Human Conditioning (37 page)

On the back of their first,
somewhat heated, conversation about having children, Aiden had triumphed in
persuading her to come off the pill just a couple of weeks after they had moved
in, but Lily had insisted they use condoms until she was ready to discuss
children again. As Elton John sang about ‘sacrifice’, Lily rolled her eyes at
the memory of succumbing to her husband’s persuasion: ‘I hate condoms, but I’ll
make a sacrifice if you come off the pill,’ he’d said.

She stepped down from the ladder
to retrieve more paint and, suddenly, her heart sank so deep that she was sure
it had just retreated from her body. “Shit!” she exclaimed and, dropping the
paint brush into a bucket, she fled the room.

Walking briskly across the landing,
with its brand-new and very expensive cream carpet and freshly painted cream
walls, she entered the bathroom. The room was huge, bright and airy, owing to
the large frosted window above the enormous, oval bath/jacuzzi that filled the
left corner of the room. All the walls were tiled in bright white opaque tiles
and the floor was laid with black granite stone. A double shower was situated
on the right side of the room, along with the toilet and a bidet.

Lily ran, leant on the sink
and stared at herself in the large mirror above it, her expression dripping
with dread. Closing her eyes tightly, she counted back the weeks since her last
period.
Six weeks!
Her eyes sprang open and the fear in her expression
was unmistakable. “Shit!”

She left the room, pulled off her overalls and headed out
of the house. Unlocking the driver door of the white Chevrolet Corvette
Coupé
that sat in the gravel driveway (one of the several moving-in presents from her
husband), she got in, started the ignition and skidded out of the driveway.

When she returned to the
house, she headed back to the bathroom. She pulled out the pregnancy test from
the plastic bag bearing the logo of the pharmacy she had bought it from and
dropped the bag into the waste bin by the sink. Opening up the pregnancy test
box, she took out the folded paper bearing the instructions, unfolded it and frantically
began to read them.  

After a couple of minutes
reading, she dropped the instructions into the sink and got on with the
gruelling task of trying to urinate over the small stick that she held
awkwardly between her thighs. As her warm urine trickled over the plastic
instrument, she closed her eyes and prayed silently.
Be negative. Please be
negative
. She popped the cap on and placed the test down on the sink and
waited, staring down at the little instrument that might be about to inform her
that her life was about to change.

She glanced up at herself in
the bathroom mirror as she washed her hands. She looked bleak.
It wasn’t
meant to be like this.
Angst and regret tugged at her heart when surely she
should be waiting in excited anticipation to find out whether she was blessed with
their first child.

She frowned.
Why did she
feel like this?
She was generally happy. She had a husband who adored her,
and who she adored in return. They had a beautiful home and they had money –
lots
of money.
What was her problem?
And really, the only answer she could
come up with was that she was still so young.
Yet not too young to get
married
and
not too young to have sex
, she scolded herself inwardly.
But she had insisted on them being careful...
so what had happened
?

She sighed with irritation.
She was thinking as if she already had confirmation that she was pregnant. She
didn’t know yet, but some innate feeling inside her was quite certain that the
little plastic instrument sitting on the edge of the sink was going to show
positive. The minute was up. She picked up the test and, with a deep breath,
she pulled off the cap.

Shit!

************

When Aiden returned home that evening, Lily was in their
very large kitchen, with its two ovens, a breakfast bar long enough to
comfortably sit eight people, all the up-to-date utilities and cooking
equipment, and shiny black and white tiled floor. She was washing the pots that
were too large to go into the dishwasher – pots from the dinner that Aiden had
had to miss, again, when she felt his arms wrap around her waist. “Alright?” he
whispered, and kissed her ear.

She nodded. His lips traced
down her neck and his touch generated the familiar twinge of arousal between
her thighs, but the feeling was instantly overridden by acute anxiety as the
result of her pregnancy test entered her mind.
Positive!
Oh, Aiden would
be thrilled, but she was unsure when to tell him. She wasn’t exactly elated
about it and she didn’t want her husband to sense her reservations. She
inadvertently sighed at her predicament.

“What’s the matter?” Aiden asked,
releasing her and stepping over to their large American-style fridge. He took
out a cold bottle of lager and popped the lid off on the kitchen worktop.

“Aiden!” she exclaimed.
“That’s oak!” He frowned and took a long gulp from the bottle. He set the bottle
down and stared at her, waiting for her to respond to his question. When she
said nothing, his eyebrows rose, silently commanding her to speak. “I’m just
tired... I’ve been decorating all day,” she lied.

“Well, we could...”

“
Don’t
suggest we get
professionals in again, please!” she snapped.

Aiden’s eyes narrowed.
“Something’s wrong. What’s happened?”

“Nothing...”

“Lily, I can read you like a
book. Now tell me what the fuck is wrong with you.”

He was serious all of a sudden
and Lily knew she had to enlighten him about her pregnancy. He would badger her
and badger her all night if she didn’t speak up now. She sighed again, louder
this time. “Sit down, Aiden.” He did nothing of the sort. He was almost glaring
at her and she knew that, as usual, he was expecting the very worst news.
“Please, Aiden, it is good news, I promise. It’s just... I’m not sure how I
feel about it yet.”

He finally yielded and sat
down on one of the four stools on his side of the breakfast bar. “Go on,” he said
eagerly.

Lily gulped and, plastering a
smile onto her face, she announced, “I’m pregnant.”

Aiden’s face lit up instantly, his smile wide. He looked
thrilled and it dawned on Lily how rare that smile was. Aiden didn’t get
enthused about many things – cars, maybe, and money – definitely money – but
she had never seen him this happy about anything. Except, perhaps, when she had
agreed to marry him.

“Really?” he breathed. He was
ecstatic, actually; as if he were a child being told he was going to
Disneyland, and as if reading her mind, he stood, paced over to her and
embraced her, saying, “This is the best present anyone has ever given me!”

His enthusiasm only made her
feel worse. Guilty, even. That she didn’t want this as much as he did made her
feel as if there was something wrong with her. She squirmed in his arms and he
stepped back. He was frowning at her again. “What is it?” Lily shook her head
silently, in response. “Lils?” he growled impatiently.

“I’m in shock, Aiden. I wasn’t
planning on this happening so quickly. We have been safe... I don’t
understand...”

He smiled with sympathy.
“Sometimes these things happen, baby.” He shrugged then added, “It’s fate,
Lils. You’ll be a great mother.”

“I have no doubt of my
maternal abilities, Aiden,” she retorted, then her voice dropped a few decibels
and she lowered her eyes to the floor. “I just didn’t want this right now,” she
finally admitted.

When she peered back up at her
husband, his eyes were narrow. He was reacting exactly how she had feared he would.
He was taking her reluctance to have his child personally. She sighed and
opened her mouth to reassure him, but she didn’t make it in time before Aiden
began. “Do you love me?” he asked, bad-tempered now.

“What?”

“Do... you... love... me?” His
tone was snide and sardonic.

“Of course I do...”

“Then why the
fuck
is
it so difficult for you to accept our baby?” Lily sighed again, but she
refrained from answering because the answer was that she didn’t know. Something
deep inside of her didn’t want this, and she could not fathom why. “Do you even
want kids?” he pressed sharply.

This raised significant thought.
Again, however, the answer was
she didn’t know
. She hadn’t really
thought about it. All this was moving too fast. She needed time to think. She
thought she would have had time; be a wife, settle into their new home, and
spend a couple of years just being Mrs Foster before she had to take the
subject of children seriously. “Aiden, I need time to think!” she exclaimed,
expressing her frantic thoughts and holding up her hands, palms up, in front of
her. “You’re smothering me about this!” There, she had said it. But it didn’t
make her feel any better and it certainly didn’t make her situation any better
either.

Aiden strode away from her and
located his lager. Putting the bottle to his lips, he began gulping the entire
contents down in one. Lily took in the changing expressions on his face, the
ferocious smouldering anger stirring in his eyes, and it was as if downing his
drink was the distraction he required to stop him from reacting some other way.
Then, suddenly, he launched the empty bottle across the room, the vessel
smashing against the far wall and scattering smithereens of broken glass across
the tiled floor.

Lily couldn’t prevent herself
from starting, and the shock and apprehension that blasted through her like a
lightning bolt left her feeling weak and as though she couldn’t control her
bladder. She gawped at her husband, and when he turned back to her, her whole
body froze as if she had just been injected with a shot of terror. She was
actually fearful of her own husband! She could feel the adrenaline, induced by
confrontation, begin to stir in the pit of her stomach, and she began to
tremble all over, overwhelmed by his anger.

Her thoughts inadvertently turned
to Gina and Aiden’s relationship with her; her pregnancy and his spiteful dismissal
of her. Aiden had implied that Gina was ‘unstable’, but who really had been the
unstable one? Her or him, or both?

Aiden slumped down at the
breakfast bar and put his head in his hands, running his fingers through his
dark hair. “Fuck, I’m so sorry, Lils,” he whispered, staring down at the
counter.

Lily could not move. This was
the first time Aiden had ever directed his notorious temper at her, and she was
petrified. For a moment, he had become a stranger, as if possessed. And she
couldn’t help but think it:
was this the Aiden Foster everyone else knew, who
Gina knew?

Lily finally found her voice
and quavered, “Are you going to hurt me?” staring down at her trembling hands.

Aiden’s eyes darted to her.
“No!” he cried and, sliding off his stool, he jogged over to her. “Lils...
hey...” He lifted her chin with his index finger and thumb, and he felt her
flinch at his touch. His heart sank. He was instantly crestfallen. “Lils, I
would
never
hurt you,” he whispered earnestly.

Lily gulped and she peered up
into his anxious blue eyes. “Did you hurt Gina?”

Aiden froze for a moment,
staring at her in shock at such an unexpected question. He shook his head. “No...
why? No, never,” he answered, but he heard the lack of conviction in his reply
and he hoped to God that Lily hadn’t picked up on it. “I’m so sorry, baby,” he added.

He looked utterly devastated,
and Lily couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. She would forgive him anything. “It’s
OK,” she whispered after a strained silence.

He embraced her and groaned
with relief. “I love you, Lils.”

She returned his declaration,
but the memory of this day would be forever etched in her mind.

April 1991

Lily was feeling pain again, but she had been told by her
doctor that her baby was not in any danger. She had been diagnosed with PPGP (
pregnancy-related pelvic girdle pain), which gave her
severe pain around her pelvic area and made it difficult for her to move
around. Despite her agony, she had sneaked out of bed at 8am that morning
before being accosted by her mother-in-law. She had walked down to the local
supermarket, which was a short distance from the Fosters’ flat at Carlton
House.

She
and Aiden had visited Duggie and Vivien the previous night. It had been a ploy
of hers to try and build a relationship with her mother and father-in-law, and
in turn she’d hoped that Aiden could gain some connection with his parents, but
when she had initially told her husband about the arrangement with his mother
to go for dinner and stay over at Carlton House, he had gone ballistic and had
stormed from the house, returning a few hours later bearing a bunch of
thirty-six white roses in apology. After an extremely long-winded discussion,
however, he had eventually yielded and, though reluctantly, had accepted the
arrangement on the condition that he himself would not stay over, that he would
go off to work after dinner then stay at a hotel and pick her up the following
morning.

Since
the announcement of her pregnancy, her husband and her mother-in-law had been
putty in her hands, though Aiden being Aiden he still challenged almost
everything before he eventually acquiesced. Her father-in-law, on the other
hand, had remained as detached as ever.

Lily
didn’t know the full extent of Aiden’s hatred towards his parents. In fact, she
didn’t know the half of it, but she did know that Aiden only spoke to his
mother on occasion and, from what she had gathered from Kate Foster, on the few
occasions the siblings had spoken, he hadn’t spoken to his father since he’d
left home in 1987.