Page 80 of The Life We Almost Had

‘It’s okay. I remember you’re off caffeine. I picked up some more chamomile on the way home.’ He unpeels my fingers and I am left alone as his footfall thuds down the stairs.I’m terrified I might never see him again. While I blow my nose, I scan the room. In the corner, the chair heaped with a pile of Adam’s T-shirts. His red Coca-Cola one. His faded brown Oasis tour T-shirt. The sight of my jewellery box causes my fingers to flutter to my neck. I’m wearing my star pendant. The one I’d packed away when Adam and I started going through a bad patch. When I was unable to conceive. I trace the curve of my belly with my fingertips.

I’m pregnant.

I try to gauge how far along I am. Six months? Seven? Eight? It’s impossible to tell. My body feels heavy. I pad over to my drawers and lift out the tissue paper-wrapped parcel. Back in bed I gently unwrap it, lifting out the tiny lemon sleepsuit and the Percy the Parrot cuddly toy.

Adam saunters back into the room in his familiar green tartan pyjamas, carrying two mugs, a packet of chocolate digestives tucked under his elbow, the way he always used to before my love for him turned bitter and cold and I’d bitch about the crumbs in bed. The chocolate stains on the duvet. It’s as though we’ve regressed back to our honeymoon phase but instead we’ve moved forward.

We are having a baby!

My heart sings.

Happily I drape the sleepsuit over my bump while Adam examines Percy the Parrot with joy.

‘I’d almost forgotten about him!’ he exclaims.

‘It seems so long ago since we were first in Alircia,’ I say.

‘It seems so long ago that we were last in Alircia.’ Adam rips open the biscuits and takes one out, biting it in half. Crumbs scatter onto the duvet but I don’t tut and dramatically brush them off.Instead I reach for a biscuit and snap a piece off, placing it on my tongue and letting the chocolate dissolve. ‘We need another holiday! We’ll have to go back once this little one makes his appearance.’

‘His?’ I ask.

‘Or hers. I’m glad we never found out at the scan. What do you say to the three of us on a beach?’

‘I’m in no rush to go back to Alircia.’ If I never see the island again it will be too soon.

‘Why?’ His face falls. ‘It’s our special place. It’s because it was a different sort of break, wasn’t it?’

‘Different? How?’

‘You know. With you being in the first few weeks of pregnancy and me not letting you do anything. No sightseeing. No yacht trips. No coach journeys to tourist attractions. Were you bored?’

The space in my throat constricts. He has created a fiction that kept me safe, him safe, us safe. Our lives carrying on in the way they probably would have done had the yacht accident never have happened.

‘I wasn’t bored,’ I whisper.

‘Good because I have plans for the three of us. I think we should go travelling. Take the trip I’d planned before I met you.’

‘I don’t know. With a baby? Is it safe?’

‘You’re always safe with me, Anna. I’d never let anything happen to you.’

I think about the way he’d twice risked his life to save me. If only he hadn’t gone back to help that elderly woman. His thumb traces my cheekbone. I turn my head to kiss his palm. He smells of coffee and chocolate and Adam.

‘Oh God. You’re not going to cry again, are you? Christ, woman,we’ll never be able to go anywhere because we’ll have spent all our savings on bloody tissues.’

‘No, I’m not going to cry.’ I take a deep breath. ‘We can go anywhere you want to, Adam. Do anything.’

‘You hear that, Percy?’ He lifts the parrot to eye level. ‘A world trip awaits us. In the meantime, Mrs Curtis…’ He waggles his eyebrows and I feel frisson of excitement. A desire to be touched.

‘Yes, Mr Curtis.’

‘I’m going to finish this chapter before we go to sleep.’ He twists around and picks a kindle up from his bedside table.

‘Adam…’ I feel incredibly sad for every mean thing I’ve ever said. Incredibly regretful. ‘Why don’t you read a paperback tonight?’

‘Are you kidding me? You’ve converted me to e-readers now. I love that you fall asleep on me and I don’t have to worry my light is keeping you awake.’ He turns and clicks off his lamp and I do the same. He wriggles an arm under my shoulders and I mould my body around his. By the glow of his kindle I study his face, the movement of his eyes as he scans the page, the twitch of a smile.

It’s a perfect, perfect moment until it’s spoiled by Oliver’s voice, deep and cutting.

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