Beatrice couldn’t help but snort a laugh.
‘So… why Scotland? Are you there trying to reconnect with Mum or something? We always did promise her a trip to Scotland, an ancestry trail kind of thing. You remember, don’t you? She always talked about wanting to rediscover her Scottish roots…’
A little hitch in Angela’s voice halted the conversation and each sister knew the other was holding back the tears that persisted in sneaking up on them recently, taking away their breath and plunging them back into the horrible feelings of loss. Beatrice let her head hang, listening to the phone line crackling, the buzzing connection bridging the miles between them.
A Scottish adventure had been on their mum’s bucket list, one of many things she never had the chance to experience. Their mother was born in Aberdeen but her parents had relocated to Warwickshire when she was a teenager. She always talked about her Scottish childhood with a fond, faraway look, and her recollections evoked an era that sounded somehow earlier than the nineteen-sixties when she’d lived there. Nostalgia did that, Beatrice supposed.
Their mother had described a time of neighbourliness, of safely playing kerby-ball – whatever that was – in the streets until late at night, and of not having much money but being happy. Despite their mother’s fondness for the place, she’d never been back as an adult, but she had spoken in a soft hybrid accent for the rest of her life that evoked the Granite City she always referred to as home.
‘It’s not that,’ Beatrice said, but thinking all the time that Angela might have a point, and realising that throughout her journey northward she’d been struck by little moments of recognition as she heard echoes of her mother’s accent in the voices of the Scottish strangers she’d encountered.
Her eyes flicked open wide as it struck her that one of themanydiscomforting things about Atholl Fergusson had been this unconscious sense of recognition. She’d heard her mother’s restrained Scottish brogue in his voice, a familiar reminder of lost home comforts in every sound he uttered. The thought shook her as she replayed his words.
‘This is life here and now,’ he’d said in his own particular way, a gravelly gruffness that carried passionate force behind it fading to soft breathlessness at the ends of sentences…
‘Are you still there, Bea? Hello?’
‘I’m still here.’
‘You know, maybe a holiday isn’t such a bad idea after all. Are yousureyou want to leave in the morning?’
‘What would I do with myself here?’ Beatrice dismissed the idea of the willow-weaving lessons in an instant. ‘I’ve never travelled on my own before and…’
‘Peep peep, mind yersel’,’ came a jolly voice from behind Beatrice, and she pressed her body to the wall to let its owner past.
Beatrice watched the woman trundle by and couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her. Obviously another employee of the inn, her thin grey hair was set in tight rollers around her head. She was wearing a white apron and wellies, with her sleeves rolled up revealing fleshy milk-white forearms, and she was pushing a wheelbarrow through the narrow hall from the bar room towards the kitchen with a great sack of frozen chips as cargo.
When the woman passed out of sight, Beatrice whispered, ‘I don’t think I belong here, Angela.’
A long beat passed between the sisters allowing Beatrice time to tell herself yet again that she didn’t quite knowwhereshe belonged anymore. Attaching herself so closely to Angela and her little family had helped for a while, but she knew all along that they needed their own space.
‘Bea…’ Angela’s voice was soft. ‘We’re worried about you. Wouldn’t it be easier just talking about it a little bit? Easier than hiding away in your house? Easier than running away from yourself to Scotland?’
Beatrice heard the shaky breath down the line, Angela holding together her emotions for her big sister’s sake.
‘I’m fine, honestly. I’m getting better. Much better. Ah, would you look at the time. I’d better get myself tidied up for dinner.’
‘Well, OK, but keep in touch?’
‘I will. I’ll text when I can get a signal on my way back tomorrow.’
‘You know we can always clear out your spare room together at the weekend? How does that sound?’
Beatrice let the kindness pass unanswered, trying to force a smile into her voice. ‘I love you, sis.’
‘You too, Bea.’
Beatrice reached for the button on the receiver cradle and let the line die, knowing Angela wouldn’t hang up first. Keeping the phone in her hand she let herself slide down the painted Artex onto the floor. She listened to the dial tone for a long time, crouching on the carpet, thinking of her sister’s concern.Talk about it. Everyone wanted her to talk about it, but there were no words profound enough to give it all utterance.
And suddenly, out of nowhere as far as she could tell, there was Rich in her mind’s eye, his face pale with the shock as she held the pregnancy test out for him to see.
Why now? Why would this particular painful memory want to intrude now? She found herself listless and tired, crumpled against the wall, letting it all play out before her.
In the end she hadn’t been able to tell him the news on Big Fat Positive day. A strange kind of awkwardness and embarrassment that you shouldn’t really feel with your own husband had crowded out the words when Rich got in from work that night. Suddenly she was suffused with worry that he’d think it had all happened too quickly. With the reality of two pink lines staring them in the face and the hypothetical mini-Rich suddenly becoming fact, the idea of being a parent seemed a whole lot less cutesy and fun.
So she bottled it, keeping the news to herself for nearly a whole week, and, she had to admit, it was lovely. Nobody in the world knew about it except her and her sesame seed. She had found herself smiling dopily while they watchedQuestion Timeand Rich was swearing at the telly, amazed he couldn’t guess something was up, but he didn’t.
Had she been waiting for some other sign of the baby’s existence, other than the test strips, before telling him? Some morning sickness maybe, which perversely she was looking forward to? During those secretive, happy days she’d jumped straight into planning; taking folic acid and knocking the caffeine on the head, and she rang the health centre and got a ‘booking in’ appointment straight away – all before telling Rich – and she’d been shocked to discover she’d have her first midwife appointment in less than three weeks, and found herself hoping for the same lovely midwife that Angela and Vic had.
