So this was it. She was finally going to tell James about the baby. She should probably have told him after her eight-week dating scan but she’d been too paranoid that something might go wrong.
‘Cassie. Hi.’ That lovely, gravelly voice. He sounded quite surprised to hear from her – understandably – the only interaction they’d had since he visited Leonie’s grave had been a few texts. But he also sounded pleased. Soon he was presumably going to be a lot more surprised and a lot less pleased.
‘Hello.’ Eek. She couldn’t just go straight in with it.Hi, James. I’m twelve weeks pregnant. I thought you should know. No. She needed to find some small talk from somewhere. She should have planned this. ‘Happy new year.’ It was definitely okay to say that even towards the end of January.
‘Happy new year to you too. How are you?’ he asked.
‘I’m good, thank you. How are you?’
‘Yep, great. I’m seeing Ella and her family a lot more. We spent Christmas together. It’s great. All good.’
‘I’m so pleased to hear it. Everything’s good here. We have our first big snowfall of the winter today. Later than usual, so it’s been particularly exciting. The animals are all well. Dina and Laura are well.’
‘Great.’
Okay. This was silly. She was just going to go for it.
‘I called because I have something to tell you,’ she said.
‘Okay.’
‘It’s actually something really big. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to say it and then I’m going to end the call to let you digest the information. And then there’s no need for you to say anything at all, ever, if you don’t want to. I mean, it will be entirely up to you. I’m not expecting anything from you. I mean, I’d be very happy to hear from you if you’d like to get in touch, but there’s no obligation.’ Forgoodness’sake. She really should just stop babbling and get on with it.
‘Okay.’ He sounded as though he was laughing slightly. He probably wouldn’t be laughing in a couple of minutes’ time.
‘So. The reason that I called is…’ Woah, this was hard to say. ‘It’s that I’m three months pregnant and you’re the father, and I’m keeping the baby. And no need to say anything. I’ll go now.’
She pressed the red button and ran to the loo and threw up.
Twenty-Nine
James
The phone had gone dead. James moved it so that he could see the screen. Yes, Cassie had in fact hung up. She had told him that she was pregnant and she had ended the call. She had told him that she was pregnantwith his baby.
Pregnant.
Pregnant.
He’d genuinely thought for a moment that she was going to say that she loved him and could they try a relationship of some kind. Pretty arrogant of him. Good job she hadn’t realised that he’d thought that.
Anyway, focusing on the essentials, she was pregnant. She was going to have a baby and he was the father.
Wow. Just. Mind-boggling.
If you were going to get this kind of news, you really didn’t want to be in the back of a taxi on your way to an important client meeting. You’d want to be home alone, or in the middle of the park or the countryside or somewhere, alone. Alone, basically. With time to think, to react, to try to get your mind working again. Right now, James’s mind was completely stunned. He had no idea what he thought.
The taxi was pulling up outside the client’s offices. Maybe he could cancel the meeting. Pull a sickie. Go home and call Cassie back. Yep. That was a good idea. He’d go with food poisoning. That could come on very suddenly and didn’t have to last long so you could be back in action the next day totally unsuspiciously.
‘Actually, mate.’ He leaned forward to speak to the driver to ask him to take him home, and his colleague Pranav knocked on the window, grinning away at him. James contemplated for one second spinning the food poisoning yarn to him and then realised that without any vomit or green features as evidence, he wasn’t going to look particularly convincing. Okay. He was going to have to do the meeting.
He got out of the cab, had his hand pumped up and down a few times by Pranav and paid the driver.
‘I just need to send a quick message,’ he told Pranav. He couldn’t leave Cassie hanging completely.
Got a meeting. Will call later.
Also, congratulations.
