Fiona McArthur - Escape For Mother's Day

Alana didn’t glean any comfort from Pascal’s shocked look. She knew well that on some level he’d still had her cast in the role of an ex-WAG—the derogatory term for the wives and girlfriends of sports stars. She couldn’t blame him; she’d seen the way he’d look at her sometimes, as if waiting for her to trip herself up, reveal herself to be the silly bimbo that most of those girls were.

‘I’ll talk to Rory.’

Alana shook her head vehemently. ‘No, that’ll make things even worse. The last thing I need now is to be pushed to the forefront of everything again.’

‘But maybe he can keep you behind the scenes for a while.’

‘It wouldn’t work.’ She could just imagine the snide comments, the looks.

‘What about your family? Don’t they know about this?’

A spasm of pain clenched Alana’s insides. She hated admitting this, knowing it would be hard to understand. ‘No; they don’t know. I was as guilty as Ryan for keeping up the pretence.’ She avoided Pascal’s eye. ‘They just … they don’t have the kind of resources I needed. They had their own things going on, and my parents are old, frail. They didn’t need to hear about my problems.’

Pascal’s tone was frigid. ‘It sounds to me like it was a problem worth sharing.’

She looked at him, feeling defensive. ‘It was my decision, OK? My family aren’t that wealthy, my parents certainly aren’t any more. They live comfortably, but they’ve earned that. I couldn’t burden them with the mistake I made.’

‘Is that how you saw your marriage?’

The way Pascal asked the question so softly made Alana feel even more vulnerable. She had to push him back; she knew well it was only a matter of time now before he ran as fast as he could from her car wreck of a life.

‘For a long time, yes I did, which is why I’m determined not to make the same mistake twice.’

He started advancing towards her, and Alana backed away further.

‘Is that what you see happening here—a mistake in the making?’

Alana shook her head, confused. Did he mean them ? ‘I don’t … What are you talking about? This isn’t anything like that.’ It’s worlds apart.

He was still advancing into her kitchen, making the space become tiny. Alana was starting to feel desperate. She felt so raw and vulnerable right now that if he so much as touched her … She stopped abruptly as her hand that had been sliding along the counter hit something. Instinctively, she covered it. She knew immediately what it was; she’d left it there in her shock and confusion just minutes before. Pascal’s eyes darted to where her hand had made the betraying, concealing movement. Alana gulped as he looked back to her. She felt guilty. She looked guilty.

‘What’s that, Alana?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, almost hopefully.

‘So why are you trying to hide it?’

‘I’m not.’

‘Show me what it is.’

‘It’s nothing, just rubbish.’ Desperation tinged her voice, and in a rising surge of panic and rejection at the thought of confronting this, too, when so much had just happened, she whipped it off the counter top and whirled around to put it in the bin. But before she could a strong arm wrapped itself around her midriff and pulled her back into a hard body. With effortless strength, Pascal reached round and pulled the object from her hand. She closed her eyes. Their breathing sounded harsh in the small space, and she could imagine him trying to make sense of what he was looking at.

Alana could feel the tension come into Pascal’s body. His arm grew even more rigid around her. She knew it wouldn’t take long for him to make sense of it. These days pregnancy tests were idiot proof and the results immediate—the word ‘pregnant’ wouldn’t have taken a six-year-old long to figure out.

And then abruptly, so abruptly that she stumbled a little, Pascal released her. She turned round to look up but he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at the pregnancy test. After a long, tense moment he finally looked at her and she fought not to wince under his almost-black look.

‘It’s pretty self-explanatory.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, crystal-clear.’

He turned and walked back into the sitting room, holding the test in his hand. Alana followed warily. He turned then, and she stopped in her tracks at the harsh lines on his face.

‘And were you planning on keeping this little secret to yourself, too, shouldering this as another burden? Another mistake?’

Pain lanced her. ‘I did the test just before you arrived. My period is late … I’ve been feeling a bit sick, so I bought it this morning on my way into work. Of course I would have told you.’ Eventually.

‘Oh, really?’ His voice could have turned milk sour. ‘I find that hard to believe, when you were about to throw it in the bin as nothing more than a piece of rubbish. Perhaps you’ve already decided what you want to do with our baby.’

Our baby.

The simple words of acknowledgement and acceptance rocked through Alana like an atom bomb. She put her hands instinctively on her still-flat belly. ‘Of course I haven’t decided anything, and certainly not what you seem to be implying. And I was going to tell you. It’s just … I’ve barely had time to take it in myself. I think you can agree that today has packed more than its fair punch.’

Hating herself for feeling so weak as another wave of dizziness washed over her, she couldn’t help swaying slightly. Words resounded in her head: jobless, homeless, pregnant. She’d really made a mess of things this time.

With a muttered curse Pascal was by her side and made her sit down on the couch.

‘When was the last time you ate?’

Alana had to struggle to recall. Pascal cursed again colourfully. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t even eaten all day?’

He threw off his coat and went into her kitchen and started opening the fridge and looking on her open shelves. Feeling totally bemused and numb, Alana watched as he took out bread, butter, cheese, tomatoes and made a sandwich. He brought it back over on a plate and handed it to her, watching her until she’d eaten the whole thing, even though it was the size of a doorstep.

When she was done, he took the plate and set it aside, then he stood up and started to pace. He ran a hand through his dishevelled hair. He looked dishevelled all over, and Alana could feel her pulse stirring to life. His shirt was coming out of his trousers, the top button of his shirt undone. He rounded on her then, taking her by surprise. Her eyes had been on his bottom, and she coloured guiltily. How could she be thinking of that at a time like this?

But it seemed as if she was not the only one. Pascal dropped down onto the couch beside her, coming close, and before she could stop him he was undoing the top button of her shirt.

‘That’s better. I can’t concentrate when you’re all buttoned up.’

Alana backed away into the corner of the couch. Pascal’s brows rose. ‘It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?’

She was beginning to feel stifled, threatened—sensory overload. She shimmied out from under him and stood up. Pascal sat back and looked up from under hooded lids. Alana’s insides clenched.

‘So when do you think it happened? I thought we were careful.’

‘We were,’ she said crisply, and then remembered the back of the car that night in Rome. Colour washed through her cheeks again. She looked down and caught his eye. She couldn’t read his expression. But it seemed as if he could read her mind.

‘Yes, there was that time. Or the bath afterwards.’ Pascal had known well he was being careless, but for the first time in his life that concern had assumed secondary place to fulfilling his physical needs. And in the intervening days he hadn’t even thought about it. More fool him. Yet, even more astounding to him right now was the equanimity he felt in the face of this news. In fact, what he was feeling was an inordinate sense of rightness. A sense of something his grandfather had passed onto him, something he’d never realised he possessed before: a sense of family.