That funny feeling is still there in my belly. I don’t know what it is yet. It’s like a beginning feeling. Like when you are excited to start a new book or use a brand-new pencil.
It feels like something important is about to happen and I don’t know it yet. Like this cul-de-sac isn’t just where I live. It’s where everything begins.
CHAPTER TWO
Freya
Now
By the time Theo loses his other school shoe, I’m already running late. It’s always the bloody left one. Always. Like his shoes have a secret agreement: one behaves, the other goes rogue just to see how far it can push me before I crack. Spoiler alert: I’m cracking.
I find it eventually under the sofa, wedged behind a toy dinosaur missing its tail; a casualty of an earlier, more imaginative battle. I hold the shoe up triumphantly like I’ve just uncovered buried treasure.
“Found it,” I call, huffing out a breath, relieved that a shoe has not caused me to lose my shit two days in a row. Theo cheers as if I’ve achieved something heroic rather than located footwear he was wearing approximately eight minutes ago.
Mornings in our house are loud. Not chaotic exactly, just full. Full of movement and questions and reminders shouted between rooms. Full of toast crumbs and half-finished cups of tea and the low-level hum of me trying to keep everything running smoothly on my own. There is always something misplaced or half-done. Usually by both of us.
I don’t hate it. Most days, I love it. I just wish it didn’t sometimes feel like a performance. Like I’m spinning plates andpretending I’m not watching them wobble and more often than not, fall.
We leave with seconds to spare. Theo skips ahead of me, backpack bouncing, energy spilling into the street like he’s powered by something stronger than cereal. I, on the other hand, could do with another coffee. Though I’m not sure there’s enough coffee in the world to energise me to the level of that kid.
Oakwood is already awake. Mums clustered by the gates. Prams squeaking along pavements. Kids darting between legs.
Oakwood Primary sits at the heart of it all, solid and red-bricked and comfortingly unchanged since I went there as a kid.
“Good morning, sunshine!” Clara calls from the gate. Her hair is scraped back into a perfect ponytail, coat zipped neatly, lipstick the same shade she wears most days. Ollie and Mabel tug at her hands impatiently. Her husband, Mark, stands behind her, relaxed, smiling at the scene like he belongs exactly where he’s standing.
I smile automatically.
Clara has always called me sunshine. She says I brighten rooms. I’m not sure that’s been true for a while, but it still warms something in me when she says it.
Theo runs off without looking back. I watch him go, heart swelling and tightening all at once. He is the best thing I have ever done. All soft edges and endless questions and bright blue eyes that notice more than I sometimes want him to. Being his mum is the most certain thing in my life. Even on the days it feels impossibly heavy.
“You’re doing that thing again,” Clara says gently.
“What thing?”
“The staring. Like you’re trying to memorise him.”
I shrug. “He changes so fast.”
“Any news from James about the baby?” she asks quietly.
The question lands heavier than she intends.
“No,” I say after a pause. “Which is probably for the best. I’d rather not know for as long as possible.”
James and I lasted just over two years. Most of that time I spent wondering whether I was ever enough for him, until the day he confirmed I wasn’t.
It wasn’t dramatic. No smashed plates or shouted accusations. Just a message lighting up his phone while I stood in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil. It was a name I didn’t recognise and words that assumed familiarity. A conversation that had been happening without me while I was six months pregnant.
I remember the hum of the fridge. The kettle clicking off. The baby kicking gently inside me while something sharp and irreversible tore our lives apart.
He didn’t deny it for long.
The worst part wasn’t even that he cheated. It was that he did it while I was becoming a mother, while my body was already giving everything it had and trusting him to hold the rest.
He is still with her. She wasn’t a mistake. She was a choice. They are expecting a baby any day now. James is about to witness a birth, to do the things he never quite did for Theo and me, and that is the part that always hurts.
