As she’d promised, the next day Tilly put her research on hold and helped her father clear out Margaret’s things. They started with the crafts room, boxing up stuff that could go to charity shops and advertising unwanted larger items on Freecycle. ‘Someone might make use of it, pet, and she’d like to think that,’ Ken said. Anything for Freecycle they moved out to the garage. Tilly kept a lot of her mother’s sewing things – the machine, her work basket, that half-finished patchwork project – but threw out most of the bags full of scrap fabric and half-used skeins of wool.
By the time they’d finished, mid-afternoon, the room was almost bare. Only a large chest of drawers and an armchair were left, and a large framed painting of crashing waves that Tilly had always loved.
‘So, all ready for decorating,’ Ken said, looking around the empty room.
‘Yes. I’ll go and buy some paint tomorrow. You all right, Dad, now that it’s gone?’
He nodded. ‘It’s only stuff, isn’t it? It’s not her. She’s still right here, where she belongs.’ He touched his chest, then left the room.
Tilly didn’t follow him, thinking perhaps he needed some time to collect himself. Instead she sat on the armchair, her hands folded across her bump, and tried to envisage the room as a nursery. A cot in the corner, this armchair opposite but angled towards the window. The chest of drawers over there, with a changing mat on top. It was big enough to function as a changing table. She’d paint it a pale yellow, she decided, the kind of colour that picks up sunshine and magnifies it. Some bright patterned curtains. The carpet was a neutral beige, in good condition as it had only been put down when her parents moved in. She’d clean it and keep it.
‘This will be your room soon, little one,’ she said, smiling. As long as her pregnancy lasted.
After a few minutes she heard Ken passing the door a few times, and went out to see what he was doing. He was hauling sacks of clothes out to the car. ‘Decided to start on my wardrobe,’ he said, in explanation. ‘I could do with some more space, and Margaret’s clothes were taking up three quarters of it.’
‘I’ll give you a hand, Dad.’
Before long, all Margaret’s clothes were bagged and ready to be taken to the charity shop or clothes recycling point. On the last pass, Ken stopped beside the hall cupboard and put his sack down. He unhooked Margaret’s red coat from its peg, held it to his face for a moment, and then quietly folded it into the sack with the rest.
*
The date for Tilly’s second scan approached. She’d had one at twelve weeks, and although all had been well, she had still not been able to relax. With her last pregnancy, all had been well at twelve weeks but then she miscarried at fourteen. This time she had tried not to look too far ahead until she had the second scan at eighteen weeks. At that stage, she told herself, it was not too far off being a viable foetus. Hadn’t some premature babies survived after being born at just twenty-three weeks or so?
So when the scan approached Tilly felt nervous, but at the same time excited. Ken offered to come with her but she declined. Every other woman at the clinic would have a husband or partner with her. It felt wrong to be there with a parent.
She’d planned to go alone, but at the last minute, on the day of the scan, she called Rob. She wanted someone alongside her, she realised. Just in case there was any bad news.
‘Hi. Er, it’s fine if you say no, but I just wondered … I have an antenatal scan today and if you’d like to come along …’
‘I’d love to,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m honoured that you’ve asked me.’
She dressed in her new, super-stretchy maternity leggings and a long, loose top, and drove herself to the clinic at Michelhampton hospital in good time for the scan, feeling apprehensive about what it might show, scared there’d be some abnormality. After all, she was eighteen weeks gone now but still hadn’t felt the baby move … Her palms were sweaty and there was a tight knot in her stomach as she took a seat in the waiting room.
Rob arrived five minutes later, having come straight from his job in a Michelhampton sports centre. He kissed her cheek and grinned happily as he sat beside her.
‘Been a long time since I was at a pregnancy scan,’ he said. ‘Never thought it’d happen again. I really am chuffed to bits that you asked me to come along.’
‘You’re the father,’ she said. ‘God, I am desperate for the loo.’ A nurse had given her a plastic cup and asked her to drink two or three cupfuls of water before the scan. ‘A full bladder pushes the baby up out of the pelvis, so we get a better picture,’ she’d explained.
‘You’re not the only one,’ Rob said, suppressing a chuckle as another couple emerged after their scan and the woman rushed straight into the ladies’ leaving her partner clutching and cooing over their scan photo. He kept up a stream of gentle banter as they waited, and his good humour rubbed off on Tilly, making her feel more relaxed than she’d been when she arrived.
At last it was Tilly’s turn. As she went into the room for the scan, the radiographer, a grey-haired woman with a round face, smiled at her.
‘Mrs Thomson, is it? And Mr Thomson, if you could sit there please.’
‘Ah, I’m not Mr Thomson, I’m just …’
‘He’s the father,’ Tilly cut in. ‘And please just call me Tilly.’ She should drop the name Thomson, she thought, and revert to her maiden name, Hutchings.
‘Rightio. Well, hop up onto the couch there, and if you could pull your top up and your leggings down a bit …’ The poor woman seemed confused about Tilly’s circumstances but oddly, Tilly found she didn’t mind at all. Families came in all shapes and sizes these days, didn’t they?
‘Sure.’ She grinned at the radiographer and did as she was asked. Lying on her back she was amazed at how large her bump was now. This was the furthest she’d got with any pregnancy. The woman smeared gel over her and then got on with the scan. A screen was mounted high up so that Tilly could see what the scan was picking up.
‘Breathe, love,’ said the radiographer and Tilly realised she’d been holding her breath. But there it was, her baby, wriggling slightly, looking like a proper little human now rather than the odd-shaped creature with an oversized head she’d seen at the previous scan. This time he or she looked like an actual baby.
‘Want to know its sex?’ asked the woman, and Tilly thought for a moment. Did she? Or would it be better to wait until the child was born.
‘No, I think I’d rather not.’ Better not get too attached, just in case.
‘OK. Well, everything looks good, size is right on the average, good strong heartbeat. Do you want a photo?’
‘Yes, please.’
Rob reached for her hand and squeezed it. ‘Isn’t that great news?’
Tilly looked at him with tears in her eyes and managed to simply nod in reply.
The radiographer printed off a photo, handed Tilly some blue tissue to wipe off the gel, and it was over. All good. No more scans now – the next time she’d see her baby would be after the birth. That thought gave Tilly a jolt of nervousness and excitement.
‘Thanks so much,’ she said to the woman, as she took her scan photo and smiled at the image of her snub-nosed baby, its tiny hands clearly defined, its knees drawn up to its chest.
‘Not at all, love. You take care, now. Have you felt it move yet?’
Tilly shook her head.
‘Might be a bit early yet. But you will soon. Like a fluttering in your belly. Funny sort of feeling. But once you feel it the first time, that’s it, there’s no end to it until the baby’s born. Good luck, love. There’s a loo just to your left if you’re desperate.’
Tilly went, and it was as she was washing her hands after that she felt it. Exactly as the radiographer had described – a fluttering, as though there was a butterfly trapped inside. She put a hand on her belly. ‘Is that you, little one? Letting me know you’re there?’ She left the hospital arm in arm with Rob and with her scan picture in her handbag, a hand still on her bump waiting for more evidence her baby was alive and kicking, and a huge smile on her face.
*
Ken had a bad cold, and was giving the railway a miss for a couple of days while he got over it. Tilly was nursing him – at least as much as he was allowing himself to be fussed over. She had installed him in the sitting room, stretched on the sofa with a rug over him, a cup of tea on a side table and the TV remote control and some reading material to hand.
‘You’re to shout out if you need anything more,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be in the dining room doing some research.’
‘Thanks, pet.’ Ken sighed. ‘Your mum used to do all this if I was sick.’
‘I know. She was an excellent nurse.’
‘It’s nice to feel looked after, when you’re under the weather.’
Tilly nodded. He’d done a wonderful job cosseting her since she’d come to live with him, and even more so since she’d got pregnant and told him about her problems. It was nice to be able to pay a little back, now that she was feeling more on top of things. Her lovely dad. She’d do anything for him. She tucked the blanket around him and went to get on with her research.
She wanted to read more of Ted Morgan’s diaries. She sat down with the notebooks, and her own jotter pad and a pen. She decided to read through, making notes of important points, and perhaps type it all up later on. As always it was a bit of a struggle getting to grips with the small, spiky handwriting but once she’d got going it became easier.
There were pages and pages of yet more angst-ridden outpourings about Annie, and worries about the closure of the railway. Lots about Annie being engaged to Bertram Clarke-Watson. And then the news that her engagement was off, and Ted’s elation, and his up-and-down emotions as he debated with himself whether she would ever consider taking him as a husband, and whether he should ask her, given that he would soon be out of a job.
I must wait until my future is secure and I have another job lined up, he wrote. I must be certain that I can provide for her.
And then an account of a day out, a trip to Coombe Regis, ice creams eaten sitting on the harbour wall. Tilly smiled as she read this. It may have been over eighty years ago but the simple pleasures of a day at the seaside still held true. She read on, and then her mouth fell open in surprise as Ted recounted a conversation he’d had with Annie as they ate their ice creams.
I am to be a father. Annie is carrying my child. I keep having to say those words over and over to myself, either aloud if no one is near or in my head if there is a danger of being overheard. Annie and I have created a new person, one that I will meet in a few short months. This changes everything. It means I MUST marry her, as soon as possible.
But Annie says there is no ‘must’ about it, and that she will not agree to a wedding yet, not while I do not have a secure future. She wanted me to find a job with good pay and then for us to marry and start a family, but things have gone backwards and the family is to be started first … She would prefer to live in a town or a city, so I need a job at a larger station. She needs me to be on a good salary, to be able to provide for her and our child, so she is free from her father whose financial problems were what made her agree to marry HIM. I will find a good job, do whatever it takes, for her to be mine, and for our baby.
Our baby. I cannot quite absorb that concept.
Tilly put the diary down for a moment and stared into space, trying to process all that she had learned. So Ted was the father of Annie’s baby. That meant Alan Harris had a cousin somewhere. Did he know? She assumed not. He’d never mentioned one. If Annie and Ted hadn’t married, then it meant that Annie had a baby ‘out of wedlock’, back in the 1930s when it would have been seriously frowned upon. How had she coped?
There was more on the following pages, in the same vein, and then details about the preparation for the last day of the railway’s operation. Tilly made plenty of notes of this. A display board detailing the final day of operation would be good, she thought. She already had seen newspaper articles about it and perhaps could track down some photographs.
And of course, there were the tragic events at Lynford station, that also happened on that last day. Tilly had reached the point in Ted’s diary when he was writing on the night before the last day. He’d been arrested the following evening. She turned the page expecting there to be no more, and was surprised to see more pages filled in, but in a different hand. A swirly, large, confident handwriting, that somehow looked more feminine. Written in pencil, smudged here and there as though the writer had been crying.
And what that final diary entry contained, made Tilly gasp with shock. This changed everything.