just needed to make his peace with it.
She hadn’t planned to get pregnant.
She hadn’t planned not to get pregnant either.
She’d behaved as if there were no consequences to what they were doing. Almost as if it wasn’t really happening.
Looking back, she found it hard to believe she’d been so … stupid? Irresponsible? But those descriptions weren’t accurate.
Dishonest: that was the word. She’d been lying to herself: she wasn’t sleeping with Johnny so why would she be on the pill?
Clearly he wasn’t sleeping with her either, so there was no need for condoms.
They were both adamant that their thing was temporary and top-secret. She was deluded enough to believe that no one knew.
But they knew in the office, they knew in the shops, they knew at the industry conferences. Not one person dared ask about it, but everybody knew.
Jessie’s periods stopped and she felt nauseous most days. She thought nothing of it until the night Johnny eyed her suddenly enormous breasts and asked haltingly, ‘Jessie … could you be, you know – pregnant?’
She considered it calmly. ‘I think, mmm. Yes. I could b– Yep, I am. I think.’
Eleven weeks, the scan showed.
‘You really didn’t know?’ the nurse asked. ‘But you’ve missed three periods.’
For the first time in a long time, Jessie burst into a bout of noisy crying. ‘I don’t understand. I’m a sensible person. I’m really copped-on.’
The nurse flicked a suspicious look at Johnny, then asked, ‘Is there some situation here?’
Jessie blurted, ‘My husband died two and a half years ago. Him there, Johnny, the father, was his best friend. I’m sleeping with him.’
‘Right. Well, that’s –’
‘Have you seen this ever happen before?’ Jessie asked. ‘Someone being pregnant and not telling themselves.’
‘I’ve seen women who didn’t know they were pregnant until they went into labour. The human mind is capable of a lot.’
‘But me, this sort of behaviour, where I’ve checked out of reality, it’s … new to me.’
After the appointment, she said to Johnny, ‘I’m going to see the Kinsellas. To tell them I’m pregnant.’
They were always going to find it hard if Jessie met another man – any other man.
‘And about me? I want to stop all this sneaking around. I love you.’
‘They’ll be very upset.’
‘I said I love you.’
‘I love you too.’ She was distracted. ‘Okay, we’ll go to see them together.’
Because they’d been worried that their chemistry might be obvious, they’d taken to visiting the Kinsellas separately in the months since their fling had started.
‘We’re having this baby. We need to be brave.’
It had been terrible, worse than either of them had anticipated.
‘I didn’t think I’d feel so ashamed,’ she said to Johnny, on the way home.
‘I know. And sad.’
‘Maybe it’ll be okay in a few months.’
‘Maybe.’
But the upshot was that she was now officially with Johnny. Sleep-walking her way into a pregnancy had forced the situation. What was also official was that they and the Kinsellas were estranged. And that was hard.
Back in the present, she looked at Johnny lying beside her. Even in sleep, he appeared anxious.
Maybe they needed some together time. But the mad thing was, they were together for almost every second of every day. How much more togetherness did they need?
She and Johnny were doing all their stuff side by side – the work and the kids and the social life. But were they on parallel paths, never connecting?
Fear corkscrewed in her stomach. These thoughts were scary.
But, look, she told herself, if that’s the case, do something. Fix it. Organize some alone time, some one-on-one. Be nice to him, ask questions, try to prise him open and find out what’s up.
As she returned to her iPad, she still felt unsettled. Something caught her eye on the news page and her heart plummeted: ‘Hagen Klein Goes Into Rehab’.
What the hell? Hagen Klein was lined up to do their next cookery school in three weeks’ time! And, according to this paper, he’d gone into rehab for amphetamine abuse.
No, no, no! Like, poor Hagen Klein and all, but poor Jessie too!
If he didn’t come – and how could he, if he was in rehab in Norway? – their quarterly take would plummet.
Her immediate impulse was to ring Mason, because he knew the answer to everything. But, no! He’d take this as proof that Jessie’s way of running PiG was completely wrong. Shifting PiG’s current set-up to a company that operated almost entirely online was a natural evolution, according to Mason. He was confident that public goodwill for the shops would translate into online sales.
As