‘A girl!’ he kept saying when he drove them home afterwards, as if no such thing had ever existed before. ‘Just think, we’re going to have a daughter!’
A daughter.
She, Willow Miller, was going to be the mother of a little girl. The thought both delighted and terrified her. Rick had already begun decorating the bedroom that would be for his Little Princess, as he now referred to the baby. Nothing, he claimed, would be too much trouble in creating the perfect home for his daughter.
Since the day of that scan, Willow had started to have the most vivid and disturbing dreams at night which had her waking in a panic that she’d mislaid the baby. ‘I’m sure I put her in her cot,’ she said in the dreams to Rick, ‘but she’s not there now.’
‘Think, Willow!’ he’d bellow. ‘Think what you did with our daughter!’
But there were worse dreams than this that came to her now. Heart-thumping nightmares which she’d thought were a thing of the past.
Not wanting to dwell on that this morning, not when it was such a lovely day, she thought instead of how much she was looking forward to seeing her mother again.
‘By the way,’ she said, suddenly remembering what Mum had planned for them to do. ‘Mum wants to take Martha and me shopping this afternoon.She thought you and Tom and Ellis could hang out together, maybe go for a walk and have a drink at the pub.’
‘Are you sure that’s what you want to do?’ he replied.
‘Yes. Why wouldn’t I?’
‘I couldn’t imagine anything worse on a hot day like today. An August Bank Holiday weekend into the bargain. Wouldn’t you rather relax in the garden or be on the beach with me? What with your shift work and me being away on a two-day conference this week, I feel like I’ve hardly seen anything of you lately. By the way, now that you’re twenty-five weeks, you did tell them at work yesterday that you’re pregnant and will be leaving?’
‘I did,’ she said, turning to look out of the window. Her work colleagues had congratulated her and marvelled at how well she’d kept her pregnancy secret, but Kyle had expressed his disappointment at the prospect of losing her. And that was because in the last month she had regularly hit her daily targets, far exceeding them on some days. In fact, she had done so well, Kyle had been talking about giving her a pay rise and promoting her.
No matter how hard she tried, Willow couldn’t imagine being at home all day alone with a baby and being entirely responsible for that vulnerable life. What if the baby –her daughter– wouldn’t feed? Or wouldn’t sleep? Or was in pain and Willow couldn’t stop the pain? Or what if Willow mislaid the baby, just like in her dreams.
The train of her thoughts led to a familiar sensation of panic uncoiling itself inside her. It caused her heart to beat faster and her mouth to go dry. For a ludicrous moment she wanted to push open the car door and fling herself out and roll away down the grassy verge.
To stop that from happening, she tightly clasped her hands together on her lap and closed her eyes. But that didn’t help. It gave her mind the chance to roam freely, straight to the nagging belief that this was all a dreadful mistake, that she had somehow walked onto a stage and been given the wrong role to play. Nothing about her life now felt like the life she should have been living. It felt all wrong, being pregnant and being with Rick. But how could she think that when he was so good to her, when he spoilt her with so many gifts and cared so much for her? He was always telling her how much he loved her, even when she had done something carelessly stupid and upset him.
‘Willow.’
She opened her eyes. ‘Yes.’
‘Sorry, were you asleep?’
‘No, just thinking.’
‘Well, if you open the glove compartment, you’ll find something in there which I hope will give you something extremely nice to think about.’
Intrigued, she leant forwards and did as he said. ‘Is it for me?’ she asked when she saw a small but beautifully wrapped present in the glove compartment.
He laughed. ‘Who else? Go on then, open it.’
Thinking it might be a replacement necklace for the one she had lost, she pulled at the pretty ribbon tied around the box. Then she removed the wrapping paper and lifted the lid on the box.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’
She stared in stunned astonishment at the diamond ring. ‘I think it looks awfully expensive, Rick,’ she murmured.
He laughed again. ‘It was. But so long as you give me the right answer, it will have been worth every penny. So what do you say? Will you marry me? Will you be, not just the mother of my child, but my wife?’
The idea of pushing open the car door and rolling away returned to her, and as though faced with the choice of that, or saying yes to Rick, she took a deep breath before answering.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
As always seemed to happen when Naomi’s family gathered together, there was an undercurrent of conflicting emotions, of something being not quite right.
While Naomi and the girls were off on their shopping jaunt, Ellis, Tom and Rick had gone for a walk to Bosham and had lunch at the Anchor Bleu, followed by the walk back to Tilsham. For some reason though, what should have been an easy-going time was anything but. Perhaps the intense heat of the day had something to do with it; the temperature had soared to a sizzling 34ºC. Bosham and Tilsham were packed with Bank Holiday weekend visitors and with the tide in, what few areas of beach there were, were crowded with day-trippers. The wily seagulls knew when they were on to a good thing and swooped down on the unwary, stealing whatever looked edible from unguarded hands.
