The Family Trap Read online

  How on earth will he react when I tell him I’m pregnant?

  Seems like I won’t be long finding out – the hordes are about to descend upon us. I can already hear voices outside, and now Maggie is helping Lipsy into the wheelchair and Robert is placing Phoenix into her arms, and any second now we’re going to burst out of that door and face the world. Would it be completely crazy for me to look around for somewhere to hide? I’m not ready. I can’t see them yet. What if they can tell? My mum – surely she’ll know just by looking at me, even if the midwife doesn’t? Granted I’m not showing yet, but don’t mothers have a sixth sense for this kind of thing?

  Then I think back to how gobsmacked I was when Lipsy dropped her own baby-bombshell last year and I realise this is nonsense. No one will know unless I tell them. And right now is definitely not the time. Not with Lipsy all glowing and proud, and the family overjoyed and rallying together properly for the first time in ages. This is not the time for me to drive a tank through the middle of them and say, ‘Hey, forget about all that – now it’s all about me again.’

  And there’s the wedding to think about …

  ‘Mum? Hello? Earth calling.’

  Lipsy and Robert are waiting by the door, Lipsy’s free hand outstretched. I walk over and grip it tightly. She smiles up at me, my little girl, the purpose of my life for the past sixteen years.

  Never mind Paul, how is Lipsy going to react when I tell her?

  There will be no easy solution to this problem. The fire last year, and the rebuilding of my house and my fractured family – not to mention the problems Paul and I had getting together – all this will fade into insignificance compared to the fallout from the news that I’m going to be a mum all over again. Lipsy might never forgive me. My life will never be the same again, and neither will Paul’s. My parents will think I’m crazy, not to mention irresponsible.

  But as I catch a glimpse of baby Phoenix’s dark blue eyes, wide and amazed at this big new world, a strange calmness washes over me. Maybe I can make this work. Maybe the fallout won’t be so bad. A new baby is not a calamity, after all. It’s a cause for celebration.

  Placing a protective hand on my flattish tummy, I fix a smile on my face and follow Lipsy out to meet the rest of the family. No matter what happens, I’m going to love this baby. This is my second chance. My chance to do it right.

  *

  When we emerge from the maternity suite, it’s like I’ve spent days in there, not hours. I grip hold of Lipsy’s hand, blinking against the bright sunlight that slants in through the high windows. The midwife trills her fingers goodbye and pads away along the corridor in her red Crocs, her behind wide and swaying. (And she had the nerve to talk about my child-bearing hips!) Hard to believe I’ve just spent ten hours in her company, and off she trots without a word.

  Mind you, I’ll probably be seeing her again in about seven months’ time.

  My mum is the first to rush forward, with Dad not far behind. No sign of Lipsy’s dad, but that’s no surprise. John Dean popped back into her life briefly last year, after leaving me high and dry when she was just a tiny baby herself. He stuck around only long enough to cause trouble for Paul and me, and to build up Lipsy’s hopes that she might finally have a father in her life. But when his plan to get back together with me fell on deaf ears, John Dean crawled back into the loser-shaped hole he came out of and we haven’t heard from him since. Good riddance.

  And then I see Paul. He hangs back until Lipsy is surrounded, then walks slowly forward and takes my hand. Holds it to his cheek. Kisses it, and then kisses me on the lips, very gently.

  Paul is effortlessly good-looking: the kind of guy who doesn’t know the effect he has on women. Wavy blonde hair that curls around his ears when he forgets to get a haircut, a well-built frame just on the hunky side of sporty, and a mobile, kissable mouth.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asks, so softly it feels as though I’m hearing the words inside my head. I nod, but suddenly find I can’t speak. He pulls me close and holds me. I’m enclosed safely in his arms, my face pressed to his chest, inhaling his scent which is spicy and clean, and there is nowhere on earth right now I’d rather be.

  Until I remember.

  I leave my head where it is for a moment and rehearse what I’m going to say. What I’ll do is whisper it to him now, then ask him to keep it to himself for a few days. Maybe even until after the wedding. At the very least until I’m ready to tell the rest of the family. By this I mean Lipsy.

  Paul, I’m pregnant. No, that’s too direct.

  Paul, darling, in about seven months we are going to have a wonderful surprise – a beautiful, darling little baby. No, no, no! That’s too Sound of Music.

  Maybe I should go for a jokey tone: Hey, Paul, I’ve got a present for you. It’s in my tummy. No, I haven’t eaten it! It’s a baby!

  This isn’t going to work, is it? I need more time, need to think this through. How best to tell the love of your life that a wonderful thing has happened, but as you’ve never even discussed babies – and you’re just about to get married and move in together without having discussed babies – you have no idea how they are going to react?

  ‘Stella?’

  I move back and look into his eyes. In the light from the high windows they are impossibly blue. The sunlight picks out the faint lines around his eyes, and highlights dust motes hovering in the air. When I was a child I used to call it fairy dust. It had magical properties, and there was a lot of it in my childhood home; my mother derived great pleasure from beating cushions.

  I could do with a sprinkling of magic right now.

  But hang on – this is Paul. The man I’ve loved since I was in high school, my best friend, the nicest, kindest, most sensible man I’ve ever met. Surely he’ll be overjoyed at the news, if a little surprised at first.

  I take a deep breath. ‘Paul,’ I begin, ‘there’s something I need to tell–’

  ‘Mum? Are you coming?’

  Lipsy, finally freed from the ferocious hugging, is waving for me to follow them up to the ward. I shrug helplessly at Paul and hotfoot it down the corridor behind my daughter.

  I never said I wasn’t a coward.

  ‘I’ll catch up with you later,’ I call over my shoulder, but to my surprise Paul is right there behind me.

  ‘I’ll walk up with you,’ he says. ‘There’s something we need to talk about.’

  We’re practically jogging now, side by side, behind Robert and Lipsy and Mum and Dad. I try to tell my dad to slow down – why he’s almost running up the corridor I do not know – but I’m too out of breath to make myself heard. Paul’s wittering on about Hannah and her birthday next week, and I’m envious as usual of how fit he is. He can jog and talk at the same time. For me, that’s multitasking taken too far.

  Our convoy turns a corner at ten miles an hour, and I hold up my hand to Paul and lean against the wall, trying to catch my breath.

  ‘She’ll follow you up,’ Paul calls after them and I nod gratefully.

  ‘You really should get more exercise, Stella.’

  He means well, but I do want to give him a slap all the same. He knows how I feel about the E word, and besides, I’m completely exhausted after being up all night. I can’t remember when I last ate anything, and I am, in fact, pregnant ...

  I say nothing. He starts talking again, and this time I manage to listen.

  ‘So Hannah said she’d really like to go away for her birthday. Serves me right for asking, I suppose, but I’ve managed to book a caravan in Wales – remember that outdoor pursuits place I told you about? Of course, she’s even more excited about the trip now there’s the possibility of us all going. I know it’s a whole week, longer than we’d planned, but I do think it will be easier with two adults keeping her occupied. What do I know about nine-year-old girls, after all? Anyway, what do you think?’

  I think it sounds like Paul’s daughter is wrapping him around her little finger as usual, but this I keep to myself.
/>   I put on a fake frown of disappointment. ‘Paul, you know it’s not great timing for me. Lipsy needs me at home – she’s only got me for another fortnight as it is, and I really want to get her and the baby settled before the wedding. I can’t just go away and leave her to it, can I?’

  And I’m thinking that a week in a caravan with Paul and his nearly nine-year-old daughter is not exactly my idea of February fun, whatever the situation.

  Then I see his face and wonder what I’ve said wrong.

  ‘Stella ... you haven’t been listening, have you? It’s my fault, I shouldn’t be telling you all this today, you’re bound to be preoccupied.’ He bashes his head with the palm of his hand and smiles contritely. ‘I’m really sorry. The thing is, I wasn’t talking about you coming with us. What I was trying to tell you was, Sharon’s health farm thing has been cancelled at the last minute and Hannah sort of asked if her mum could come along with us, and I didn’t know what to say. But I knew you’d be cool with it because you know it’s no big deal, right?’

  It’s a good few seconds before I can speak. Hannah was supposed to be staying with Paul for a few days over half-term while her mum was away. Now they’re going to Wales for a week, and ...

  ‘You’re taking Sharon on holiday with you? In a caravan?’

  Why the fact that it’s in a caravan makes it worse, I have no idea. But it does.

  Paul has the grace to look sheepish. ‘It’s a pretty big caravan,’ he tells me, as if this makes it any better. ‘There are separate bedrooms. Sharon and Hannah can share.’

  Oh, well. Silly me. That’s all fine then.

  ‘I couldn’t say no, Stella. This means the world to Hannah. It was all she wanted to do for her birthday, you know how sporty she is. And with us moving away and all … You do understand, don’t you?’

  Well, of course I understand. He only found out he even had a daughter six months ago; of course he wants to spoil her and take her away on holiday, and probably go fishing and kayaking and mountain biking – all the things I most definitely wouldn’t want to do. And all the things I imagine Sharon will jump at.

  But taking your ex on holiday? Isn’t that a bit inappropriate – particularly the week before your wedding?

  When I say this, his face crumples, and I know he doesn’t have any answers that will make me feel OK about it. He won’t deny Hannah this. And I shouldn’t ask him to.

  Still, it hurts. Paul knows I’ve always felt insecure about pocket-sized Sharon, with her zest for life and her yoga and Pilates – the woman practically has a sign around her neck that reads: Paul’s ideal partner.

  ‘You’re the only woman I want to be with, Stella,’ he tells me whenever I share my fears.

  It doesn’t make me like Sharon any better.

  ‘Come on,’ he says now, nudging me in the ribs. ‘Don’t be a grump about it. What’s a week in a freezing cold caravan when we’ve got our whole lives together to look forward to?’

  ‘As long as it’s not so cold you’re cuddling up to keep warm,’ I grumble.

  ‘You could come too, if you wanted,’ he says with a grin. ‘There’s plenty of room.’

  ‘Ha! Right. Like that’s not my idea of hell.’

  ‘Exactly. And you’ll be so busy with Lipsy and the baby you won’t be thinking about me at all, will you?’ He puts his face to my hair and inhales. ‘Whereas I’ll be thinking about you every second.’

  ‘You’d better be, Smart-boy.’ I give him my best stern look and then relent and allow him to kiss me. His lips are warm and insistent; I could never get tired of being kissed this way if I lived to be a hundred.

  A passing orderly hisses, ‘Get a room,’ and with a wry smile, Paul allows me to come up for air.

  ‘Don’t get so caught up in baby stuff that you forget to finish packing,’ he says as I extricate myself from his arms. ‘Two weeks tomorrow and it will be just me and you.’

  Hmm. Not quite. My hand falls automatically to my stomach. But this whole Sharon thing has discombobulated me: I can’t seem to get my head back into the right place for new baby news. There’s this crushing sensation in my chest that I don’t recognise. I guess I’m just really tired.

  Paul watches a man wheel himself down the corridor and looks off, his expression faraway. ‘Me and you going on our new adventure,’ he says, and I smile to myself and reach for his hand.

  One of the things I love about Paul is the way he takes the whole “what’s mine is yours” thing so literally. The new adventure in Derby isn’t really ours – it’s his. The recession hit Smart Homes badly; many estate agents, especially small independent ones, have been struggling to survive. And in Milton Keynes, with the glut of cheap new houses being sold off by the bigger agencies, Smart Homes didn’t stand a chance. By Christmas, Paul was already operating on a skeleton staff of one – himself – and searching for new ways to make money. When the offer came to head up a new rental agency in Derby, Paul considered it a lifeline. Smart Homes was his baby, the business he’d built from scratch. I knew the day he closed the door to the office for the last time would be devastating for him. How could I refuse?

  This was just after he proposed, by the way, which made it even harder to for me to say no.

  ‘It’ll be a fresh start for us, Stella,’ were his exact words, and the relief on his face told me more about the stress he’d been under than I necessarily wanted to know.

  One phone call from an old college friend and Paul had it all worked out.

  ‘We can rent to start with, but I’ll sell my flat here as soon as the market picks up and we can buy something ourselves. Together. A little terraced house, perhaps. Something you can renovate, a little project for you. What do you think?’

  He had me there. Last year I had big plans to get into property developing – my plans came to nothing, which is a whole other story, but now Paul was offering us both the chance to start again.

  But once he’d demonstrated that driving from Derbyshire back to Milton Keynes only takes an hour and a half, and promised that we would make this journey each and every weekend, I jumped on board with as much enthusiasm as if the idea had been mine all along.

  ‘We are still coming back here at weekends, aren’t we?’ I ask him now, thinking of Phoenix and that little rosebud mouth. Thinking of the new baby, and how I’ll need my family around me too. ‘Even though you’ll be managing the new agency, you will still get time off, right?’

  He sighs and shakes his head, dragging his attention back to me. ‘We’ve been through this a hundred times, Stella. It will be fine. Lipsy is a big girl now, and she has Robert and your mum and dad to help her out. This is our time now. Just you and me. You have to start to let go.’

  Well, he’s right. Of course he is. But letting go is always easier in theory, I’ve found.

  Like letting him go now, knowing that tomorrow night he’ll be sleeping in a caravan with the mother of his child. The mother of his other child …

  ‘I love you,’ he says. His expression is the one I love best: besotted and completely soppy.

  ‘I love you too. And I’ll be here all ready and waiting for you when you get back.’

  And so will the baby he still knows nothing about.

  ‘Bye, nearly-wife.’

  I go up on tiptoes and kiss him one more time. ‘Bye, nearly-husband.’

  ‘And you’re OK about Sharon coming with Hannah and me?’ he asks again.

  I bite off the ‘What choice do I have?’ and nod instead.

  ‘I hope you all have a lovely time,’ I say. Which is an out-and-out lie. But the moment for my news has passed; there’s no way I could suddenly announce my pregnancy now. It will wait. News this big can wait a week, right?

  With a kiss and a happy grin Paul walks away, confident and impenetrable, not a single cloud on his horizon. I’m watching his back – OK, I’m admiring his back, which always has the power to stir me: broad shouldered, clad in a tight-fitting T-shirt, just yummy – when I suddenly ha
ve a horrible, stomach-wrenching thought.

  I remember what happened between Paul and Sharon eight years ago. The reason they split up in the first place.

  I turn away from Paul’s retreating form and lean against the wall. My head is spinning, and not just from hunger and tiredness.

  Why didn’t Paul know he had a daughter until last year? Because he broke up with her mother when she found out she was pregnant, is why.

  Which does not bode well for my current situation at all.

  There’s no reason to think he’d do the same to me, of course. No reason at all.

  Chapter 3

  ‘He’s so beautiful. He’s the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen. Apart from you, I mean.’

  I’m holding baby Phoenix in my arms while Lipsy snacks on toast and marmalade. She looks tired, but also radiant, the way only new mothers can. In about seven months’ time it will be me sitting there looking tired but radiant.

  Or maybe just tired, me being so much older and all.

  I push the thought away and focus back on my daughter. I won’t think about the next new mum-to-be. Now is not the time.

  ‘I missed you last night,’ I tell Lipsy. It’s true – the house seemed empty without her. Robert came in looking like a ghost after visiting hours ended and crept straight up to bed. I should have basked in the solitude, but all I could do was fret. When I arrived back at the hospital this morning I expected to find Lipsy exhausted and in tears with the stress of it all. I underestimated her. She’s taking it all in her stride.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ she says, reaching for a plastic cup of orange juice. ‘I bet you were living it up, making the most of your last night of freedom before the house gets overtaken by baby things.’

  I laugh at this. ‘Last time I looked, the house was already taken over by baby things. I can barely move for soft toys and changing mats and boxes of clothes.’

  ‘Speaking of boxes, how is your packing coming on?’

  ‘Fine.’ I look at Phoenix’s face, watch his breath go in and out, the little tremble of his lips. ‘Lipsy, are you sure you don’t mind me moving so far away?’