# On Your Doorstep: Perfect for those who loved Close to Home

Laura Elliot

Previously published as Stolen ChildIt's every mother's worst nightmare . . .Carla Kelly wakes to find her two-day-old baby’s cot cold and empty.Her daughter has been taken.Desperate and at breaking point, Carla launches a fierce national campaign to find her baby – but the trail runs cold.Then she receives an intriguing letter, offering support from a surprising quarter. But it leads Carla into a chain of events that exposes shocking secrets from her past. Someone is out to seek their cold-blooded revenge.And it will bring Carla unknowingly closer to the stolen daughter she has sworn she will do anything to get back …

## On Your Doorstep. Laura Elliot


## Copyright

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published as ‘Stolen Child’ in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2010

This ebook edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2018

Copyright © June Considine 2010

Cover design © Alison Groom 2018

Cover photograph © Louise MacGregor 2018

June Considine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9781847561466

Ebook Edition © July 2010 ISBN: 9780007367986

Version: 2018-11-05

## Dedication

With love to my husband, Sean Considine.

Thank you for your invaluable support throughout the writing of On Your Doorstep.

## Epigraph

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

From ‘The Stolen Child’ by William Butler Yeats.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Chapter Seventy

Chapter Seventy-One

Chapter Seventy-Two

Chapter Seventy-Three

Chapter Seventy-Four

Chapter Seventy-Five

Chapter Seventy-Six

Chapter Seventy-Seven

Chapter Seventy-Eight

Chapter Seventy-Nine

Chapter Eighty

Chapter Eighty-One

Acknowledgements

Reading Group Questions, Laura Elliot:

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

## Chapter One. Susanne. Midsummer 1993

I buried my baby on the shortest night of the year. We were shielded by old walls as I laid her to rest in a shadowy wilderness of lilac and elderberry. She was my almost-child, my shattered dream. Sixteen weeks in my womb before she came away. Born on the longest day of the year, webbed fingers and toes, her veins delicate as skeins of silk. Sweet little monkey face.

The pain took me by surprise. When it came, I was standing by the gate leading into Dowling’s Meadow, feeding sugar lumps to Augustus. I heard gunshots in the distance. Mitch Moran, clay pigeon shooting again, and, beyond the lane, the pulse of traffic as cars, driven too fast along the narrow road, signalled an end to another working day. Such a twilight, clouds streaking like lava across the sky, the rooks looping and clamouring above the trees. Then I felt it, the familiar cramping in my stomach, the low drag on my spine.

Sugar crunched like icicles under my feet when I stepped back from the gate. The pain was slight at first and eased quickly, as if teasing me into the belief that I was imagining it. I walked carefully back towards my house, hoping there was still time to save her. But the evening was on fire, a conflagration setting the countryside alight, and the scattering rooks fell through the air like charred scraps of paper. Even the flowers in the hedgerows hurt my eyes, the scarlet pimpernel, the blood-red poppies swaying as I bent over them, cradling my stomach until the pain eased and I could walk again.

I knelt on the bathroom floor and gripped the edge of the bath. The cramps ebbed and surged, each one becoming more insistent, more cruel. Each one signalling the end of another dream. I thought of ringing David but, even before I uttered the words, he would hear my ragged breathing and know. He was too far away to bring me comfort and I could not bear his disappointment, not yet. I thought of ringing my gynaecologist, an austere man with a masterful knowledge of the female anatomy, but he has never been able to answer my most basic question. Why? He would shake his head and offer false comfort, assurances and condolences. I thought of ringing my mother-in-law. Miriam is practical and kind. She would come immediately and drive me to the hospital, not saying much, because it had all been said before. But I stayed where I was, knowing that what was about to happen would be swift and soon. No waiting around, no false hope, no time for anything other than the fluid separation between life and loss.

Once again, my body had betrayed me. Once again, it had defied my will and destroyed what David and I, with grim determination, had created.

Body and mind are one, Miriam always argues, the spirit and the flesh, compatible and whole. Wrong…wrong. The body triumphs every time and I am left holding the husk.

This little one had no fight. She slid cleanly away, so tiny, yet capable of so much brutal force as she left me. I remember wailing. I needed to keen this loss and I was glad to be alone, not subjected to the constraints of a hospital where the feelings of others must be considered. When I could cry no longer, and such a time will always come, I went through the rituals of separation. Familiar rituals by now and usually carried out by efficient midwives, their expressions sympathetic, their eyes gazing beyond me to the other mothers, the ones with reasons to rejoice.

I wrapped my daughter in a soft white towel and rocked her in my arms. I rested my back against the wall. It grew dark outside. I felt hot then cold, my thoughts lucid then drifting. Why fight any longer? Someone would find us eventually.

I ignored the phone when it rang. The caller was insistent. The sound made me quiver but I stayed where I was. The silence, when it stopped, pressed against my ears. I became conscious of other sounds: the creak of old wood, the hiss and gurgle of pipes, the intrusive sighs of a house that has belonged to many generations. The bathroom blind clanged against the window frame and demanded my attention. I wanted to rise and close the window, keep out the scent of the night scented stock I had planted in the spring. It wafted in waves through the stifling atmosphere: sweet and cloying, demanding my attention.

The phone rang again. I became afraid. If it was Miriam, she would drive over to see why I was not answering. Earlier, I had left her working late in her studio. She was probably still there burning the midnight oil, as she usually did when she had an exhibition coming up. If it was David calling from the oil rig, he would ring his mother and the result would be the same. She would drive over immediately to check that all was well. The back door was open. She would enter unannounced and then it would be too late.

I stumbled to my feet and laid my baby, my still and silent little bundle, on the floor. I opened the door of the living room. My hip knocked against the sideboard. Yellow roses drooped in a vase. Some petals had already fallen and more followed, spilling silently onto the polished wood, as if my laden breath had disturbed their fragile link to the stem. How long had I been drifting? Minutes, hours? Somewhere, in my mind, I was still bending over the blood-red poppies and the rooks were swirling.

My suspicions were correct. Miriam’s anxiety was carefully controlled yet it stretched, taut as a membrane, between us. She asked how I was and I told her I was fine…fine. My voice was steady. That surprised me. Steady and calm while inside I was howling.

This was the second time she had called, she said, and she waited for an explanation.

I told her I’d been walking – such a fine, balmy evening. She warned me that the lane could be dangerous, easy to trip on a broken branch, to slip on mulching leaves; she knows every step of the lane, as David does, but I am a city woman, transplanted.

‘I’ll drop in and see you on the way home,’ she said. ‘I want to show you the new sketches.’

I almost blurted out the truth. But I thought about the last time, and the time before, and before…and the well-worn, well-meaning platitudes that stretched thinner and thinner each time she uttered them. Tomorrow, when I was stronger, more able to handle my grief, then I would break the news.

‘I’m on my way to bed,’ I said. ‘I’ll look at them tomorrow. Talk to you then.’

I walked to the front door and folded my arms, pressed them against my breast. Light spilled around me but, beyond the porch, an impenetrable darkness stretched across the Burren. It seemed, as I stood there, that the night was whispering, that even the wind breathed my pain. In the rustle of leaves against the wall I heard the whispers and I heard them rise above a howl that lunged from the darkness. Phyllis Lyons’s dog barking at the moon, the sound silenced as suddenly as it started. But still the whispering continued. I felt myself sinking into the powerful refrain, my lips moving, framing the words, making them audible – No more…no more…no more…

What does premeditated mean? Is it a conceived plan – or a thought unborn until the moment of delivery? I wrapped my baby in a white blanket and sealed her in a plastic shroud. I carried her gently to the old cottage in the lane. It hulked in the half-light, a crumbling ruin, shouldering briars and ivy, the ground covered in dense banks of nettles. Children once played within these crumbling walls and slept beneath a thatch that hugged them tight. Long gone now, both the children and the thatch. I stumbled through the weeds and the high purple thistles that pushed their heads through the cracks in the stone floor. I laid her down on white bindweed bells and dug her grave outside the walls.

The garden has long lost its form. A low drystone wall marks its boundaries. In the summer the whitethorn and lilac grows wild, and the ripe fruit drops silently from a long forgotten plum tree during the autumn months. I wanted to name her. Everyone needs a name to stamp their identity on this world, no matter how brief their stay. Joy, I whispered. You would have brought us such joy. My body ached, bled, wept for what I had lost; but when I left that place, my mind was a cold, determined force with no room for grief or doubt.

In the hallway, I paused before a mirror. The weight I had gained during my brief pregnancy seemed to have fallen from my cheeks. My eyes had steel in the blue, a stranger’s eyes staring back at me through swollen eyelids, defying me to question or condemn. My hair looked dark, the blonde strands lank with sweat and mud. I was unrecognisable from the woman who had earlier walked the lane; yet, it seemed effortless, this casting aside of an old skin and stepping into the new.

I slept and awakened, slept again. I had no memory of dreams. Dawn was leaching the stars from the sky when I arose and showered dirt from my body, burned my clothes, the towels, the bathroom mat. I washed the floor and walls. I threw out the yellow roses. A bird sang outside the kitchen window, a shrill, repetitive solo, until others took up the song. Their chorus throbbed through the morning.

I rang Miriam and told her I would work from home for a few days. Too many interruptions in the office and I had spreadsheets to prepare, catch-up phone calls to make. Later, David rang from the rig.

‘Our baby moved,’ I told him. ‘Like a butterfly, fluttering wings beneath my heart.’

The words turned to ash in my mouth but they had been spoken and I heard him sigh, as if he had placed his hands upon my belly and felt his child respond. And all around me, in the cracks and crevices of these walls, in the nooks and crannies of this old house, in the chinks of all that had passed since I moved here, the voices whispered – No more…no more…no more.

## Chapter Two. Susanne. September 1993

Carla Kelly is everywhere. The public face of Anticipation. I see her on billboards and bus shelters, in glossy advertisements. Her white teeth, her full pink lips, her long blonde hair, and that look in her brown eyes, that amber shimmer of contentment; earth mother-to-be, with attitude and glamour.

These days, she’s the first celebrity to be interviewed in the media whenever the subject of pregnancy is aired. She writes a column in Weekend Flair. ‘My Pregnancy Diary’ she calls it. How to retain one’s sexuality and sense of fashion during those long nine months. Promoting Anticipation all the time. One thing about her, she always was professional.

The Anticipation maternity collection, Dee Ambrose told me when I called into the Stork Club boutique this afternoon, is the most popular label she’s ever carried. Lorraine Gardner is an excellent designer and she’s touched gold with Anticipation. I was so impressed, I bought a pair of fine wool trousers and a silk twist top.

Perfect for the final trimester, said Dee, and wrapped them in tissue paper before placing them in a carrier bag. Anticipation was written in gold lettering against a black background. An elegant bag for an elegant collection. On the way out of the boutique, I almost collided with a lifesize cutout of Carla Kelly. Dee laughed, noticing how my mouth opened with an apology in the same instant that I realised it was part of the promotion.

Only the big campaigns can afford her now. Her career took off after that lingerie promotion. It gave her an edge, a notoriety, all that sleek flesh and red lace flashing from the billboards. Drivers rang talk radio and complained that her image distracted them during rush-hour. Lorraine Gardner wouldn’t have had a chance of running her Anticipation campaign if Carla Kelly hadn’t been her sister-in-law.

I carried my carrier bag like a banner to the Nutmeg Café where I’d arranged to meet my mother-in-law. The rain fell steadily as I crossed Market Square and I walked carefully on the slippery cobblestones. A wretched day for the Saturday market, what with the wind billowing the awnings and people scurrying past the stalls towards the nearest shelter.

The Nutmeg was crowded. The smell of damp wool reminded me of crowded buses on muggy school mornings. Women stopped at my table to tell me I was blooming. Even the cashier, a frail, round-shouldered woman, smiled as if she’d known me all her life and said my bump had become enormous since the last time she saw me. I’ve no memory of us ever meeting but she knew that David had returned to the rig and that I’m planning an end-of-season discount sale at Miriam’s Glasshouse. I grew up in the solitude of crowds but here, where the population is sparse, everyone seems to know my business. Miriam arrived at the Nutmeg shortly afterwards and apologised for being late. Something to do with bumping into acquaintances on every corner she turned. She hugged me. Took me quite by surprise. No time to move before I was enveloped in her arms. My mother-in-law has a habit of nudging and hugging and tapping me when I least expect it. I’ve never grown used to her effusiveness. I expect it’s to do with my upbringing – nothing touchy-feely about my parents. I’ve told her about my childhood. The silence and the separation, two people living on either side of a glass wall of indifference, so steeped in their own unhappiness they were incapable of reaching out to me.

‘It explains a lot,’ Miriam said, and pitied me for the tenderness I’d never experienced.

I’m willing to endure her pity but not her touch. ‘Don’t tempt fate,’ I warn her when she asks if my baby is moving. Now she no longer seeks permission to rest her hands on my stomach, but today in the Nutmeg she hugged me so tight I thought my heart would flip over.

Phyllis Lyons entered and came straight to our table. No asking, just an assumption that, as Miriam’s school friend and my nearest neighbour, she had every right to join us. She picked up my Anticipation carrier bag and placed it on the table.

‘Go on, girl,’ she said. ‘Give us a look.’

I lifted out my new purchases and held them up for inspection. Miriam thought the twist top was a wonderful colour. ‘Sapphire blue, a perfect match for your eyes,’ she said, and ran her hand over the silky fabric. ‘So glamorous,’ she added, ‘yet it looks so comfortable.’

Phyllis checked the price tag. ‘Mother of God,’ she said. ‘Are you made of money or what? What’s the sense of glamour when you look like a whale? If I were you, I’d just keep letting out the waistband.’

What does she know? She’s a middle-aged spinster and gone beyond all that now.

Miriam looked apologetically at me and placed my clothes back in the carrier bag. She finds Phyllis as irritating as I do, but neighbours, she warned me when I first came to live in Maoltrán, have long memories. It’s wise to keep on their good side.

‘I feel sorry for her,’ she said, when Phyllis finally left to pick up a prescription for her mother. ‘It’s no joke looking after a creaking door and that mother of hers has been creaking for as long as I can remember.’

She asked when I was due to see Professor Langley again. ‘Next week, I told her. I’ll take the afternoon off, if that’s okay with you?’

‘Of course…absolutely.’ She nodded vigorously. Her anxiety smothers me. The harder she tries not to show it, the more obvious it appears. She’s nervous about the long distances I drive. But I’m her marketing manager. It’s my responsibility to meet with customers. She keeps telling me to start my maternity leave and take it easy for the final months.

‘But what on earth would I do,’ I ask her, ‘sitting all by myself in an empty house? I’m fit and healthy. I intend working until the last minute.’

‘David warned me to keep a close eye on you and not let you overdo things,’ she said. ‘It worries me,’ she added, ‘him being on that oil rig. If anything…’ She paused, uncomfortable at having to remind me that I’ve a bad track record when it comes to bringing her grandchildren into the world. I try not to give her cause for concern.

It has not been difficult to maintain the illusion of pregnancy. I’ve made a harness with bindings that fit snugly below my breasts and under my stomach. I pad it with firm fillings that outline my expanding curve. I’m so conscious of avoiding contact with anyone that my antennae remain on full alert, tremblingly cautious, always watchful. My face looks too gaunt for a woman in her last trimester but people see what they want to see and their eyes are always drawn to my stomach.

Hopefully, Professor Langley has forgotten my existence. His secretary handled my decision to change gynaecologists with chilly politeness and sent me a bill for my last appointment and scans.

At the start of the month, David arrived home on leave, his skin tanned and taut from the harsh North Sea gales. I hid the harness then, and drank so much water every day that my stomach felt as tight and swollen as a drum. My food was fat and starch, it sickened me, but my weight kept increasing. He transformed the spare bedroom into a nursery. He painted the walls a pale apple green and hung one of Miriam’s seahorse mobiles above the carry-cot. We travelled to Dublin and stayed for a weekend with my father and Tessa. We bought a pram and the carry-cot, a feeding chair, a changing station. The whispering grew more intense as we made our decisions. Each time I faltered they whispered…Remember us…remember us…no turning back…Whenever I felt the urge to run free from the shadow of that cottage and bring the dream to an end, they’d whisper stay…stay. Be silent, they urged, when the truth pressed against my teeth so hard it ached to be heard. Be brave, they whispered, when David laid his ear too late to my stomach and said, ‘I can’t feel anything…Well, maybe I do…it’s so hard to tell.’

What he’d felt was my shudder of fear, my womb contracting with dread determination.

That is how our baby grows, carried into being on a whisper.

I met a horse whisperer once. He was small and stout and wore a wide-brimmed hat with a jaunty feather in the side. To be called a horse whisperer sounded mysterious and powerful, but he said he was simply a man who understood horses. He came to us soon after we purchased Augustus – the horse had too many bad habits for us to handle alone. I’d watched him stand before Augustus, face to face and then cheek to cheek, not threatening, just empathising, reaching deep into the horse’s psyche and connecting with the rage that lay at the heart of his flailing behaviour. By the time he’d finished, Augustus was still a spirited horse but he was biddable. He’s gone from the meadow now, sold to a horse dealer. I told David he broke loose and almost knocked me to the ground. Seeing him at the gate every time I passed was too much to bear. I want amnesia.

It will happen, my whisperers promise. Trust us…believe in us…we are the whispers of what should have been.

David was reluctant at first to move from my bed, but when I told him I’d suffered some spotting, he understood. Nothing must endanger this new life we’ve created. I reassured him of my love, explained how hormones go berserk during pregnancy and lovemaking is impossible. ‘Afterwards,’ I promised him, ‘afterwards when our baby is born, everything will be different.’

When I came home from the studio on the night before he left, he asked me to sit down and talk to him. He placed his hands on my arms and sank me into a chair.

‘Be still,’ he’d said, ‘and listen to me. All this rushing around and working such late hours. Apart from our trip to Dublin, I’ve hardly seen you since I came home.’

He kissed me, his mouth seeking some response. My body clenched in protest, and I accused him of being demanding, selfish, thinking only of his own needs. How was it possible that he could not hear the terrified whine behind my bluster?

‘Why,’ he’d asked, ‘do you spurn me? Do you think I’m a beast, incapable of lying by your side without wanting to invade your body?’

I almost told him. I could feel my knees weakening, the urge to kneel before him and confess. But the whisperers moved from gentle persuasion to implacable authority and straightened my spine. I faced him down, this man whose children I carried so briefly, all five of them, and who now urge me onwards…No more…no more…no more.

He drew away from me and wished me goodnight, chastely kissing my forehead. I understand his desire to be part of my experience but this is a journey I must take alone.

The rain had stopped by the time we left the Nutmeg and shoppers were drifting back to the market stalls. A traveller sat on a blanket outside the café. She was young, twenty at most, a baby in her arms, and a dull-eyed small boy hunkered beside her. I searched in my purse for coins but Miriam went back inside to buy coffee and sandwiches for the mother, milk for the boy.

‘It’s a boy child, missus,’ the traveller said. ‘A big boy child for his fine strappin’ mother.’

Her hard, experienced eyes seemed to sear through my secret. The pavement swayed, or perhaps I stumbled, and the coins fell from my hand, rolling across the uneven surface until they were clenched in the boy’s fist.

Phyllis Lyons arrived back from the pharmacy with her mother’s medication and asked if she could get a lift home with me. Her car was being serviced and she’d missed the twice-hourly bus that runs past her house. Miriam waved and left us together, glad, I suspect, to escape to her house on the other side of Market Square.

Throughout the journey home, Phyllis talked non-stop about her mother’s ailments and her efforts to alleviate them. I stopped outside her gate and waited for her to leave the car.

‘Come in and say hello to Mammy,’ she said. ‘She loves the bit of company.’

I stared at the grey lace curtains on the front window. Her mother would have been watching us, stooped on her Zimmer frame. Inside, the air would be stale and smoky.

‘I’m expecting a call from David,’ I said, and Phyllis nodded, as if my excuse echoed all the others she’d ever heard.

She stepped from the car and walked around the side of her house, squeezing her stocky figure past the tractor. Farming her few acres and looking after her mother…it can’t be an easy life but she accepts it without complaint.

I turned down the lane and drove into the grey arms of Rockrose. I locked the front door behind me. Such relief, being alone again, able to breathe, to open my waistband, to allow the silence to settle until only the whisperers were audible.

I speak to women all the time. They look at my bump and confide in me. One woman told me she’d never once, during the nine months of her pregnancy, felt her baby move. He’s eighteen years old now, on a track and field scholarship in the United States. Another woman was told by her gynaecologist that he could not detect her baby’s heartbeat. That night she felt the first fluttering of life in her womb. Put a group of women together and they’ll tell stories that mystify the medical profession.

Carla Kelly writes about them in her pregnancy diary. The happy, clappy stories about babies who kick and jog and elbow their way towards birth. I sent her a letter shortly after that night. I asked her how it was possible to keep hoping when the womb rejects the dream. An anonymous letter, of course. She could not deal with my story. She passed my letter on to Alyssa Faye for her advice column. As a psychologist, Alyssa Faye believes she has a deeper understanding of the human psyche than the average journalist. Human suffering is grist to her mill. For three weeks she analysed my miscarriages, analysed my head, analysed my emotions. I did not write my story to pad her column. I wanted to see if Carla Kelly could understand, empathise. I got my answer.

Last week in Dublin, I saw her in Brown Thomas with her husband. At least I assume that’s who it was. He stays out of her limelight but she held his arm in a way that suggested he was her rock. They were looking at baby clothes. I followed them from the department store and up to the top of Grafton Street. The flower sellers were busy. Birds of paradise flamed against white chrysanthemums and tightly coiled rosebuds jutted like spears from overflowing buckets. She bought the roses and continued onwards. I lost sight of them when they entered the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre. I probably could have found her. She’s tall and distinctive enough to stand out from the crowd but I was too weak to move any further. I sat down in a coffee bar and asked for a glass of water. The waitress had the experienced eyes of an older woman counting months. She brought the water sharply and asked if I’d like her to call a taxi.

‘You think it’ll never end,’ she said. ‘Especially the last months. But it does and then you’ll know all about it.’

She spoke with relish, they all do, warning of impending chaos and tiny impetuous demands that will turn my life upside down.

The taxi came shortly afterwards. I caught a last glimpse of Carla Kelly and her husband as I was leaving. They were laughing at something one had said to the other. Her head was thrown back, her hand covering her mouth, as if her laughter was a wild thing she must contain. It’s a long time since I laughed that way. Had I ever? I must have, especially in the early days with David. Now I laugh on cue. It sounds natural, spontaneous, even contagious. In public relations, where it’s necessary to flatter and admire, I have acquired certain skills. I lean on them now but, from time to time, they slip. Then all I have to do is touch my stomach. Small gestures create an easily translatable language that gives me leave to be tired, anxious, irritable, uncomfortable and, occasionally, irrational.

Was it irrational to follow Carla Kelly that day? Of course it was. I realise that now but she is the face of Anticipation, taunting, flaunting; telling us it’s easy, so easy and natural to carry a baby in the womb for nine dangerous months.

I too used to keep a diary. I made the last entry when I was sixteen years old. Hard to believe that’s twenty-three years ago. I was pregnant then, eight months gone, on the final stretch, so to speak. And on the verge of becoming a teenage statistic. I lost my boy in March, gone before he had time to draw breath. Lots of blank pages afterwards. The world had become a greyer place, not worth recording. Nothing left for me except my scans and a whisper of what might have been.

‘You’ve had a lucky escape,’ my father said when I was discharged from hospital. ‘Best thing you can do is get on with your life and forget it ever happened.’ He’d taken care of everything and discouraged me from visiting the Angels’ plot in Glasnevin Cemetery. It’s such a poignant place to visit – that treasured, communal space where the tiny ones rest together.

‘It’s a new beginning for all of us,’ he said. ‘No looking back.’ My mother was dead by then and he was about to be married again. He’d changed from the grim, dead-eyed man I used to know. His face was plumper and he laughed easily, joyously. I would look at Tessa and wonder how such a small, insignificant woman with rimless glasses and a slight stammer when she was nervous had wrought such a change in him.

I didn’t blame him for not wanting to begin his married life with a troubled teenager and her baby. I just wished he hadn’t looked so relieved, so determined to obliterate my experience. But it never was obliterated, just lightly buried…like my boy. I held on to my diary, kept it safe each time I moved, but I never had any inclination to read it until after that night in the cottage. Funny experience…rediscovering the young me. I was on a wild carousal all right, and heading in only one direction.

Now I’m filling those blank pages. Dates don’t matter. Time is suspended. Writing about it helps. Otherwise my mind is frantic, thoughts running like ants beneath an upturned stone. How did I work through that wall of pain? There has to be a reason…has to be. Three months have passed since then yet the memory clings to my senses. I hear the clunk and clank of a spade, smell the dank, uncovered earth. I see a small bundle resting in that narrow cleft. I feel the clay beneath my nails, the briars tearing my legs, the polka-dot sting of nettles on my skin. And the taste that remains with me is bile, bitter gall.

It’s time to close my diary and try to sleep. Close it now and silence the whisperers. Close these musty pages and trap the future as it waits in anticipation.

## Chapter Three. Carla. October 1993

Carla Kelly held her hands upwards to receive the wedding dress. Ivory silk overlaid with lace billowed across her shoulders before settling over the defined bump of her stomach. A beautician moved forward to brush blusher across her cheeks and sweep mascara over her eyelashes. One of the dressers briskly corseted Lizzy Carr into the black Goth wedding dress. Her feet were already booted in aggressive spiky heels. A slash of black lipstick emphasised her masklike white face. In contrast, Carla’s make-up was a delicate blending of peach and gold.

She bowed her head as a hairstylist switched off the hairdryer and rippled his hands through her hair, working it with his fingers until it tumbled in dishevelled strands to her shoulders. He clipped an ivory wisp of feathers into place and stood back to check the effect.

Lizzy was handed a bouquet of black roses with one red rose in the centre. Her heavy eye make-up emphasised her emaciated appearance while Carla, carrying a bouquet of orchids sprigged with lily of the valley, looked dewy, fecund, feminine. The backstage photographers clicked around them until Raine signalled at the models to prepare for their entrance.

Lizzy strutted forward into the light and headed towards the foot of the catwalk. She paused, waited for Carla’s entrance. The audience gasped, then laughed and applauded as Carla, sexy and pregnant, opened herself to the vibrating music, the piercing strobes, the lens of the cameras stripping her layer by layer as she glided towards the photographers. They called her name. This way, Carla! That way! The other way! At the foot of the catwalk, she stood with Lizzy and allowed the audience to absorb the contrast. Then they separated, each move choreographed, each inch of space worked to full advantage. Carla smiled and turned. From behind, she looked like the other models. No weight on her bottom, ankles still slender. The fashion journalists scribbled, the flash of cameras dazzled. This was Raine’s most ambitious designer collection to date – and the introduction of the Anticipation wedding dress. Tomorrow the dress would feature on the front pages of the newspapers and Raine, delighted with the publicity, would laugh when the inevitable calls were made to talk radio complaining about pregnant brides glamorising carnal knowledge.

The wedding dress swirled around Carla as the music quickened and the fashion show built to a finale. The other models emerged from behind the screens to sashay down the catwalk and form a guard of honour. They clapped Raine forward to meet her audience. The applause increased as she bowed, grinned self-consciously, longing to be backstage again, organising everything and everyone.

Carla changed into a pair of Anticipation stretch jeans and a midnight-blue top. She had enjoyed her time as the face, or – to be more accurate – the belly of Anticipation, but she was growing tired of the constant publicity.

The baby moved, a gentle jog of heel and elbow that never failed to delight her. She did not know if she carried a boy or a girl, preferring, like Robert, to wait. Life was a series of changes, of adjustments, and the biggest adjustment would take place in three weeks’ time. Outside in the auditorium, chair seats snapped back. Voices faded as the audience departed. She emerged from a side door and walked down the empty catwalk. The cleaners had moved in and were removing discarded programmes and press releases. The sound engineer grinned across at her as he packed his equipment and wished her goodnight.

In the ladies’ she breathed in the scent of potpourri and tried to imagine a time when she would not feel the constant pressure on her bladder. A woman, heavily pregnant and wearing a distinctive Anticipation top, emerged from one of the cubicles.

‘Good show.’ She smiled through the mirror at Carla. ‘I particularly liked the wedding dress.’

‘So did the photographers.’ Carla laughed and held her hands under the tap. ‘I’m still hallucinating from the flashes.’

The woman ran a comb through her short, spiky hair. Studded earrings glistened on her earlobes. ‘It’s been a long time, Carla,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

Startled, Carla paused as she was about to dry her hands. ‘Do we know each other?’

‘I’m Sue Sheehan,’ she replied. ‘At least, I was before I married. I used to work for Edward Carter.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t recognise you.’ The scent of potpourri breathed sweetly into the space between them. Carla swallowed a hot rush of nausea. Since her pregnancy, her sense of smell always seemed more acute at night.

‘Like I said, a long time ago. Ten years at least.’ Sue Sheehan tilted her chin, as if checking for any sag underneath. Despite her advanced pregnancy, she had a slim face, her features emphasised by her boyish haircut. Her complexion was smooth, almost waxy, and Carla was suddenly reminded of a doll, an asexual doll with a blue unflinching gaze. Sue blinked and the impression was immediately dispelled. Carla struggled to separate her from the brashly confident team of women who had surrounded Edward Carter in those days. They all had that look, tight haircuts and sharp shoulders, their rippling blouses and pert breasts defining their femininity. She must be in her mid-thirties now, Carla speculated, or even older, if she had been one of the senior executives in Carter and Kay Public Relations.

‘Do you still work in public relations?’ Carla removed a tube of lipstick from her bag. Her hand remained steady as she applied it to her lips.

‘Not since my marriage,’ Sue replied. ‘I work in the craft industry now. Marketing.’

‘That sounds interesting.’

‘Yes, indeed it is. Do you ever see Edward these days?’

‘No.’ Carla snapped her handbag closed and placed it under her arm. ‘Apart from on the television, of course. Impossible to miss him.’

‘Yes…he always had a way with words. When is your baby due?’

‘Mid-November, or thereabouts. My gynaey says it’s common to go over time on the first though. What about you?’

‘Around the same time. Like you say, hard to tell with the first.’ Sue glanced at her watch. ‘My step-mother’s waiting for me in the bar. It’s been nice meeting you again.’

‘You too, Sue. Good luck with the birth.’

‘Yes. I can’t wait until all this is over.’ She leaned against the counter, as if her weight was suddenly too heavy to carry.

‘Are you all right?’ Concerned, Carla leaned forward but Sue straightened, moved out of reach.

‘I’m just tired. It’s been a long day.’

They walked together to the bar where Raine was waiting for Carla.

‘Well done,’ Raine said as Carla tried to perch on a high stool beside her with as much dignity as possible. ‘I’ve already been interviewed by three journalists and asked if my wedding dress is meant to endorse sex before marriage.’

‘Mmmm…sounds like you’ll have the moral majority on your back tomorrow.’

Raine laughed. ‘Bring them on,’ she said. ‘Are you coming to Sheen’s?’

Carla shook her head. ‘Do you mind if I take a rain check and head straight home? I’m whacked.’

‘Not at all. I’m tired myself but I need to sweet-talk the buyers. Is my bro skulking in dark corners tonight?’

‘He should be home by now. How’s Gillian?’

Raine’s smile faded. ‘She’s good. Not much energy though. That last chemo session was tough.’

‘Tell her I’ll drop in tomorrow.’

‘Will do.’ Raine leaned forward and patted Carla’s stomach. ‘Night night, little one. Lay off the football for tonight and give your mum a chance to sleep. She’s had a busy day.’

Across the lounge, Sue Sheehan had settled awkwardly into a deep armchair beside a slight woman with glasses. Carla felt a fleeting sympathy as she imagined her difficulty when the time came to get up again. All she seemed to notice nowadays were women at the same advanced stage as herself.

Outside the hotel, she hailed a taxi. Lizzy Carr, in jeans and a puffa jacket, all traces of her Goth persona removed, waved as she ran down the hotel steps. She was followed by two other models, who were also heading to Sheen’s on the Green. For an instant Carla was tempted to follow but then a taxi driver pulled up and she stepped into the taxi’s dark interior.

In the company of models, Carla moved in an assured world where she did not have to apologise for being tall. No more cramped knees from bending to listen to others. No more enduring jokes about giraffe necks or being asked if it was cold up there. Her face, attractive but not beautiful, could be moulded to define a mood, an emotion, an atmosphere. The perfect face, declared the scout who had approached her on Grafton Street when she was sixteen and persuaded her to consider the catwalk for a career. She had acquired the poise and confidence to stand aloof from conversations and discovered that such indifference made people strain upwards so that they could hear what she had to say. But with Robert Gardner, everything was mouth to mouth, eye level to eye level.

He was waiting for her when she arrived home.

‘So, how did it go?’ he asked and drew her down on his knee. He smelled of soap and shampoo. Nothing about his appearance suggested that he had spent his day working on the grim and secretive side of the city streets.

‘The wedding dress was the highlight. I wanted to get married all over again.’

‘That could be arranged,’ Robert said. ‘Only one stipulation. No change of groom.’

‘As if I would.’ She kissed him but was unable to prevent a yawn escaping.

‘So much for my sex appeal.’ Robert eased her to the floor. ‘Come on. It’s way past your bedtime.’

She leaned heavily on his arm as they left the living room. She was glad of his height, his strong arms. During the last week, she had become aware of a slight listing movement when she walked. They would have a tall child. No problem if it was a boy but for a girl, Carla thought, remembering her own lanky teenage years, maybe not so good.

In bed, they spooned against each other and drifted towards sleep. One of them, or perhaps both, stirred with lazy desire and Robert’s arms tightened around her. Their lovemaking was passionate but gentle. She moaned softly into the pillow and their baby moved. Robert felt the rippling sensation beneath his fingers and, suddenly nervous, held back until, responding to her touch, he entered her slowly from behind. She clenched him tightly inside her, her energy carrying them swiftly over the edge of desire.

Afterwards, still in the same coiled position, she tried to sleep. Her leg cramped and the baby’s elbows seemed wedged under her ribcage. Robert turned, slapped the pillow without waking, and sank his head deeper into it. The room was cold, the central heating off. She pulled on a towelling dressing gown and tied the belt below her stomach. She paused before a full-length mirror and smiled at her bearlike appearance. If the photographers could see her now, there would be a very different photograph on the front of the tabloids tomorrow.

Downstairs, she entered her compact office. Once, rooms such as these had served as dens for husbands who smoked pipes in comfort and isolated themselves from the daily domestic routine. She sifted through the latest batch of letters, answered a few and chose the ones she would use in her column. Shortly before meeting Robert, she had enrolled in a media studies course, fitting her lectures around her modelling assignments. She now had her degree and a regular column in Weekend Flair, a Sunday newspaper supplement magazine. Carla was under no illusions that the reason she had been approached by the editor had more to do with her Anticipation profile than her media degree. But the number of letters kept rising from women seeking advice on morning sickness and weird hunger urges. Some letters amused her, others were so filled with pain and frustration that she shrank from answering them in her column, aware of her own inexperience. In such instances she passed them on to Alyssa Faye.

She was also beginning to receive commissions from other magazines. The feature in Pizzazz was excellent. She picked up the celebrity magazine from her desk and flicked through the pages until she came to the ‘before and after’ feature she had written about the refurbishment of their end-of-terrace Georgian house. When the alterations had first begun, she had taken photographs of the resulting chaos and these photographs had been juxtaposed against a photoshoot of the finished results. So far, she had not shown the magazine to Robert; the memory of the row that followed her decision to write the feature in the first place was still fresh in her mind.

‘Absolutely no way,’ he had declared when he heard that a photographer intended photographing each room in their house. ‘I’ve no intention of allowing our lives to feature in some cheap, pretentious magazine.’

‘Cheap?’ Carla, used to having the camera trained on her, had been astonished by his reaction. ‘There’s nothing cheap about Pizzazz.’

‘The title says it all,’ he declared. ‘“Pizzazz”. How could you possibly want us to feature in such a vacuous publication?’

‘It’s not vacuous and everyone wants to feature in it.’

‘Everyone?’ He scoffed. ‘Who the hell is everyone?’

‘It’s for Raine’s sake.’ She had changed direction, aware of how shallow she sounded, or rather, she thought, how shallow he had made her sound. ‘She’s invested everything in her publicity campaign. This is another opportunity to promote Anticipation.’

‘Not at my expense,’ he had argued. ‘I insist you cancel the arrangement.’

‘Insist?’ Carla was outraged by his arrogance.

‘You used to protect my anonymity,’ he retorted. ‘Now you want to splatter my private life everywhere.’

‘What’s to splatter?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t expect you to appear in the photographs. I’m not that stupid.’

‘I never said you were stupid. But you need to slow down on the exposure you get. It’s different now. You have to think of others besides yourself.’

‘Come off it, Robert,’ she retorted. ‘The average junkie is hardly likely to have Pizzazz on his reading list.’

When he paid no attention to her arguments, she cried. Her tears were genuine but under control. She had a modelling assignment the following day and could not afford a ravaged face. Robert had never seen her cry. His anger was immediately replaced by concern and, eventually, by capitulation.

‘I want our privacy to be respected, especially when our baby comes along,’ he had warned her. ‘This is the last time anyone from the media sets foot in our house.’

Looking at the glossy photographs, Carla wondered if he had been right to object. Seen through the lens of the camera, their house looked larger, more luxurious and dramatic than it really was. There was something invasive about the photographs, particularly those taken in the nursery.

Initially, when Colin Moore, the photographer, had entered the nursery, she had moved forward to stop him, then changed her mind. This was a room waiting in anticipation. Somehow, it seemed appropriate to photograph it.

She had painted the nursery herself, a pale yellow shade that gleamed like gold when the sun struck the walls. Before returning to bed, she entered the room and trailed her fingers over the cradle. It had been an extravagant purchase, a replica of a Victorian cradle with a canopy of white gauze. She had bought it at a craft fair, along with the mobile of stained glass seahorses that now hung above it. She sat in a wicker rocking chair and swayed slowly back and forth. Her baby moved, a hard defiant kick that advised her to savour her tranquil moments. They would be gone soon enough. She cradled her stomach as she watched the city drift asleep and tried to imagine herself and Robert as parents.

They had so little in common, or so their friends had claimed when they first met. Bets had been laid on how long their relationship would last. Carla smiled, remembering that first meeting when Raine, in the aftermath of another fashion show, shouted their names across the table in Sheens on the Green to introduce them. Robert had lifted his eyebrows and smiled ruefully at the noise dividing them. Under normal circumstances, he told her later, he would have refused point blank to attend a fashion show. He had never shown any interest in the glitter and glamour associated with his sister’s career but this was a charity event to raise funds for breast cancer research. Gillian, his mother, had insisted he support it – not just financially, but physically, by accompanying her.

Gillian, frail but defiant in a red bandana, had the translucent pallor of someone who had stepped close to death. Carla noticed how attentively her son listened when she spoke, as if he appreciated the second chance he had been given to cherish her. She studied their faces, seeking similarities, and found them in their intense blue eyes and the generous width of their mouths. They shared the same bone structure. Cragginess would come to him with age but his features would never sag. The restaurant lights glinted off his black hair. Gillian’s lips would have been voluptuous before illness drained their fullness and her son had inherited that same lush curve. A mouth made to be kissed, Carla thought, and Robert, as if attuned to her thoughts, reached out and held her in his gaze. In that single glance, something indefinable passed between them. Carla would later acknowledge it as love and he would agree, his expression still bemused by the suddenness of their attraction. Love at first sight – as romantic as it was ridiculous. If any of her friends had described the sensation, Carla would have laughed and called it a chemical hit. But it had carried them into marriage and would soon carry them into parenthood.

The night-time traffic had slowed. Only an occasional car passed, casting brief, surging shadows across the walls. The mobile tinkled above the cradle and the circle of seahorses, translucent mauves and luminous greens, flashed and danced lightly, as if they sensed her intrusion.

## Chapter Four. Susanne

‘Why seahorses,’ I asked Miriam when I travelled to Maoltrán for the first time to be interviewed for the position of marketing manager.

‘Why not seahorses?’ She had sounded amused. ‘The female of the species is intelligent enough to enjoy the delights of courtship and the male gallant enough to carry the consequences.’

She picked a seahorse from a plinth and held it up for me to admire. The shade was a delicate coral that gleamed like mother-of-pearl and deepened to a glistening salmon when the spotlights caught the glass and played with it. She smiled and stroked her index finger over the protruding belly. ‘Would that our men were so obliging,’ she added, and we laughed together, the kind of conspiratorial laughter women share when we discuss our men.

She handed the seahorse to me. I tapped it with my nail. The tinkling sound was as pitched as a tuning fork. I imagined a shoal of pregnant males, their slender exclamation-mark spines camouflaged against wavering sea grasses, their taut, tight bellies pulsing with life.

Her seahorses have names and personalities. Some are exquisitely etched and encrusted with gems. Others have a more practical design and can be used as bookends, framed on walls or attached to bathroom mirrors. The mobile is one of the most popular items in her collection.

Carla Kelly has one hanging in her nursery. I saw it in Pizzazz. That magazine may be devoid of intelligent content but old habits are hard to break and I buy it every month. I used to check it regularly to see which of my clients had been included when I worked for Carter & Kay. Sometimes they didn’t make it. Not prestigious or interesting enough. The editor was ruthless when it came to deciding who should feature on her pages. Carla Kelly now obviously fits this profile.

She wrote a ‘before and after’ feature about the house in Ranelagh where she and her husband live. The before shots look horrendous but the after photography is pure Pizzazz and allows her to do what she does best. Her face leaps from the pages and dominates them to such a degree that the furnishings and décor are insignificant props in the background.

That night at the fashion show, she shuddered when I mentioned Edward Carter’s name. She covered it up but I watched her composure slip for that instant and I knew she was back there again, with him, intent on destroying what they had so wantonly and carelessly created. I wonder if her husband knows. Probably not. There’s something hard and unforgiving about his eyes.

No sign of him in the Pizzazz shoot. It’s not his kind of magazine. Gloss and dross. Back in those days, apart from the advertisements, Carla Kelly never appeared in her own right. She was just another face, another model climbing on the backs of the older ones, juggling for space in the tabloids. Titbits and gossip, she loved the camera and it loved her. Then she got her lucky break with the lingerie campaign. She’s changed now, of course. Pregnancy has given her credibility. Celebrity and credibility, an unbeatable combination.

She painted the walls yellow for her baby, a neutral colour to suit either gender. A white cradle sat in the centre of the room, muslin curtains trailed the floor. She sat by the window in a white wicker chair, her hands resting below her stomach, her face in profile. Outside the window, a tree was visible, bronze leaves beginning to turn. Her expression was serene, her head bent slightly so that the light streamed through the blonde tendrils. The eternal Eve. I almost expected a serpent to coil from the branches behind her. Signs and omens, they keep appearing.

The whispering voices awaken me at night and insist that I listen to the tinkling call of the seahorses that Miriam fuses in the raging heat of her furnace room; the molten globs are suspended, swelling, mutating. It has to be more than a coincidence.

## Chapter Five. Carla. November 1993

Shortly after their marriage, Carla was crossing O’Connell Bridge on her way to a luncheon fashion show when she saw her husband at work. The wind, blowing harshly off the Liffey, tossed her hair across her face, and he had almost passed her by before she became aware of him. A junkie, she thought, summing him up in a glance, his baggy tracksuit bottoms, the grubby trainers minus laces, and the way he hunched into his nondescript anorak, his pale face protected by the hood. More like a dealer, she decided, as his eyes, darting and shifty, sized up everything around him. For an instant, she was swamped in his gaze as his eyes flashed with recognition. Then he was gone, swiftly absorbed in the crowd.

Shocked, she leaned over the balustrade and gazed into the Liffey. The tide was low, the walls of the river dank and brown. She pretended she had not recognised him, knowing he would be furious with himself for dropping his guard, even for an instant. Strange that she, who knew his body intimately, had not noticed his height, nor could she remember anything about his features, other than his eyes, momentarily betraying him. But in that chance encounter, Carla realised they did share something in common; a chameleon quality that allowed them, when necessary, to dominate or to blend successfully into any landscape of their choosing.

Almost a year had passed since then but she remembered that incident when she watched the evening news. A consignment of drugs had been discovered in the secret compartment of a truck entering Dublin Port. Not discovered, Carla thought, as the news report unfolded. The customs officers knew exactly what they would find when they stopped the truck. The television camera lingered over the plastic bags laid out on a table for maximum exposure. A grave-faced policeman estimated the street value of the seizure. Five hundred thousand punts, a sizeable sum. Uniformed Gardaí moved in the background. Robert was not among them. His role was covert, undercover. He worked the docks area, eliciting information, making contacts, his identity so deeply embedded that twice he had been arrested by uniformed guards unaware of his undercover work. These things he whispered to Carla in the aftermath of lovemaking, coiling her hair around his fingers, his laughter warm in her ear. He skimmed over the dangers, aware that he straddled two worlds but confident of his footing.

‘Did you see it?’ He rang her shortly after the evening news. The background was loud with voices, laughter, music.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Well done, my favourite mole.’

‘We’ve gone back to Sharon’s house,’ he told her. ‘I’m just going to have a few drinks then take a taxi home.’

‘A likely story.’ She knew he would arrive home in the small hours, smelling of whiskey and, probably, a late-night curry. ‘The spare room is ready and waiting,’ she warned him. ‘In my delicate condition, a drunken detective in my bed is the last thing I need.’

He promised to be quiet, shoes off at the front door. ‘You’re sure you’re okay?’ he asked.

‘I’m fine.’ She wished she felt as serene as she sounded. ‘Another fortnight to go. I assume you’ll have sobered up by then.’

He was still laughing when she hung up. Their marriage was as separate as a snapped thread from his small, close-knit team. Was she jealous, she wondered as she replaced the receiver. She thought of Sharon Boyle, with her black boyish hair and long, muscular legs, the tough-talking sister in the tight band of brothers. Carla had met her for the first time when she came to their house-warming party with other members of the squad. The group had remained apart from the general gathering. They sat on the stairs, forming a closed-off huddle that showed no inclination to stir outside their pall of cigarette smoke, shop talk and camaraderie. Robert had mingled effortlessly with the other guests but he had joined his colleagues on the stairs by the end of the night.

No, not jealous, exactly, Carla decided. Just envious of the slash of danger that drew people together in a way her safe, glittering world of fashion could never do.

She watched television for a while, searching the channels for light relief, a romantic comedy or an enthralling love triangle she could enjoy without Robert’s heavy breathing signalling his boredom. Nothing interested her. Her back ached and the baby appeared to have manoeuvred a vaulting pole under her ribs.

The phone rang when she was climbing the stairs to bed. She reached the bedroom and lay across the bed.

‘You sound like you’ve just run the marathon,’ said Raine.

‘A marathon would be easier,’ she replied and pulled the duvet over her.

‘I suppose the bro is on a razz.’ Raine had also seen the evening news.

‘Celebrations are well underway,’ Carla replied. ‘I’ve plumped the pillows in the spare room.’

‘Wise move.’ Raine laughed. ‘Although his powers of recovery are amazing.’

‘So I’ve discovered. How’s business?’

‘Brilliant, thanks to you. How are you?’

‘Solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. That’s if I discount kicks, jabs, twinges, aches, and the occasional rugby tackle.’

‘Do you want me to come over and keep you company?’

‘Not tonight, thanks. I’m already in bed.’

‘Sleep tight, kiddo. Enjoy it while you can.’

Carla arched her back to ease a deep cramping pain. Filled with restless energy, she arose and pulled clothes from the wardrobe, folded them into a black plastic sack. Tomorrow she would bring her Anticipation collection to Oxfam and wish good luck to those who wished to wear it.

Midnight came and went without any sign of Robert. She drifted asleep. Her dreams were jagged with pain. Awakening suddenly, she was unable to remember the details, only the discomfort. A moist warm trickle eased between her legs. She hurled the duvet aside, gasped as a spasm rippled across her stomach. Her waters were not supposed to break until later in labour. Her baby was not ready. Another spasm gripped her and she understood that it was she, not her baby, who was unprepared.

Gingerly, she left the bed. Her nightdress clung to her skin. She shivered as she pulled it from her and reached in the wardrobe for a skirt and top. Her bag was packed. All she needed was her husband, drunk or sober, by her side. She was angry with him, then amused, then panicked, her emotions all over the place.

Robert had given her a number to ring in emergencies. Sharon answered, her clipped authoritative voice slurred, too loud. Music blasted in the background. Heavy rock. Sharon shouted at someone to lower the stereo then returned her attention to Carla.

‘He’s not exactly in the best of health.’ She laughed apologetically. ‘Actually he’s just passed out on the sofa.’

‘Then throw a bucket of cold water over him,’ Carla shouted. ‘And tell him to get his arse over to the Valley View because his child is not waiting around for his health to recover.’

‘Message understood.’ Sharon snapped to attention. ‘I’ll call the ambulance. Do you need a Garda escort?’

Carla forced herself to breathe slowly until the cramp subsided. ‘That’s not a bad idea,’ she gasped. ‘But you’d better do it fast.’

She debated ringing her parents then decided against it. Her father would cope but she did not want to watch her mother’s lips trembling, her hands flailing, her mind ticking off everything that could possibly go wrong.

The ambulance crew arrived. They joked about delivering roadside babies. Carla panted and wondered if they would be laughing on the other side of their faces before the journey was over. The blue lights of a Garda car scattered the darkness as the ambulance driver followed, breaking through traffic lights and heading straight for the Valley View Maternity Clinic.

The pain gained momentum, the spasms coming faster. Robert arrived in a taxi at the same time as the ambulance reached the clinic. He rushed towards her, looking, as she had expected, utterly disreputable, unshaven, his voice excruciatingly precise as he attempted to convince her he was sober. She laughed and allowed him to help her into a wheelchair. Their baby was coming. She sensed its determination, the driving force of its head seeking the light.

‘I love you…love you…love you,’ Robert babbled as she was wheeled into the clinic.

She tightened her grip on his hand and breathed into the rhythm of another spasm.

The midwife said, ‘This one’s not going to hang around. Come with me, Mother. We’re heading straight to the labour ward.’