I’m seeing him on a legal visit tomorrow. Shall I put a word in? He does legal aid.’
Kara nodded, feeling totally deflated. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, that’s so kind of you.’
‘No worries. I’m going down to the canteen. I need some sany towels. I came on early. All the bloody stress, I guess.’
A sudden thought almost knocked Kara sideways. She hadn’t even considered her period. She was late, the sickness over the last few days having put everything else to the back of her mind. And what with worrying about herself and Justin and now being incarcerated in this absolute shit-hole, it was no wonder that her once logical and formidable brain was out of kilter.
She did a mental recap of when she’d last had a period and an uneasy feeling gripped her stomach. It had been her last trip to Papua New Guinea where she’d thought she had contracted the lingering gastro bug that had been infecting the villagers. She could quite easily have thrown up the pill then. She calculated back the dates and sat there numb; she was possibly two or three months pregnant. How the hell could she have not known? She was medically trained. She’d put it down to sickness and stress, and she hadn’t thought a baby was on the menu yet – not this side of thirty anyway.
Two weeks had passed. Lucy was keeping up her end of the bargain, as she saw it. Justin worked late most evenings and slept in the spare room. She cooked his evening meals and they joined in small talk – how he had got on at work and what she had been up to during the day. Then, believing they were getting somewhere, she decided to up her game. ‘So, Justin, I was thinking perhaps I should meet your family. We can break the news together.’
He was just about to place a fork full of mashed potatoes in his mouth when he stopped and placed his cutlery down. Taking a deep breath, he declared, ‘I haven’t even told my mother about my break-up with Kara, let alone the house burning down. I think she needs to deal with one thing at a time, don’t you?’ His curt tone pricked her nerves.
‘Christ, Justin, she must already know. It was in the papers, and she will think it odd that you haven’t called.’
‘Look! My mother doesn’t read the news, except her local rag, and she knows if I’m busy, then I won’t call, but if she got wind of it, she would be knocking down my office door. Let me deal with one thing at a time, eh?’
Lucy noticed the fine lines that had appeared around his eyes. Maybe it was the overhead light that highlighted his face, but he looked older, not so fresh. She couldn’t even say they were laughter lines because his expression of late was so sullen. Being patient was wearing thin and she had to batten down the urge to shake him. She wasn’t used to men denying her affection.
‘But surely your mother will be excited when you tell her she will be a grandmother?’
His face tightened to an angry glare. ‘You what? Are you delusional?’
Lucy forced her eyes to water. ‘But, it’s not fair, Justin. I feel like I’m being hidden away, like your dirty secret, when I should be embracing this pregnancy, showing off like other mothers-to-be, buying baby clothes, and enjoying the experience. It’s not my fault that Kara burned your house down and ended up in prison.’ She allowed a fat tear to fall. ‘I didn’t think you two were such a big deal because you wouldn’t have been in bed with me … twice. She wasn’t your wife, you never married her, she was just a girlfriend. If you really loved her that much, you wouldn’t have been seeking solace in another woman’s arms, my arms, would you?’ She didn’t raise her voice but kept her tone neutral.
He shook his head. ‘Hello? I was drunk,’ he replied, coldly.
‘Maybe you were a little tipsy the first time, but you weren’t drunk the second time, when you came over to chat me up in the bar. If I remember rightly, Justin, you were stone-cold sober and moaning about Kara always being away and how you were getting bored with her. I would never have got involved with you, if I had thought for one moment you still had feelings for her. How do you think I feel? I thought we had something special. I know it was all very quick, but now we’re having a baby and looking forward to the future, it’s just not fair on me. Your suffering from guilt is affecting our baby. It’s not even born yet, and they say unborn babies pick up on things.’ She allowed another tear to fall, hoping that it would stir a reaction.
For a moment, as Justin stared into her speckled amber eyes with that innocent expression, he saw Kara. It was so strange, he took a deep breath and blinked. He did miss Kara and would do anything to turn the clock back, but he couldn’t, and the sooner he accepted it, the quicker he could move on, and perhaps telling his mother would be the best thing.
‘All right, this weekend, I’ll drive to my mother’s and let her know what’s happening, and then, once she gets over the shock, I’ll take you over there to meet her.’
Clasping her hands together, she tried to control her excitement. ‘Aw, thank you, Justin, I so want to meet her. I don’t have a mother. Well, I do, I just don’t know her, so it will be lovely to have your mum in my life and plan for the arrival of our precious child.’
At that point, Justin realised that he knew very little about Lucy, and a sadness crept over him. Lucy didn’t have a mother. ‘You said a while ago you grew up in foster care, didn’t you? Didn’t you have a mother figure, then? Wasn’t there someone you cared about and who cared for you?’
For a second, Lucy forgot she’d told him that she was brought up in foster care. ‘Oh, no, I went from home to home. No one really wanted me. They all wanted babies, and when you’re older, they want the money. I was worth a hundred pounds a week to the last foster carers.’ She stared at nothing, giving the impression she was somewhere in a dark place, recalling a distant horrible memory. In reality, though, she was plotting the next lie.
‘You never really had any family, then? That’s pretty sad, Lucy. I’m so sorry, love.’ He genuinely felt bad for her because he did know what it was like to have a loving mother, although not a father because his had run off. But, still, his mother more than made up for it, in love and kindness. He stretched his neck, trying to ease the strangling feeling. How was he going to tell his mum that Kara was in prison and his house was just a pile of ashes? And to top it all, he’d done the one thing his mother detested and that was to be unfaithful.
He could hear her words ringing in his ears. ‘Son, I’m so proud of you. You have grown up to be a fine young man with morals and values and you never went off the rails. I feel I have done my job.’ He remembered it well because it was the day she’d given him her grandmother’s engagement ring for Kara. That was twelve weeks ago, but Kara was overseas for the second time, and so he’d hidden the ring in his sock drawer. He’d wanted the time to be perfect and had planned a trip to Italy in order to propose.
He snapped out of his thoughts, when Lucy said, ‘So, yes, having your mother will be like having my own.’
He so desperately wanted to go along with the notion that Lucy and his mum would be friends and the idea that a baby would make everything okay, but how could it? His mother loved Kara; she doted on her, in fact. She took over very quickly from Joan, who was eager to move to Australia, a long-term dream of hers. So, as soon as Kara mentioned that she would be moving in with him, Joan sold up and emigrated. Crippled with arthritis and suffering from extreme pain, she hoped the warmer climate would do her good. The truth was, Joan was very poorly and showing signs of dementia. Consequently, she would forget to call or even answer the phone, and so Kara resorted a lot to texting her.
Christ, how would his mother, Mollie, take it all? They were already a family: Mollie, Kara, and him. He looked across the table at Lucy, who was still teary-eyed. Knowing he had to get the past out of his head, he said, ‘Hey, why don’t we go out tomorrow tonight for a meal and properly get to know each other?’
Her face lit up. ‘Really, do you mean it?’
‘Yes,