I’m standing at the Belfast sink, the enamel crackled and chipped but still beautiful, peeling potatoes. “What are you going to make with these tonight, then?”
“Just mash again,” says Mrs. Mumford.
“If I was a cook, I’d make something for you but I think you probably make a better job of it yourself.”
“Oh, you do more than enough for me already,” she says. “Anyway, you shouldn’t stand for too long. Not in your condition.”
“Ha! That’s funny coming from you.” She has terrible arthritis in all her joints. Her fingers are gnarled with it, hence I’m peeling her potatoes because she no longer can.
The first time I knocked on her door to offer to fetch her shopping, she looked at me with wary suspicion.
“Are you from Social Services?” she says.
I guess they must be the only legitimate people to visit her. It makes me sad. I laugh awkwardly. “No, Mrs. Mumford. I live down the road. Just over there.” I point toward my house.
“Oh, yes, dear,” she says. “I’ve seen you. Are you all right? Do you need something?” She’s staring at my belly.
“Actually, I was wondering if you needed anything? I’m going shopping and I could tag your list onto mine.”
She clacks her false teeth. “That’s very kind, dear. But I’m a bit nervous of strangers what with everything you read.”
“I do understand but . . . you know where I live. I promise you, I only want to offer a bit of help.”
“Wait there.” She shuts the door and I stand on the step feeling foolish for a few long minutes, wondering if this wasn’t a stupid idea until she appears again and hands me a short shopping list scribbled in pencil on the back of an old envelope. She gives me a £5 note.
“I promise I’ll be back.”
To her obvious surprise, I return with her shopping and a small amount of change and she decides I am trustworthy enough for a cup of tea.
“I’ll make it,” I say.
“I may be eighty-seven, dear, but I can still make a good pot of tea. You’ve done quite enough. You should be putting your feet up. Look at you.”
She makes an excellent pot and puts a few biscuits on a plate. She asks what my husband does and I tell her I’m not married and she looks surprised. Now, having gotten to know each other, she’ll occasionally bring up the subject, saying she thinks I should find a man. She thinks I’m a bit foolhardy.
I get her shopping every Friday. I peel her potatoes then we sit and chat over tea and cake. She loves the Battenberg I buy her. She tells me off for spoiling her. I love that she can feel spoiled by such simple things, and I’m glad I finally knocked on her door and made the offer I had intended to suggest for so long.
To be honest, it’s not totally altruistic. We are company for each other. She tells me wonderful stories about her life, how as a young girl she used to polish the silver for some grand family in a stately home in Norfolk, which was where she met her husband. He was the chauffeur. So very Downton. I could listen to her for hours.
And now, as each week passes, there is joy in the fact I’m getting bigger and contrarily I’m also getting my energy back. My baby is kicking. It’s been kicking for several weeks.
Isabelle was with me for the first kick. She was helping me sort out the spare bedroom and get it prepared as a nursery.
“Isabelle, come here!” I shout from the landing. She looks up at me, drops the black bin liner she was taking out to the trash and charges up the stairs. “Quickly. Put your hand on my stomach. The baby just kicked. I felt it!”
“Jesus, you scared me.” She stands with her hand on my stomach and puts my hand on her pounding heart. “Feel that,” she says.
“Focus on my stomach.” We’re waiting but there’s nothing. “I promise you I felt it kick.”
She smiles. “Best thing, huh! That first one.”
“Shhhh. Wait. It’s going to do it again. I know it.”
She jumps. “There it is!” Her mouth drops open in wonder as if it’s her first time, too. “Hello, baby!” she sings. “Well, you have a mighty fine kick.” And that was the moment we agreed she should be my birthing partner. I want her to be involved for as much as possible.
It’s certainly going to be interesting if her attendance at my twenty-week scan is anything to go by. I almost regretted allowing her to come.
“I don’t want to know the sex,” I say to the sonographer.
“Why don’t you want to know?” says Isabelle, horrified.
“Because I don’t.”
“But everyone wants to know.”
“No, they don’t. You want to know.”
“Sure I do. I’m normal.”
“Isabelle,” I say. “If you’re normal, then the pope’s Jewish.”
She laughs. “We’re all Jewish,” she says. “Somewhere along the line.”
I catch her looking rather too closely at the screen. “Stop it!” I say. And she gives a sneaky smile. “I’m looking for balls,” she says. “I’m hoping for balls.”
“Balls or no balls, I’m hoping for healthy.”
The sonographer smiles. “I’m not giving anything away, but it’s all looking pretty good to me,” she says.
At work, even though I’m absolutely fine, they all fuss over me as if I’m their pet goat, making sure I’ve got water and tea and that I don’t outstay my welcome. Seeing the care in their faces, I realize I was truly missed. It’s given me an inner confidence in myself I didn’t know I had. It’s as if I’ve been allowed to read my own obituary and it said the most beautiful things.
The high point recently, of course, was walking down the aisle, three tiny bridesmaids at my hem, behind Olivia and her father.
Seeing her standing together with Dan, holding hands, entrusting themselves to an unknowable future, I couldn’t help but cry. It made me want to believe in love again. But I’m always a sap at weddings.
The inevitable questions were asked.
“Where are you having it?”
“Royal Free.”
“Do you know what sex it is?”
“’Fraid not. Don’t want to know.”
“Where’s the lucky father? Is he here?”
“I’d like to know the answer to that question myself.”
“I’m sorry?”
“He’s not here. In fact, I’m doing this alone.”
And I’d smile and leave it at that. For them to wonder. For them to gossip. Because I don’t care what they think and I’m proud of that. If Olivia’s wedding had happened sooner, I might have answered those same questions differently. Or hid in a corner to avoid them. But thanks to making peace with Harry, with Isabelle, with all of them one way or another, I’ve finally made peace with myself.