‘I’m still so angry at your sister I could spit.’
Tarquin tamped down his irritation as he changed out of his dinner clothes and got ready for bed. ‘Wren, it’s been a long day, and we’re both tired. I told you not to trust Caitlin; she’s as changeable as the wind and twice as frustrating to deal with. We’ll look into adopting a child.’
‘But adoption takes ages, Tark. And I’m so, so tired of all of this endless, endless waiting.’ She began, hopelessly, to weep.
He let out a breath and dropped to his knees beside her at the dressing table. ‘Don’t cry, darling, please,’ he pleaded as he wrapped his arms around her. ‘You know I can’t bear to see you cry. I feel like this is all my fault.’
‘Your fault?’ Wren drew back and looked at him, startled. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘The last test indicated I’m the one who’s infertile, not you.’
‘That was only one test, Tarquin, and it wasn’t conclusive,’ she said firmly. ‘The doctor said so.’
‘“Not conclusive” doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.’
She kissed the top of his head and stood up. ‘It also doesn’t mean that it is. Please, don’t blame yourself, Tark. It’s no one’s fault. It’s time I got ready for bed, too. And I don’t mean to complain, I’m just tired. We both are. You’re right ‒ it’s been a long day.’
Tarquin yawned and settled himself in bed. ‘No worries. I’ll just have a look at the morning’s headlines while you’re in the shower.’
She nodded and disappeared into the bathroom.
As the water began to run in the shower stall, Tarquin reached out to the bedside table for his reading glasses. They weren’t there. He frowned. What the devil had he done with them?
He was just about to throw on his robe and go downstairs to search for them when there was a piercing shriek from the bathroom.
‘Good God,’ Tark muttered, and flew out of bed. ‘Wren? Wren, are you all right? What’s happened?’
He envisioned every sort of horror – she’d fallen, she’d hit her head, she’d cut herself badly whilst shaving – but when he flung himself into the bathroom, Wren stood, naked and dripping and unharmed, on the mat in front of the shower stall with a dazed expression on her face.
‘Darling, what’s wrong?’ he cried. He held up his hand. ‘How many fingers am I holding up? Shall I call Dr MacTavish?’
She looked at him and smiled.
‘Two. And yes, you could call the doctor...although it can wait until Monday, I should think.’
Tarquin looked at her blankly. ‘I don’t understand.’
Wren placed a hand tenderly on her stomach. ‘I’m late, Tark. Two weeks late! I missed my period, and with all the upheaval going on, I didn’t even realize it until just this moment. I think,’ she looked up at him with a hopeful expression, ‘I think I really might be pregnant.’
He tempered his own twinge of excitement at her words. ‘Are you sure? You’ve been late before, when you were stressed, and it turned out to be nothing.’
‘But I’ve never been this late, Tark! And it’s not only that – I’ve been moody, and teary, and my,’ she blushed, ‘my breasts have been terribly sore. I even felt a bit queasy the last couple of mornings, but I put it down to nerves.’
He allowed himself to feel a cautious, tiny stirring of optimism. ‘We can’t get our hopes up just yet,’ he warned her, ‘not until the doctor runs the proper tests.’
‘No, no, of course we can’t,’ she agreed, and flung her arms around him. ‘But I’m telling you, Tark ‒ I’m pregnant. I know it. I can feel it.’
It was late the next day as Natalie and Rhys arrived at Heathrow and hurried through the throngs headed towards the luggage carousels.
‘Isn’t it fabulous, darling?’ she called out as they took their place by the conveyor belt and watched luggage of every description – most of it, Natalie noted sadly, black – go rolling slowly past them.
‘Isn’t what fabulous?’ he asked, distracted.
She looked up from her mobile phone. ‘Wren might be pregnant! She’s to find out tomorrow.’
‘Yes, that’s great. Hold on – wait a minute, that’s mine!’ Rhys exclaimed, and wrenched his suitcase from the hand of a teenage boy with a guitar case slung on his back. ‘Didn’t you see the yellow luggage tag?’
‘Sorry, mate,’ the boy muttered.
‘Rhys, are you even listening to me?’ Natalie demanded. ‘She says Dr MacTavish is running the pregnancy test tomorrow to find out if they’re having a baby or not. After all this time...Oh, I’m so happy for them!’
He reached across two overstuffed backpacks to grab Natalie’s cosmetics case. ‘Who?’
‘Wren!’ she said crossly. ‘You’re not listening.’
‘Natalie, if you hadn’t noticed, I’m trying to get our bloody luggage.’ He turned to glare at her. ‘Speaking of which, would you mind getting off that damned mobile phone and help me out, please?’
She crossed her arms against her chest and eyed him with a mulish expression. ‘Sorry, but I can’t.’
‘You can’t,’ he repeated, and stared at her. ‘Why the hell not?’
‘Because,’ she hesitated, and her lower lip quivered. ‘Oh, this isn’t at all right,’ she fretted. ‘The airport’s not the sort of place to tell you the news.’
Rhys made a monumental effort to tamp down his irritation. ‘What news? What in sod’s name are you on about? Natalie, I still have to retrieve the rest of our luggage and fetch our car from the long-stay car park! The traffic home promises to be horrendous if we don’t get ourselves out of this bloody airport soon.’
‘Fine.’ She sniffled. ‘Never mind, then.’
‘Oh, for...’ He glared at her, then turned away and began scanning the carousel for the rest of their suitcases.
‘Don’t you care what my news is?’ she asked, hurt. ‘Aren’t you even a little, tiny bit curious?’
He grabbed the last two wheeled suitcases and wrestled them to the ground. ‘What is it?’ he snapped, out of breath and nearly out of patience. ‘What is it that you want so much to tell me, but won’t?’
She looked at him, her eyes luminous with unshed tears. ‘Oh, Rhys...’ She fiddled with the strap of her shoulder bag.
‘Tell me, Nat,’ he said grimly. ‘What’ve you done? Did you spend all of our money in the duty-free shops again? Did you leave the coffee pot on and now our entire townhouse is burnt to the ground? Did you invite Dominic and Gemma to go on another holiday with us? What?’
‘No! Nothing like that.’
‘Then,’ he said, mustering as much patience as he could, ‘what is it? Please tell me.’
‘I...I’m pregnant.’
Rhys stared at her. ‘What? Pregnant? But we’ve just been through this, Nat. You’re not pregnant; you didn’t follow the directions on the test properly.’
‘No, I didn’t. And no, I wasn’t pregnant.’ She looked up at him expectantly. ‘But I am now.’
‘How do you know?’ he scoffed. ‘Did you buy another kit and have another wee on a stick? Look how well that turned out.’
‘No. I went to see Dr MacTavish the other day, and I had a proper test done this time.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I wasn’t completely sure, and I didn’t want to make the same mistake I made last time, and get everyone’s hopes up – and get your hopes up, only to dash them. But I’ve been feeling really tired, and cranky, and – oh, just a bit off, I suppose.’
He shook his head slightly, still disbelieving. ‘You’re – you’re sure? You’re going to have a baby. Our baby.’
‘Well, who else’s baby would it be?’ Natalie retorted. ‘There’s no question,’ she added firmly. ‘I’m definitely, unequivocally, pregnant. I’m due in September.’
Rhys let out a short breath. ‘Oh. So you’re really...Oh my God!’ He dropped the suitcases and threw his arms around her, hugging her tightly as he lifted her off her feet. ‘You’re really pregnant!’
‘I am,’ she said, laughing as he spun them both around. ‘Ooh, stop – you’re making me dizzy.’ Her face went pale.
He set her back down with great tenderness. ‘Sorry, darling. It’s just – what fantastic news! How did you keep it quiet all this time?’
She gripped the handle of one of the wheeled suitcases and fell into step beside him. ‘I didn’t want to steal Dom and Gemma’s thunder. Yesterday was about them, not me. And then there was the news about Colm’s father, and Caitlin’s pregnancy, and Helen and Colm’s engagement, and...’ her voice trailed away. ‘Well, the time was never right.’
‘I’m glad you waited. This’ll be our secret, at least for a day or two.’
She followed him down the ramp towards the exits. ‘Don’t you want to tell our parents? Your mum, and mine, and Alastair, and Jamie?’
‘Are you serious? Of course I do. I want to shout it from the rooftops!’ he exclaimed, and grinned. ‘But first, let’s keep it to ourselves. Just for a bit.’
‘Do you mean like the time I borrowed Alastair’s Mercedes, and backed it into a ticket machine, and you had it fixed, and then we told him about it?’
Rhys smiled and kissed her. ‘Yes, darling. Exactly like that.’
And even though the long-stay car park attendant couldn’t, at first, find their car, and even though Natalie left her allergy pills in Scotland and sneezed half the way home, and even though traffic through London was every bit as horrendous as he’d predicted, as he drove them home, Rhys reflected that on the whole, he was really a very, very lucky man.