Ellie Darkins - Bound by a Baby Bump

Something caught her attention from the corner of her eye, and she started when she realised her train had already pulled up to the platform. She raced down the stairs, but the doors shut and locked with her on the wrong side. Even on his way out of her life Leo was disrupting her schedule. On second thought, she mused, maybe it was a good thing she wasn’t in touch with him. He’d caused quite enough chaos in the one night she’d known him. She glanced up at the information screen, wondering how long the next train would be. Typical Sunday service. She’d be stuck on the platform for an hour.

But maybe she could do something useful with the time. A quick search on her phone showed a pharmacy just around the corner that should be open. Walking quickly, she headed to the chemist—a few minutes and several rather personal questions later, she had emergency contraception and a bottle of water. She read quickly through the information on the packet as she waited in a quiet corner of the station. Ninety-five per cent effective. Not ideal—but in the circumstances, the best she was going to get. She swallowed the pill then forced the issue from her mind, and looked through both hers and Will’s schedules for the next week.

There were a couple of things she’d need to look into once she got to the office. Meetings that had been added at the last minute, when she was too busy with organising the fundraiser to pull together all the research and paperwork that she knew Will would need in order to prepare.

She worked through a few of her emails, making adjustments to her plan for the week as she went and slotting in new items for her Monday morning meeting with Will.

After the meeting she’d be able to plan out the rest of her week almost to the last minute. And her regular ‘contingency’ and ‘AOB’ slots meant that even the unexpected would have to bend to her plans and not the other way around.

She’d come to rely on that order, needed those careful plans to make her feel safe. Because without them what else was there?

It had been the only way for years that she’d been able to quiet her feelings of chaos and panic. The men who’d broken into her childhood home hadn’t planned to hurt anyone, the court had heard: they’d thought the house would be empty, had no idea that a fourteen-year-old Rachel was home alone. So when she’d startled one of them as he’d been rifling through the video collection, he’d panicked and lashed out at her. It was a pretty unpleasant knock to her head, but nothing serious. And eventually the nightmares she’d suffered had stopped, but that hadn’t stopped her parents’ guilt at leaving her at home. They’d fussed and smothered and, on occasion, wailed, insisting that Rachel inform them of her whereabouts at all times. Curfews were to be observed to the minute, unless she wanted to afflict a full-on panic-attack meltdown on her parents.

So she could be flexible if she had to be. ‘AOB’ and ‘unexpected’ had their own places in her plans, and that was all last night had been. But perhaps she shouldn’t do it again. Those slots should be kept strictly for emergencies. Not for blonds who were hard to forget in the morning.

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