‘I don’t know.’ Holly’s voice no more than a whisper.
She looked shockingly altered in such a short space of time. Enya pictured the bounding girl who had clung to Aiden as he left for Rome, barely recognisable as this thin, pale creature, with a vacancy to her eyes that Enya recognised as the one that came with the most toxic combination of medication and grief.
‘Sit down, lovey.’ Grateful the Greengates were engaged with clients, she pointed to the two leather chairs by the door, fearful the girl might fall. Holly sat. ‘And how areyou, Jen?’ She leaned back on her desk and folded her hands, taking the opportunity to try and build a bridge, as her friend took the seat next to her daughter and placed her phone and car keys on her lap.
‘I’m...’ Jenny, who also looked beaten by exhaustion, exhaled, stared at her daughter. Enya understood; when your child was this hurt, you felt every beat of it as if it were your own pain. Because itwasyour own pain. ‘Holly wanted to speak to you.’ Jenny changed tack, deflected. ‘She wanted to speak to you when we popped by the other day, but Angela was there, so.’
‘Any time, any time, my love, you know where I am.’ She addressed the girl directly.
‘I have something to say.’
Without preamble, Holly sat up straight and spoke with a clarity and strength to her tone that had been missing up until now. It suggested that she might be unable to cope with any more pleasantries exchanged; the formality a terrible reminder of how far they had drifted. As if she floated on Frank’s lilo, but one pushed out to sea, the speed of the drift one of the hardest things to comprehend, cut loose.
Enya braced herself, expecting to hear a speech that would no doubt slash Aiden to pieces. It was not what she wanted, of course, but understood that it might be entirely necessary as part of Holly’s journey to get it all out, to have her moment. She would, she decided, remain passive, neither condone nor counter, but instead recognise that when your heart was cleaved open it was easy to say things that would never otherwise find their way on to your tongue.
‘Well, it’s easy for you to say, Angela! Go for a bloody walk? Get some fresh air? Have a long bath? Is that going to bring him back?’
‘No, love. I just thought . . .’
‘Well, stop just thinking, and just saying, and come back and tell me how much walking you feel like doing when your husband is lying under a tree!’
Yes, she understood more than most.
‘I’m pregnant.’
Enya felt the words ricochet off the walls and land in her chest like bullets.
‘Holly!’ It took a second for her to find the motivation to move. She felt almost breathless as she walked to her chair behindthe desk and sank into it, not trusting her legs to keep her upright. ‘Are... are you sure?’
‘She’s sure.’ Jenny answered on her daughter’s behalf, her lips tight and thin.
Enya felt torn; her instinct was to say,Oh, God, no!Aware as she was that if this news had come only a few weeks ago, they would be celebrating, rejoicing, delighted! She and Jenny, best friends, grannies together, before Aiden had hopped on a plane and diverted the path along which they had all been travelling for the longest time. Before he had fallen for Iris and broken Holly’s heart. Pregnant Holly’s heart.
Pregnant?It was a disaster. An unmitigated, complicated disaster, like flicking a match into a gas-filled room, like giving hungry foxes access to the henhouse, or throwing a lit firework into the fireworks storeroom. Enya did her best to contain these thoughts, keeping it together until she could go home and scream. If she had thought the whole state of affairs was complicated before, this was on a whole other level. How would Holly cope, how would Aiden? Would Iris stick around if there was a baby on the scene?A baby!
‘Wow! Darling! I don’t know what to say. I can’t imagine how you’re feeling, Holly.’ Her voice, she was aware, sounded shaky.
‘I was going to tell him the night he came home. I’d written a card, saying how our new bedroom was themed on a ship, going on a voyage into the unknown, as that’s what we were about to undertake.’
Enya felt guilty for having internally mocked the theme and could now see it was as sweet as it was tragic.
‘And is this...’ how to broach the very delicate subject without being overt or suggestive, but the fact was that, at this juncture, Holly still had options, ‘this is what you want? To have a baby?’
‘Yes, it’s what I want.’ She watched as the girl who had spoken so definitively placed her hand on her stomach.
Jenny stiffened in her seat and at no more than the sight of her friend’s straight back, Enya felt her hopes for reconciliation shatter and land like tiny shards on the carpet around their feet.
‘It will all be okay.’ With some of the strength returned to her legs, she walked to Holly and dropped down in front of her. ‘We are all here for you.’
‘Not quite.’ Holly blinked away more tears.
Enya took the young woman’s hand into her own; she smiled up at her,a baby!It felt surreal. She mentally tried to figure out how to make it wonderful, how to smother the doubt, the fear, the bloody nightmare scenario they all now faced.
‘You’re not all here for me, Aiden’s not here for me.’ It seemed the sound of his name was almost too much, and again she started to cry in earnest.
‘He doesn’t, doesn’t know?’ She spoke with hesitation, understanding that if he did know then it not only changed the manner of his infidelity, but also, more than that, it changed what she perceived to be the nature of the man himself, his integrity, his moral compass. It was already hard for her to justify the fact he had cheated on Holly, let her down, made rash decisions that had impacted her greatly.
Holly shook her head. ‘He doesn’t know.’
