“But-.”
Alison shook her head and silently cried. “She isn’t, Sam. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t understand. You told me she was mine. You let me pick her name, we’re going to call her Sadie. You said, Ali.”
My words and eyes implored her, needing her to tell me she’d got it wrong or that it was all a sick joke, but she simply swiped at the tears on her cheeks.
“Who’s the fuck is she then?” I hissed, trying to regulate my breathing. “Tell me.”
I pushed up from the chair, almost sending it toppling and rushed around to the cot, needing to see for myself whether she had my olive complexion and dark hair. As I pulled back the blanket, Ali and I both gasped at the same time.
A perfect, pale brown face peeked out at me and I felt the ground fall from beneath my feet. Every hope and dream I’d had of starting a family with the woman I loved flashed before my eyes and disappeared in a puff of air.
“She’s Roger’s,” I gasped, thinking of her Jamaican husband whom she left a year ago.
Alison let out a quiet sob and nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“So you keep fucking saying,” I growled, not caring how loud I was. “But you haven’t explained how she’s his baby, when you’ve been separated for eleven fucking months. You said you left him. You told me you couldn’t stop the feelings you had for me, so you left him a month before we got together.”
The woman in the next bed gasped, but went back to reading her magazine when my hard gaze landed on her.
“I-.” Alison stopped abruptly as her eyes widened in horror at something behind me.
I swung around to see Roger, her fucking husband, strolling in. He had a huge bouquet of flowers in one hand and a teddy bear in the other. I looked down at the small pink bear that I still had clutched in my hand and felt bile rise in my throat.
I wanted to puke. I wanted to run. I wanted to stay and tell him everything. I wanted this gorgeous little girl to be mine.
“You’re back?” Ali said, her voice rising in pitch as Roger looked over at me.
“Couldn’t keep away. Hey, Sam,” Roger cried, giving me a huge grin. “Great to see you man. You just come from practice?”
I heard Alison whimper behind me as her hand moved to rest on top of the sleeping baby. “Sam just came to give Abigail a teddy bear, and tell me about practice. He almost did a personal best, didn’t you Sam?” she asked, her voice high pitched and anxious.
My throat prickled and my chest tightened as the baby’s name registered. She wasn’t mine, she hadn’t got the name that I’d picked.
“Well, that’s really nice of you, Sam. Not many swim coaches get that sort of treatment baby, do they? And almost a personal best, great going man. That guy you’ve got standing in for Ali must be cracking the whip.”
Laughing, Roger moved to the other side of the bed and leaned down to kiss Ali, just as I’d done only minutes before. It was the simple act of a man kissing the mother of his child, yet it felt like a knife to the fucking heart. When he pulled away, Ali stiffened and stared at me as she worried her lip.
“Hasn’t she done well, hey?” Roger asked, nodding towards the baby. “I told her the day she did the pregnancy test it was going to be the most beautiful baby in the world, didn’t I babe?”
She’d been with him when she took the pregnancy test.
The same pregnancy test I’d found when her bag fell off the seat one night at the pool, when we’d been the only ones there, practicing late into the night as we’d always done. The same fucking pregnancy test she’d shown me with tears of joy and a huge smile on her face and said ‘surprise’.
Looking down at the baby, I thought back to that night. I’d just reached eighteen and Alison was my thirty-three year old coach, but I’d hugged and kissed her and told her how happy I was that she was having my baby. We’d had sex in the changing room and then gone back to her house that she used to share with Roger. That was the one and only time I’d stayed the whole night, but after that Alison had said we needed to be careful in case the neighbours saw and put two and two together once she started to show. She’d said, if anyone found out about us she could have her coaching license taken away and I’d end up with some shit community coach who had no idea what my potential was.
“She’s perfect,” Alison said, painfully dragging me back to the present.
I looked at her and felt my jaw tighten as her eyes silently begged me not to blow up her life, like she’d made mine implode with her lies.
“She’s gorgeous, Roger,” I replied before clearing my throat to rid the thick emotion from my tone. “Looks just like you.”
Alison drew in a jagged breath but Roger’s deep laugh drowned out the noise of her discomfort.
“Nah,” he said, shaking his head with a huge grin. “She’s all her mummy. My eyes maybe, but the rest of her beauty all comes from Ali.”
“H-how did practice go?” Alison asked.
