Twenty
Ihadmadeonedecision about my future. Not that there was ever any doubt.
The wedding planning business definitely wasn’t for me.
You solved one problem – or you thought you had – and then another one popped up. And, as all those TV shows had shown me, together with the wedding dress in Shanghai story, and especially Adele’s behaviour: Brides were strange and unpredictable creatures who would cause problems where none existed and would often do the complete opposite of what any other normal woman would do.
‘What do I do now?’ Adele asked after she had taken the test and returned to the dining room where Lucy, Noelle and I had been nervously waiting, the required two minutes having passed at least a minute ago.
She sounded surprisingly calm and yet disappointed as she dropped slowly onto the chair she had vacated less than thirty minutes earlier, staring at the test with a slight frown on her face and a tear at the corner of her eye.
‘Carry on as if you had taken the test,’ I suggested, as gently as I could.
‘But … but I must tell Marcus. He … he has a right to know.’
‘There’s no need to tell Marcus,’ Noelle said, reaching out and squeezing Adele’s free hand which she had rested on the table. ‘He doesn’t know you’ve taken it, so there’s really no point in telling him it was a negative result. Give it to me and I’ll throw it in the bin.’
‘It wasn’t negative,’ Adele said, the tears now close to brimming over and her lips quivering as she held back the sobs waiting to burst forth. ‘Doesn’t blue mean it’s positive?’
She held the test so that we could now see it and she was right. There was a blue line in the control window and a dark blue ‘+’ symbol in the result window.
‘You’re pregnant, Adele,’ I shrieked, seemingly happier about the news than she was. ‘Congratulations!’
Noelle screamed with delight and jumped up and down, and oddly enough, Lucy was the first one to burst into tears.
‘Congratulations! I’m so happy for you,’ Noelle said, wrapping her arms around Adele’s shoulders, while the new mum-to-be remained in her seat as though she were a wax work model of herself.
‘This is wonderful news,’ Lucy said, sniffing. ‘Congratulations, Adele!’
I’d put a box of tissues on the table earlier, knowing that Adele was coming this evening and there were bound to be tears. I handed Lucy several, and she blew her nose, sounding like a seriously out of tune trumpet.
Strangely enough the loud noise seemed to bring Adele out of the trance-like state she was in and she suddenly jumped out of her seat, almost knocking Noelle flying in the process, and began dancing around the chair.
‘I’m pregnant!I’mpregnant! Me! The woman who never gets anything right.’ She squealed with delight, just like Noelle had done before her, and then she hugged us all in turn.
The four of us finally calmed down a little and we flopped back onto our seats still smiling like Cheshire cats. The test was lying on the table in front of Adele, which wasn’t exactly hygienic bearing in mind she’d peed on it. But now she stared at it again and the smile slowly faded from her face.
‘Seriously though. What do I do now?’
Lucy, Noelle, and I all exchanged confused looks.
‘Tell Marcus, and celebrate,’ I tentatively suggested wondering what else she could possibly have in mind.
‘But then he might think he has to marry me. He’s very old-fashioned in some ways.’ She let out a tiny sob.
Again the other three of us in the room exchanged bemused looks.
‘Hewantsto marry you,’ Lucy said, emphasising the word, ‘wants’. ‘So that’s not a problem.’
‘But what if he doesn’t want children? What happens then?’
This time, the looks the other three of us exchanged, were of concern. That hadn’t occurred to any of us in our euphoria.
‘I’m sure he does,’ Noelle said confidently. ‘Look how he is with Melody. He’s almost like a second father to her. Even Alec has commented that Marcus would be a great dad. In fact – although I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, so please don’t repeat it – Alec told me recently that he’d made a will after his wife had died, in case something should happen to him, and that his parents were to be Melody’s guardians, followed by his dead wife’s parents. But he’d been thinking about changing that, because they were all getting older, and he said he’d broached the subject with Marcus before last Christmas, and asked him if he would consider being her guardian. Marcus said he’d be both happy and honoured to do so. But Alec hadn’t got around to it yet, and when he met me, he decided to wait, because he was sure we’d be together for life, so it made sense to hold off on the new will because he was going to ask me, once he was sure Melody and I loved one another. He said he’d told Marcus, who understood completely but had nevertheless seemed a little disappointed. So you see. Marcus must want children.’
‘But that is someone else’s child,’ Adele said.
‘Which means he’ll be over the moon to discover he’s about to have one of his own,’ I said, getting slightly irritated by Adele’s constant doubts, no matter how good the news. I knew she probably couldn’t help it, but even so.
