What's Yours Is Mine (21 page)

“I'm sorry.” I laugh. “That was meant for Tom.”

She doesn't smile back. “Grace, can I talk to you?”

Tom stands. “I'd better have a shower before Grace throws me in the pig pen—”

“Please stay, Tom,” Susannah says clearly. “This concerns you, too.”

She looks tense, but calm. I remember her having the same expression the day she told us she was putting the boys into care. As if she's finally found the courage to face the truth and take whatever is coming her way.

She doesn't sit down with us. Instead, she stands defensively behind a kitchen chair, gripping the back for
support. “I'm sorry,” she says. “I didn't mean for this to happen. I didn't want to feel like this. I've spent the last two weeks trying to feel different, but I can't help it.”

“It's not your fault,” I say quickly, thinking she's talking about Blake. “We all make mistakes—”

She cuts me off. “You don't understand.”

Tom and I glance warily at each other, waiting for her to continue. She opens her mouth several times, and then closes it again, as if unable to find the right words.

“Susannah, it's OK,” I say softly. “Blake's the one who's married. He should—”

“I'm not talking about Blake.” Her eyes fill unexpectedly, and suddenly she looks about twelve years old again. “I'm so sorry, Grace. I was just trying to help. I didn't know this would happen. I never meant to hurt you—”

“Hurt
me
?”

“I wanted to do the right thing. I was going to, I swear.”

I want to go to her, but a terrible foreboding settles on my shoulders, pinning me to my chair. I know what she's going to say. I've known ever since she decided to see her sons. Deep down, I think I've known it would end this way since the whole thing started.

“It's a girl,” Susannah pleads. “A girl.
My little girl
. I can't give her away, Grace. You must see that. I'm her
mother
. I can't give her away.”

“I do see,” I say calmly. “I understand.”

Her head jerks up. “You do?”

“Oh, yes. Perfectly. There's just one thing, Susannah. That baby isn't your little girl. She's
mine
.”

Complete fucking bed rest. They won't even let me out of bed to pee in case it sends me into labor. For thirteen frigging days, I've done nothing but lie on my back and stare at the ceiling. It's like being a tart but without the cash benefits.

I'd be crap at doing solitary. I've never been much for reading books, and there's only so long you can spend flicking through
Heat
and
Closer
without wondering if the entire world is out screwing their extended families. Grace made a big song and dance about private rooms, but it turned out they were all full, and so far everyone's refused to snuff it and free up a bed. So I've been stuck in this crappy ward with no TV and no Internet and too much bloody time to think.

At first I thought it was my hormones making me all dumb and broody. But I didn't get like this with the boys, and trust me, my hormones were in overdrive then. It was really bad with Davey; I'd burst into tears if Princess Di so much as changed her hairstyle. One memorable morning,
I sobbed for two hours when I found out the bin men didn't recycle latex. I ate chocolate ice cream with cheese Quavers, and started a refuge for sugar ants. But maternal urges? I had about as much nesting instinct as Myra Hindley. What I'm feeling now has nothing to do with my hormones.

I never wanted another baby. Not once since I gave up the kids have I even thought about having another one. I was crap at it last time around! I hated every bleach-soaked minute of it. Why the fuck would I want to do it again?

I offered to play rent-a-womb for Grace because I wanted to keep a roof over my head and maybe prove to her and everyone else I could do something cool for once. I never considered what might happen if I changed my mind, because it
so
wasn't going to happen.

But something weird happened to me when I saw my boys again, all grown up. I realized for the first time in my life what I'd been missing. But I knew, even then, I wasn't going to get a second chance with them, not really. I can see them every week or two, and maybe even get to know them a bit, but the Social won't let me take them home, not now that they're settled with their foster parents. I can't argue with that. Let's face it, how could I turn around and become a Mum to two teenagers I barely know? It's never going to happen. It's too late.

This baby is different. It's not too late for this baby.

When the thought first popped into my head, as I was sitting on the sofa looking at Donny's drawing of his mum and dad and brother, a picture that had nothing to do with
me, of course I didn't take it seriously. This baby wasn't mine! I was having it for Grace. Yeah, sure, it would've been nice to have a bloke in tow and a baby and a family of my own, but it'd be nice to win the lottery, too. It was never going to happen. I'm just not mother material.

But once I'd let the genie out of the bottle, the thought wouldn't go away. It kept on buzzing around my head.
I want to keep my baby. I want to keep my baby
. I told myself it was just my hormones running haywire. I almost managed to laugh at the idea of me going back to nappies and pushchairs and puke. As if!

But love isn't logical. And so for two weeks, I've laid on my back and the idea has gone around and around in my head and I've gone back and forth, back and forth. I know it's stupid. I know I'm the last person who should even contemplate motherhood again. I know I'll break my sister's heart, and she'll probably never speak to me for the rest of my life. But I can't give my baby away. Not this time.

And then I hear Mum's voice in my head, reminding me how much I'd hated being tied down by the boys. How the responsibility freaked me out.
This notion to keep the baby is pure selfishness, Susannah. You're no more ready now than you were then
.

Grace comes to see me every day, and she's so excited, so full of plans, glowing with happiness. She talks about the rocking horse she's having restored for the nursery and the wonderful kindergarten in the village and ponies and bedtime stories, and I realize how much better a mum
she'd make than me. How can I deny my baby all the things she can offer it, a stable home with two parents and a good education and all that stuff, just because I'm feeling broody? How can I smash up her life and tell her I've changed my mind?

Because this is my baby
, I think passionately now. Not Grace's baby. Mine. My DNA, my flesh and blood. I can feel it kick inside me! I know Grace will be heartbroken, but she
will
get over it. If I let this baby go, it'll kill me. It's as simple as that.

I pick my nails nervously, glancing along the ward every couple of minutes. Grace is coming to collect me any moment now, and I still haven't told her. I keep meaning to, but every time I think I've finally screwed up my courage, I bottle it.

Maybe … maybe we can still find a way around this. Somehow. Perhaps we can—I don't know—share the baby? I could keep living at Tom and Grace's and she could keep working, and I could be a kind of nanny, or something. It
could
work.

A girl in a white lab coat pushes a portable ultrasound towards me. “Susannah? We just want to check the baby before you leave? Make sure it's OK?”

“What, again?”

“Better safe than sorry?” she singsongs. “Won't take long?”

I scowl, but slide back on the bed and lift up my T-shirt. She squirts cold gel on my belly, and slides her probe thing over it. She looks about a year older than Davey.

“She looks like she's doing fine?” the girl says, clicking and pointing.

I glance at the monitor, but it still looks more like a fish fossil than a baby, if you ask me. “Wait,” I say suddenly. “Did you say
she
?”

She whips her probe off my belly. “I shouldn't've said anything.”

“I'm having a girl?”

She nods nervously. “Like, I'm ninety-nine percent certain? You won't let on I told you, will you?”

“Said what?”

“About the baby being a—oh. Right. Yeah, thanks.”

Seriously:
she's a doctor?

She quickly wheels her machine off before she puts her foot in it any further, almost colliding with Grace.
I'm having a girl
.

There's no way I'll let my daughter end up like me, I vow suddenly. I'll make sure she knows better than to let a man fuck up her life. I won't let her diet, and get obsessed by the pictures of skinny models in stupid magazines. I won't let anyone ever make her feel the way my father and every other man in my life has always made me feel.

In that moment, I know there's no way I'll ever let her go.

I can't even look Grace in the eye as she leads the way out to her fancy sports car. She puts down the roof, and sings along with the radio as she drives us home precisely five miles under the speed limit. She's so fucking
happy
. I pull up my hoodie and scrunch down in the seat. All I
want to do is get to my room and hide under the duvet until I figure out how the hell I'm going to tell her I'm about to ruin her life.

I'm in such a funk I can't even talk to her. Only when she goes sailing past our exit off the motorway do I open my mouth. I really don't have the energy for her games today. I just want to go home.

She drags me halfway across Oxford, and then makes me look around some stupid posh flat. I don't even want to get out of the car, but Grace doesn't give me much choice.

“What are we doing here?” I demand, as I follow her into the empty apartment.

Grace waves her arm around the room. “I'm showing you your new flat.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It's yours, for after the baby,” she says, flinging open the doors onto a tiny balcony overlooking the river. “I've leased it for a year, but there's an option to buy if you decide you want to stay longer …”

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Grace is exclaiming over cupboards and pointing out period features, and any minute now I'm going to blow up her world.

I won't be staying in Oxford. I won't be staying within a hundred miles of my sister. Once she finds out I'm not going to give her my baby, she isn't going to be renting me expensive flats or lending me Donna Karan. I'll be lucky if she doesn't kill me. I plan to get the fuck out of Dodge as soon as I've told her. Manchester, maybe. It's as cool as
London, but not so frigging expensive. And it'll be easy for Blake to find work if he comes with me—

Don't be a little fool. Married men never leave their wives. If you do this terrible thing to Grace, you'll be on your own
.

I can just hear Mum's voice, but she's wrong. I'm not being stupid. Why shouldn't he leave Claudia? We get on really well. If the baby's his, which it's got to be, he'll have just as much reason to come with me as stay with her. More, even. There's no way he gets the kind of sex from her that he gets with me.

My knickers go into meltdown at the thought. It's been
weeks
. Blake couldn't visit me in the hospital, obviously, so I haven't seen him since Grace told the bloody world I was pregnant. I wanted to break it to him myself, but maybe he'll have guessed anyway that the baby's really his. He'll probably suggest he leaves Claudia himself. Perhaps we can even break the news to Grace together. It'd be easier for her if she hears from him the baby isn't Tom's.

Behind me, Grace is just going on and on about the apartment, doing my head in. I round on her, and then feel like a complete bitch.

I apologize, but I can tell she's hurt. We trail out to the car, and I'm too tired and stressed to make it all right. I just want to get this over with. I wish Blake would return my calls. I've rung him about five times this morning, and texted him, like, every ten minutes. He must have his phone switched off because of his stupid wife.

For a moment, when I see him coming out of the house across the street, I think I'm imagining it because
he's on my mind. And then I realize I'm not hallucinating. The bastard really is here.

WHEN WE GET
home, Grace leaves me to stew in my room while she fusses around downstairs. I sit on the edge of the bed, too sick and raw even to cry. I shouldn't have been such a cow to her. I wish I could take back what I said. She does fancy Blake, but unlike me, she's not stupid enough as to do something about it. I'm the fucking idiot who homes in on assholes like a heat-seeking missile and invites them to walk all over me. Why am I always so fucking
stupid
?

Blake isn't going to leave Claudia. Why would he, when he can have his cake and eat it? The only way they'll split is if she kicks him out, and if she hasn't done that by now, she's not going to.

I'm not even second in line. He's been shagging that blond bitch since way before I was on the scene. What am I, a bit on the side of his bit on the side?

I've put off telling Grace for lots of reasons: mainly because I'm a fucking coward. But also because I didn't want to have to leave Blake. I guess I always knew he wasn't going to come with me.

I get up and go into the bathroom, where I splash cold water on my face. I'm running out of excuses. There's no reason for me to stay here now. I won't end up on the street. I'm pregnant, so the Social will have to give me somewhere to live. It'll be a shit hole, but I've survived worse. I climbed out of the hole before. I'll manage.

In the kitchen, Grace and Tom are laughing, and for a second, I nearly bottle it again. They've been my family for nearly six months, and they're going to hate me. As soon as I open my mouth, it'll all be over.