‘You said I’d ruin your life as well as mine if I didn’t get a handle on this thing.’ She had been clasped in his arms and he had moved her slightly to look down into her uplifted face. ‘It was like a bolt of lightning, Marianne, I can’t explain it. In everything that had happened I’d never grasped that before,’ he had admitted soberly.
‘Because you’d never understood how much I love you?’ she had asked gently. ‘Is that why?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps. But the shock of first seeing you with him, the look on his face—I thought for a moment I had lost you. And then you declared your love for me again… It was like a second chance. And then I got angry.’
‘With me?’ she had asked, with careful neutrality.
‘With myself. The problem was mine and yet I was making you shoulder it. It wasn’t fair,’ he’d said with a touch of grimness. ‘None of this has been fair.’
‘Neither was your childhood,’ she’d murmured softly, holding him, loving him so much it hurt.
He’d shrugged, tracing a path round the outline of her soft lips with a tender finger. ‘People endure worse without letting it cripple them,’ he’d said quietly. ‘I sat in the taxi and looked down at my ankle and realised there were worse ways of being crippled than by broken bones. I’d always prided myself on being a fighter, on seeing problems merely as embryo opportunities, so where was that warrior spirit over this?’
They had talked some more, and she had been reassured at the time, but since then little niggling doubts—born of the long months apart and the misery of the last year at the apartment—had crept in much as she had tried to dismiss them.
She wouldn’t allow them any more headroom. She stared fiercely into the darkness, willing the panic and unease to leave. Zeke was too intuitive by half, and if he sensed she was doubting him it could seriously jeopardise this new understanding between them which was still so sweet.
She had told him he had to trust her and the boot was just as relevant on the other foot, too! She wouldn’t think another negative thought. He deserved all her faith for their future.
Nevertheless, it was some time before she fell into a restless slumber, and her dreams were full of nightmarish images and long dark corridors that stretched endlessly into oblivion.
Marianne awoke late the next morning and she lay for some time without moving, in the grip of a deep, all-embracing weariness that seemed a little extreme for the couple of hours’ sleep she had missed. Nevertheless her limbs felt like lead.
It was Saturday morning, and in the distance somewhere she could hear church bells, and the faint murmur of voices downstairs, which she assumed was Zeke and Pat, Zeke’s side of the bed being empty. She really ought to go and join them, she thought tiredly.
She forced herself to sit up, feeling guilty she hadn’t been downstairs when Pat went down, and then felt so horribly ill she thought she was going to faint. She sank back against the pillows before she realised she had to get to the bathroom as a wave of nausea swept over her, but a few minutes later, once she was minus the contents of her stomach, she began to feel a little better and struggled back to bed.
‘Marianne?’ She had just slid under the covers when Zeke walked in the door with a cup of tea in his hand, the smile which had been on his face fading as he took in her ghostly pallor. ‘What’s wrong, darling? Are you ill?’
‘I feel awful.’ It was something of a plaintive wail but she hated being sick. ‘It must be a tummy bug or something.’
Zeke immediately took charge, ordering her to stay in bed and rest and assuring her that he and Pat were quite capable of seeing to the Sunday dinner between them. However, by lunch-time she felt as right as rain, and joined the other two downstairs for a big meal of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and three veg, which she ate with gusto.
The three of them went for walk in the afternoon, calling in at a small oak-beamed thatched pub on the way home, before Pat left for Bridgeton with promises she’d be up to see them again soon.
Marianne slept heavily that night, and was barely awake when Zeke kissed her goodbye in the morning after placing a cup of tea on her bedside cabinet.
Within moments of sitting up in bed she had to run for the bathroom in a repeat of yesterday’s performance, but this time a disturbing possibility had her stomach turning upside down long after the nausea had subsided. But she couldn’t be. Could she?
By mid-morning her suspicions were confirmed after a visit to the local chemist for a pregnancy testing kit. She was trembling as she sat at the kitchen table staring at the little vial, myriad emotions jumbling her thoughts and causing her head to swim. A baby. Zeke’s baby. They had started a new life.
She had put the non-appearance of her monthly cycle after Christmas down to stress, remembering all the other times in the past when she had been two, three, even four weeks late. And then when Zeke had come for her and literally swept her off her feet again she just hadn’t thought of it in all the excitement of furnishing the house. And why should she? All their careful following of charts and such in the last year of their marriage had produced nothing; pregnancy was the last thing—the very last thing—that would have crossed her mind.
But she was pregnant and it was Zeke’s baby growing inside her. Her hand moved protectively to her stomach and she shut her eyes tightly, her mind racing.
How could you be thrilled and scared to death at the same time? she asked herself weakly. A baby was wonderful, the fulfilment of all the dreams and longings she had felt for so long, but it was the wrong time.
She opened her eyes, staring vacantly round the beautiful kitchen as she brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes with a shaking hand.
It was too soon—far, far too soon for Zeke. He had just begun to accept the idea of her going to university and working for a career, of her being with other people and following her own star to a limited extent. This pregnancy would be the end of all that, certainly for a few years at least, and she had never liked the idea of having just one child anyway. Two, or even three, had always been her heart’s desire, and close in ages so they could enjoy each other, as she would have loved to have been able to enjoy the company of a sister or a brother.
This pregnancy would satisfy all the possessive darkness of his strange nature; he wouldn’t be able to resist falling back into his old ways—it was like a gift from the gods. A destructive, self-indulgent gift.
No, no, she couldn’t think of their baby like that. She shook her head, a little moan escaping her white lips. And, whatever, she wanted this baby more than anything in the world. It would mean the world to Zeke; he would be thrilled to bits. It was just that if it had happened a few years from now, when he had really come to terms with his jealousy, it would have been so much better for them. She was frightened, terribly frightened of how their relationship would suffer.
She spent the rest of the day in a state of fermenting unrest. She had been feeling increasingly tired lately, she recognised when she thought about it, almost drained at times. And the non-appearance of the physical signs should have alerted her long before this. But what difference would it have made? She could have insisted they remain apart during her pregnancy, given him more time to conquer his personal demons, she answered herself.
But, no, that wouldn’t have worked, she reasoned in the next moment. She couldn’t have lived apart from him at a time like this, not loving him with all her heart and carrying their child.