The Secrets She Must Tell - Lucy King Page 0,13

myself many times.’

‘And?’

‘I apparently had what’s called a cryptic pregnancy,’ she said, rubbing her damp palms down her denim-clad thighs. ‘I carried on taking the pill, so I didn’t miss a period. I didn’t have morning sickness or any other signs. Because I was so busy at work I was exhausted anyway. Maybe I ate a bit more and gained a couple of pounds, but I put it down to stress-related comfort eating and cut back.’ She paused to give him time to at least partly absorb what she’d said, then added, ‘I realise how this must sound.’

‘You can’t have any idea how this sounds,’ he said darkly. ‘Implausible doesn’t come anywhere near it.’

She couldn’t blame him for his scepticism. If she’d been in his shoes she’d have dismissed the idea as ridiculous too. ‘It’s rare but it happens. To one in about two thousand five hundred women. I had an anterior placenta. If I ever felt any movements, I put them down to tummy rumbles. I really had no idea. When my waters broke and I started having contractions right in the middle of A&E, no one was more surprised than me.’

And wasn’t that an understatement? Stunned and terrified was a more accurate description of the feelings that had stormed through her. She’d never felt physical pain like it. She’d thought she was dying. And then, when realisation had dawned, the awful, horrible confusion. How could she be pregnant? How could she not have known that she was? She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t uneducated. Yet in those bewildering, petrifying moments she’d felt both.

‘And subsequently?’ he said bluntly, yanking her out of the chaos and confusion of the delivery room and back to the present. ‘Josh is six months old.’

‘The whole thing came as a massive shock to me,’ she said, remembering with a chill how quickly and devastatingly her smooth, well-ordered life had been blown apart. ‘I was totally unprepared. I hadn’t been to any antenatal classes. I’d read no books and looked nothing up. I had no baby things and absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was thrown in at the deep end and expected to swim. It’s been a busy time and insanely tough.’

His dark gaze held hers, not allowing her to look away, not letting her off the hook for one second. ‘Still, Georgie. Six months.’

‘I know.’

‘Well?’

This was it. Her moment of reckoning. ‘Could I possibly have a drink? I’m not prevaricating,’ she added in response to the sharp arch of his eyebrow. ‘Truly. I could just do with a bit of fortification.’

‘That bad?’

Worse. ‘Maybe.’

‘What would you like?’

‘Whatever you’re having.’

‘Scotch.’

‘That’ll do. Neat. No ice.’

With a brief nod, Finn got to his feet and strode over to the bar to fix her drink and refill his while Georgie tried to marshal her thoughts, her mouth dry and her heart pounding. How much should she tell him? What could she leave out? Was there anything she could do to make this easier? Unlikely.

‘Thank you,’ she said, accepting the glass he held out and taking a long, slow sip of the whisky. ‘Delicious. Peaty.’

The look he gave her was forbidding, his patience clearly stretched. ‘Georgie.’

Right. OK. She lowered her glass and braced herself for the guilt and shame and anguish that still crucified her even though she knew that none of it had been her fault. ‘So, as I said,’ she said, her voice shaking a little despite her efforts to control it, ‘Josh’s arrival was unexpected. It was also extremely traumatic. Not from a medical point of view—in those terms it was very easy apparently—but from a mental one. I’d left home that morning expecting to be given some strong prescription painkillers. I’d envisaged being back in time to finish the report I’d been working on. Instead, ten hours after being admitted, I went home with a tiny newborn baby.’

She looked at him, willing him to at least try to understand, however big an ask that was. ‘The shock was cataclysmic. I can’t begin to describe the weight of responsibility. Or the terror. I was all on my own and I had no clue what to do. I didn’t know how to feed him or soothe him or anything. For forty-eight hours neither of us slept, which meant that nor did my flatmates, who were quick to point out I was now in contravention of the tenancy agreement and threatened to call the landlord.’

She glanced down at the glass she was turning in her hands, the