Six-thirty on a Saturday is merely a number, too,thought Sam but didn’t say it.
Instead, she mildly pointed out: ‘I was asleep.’
‘Right. I trust you’re well and have a good day planned,’ said her mother with the same formality she probably used to address the school’s board of governors. ‘Again, happy birthday. Here’s your father. Goodbye.’
With that unmaternal sign-off, the phone was handed over.
‘Happy birthday, lovie. Sorry for the early call but ...’
‘I get it, Dad,’ said Sam, warmly. ‘Early morning swim? The garden?’
Her parents lived close to Dublin Bay, where hardy souls swam in all weathers, Sam’s mother among them.
‘The former,’ her father said. They’d communicated this way for years: Sam would speak and he’d answer in the ‘yes/no/absolutely’ code that was hardly Enigma-machine-quality but worked for them.
Her dad, Liam, was as mild, chatty and forbearing as her mother, Jean, was cool, uncommunicative and distant. It was one of the great mysteries of Sam’s life as to how the two of them had ever married. That they’d stayed married, she put down to the social mores of the times and some concept both parents had about staying together for their daughters.
Nobody talked about the ice-cold rows between her parents when she’d been growing up, and now, this part of life appeared to have been airbrushed out of family history. It was like the fridge magnet said:If anyone asks, pretend we come from a nice, normal family.
Only she and Joanne, her younger sister, talked about the past now.
Their parents’ marriage of opposites had made Sam determined to be nothing like her mother and to marry a man she adored, rather than one she merely tolerated.
She’d succeeded. Nestling closer to her beloved Ted in bed, she thought that, yet again, being with him should feature in the number one slot on her daily gratitude list.
‘How are you feeling and how’s the little baba?’ her father asked.
‘Wriggling,’ said Sam, putting a hand automatically on her hugely swollen belly and smiling, another automatic move. She’d been smiling since she’d found out that she was pregnant, which was astonishing because, after three failed IVF cycles in her early thirties, she’d assumed that babies were out of the question.
Ted had been smiling pretty much non-stop too, a giant grin that brought out that dimple in his otherwise acutely masculine face, a dimple Sam really hoped their baby would inherit.
After many painful years of longing, they’d finally somehow come to terms with the fact that they were going to be child-free people, and that a dog/cat/hamster was the answer – or so everyone said.
They would deal with the grief, they would not let it part them. They would do their best to move on.
‘Let’s be happy with each other,’ they’d agreed.
So they’d got two dogs, Ted began the marathon running that had been put on hold during years of planned babymaking schedules (the fertility-drug years) and Sam filled her weekends with botanical watercolours and the odd yoga class, so she could learn again to love the body she’d felt had betrayed her.
And then suddenly, the previously infertile Sam had become pregnant.
Incredibly, miraculously pregnant with no help from anyone apart from Ted.
‘Last dash of the ovaries,’ said her GP. ‘Evolution is incredible. If you haven’t given birth by a certain age, your body can launch into action.’
‘Wow,’ Sam had said, which was almost all she’d said since she’d gone to the GP to discuss her strange tiredness and morning nausea, thinking there must be a medical reason other than the obvious.
On the phone, Dad said it was a good sign the baby was a week late.
‘All first babies are late and the later they are, the smarter they are. I can’t remember what site I read it on, but it’s true.’ Liam spent hours consulting the internet every day on pregnancy issues. ‘I was going to drop round later with your birthday present,’ he added.
‘I’d love that. We’ll be here. Ted’s going to walk the dogs, but I plan to tidy the kitchen cupboards.’
‘Ah, love, not on your birthday,’ begged her father. ‘Watch old movies and drink hot chocolate. That’s the right sort of plan. Do you have marshmallows? I’ll bring some.’
‘Just like old times,’ said Sam, smiling into the phone.
When her father had hung up, Ted nuzzled into her.
