The Single Mums' Secrets - Janet Hoggarth Page 0,63

It can be sooner though. They took your bloods as soon as you arrived so it might be any moment.’

Please let Billy and Celeste be seen before me. Please, God. Please? I don’t ask for things so do me a small favour. I genuinely never pestered a sky fairy for anything, so I was hoping the one on call was listening today.

‘Christa Browning? Christa Browning?’ a nurse boomed across the waiting room standing right in front of me waving a piece of paper in her hand like flag, practically cheerleading me into submission, her voice reaching parts of the hospital not yet built. I didn’t turn round when I stood, I just followed her and her squeaking grey Crocs to a sterile white cubicle to be told my higher than average results for birth defects due to my age, but not to worry. I wasn’t fretting about that, I was more worried about walking back out there and Billy texting Tom about who he’d seen at the antenatal clinic. Thunder Cunt. The lid was undeniably off the jar for the remainder of this pregnancy. If this wasn’t an unremitting slew of emergency situations, then I didn’t know what else could touch it. Billy and his wife had disappeared when I returned to Louise.

I stayed another night in Forest Hill, cocooning myself from the reality of the conversations ahead. If I avoided Carl, then I could put it off a bit longer…

‘Will you tell Tom?’ Louise asked as I pushed my spinach and ricotta ravioli round my plate.

‘I’m going to have to, aren’t I? He’s going to notice at some point, even if Billy doesn’t out me before that.’

‘He might be OK about it now he’s with someone else,’ Louise said unconvincingly. ‘Does it make you feel weird?’

‘What? Having a baby, or the fact that Tom isn’t the father?’

‘Tom.’

I prodded my pesto-covered parcel with my fork and lifted it up to my mouth like a microphone. ‘I’m not sure how I feel. Sad, in a way. This would be so much easier if he was the father. But if we were still together this wouldn’t have happened as I would still be on the pill preventing this one-in-a-million accident ever occurring.’

‘You came off it when you broke up?’

‘Yes, I needed a break; I’d been on it for so long for the PCOS. It was unnecessary contraception. I also wanted to see how the menopause was going to pan out…’

‘How do you think Carl will take it?’

‘No idea. It all feels so tangled in my head. I’m dreading telling him because I don’t really know him at all. Lara seems really nice and they look so happy together. Then I’ll blunder in with this news and ruin everything. I don’t want that to happen.’

‘Who will you tell first?’

‘Lou, can we stop talking about it? It’s making me feel stressed. I just want to get used to what’s going on for me first before I bring them into it.’

She nodded.

In bed that night all I could see in the dark was Tom’s face the first time we visited his baby niece. I think I’d known then we were doomed, that he would eventually have to choose one love over another. And now I was going to be doing the very thing I said I never could. I felt wretched. I hoped he would understand this wasn’t about him. I prayed again that Billy hadn’t seen me because I hadn’t gathered my own thoughts on the matter yet. Telling anyone else still felt beyond me right now.

*

‘Can I come in?’ Tom knocked on my office door. It was the tail end of the day and I was typing up my notes from my last patient, a teenage girl who had come in without the prior knowledge of her parents in order to procure the pill. It felt like every patient in the last few days had been a raging red flag on potential parenting pitfalls in the post for me.

‘Yes. How are you? Have you got news on the new mortgage?’ The preceding week had been like living with a ticking time bomb, yet as the weekend approached I relaxed, convinced Billy hadn’t spotted me.

I’d still not worked out how best to tell Carl: ‘So, Carl, remember that monumental shag we had on your sofa where the condom went walkabout? Well, it actually split and now I’m carrying your love child. I hope Lara doesn’t mind…’

‘Have you got some news?’ he asked awkwardly, blushing