‘More than okay.’
‘Do you want a salad to go with it? Or what about some kale?’ Feeding her with good wholesome food was Tom’s way of preparing her body for creating and carrying a new human life. He regularly scoured the internet for the latest super-foods that would aid their ability to have a child. Cutting out alcohol should have been on the list of dos and don’ts, but they had both agreed a glass or two on alternate evenings would help them relax. Of course, the moment Martha became pregnant, she wouldn’t dream of touching alcohol. Or caffeine. Or soft cheese and whatever else was deemed harmful.
If there was one thing she was good at, it was abiding by rules.She was a stickler for rules. She was pretty good at making them too.
‘Thou shalt not break my ten commandments, so says Martha Miller.’
That was what her sister used to say when they were children and when Martha would invent a game for them to play. It would start simply enough, like pretending they were shipwrecked on a deserted island and had to make a camp before it was dark. It was all imaginary play; the island was the Turkish rug in the hall and the tent was an old sheet pegged over Mum’s clothes airer. But at some point, Willow would lose interest because Martha would keep devising things they could or could not do, like why Willow’s oversized cuddly polar bear couldn’t join them on the island.
‘We’re not on an island in the Antarctic,’ Martha would point out – helpfully in her opinion – ‘we’re marooned on a tropical island. Polar bears would find it too hot and they don’t eat coconuts, do they?’
‘They might if they were given the chance,’ Willow would say.
They had finished eating supper and were loading the dishwasher when Martha was seized with a depressingly familiar cramping sensation in her stomach. It was confirmation, as if she needed it, of what she already knew. It drew a defeated sigh from her, which she immediately tried to cover up by pretending to cough.
‘You all right?’ asked Tom.
‘A tickle in my throat,’ she said.
She rarely lied to Tom, and when she did it was usually a white lie to keep a surprise from him, like the time she had organised a secret weekend away in Venice for their first wedding anniversary. Just as she did with everything, she had planned it down to the last detail,other than factoring in that Tom had planned a surprise of his own.
‘That puts paid to the dinner reservation I’d made for us,’ he’d said with a laugh when she’d presented him with a card and their flight reservations.
But now she found that trying for a baby – what a ghastly phrase that was! – had turned her into a wife who regularly sneaked around behind her husband’s back.
They were only small indiscretions that she committed, like not telling Tom about the pregnancy test kits she bought, or about the baby clothes she had smuggled into the house and kept hidden in the wardrobe in the guest bedroom.
She couldn’t bring herself to share any of this with Tom for fear of him thinking she was becoming obsessed with having a baby. Because if he suspected that was the case, he might also start to think that was all she cared about, to the exclusion of him.
It happened all the time; couples torn apart through not being able to conceive. She didn’t want that to happen to them. They were stronger than that.Shewas stronger than that. Through sheer force of stubborn tenacity she would make life bend to her will. She was not her father’s daughter for nothing.
But she was getting far too ahead of herself. They had only been trying to get pregnant for ten months. It was no time at all. It was just that she was so used to getting things done, methodically ticking items off her list of things to do. As an inveterate list maker, she liked to start her day with a list of tasks she had to achieve, both at work and at home. It gave her a sense of purpose and achievement. She never actually wrote down the words ‘make a baby’, but it was there in invisible ink right at the top of every list.
Thinking of today’s To Do list, she had one other outstanding job to tick off and that was to speak to her sister. She would need Willow’s support if there were to be any chance of convincing their mother that it was time now to consider the future and do the sensible thing.
Not that Willow knew the first thing about being sensible, and really Mum wasn’t much better either. During the Coronavirus pandemic Martha had nagged her mother constantly to be careful and not risk leaving the house, but Mum had been adamant that she should do her bit to help in her local community. Along with a team of others, she had shopped for the elderly and vulnerable and made sure they were coping with the fear and loneliness of lockdown. Martha had been convinced that her mother would catch the virus, just as Tom’s poor mother had.
Having lost Dad only months before anything was known about the Coronavirus, the thought of losing Mum as well would have just been too much to bear. It was the aftermath of that worry that was behind Martha’s determination now to make Mum accept that it would be better if she sold Anchor House and moved from West Sussex to be conveniently nearer to her daughters.
Especially if there was a grandchild for her to help out with.
With Willow onside there might be a greater chance of convincing Mum that it would be the sensible thing to do.
Chapter Two
Willow was fast asleep when her mobile rang.
It had been a deliciously deep sleep, the sort that didn’t respond well to being disturbed, but in fumbling for her mobile on the bedside table she woke with a jolt, realising two things.
Firstly, she wasn’t in bed, she was in the bath.
And secondly, by flinging out her hand for her phone, she had knocked over whatever had been on the wooden stool next to the bath.
She had found the sweet little stool in a junk shop and carried it home triumphantly, filled with plans to do it up with some pretty chalk paint and then sell it on eBay. She had thought it might be the start of something new and creative for her to do, a bit like Mum’s old gardenalia business. She had imagined gathering enough stock together to open a small shop called Willow’s Emporium. Full of enthusiasm for the idea, she had bought the necessary tins of paint, brushes and whatever else was required, but had somehow never got around to painting the stool.
If ever she needed a symbol to capture the complete lack of achievement in her life, that stool was it.
‘Willow, are you there?’
