Bestselling Authors Collection 2012(36)

She tugged on her seat belt, releasing some of the tension so she could angle herself away from the sun, already intent on turning the damp road to steaming. She idly rubbed her belly with her free hand. She was more and more aware of her growing bump now and what it did and didn’t like. Humidity it didn’t.

She wasn’t big by any means, but the changes in her body were a revelation. Every day she seemed to notice something new, a slight change in her shape or the fit of her clothes as her bump grew and her waist thickened.

‘So who would have looked after this baby if it had been yours?’

She swung her head around. ‘Me, of course.’

‘But you never wanted a baby. That’s what you told me.’

So what if she didn’t? ‘Is this actually relevant to anything?’

He shrugged, looked in his mirrors as the lane in front blocked up and smoothly changed gears and lanes in one fluid movement.

‘Why did you marry him?’

‘Did I miss a clause in that agreement I signed? The one that said you were entitled to know my deepest and darkest secrets, along with my most stupid mistakes.’

He flashed her a smile that made her bones turn to jelly and made her glad she was sitting down. He never smiled at her. He avoided her. And when he couldn’t avoid her, he tolerated her. He didn’t smile. ‘Clause twenty-four, sub-clause C. You must have missed it.’

‘Fine,’ she said, still wilting under the combined effects of the sun and one devastating smile. ‘In that case, it was my mother’s fault.’

‘You’re blaming your mother for you marrying Shayne?’

‘Yes. No. Well, sort of. We hadn’t been going out long when we learned she was sick. He was good to me then—good to us—and my mother wanted to see me settled before she died. Wanted me to have the whole white wedding she’d never had. Shayne seemed keen.’ She shrugged. ‘It was the least I could do, under the circumstances.

‘And it was okay. For a while.’ She turned her head away. ‘You know the rest.’ She squeezed her eyes shut, expecting the pain and the prick of tears and wanting to hide her face before that happened, but surprisingly neither pain nor tears arrived. She exhaled a long, slow sigh of relief. Good. So maybe she was over feeling sorry for herself. Just as well, because by the lack of response, it looked like nobody else was interested. ‘So that, in a nutshell, is the whole sad story. Are you asleep yet?’

‘Not likely. Tell me, how did your mother die?’

She looked around, searching the high street shops lining the road, wanting a diversion if not an escape and wondering if it was fair to blame all her discomfort on the humidity. How far was this baby shop anyway? And why was he insisting she even do this? She didn’t want to buy things for a baby she’d never know. She didn’t want to lie in bed at night and imagine it lying in a tiny bassinet she’d chosen or wearing precious little outfits she’d selected.

Couldn’t he see that? Couldn’t he tell that she didn’t want to know anything that would make it harder to forget this child?

And what was he even doing here? He’d shown no real interest in this baby, other than claiming ownership. He’d avoided her the last month and now he wanted to go nursery shopping? What was that about?

‘Unless you don’t want to tell me,’ he prompted.

She put her head back against the headrest, closing her eyes. ‘Breast cancer,’ she said finally. ‘By the time they found it…’ She squeezed her lids tighter together, but this time there was no denying the pain or the tears that squeezed out, suddenly right back there, back at the restaurant and the celebration they’d all assumed it was.

‘Mum treated us all for Christmas lunch, said she’d won some money on Lotto and wanted to splurge. She shouted us all—Shayne and me, his parents, even his sisters and their partners. I think she loved the idea of having a big family around her for once.’ She paused. ‘We’d never had a Christmas meal out before. It was such a treat to eat in a real restaurant. Everyone was wearing party hats and pulling Christmas crackers. It was the best Christmas we’d ever had.’

She dragged in air. She should have realised how tired her mother had looked, even as she’d so valiantly smiled and laughed and joined in. She should have noticed the shadows under her eyes and how little she had eaten herself while everyone around her was feasting. ‘Mum made it a special Christmas for everyone. Until we got home and she confided to Shayne and me the truth. That she was dying. That she had only weeks to live and there was nothing anyone could do for her. The only thing she wanted more than anything was to know that her daughter would be taken care of.’