“Can I get you anything?” Sandra watched Tasha devouring a large finger of cheese coated in chocolate as she attempted to return the juice to the fridge.
“No thanks. I might just go back to bed for a while. Did you say you were grocery shopping today?” asked Tasha.
“I was, but you probably shouldn't be left alone,” replied the older woman with a more concerned expression on her face now.
“Sandra, I will be fine. I feel bad enough thinking that you're working on a Saturday just because Jim is and I'm pregnant, but Jim is at the end of the phone if I need him. I also have Philip across the drive and Abby, Lucy, Sara and even Bria if I get desperate, and let’s not forget Mike next door who I am sure has a list of instructions so please carry on with what you have planned.”
“Okay, if you're sure.”
“Absolutely,” Tasha said before heading for the stairs where she stopped halfway up with a pain that had her doubling over before completing the journey and climbing into bed.
Lying on her side, Tasha curled into a ball, as close to a ball as she could with her very pregnant belly in the way and remembered her wedding to Jim and her life since that moment.
As she replayed her words to Sandra about the timing of her pregnancy she realised the timing of everything with Jim had been off in her own mind. When she’d met him and they’d spent that first week together it had been a whirlwind and although it had been a week she’d never forget, part of her had wished it had been a few years later. Two or three years later would have found her better prepared, ready for the pig-headed freight train that her husband was. Those years would have enabled her to gain more work and professional experience and then she would have embraced everything the first year with Jim had thrown up rather than kicking back as she had so often. With a single chuckle, she acknowledged that she was always going to kick back against so many of Jim’s ways and demands.
They really had endured so much together; the whirlwind romance, dealing with her parents and Liam, trying to blend their family to include her siblings, grandparents, Lizzie and Philip and now their own child, their marriage and that was without her even considering the impact of Mickie on their lives. Maybe this was exactly as it was supposed to be and meeting a year, two years later it wouldn’t have worked. In that time Mickie might have managed to sink her claws in even further and manipulated her way into Jim’s life and heart.
Mickie was still a blot on the landscape. Tasha still had the occasional nightmare that centred on her, but they were the exception rather than the rule now. It was Jim who was more affected by Mickie. He still felt guilty, maybe he always would, not that he should in Tasha’s mind, but he did. He felt bad that he’d ever exposed Tasha to Mickie, but more than that it was that he’d underestimated Mickie’s love and obsession for him as well the depths she’d sink to in order to remove Tasha from his life.
He had, in those first few weeks after Tasha’s crash and then Mickie’s death, tortured himself with all of the choices he’d made where Mickie was concerned, often asking himself if he’d missed signs that she’d been unbalanced all along, that there were no lengths she wouldn’t go to in order to become Mrs Maybury.
Tasha’s personal belief was that Mickie was unhinged and probably had been all along, even if it hadn’t shown. However, once she’d seen an opening for herself in Jim’s life as something other than a friend she’d seized it fully, but that is when Tasha had come along and gate-crashed the party. Tasha could almost feel some sympathy for Mickie as she imagined how it must have hurt her to hear everyone saying how different Tasha was, how different Jim was because of her. But then Mickie had tried to manipulate every situation that involved Jim in order to gain some ground, like she had with number two and her abortion.
A wave of tightness suddenly caught her off guard but Tasha felt it was a signal from her baby, a reminder that she needed to focus on happy thoughts, not dark thoughts of Mickie. It was also confirmation that a few more years of professional and personal independence would have meant she wouldn’t be where she was and neither would he, or she, her baby that was safely tucked up in her womb and refusing to be shifted, no matter how she tried to move him and she’d tried relentlessly to do just that over the last week or so; she’d tried eating ridiculously spicy food, drinking raspberry leaf tea until she thought she might soon resemble a raspberry, exercise, she had done more exercise in the last couple of weeks than the previous couple of years, brisk walking and swimming were the ones Jim hadn’t vetoed after finding her down at the stables and saddling up the chestnut stallion he’d always banned her from riding. And then there was sex, lots and lots of sex, including that morning in the shower. Although her hormones had gone into overdrive during early pregnancy, by the time she’d hit the third trimester she was too tired and felt far too fat to be as passionate as she had been pre-pregnancy and early on. However, as she’d read that sex could trigger labour she had forgotten about any issues of self-consciousness and body image and had literally been jumping on Jim at every opportunity and although he knew her main motivation wasn’t him or even herself he happily obliged, but so far nothing had worked.
With her grandmother’s words,you can’t rush a baby to be born, he will come when he’s ready and not before, ringing in her head Tasha decided she was probably right and despite her worries about not being attractive anymore, about being fat with stretch marks another try when Jim came home wouldn’t hurt because he never made her feel anything less than beautiful, never had, not since the second he had set eyes on her.
With happy and emotional tears threatening to strike, Tasha closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her belly, cuddling her baby as she fell asleep.
It was another couple of hours before Tasha woke, still feeling restless so took a long bath and after dressing in a floor length maxi dress made her way back downstairs to an empty house. There was a message from Jim waiting for her.
Smiling at his message and the handles he'd adopted for them after watching some TV show where a teenage mum had referred to her child's father as being the baby daddy she began to text back but was caught off guard by a pain that was spreading across her abdomen, like earlier, but this one was more of a wave than before. Blowing and panting, she was relieved when it passed quickly. She abandoned her text to Jim and instead text Philip.
Philip came bursting through the door a few minutes later dressed in sweats and a t-shirt looking as though he'd just rolled out of bed as another wave of pain crashed around Tasha causing him to panic.
“Shit Tash, are you okay? Oh God, of course you're not! Is it the baby? Are you having the baby, oh no, I can't do this,” he cried.
“Philip, please calm down. I think I’m in labour, yes, but I won’t need you to be my midwife anytime soon I don't think. Could you go upstairs, to the nursery, there are two bags in the closet, can you bring them down and then I’ll call your dad.”
“Sure. That I can do.” He ran for the stairs, immediately falling up them making her laugh momentarily proving he might just be the distraction Tasha would need as she internally panicked at the reality of her situation.
Philip returned carrying the bags to find Tasha leaning across the kitchen counter and panting.
“Got 'em. Have you phoned the old man?” He looked scared suddenly.
“Philip, please don't look like that. I am shitting myself here without you looking more scared than I feel. You're not the only one doubting their ability to do this, but I have no choice anymore. Call Amanda and see if your dad's free, please.” She began to pace while rubbing her belly and talking to her unborn baby, “I know I wanted you out, but you needed to wait for Daddy because I am clueless here.”
“Hey, Tash, we'll do this together right, me, you and junior?” asked Philip in an attempt to reassure her and succeeding until another contraction hit as the call connected to Amanda's phone who herself was pregnant, but was about three months behind Tasha. “It's just ringing out.”
“Of course, it's Saturday. Amanda doesn't work weekends. Shit! Call your dad's mobile and if there's no answer call Marc, he's in the meeting too,” Tasha told Philip before doing a strange combination of a pant and a blow.
Dialling his father's number he frowned as it rang out for what felt like forever before Jim acknowledged the call that he thought was from his wife.
“Hi baby, are you okay?”
