For a while, everything was fine in the Stone world. Charlie was making big bucks, Nula started to feel easier about what had happened on the day of the zoo party. It was just boys being boys. Cruel little fuckers, sometimes. It was all forgotten, and that was for the best. Belle continued to be a source of fascination for Harlan while big oafish Nipper followed Harlan everywhere, hanging on his every word. They were always huddling in corners, whispering, laughing, shoving each other. Life was OK. She kept up her journals, kept taking the pills. Some days, life was almost sweet.
Then suddenly, Nula got sick. She’d wake up and rush to the loo and vomit. Her body felt puffy. She had vile headaches when she wasn’t even hung-over.
‘Maybe it’s one of those thyroid things. Underactive or something? You ought to get checked out,’ suggested one of her old girlfriends from the Smoke.
God, Nula hated doctors. She’d been reading something about bad breast implants, maybe it was something like that, the things were leaking and poisoning her system? She’d always craved big tits but not at the cost of her life. No way. Now she was frightened. She might be really, seriously ill. She might have something fatal. She couldn’t check out yet – she had this fabulous lifestyle, she had Milly, and now she had the boy as well, Harlan. He might creep her out sometimes, but Charlie was so pleased with him, so delighted to have a son at last, eager to get him started in the business. She couldn’t die of anything. Not yet.
Finally, Charlie nagging at her had the desired effect and she went to the doctors and broke down in tears that she had been suppressing for weeks. She’d been so anxious, so scared. She’d never been seriously ill before. And she thought now this was going to be it. The end. And it was too soon.
Oh Christ . . .
Charlie was no help. He was away again. He was often away. It was Turkey this time, where heroin production was kept in line by the Turkish Maffya. From there he was off to Peru where, he’d told her, a thousand pounds’ worth of coca leaves from a Peruvian hill farmer would convert to cocaine and fetch a million pounds on the London streets.
Like she cared. They had their high-end life. There was everything here. The house overlooked one of the most exclusive golf clubs in the country. There were ten bedrooms, all en suite. Three drawing rooms. Massive staircases, a downstairs hallway you could hold a dance in. A gym. An indoor and an outdoor heated pool. Outside, the house was skirted by a huge terrace, then a massive lawned garden with an integral sprinkler system. There was a deep pond full of koi carp, a boating lake, a tennis court, a walled vegetable garden and orchard, tended by four gardeners. There was now also the ‘petting’ zoo, which Charlie added to on a regular basis with the creepy reptiles and crocodile-type things he seemed to like so much. It was a bit of a hike down there, so he kept a buggy parked up in the workshop beside the garages.
On this trip Charlie had taken Terry with him, and feeling so ill, so low, Nula was glad about that. Charlie had left a couple of his other men on the door of their house.
Nula often wondered if one of these days her bumptious risk-taker of a husband was going to be returned home to her in a box. Maybe they could have a joint funeral, the pair of them. Leave it all to little Milly, and to their adopted son Harlan.
So she had to endure her ill health on her own and although she was scared shitless, she was glad of Charlie’s absence. He’d be fidgeting, shouting, thumping the table, demanding answers. She just wanted to be told, quietly and calmly, what the fuck was wrong with her. That was all.
The doctors ran a raft of tests. They prodded her, poked her, weighed her, and a week later the consultant called her back in. By this point she was screaming inside, scribbling wildly in her journals, wondering if taking up drink would be a good idea. Or cigarettes. Fuck it, if she was dying anyway, what would it matter?
Then it was off to see the consultant, all on her own. She sat there in his office, waiting for the axe to fall. He came in, smiled and sat down.
‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘You’re pregnant.’