About the Publisher
This time, Fliss used a vase. It was possible this would be the lucky vessel. Over the years it had held many sentiments: flowers of celebration, bouquets of apology and now it contained a rich, yellow brew that represented her future hopes. Fliss dipped the stick in and started the count to ten. One Elephant. Two Elephant.
‘Muuuummmmmm – I’m hungry,’ Hollie said, from the other side of the door.
‘Go play with your toys and I’ll make breakfast in a minute,’ Fliss said. Three Ellie. Four Ellie. She sped the next two up hoping the interruption wouldn’t interfere with her accuracy. Five Elephant. Six Elephant.
‘But Mummmmmmmmmm.’
Seven Elephant.
‘Hollie, I’m on the toilet. Now go and do as I’ve told you before Mummy gets annoyed.’ Eight Ellie. Her daughter hadn’t moved and was scraping about on the landing. ‘One...’ She started the countdown to the naughty step and wondered why Hollie would choose now to be disobedient. Nine Ellie. Was it nine? She’d forgotten where she was at. ‘TWO...’ The force in her voice was more effective this time and soft footsteps traipsed along the landing. Ten Elephant. It must be ten, right?
She pulled the stick out of the vase, popped the cap on, placed it on the side and wondered what to do for the next two minutes. She could go downstairs and make a start on Hollie’s breakfast, but then her daughter could do with learning a little patience. Besides, if she did that, there was no way she’d be back in time for an accurate result. All the packages said you had to disregard the test after ten minutes.
She looked at her watch. Time was standing still and Hollie was up to her familiar trick of doing as she was told for all of ten seconds. ‘I know you’re not in your bedroom, Hollie.’
Fliss fiddled with the door handle with the desired effect: her six-year-old daughter now running to her bedroom.
One minute and counting. Fliss should have waited for her husband, Ben, to be with her, but if she did that, well, she spent far too much of her life hanging round for him. Far better to quash her suspicions now before becoming convinced, only for her irregular period to arrive and crush her hopes. And it was only her that seemed to be crushed each time it happened. Ben often commented on how she should concentrate on the daughter they did have, not become obsessed by something that may never happen. That was the problem she’d found with Ben; he always wanted to get his point across but rarely listened to what she had to say. As her own unquenched desire wasn’t a strong enough argument, she started to point out Hollie’s recent behaviour in a bid to prove she needed a sibling. It would stop the only-child syndrome from developing. He batted her off with, ‘We’re still trying. If it happens, it happens.’
Fliss wished she could be so complacent about it. Like the two minutes she was waiting now; she could really do with having Ben’s cool attitude. Why did her entire life seem to pass by in a hurry right until she needed something to speed up? She glared at her watch as the final fifteen seconds strummed round in a slow and irritating fashion. As the last seconds closed in, Fliss looked for something lucky to hold on to. Hollie’s toothbrush with its princess handle glimmered at her and she grabbed it with her left hand. The ritual was getting stupid, she realised. She picked the stick up with her right hand and levelled it in front of her closed eyes. Could it be that perhaps this time it was going to be different? She visualised the two blue lines in her head. Positive thinking, that’s what would get her through. Believing, at some point, this would truly happen. She saw the positive result and imagined the way it would feel. She remembered the way it had felt when she’d found out about Hollie. Not-long-married, in their expensive, not-family-orientated flat, Ben and Fliss, being on the wrong side of thirty, had been eager to start a family. They’d never for a minute thought