otherwise, and then let his eyes drop to her stomach.
‘How did that happen, then?’ he asked.
She thought his tone suggested curiosity rather than anger, but she had been hoping for a more enthusiastic response to her revelation. Angie held her breath, ready to defend herself and her unborn child, but hoping that she wouldn’t have to.
