The Art of Keeping Faith (43 page)

This is the first morning this week I have not woken up to drilling. Instead I have awoken to Meredith bouncing on my bed.

“It’s scan day,” she says bouncing higher. “Come on, Lilah, you can’t have forgotten.”

Well, I would not use the word forgotten exactly.

“Nope.”

“You have been checking in your folder, haven’t you?”

Uh, no. I am far too busy searching the Internet.

“Yes.”

“Come on then. Let’s get ready. We have got to be at Kingston at nine-thirty.”

“Nine-thirty?”

“Yep, and I am driving.”

“Oh, shit.”

There is no point arguing. If scary, Lilah-style Meredith has made her mind up, then so be it.

One hour later

“Watch the truuuuck!”

“What truck?”

I squeeze my eyes shut and grip onto Deathtrap Cooper’s split leather seats.

After a moment has passed I cautiously open my eyes and breathe a sigh of relief when I see that Meredith has managed to successfully negotiate our way around the parked lorry she was careering toward at great speed.

If I make it to the scan it will be a complete miracle. We may be attending the hospital for an entirely different reason than we set out for.

Half an hour later

We are here, but we are late. Meredith just bunny hopped the car around the car park and then spent ten minutes trying to reverse into a space.

I was screaming at her by the end, and made her get out of the car so I could park the damn thing.

Deathtrap Cooper is a high spec vehicle and does not appreciate being driven by amateur rookies.

We run down the corridor to the ultrasound unit and screech to a halt by the front desk where we are looked up and down with disdain by the old biddy behind the counter.

“Hi, I’m Lilah McCannon. I have a scan at nine-thirty,” I breathlessly announce.

She looks at the computer and then pointedly at the clock on the wall which informs us it is twenty to ten.

“You’ve missed your appointment.”

No shit.

I glare at Meredith who decides to speak up on my behalf. “We had a parking problem. Did you know that your spaces are far too small to park a car in?”

I glare at her some more and kick her on the ankle.

“Ow, Lilah! Jesus Christ.”

The woman behind the counter decides at this point that we are rather annoying and motions us over to the chairs.

“I will see if they can fit you in,” she tells us in a superior tone which reminds me a little of my mother.

Ugh, my mother.

Must stop thinking bad things and calm down my stress levels—the baby is going to be catatonic on the scan otherwise, that’s if we even get one.

Fifteen minutes later

“Lilah McCannon?” calls a friendly looking woman in a plastic apron.

“Yes!” I answer hopefully.

“You are in here.” She ushers me along and I grab Meredith as I get up from the chair.

“Can my friend come with me because the Dad is not here?” because I dumped him.

“The more the merrier.” She smiles and I decide I like this lady.

We enter the room and I automatically start undoing my jeans and push them down.

“What are you doing?!” Meredith gasps.

“Getting ready for the scan, duh.”

“Lilah for goodness’ sake, it is not one of those scans. You can have a normal one now. Oh my God you haven’t read a single thing in that folder have you?” she chides.

Laughing the lady in the plastic apron pats her hand on the big chair / bed thing.

“I take it you had an early scan.”

“Um, yes a couple of weeks back.”

“And why was that, dear?” she asks distracting me from the memory by squirting me with jelly out of a squeezy bottle.

“Oh I had lots of bleeding but everything was okay.”

“And no bleeding since then?” she asks.

“No.”

“Well, let’s make sure that everything is okay.”

I break out in a cold sweat all over. What does she mean that everything is okay? Surely one scan means that everything is fine.

“Sorry, but what do you mean?”

“Well, nothing to worry about, but just sometimes if there are problems we only pick them up at the twelve week scan.”

Holy shit. No one told me this.

Meredith grips my hand. “It’s okay, Lilah, everything is going to be fine,” she soothes.

“You don’t know that!”

The lady with the wand thing in her hand starts to roll it over my stomach and I stare desperately at the screen.

I see nothing, just grey and black. Hell, I don’t even know what I am looking for.

“There you go, see that?” the lady asks pointing at the screen.

“No, see what? I don’t see anything.”

“There, Lilah, stop panicking and actually look.”

So I do. I take a deep breath and look at the screen again and then I see it. It’s not a little squished alien like two weeks ago.

This time it looks like an actual baby inside my tummy.

Oh shit.

“Oh, my God, I have a baby in my tummy! Meredith can you see it? Look. There is a baby inside my tummy!”

I gesture wildly between the screen and my stomach. Meredith starts to laugh, turning to look at her I find that she has tears on her cheeks, and then I start to cry, too.

“Okay, I am officially not going to speak anymore, because I don’t want to freak you out by mentioning measurements and so on. So you just sit there and enjoy the view,” says the nice lady in the plastic apron.

I automatically start to sit up, “What measurements?”

The woman gently pushes me back down again.

“Lilah, relax. Your baby is already going crazy. What on earth were you doing this morning?”

I glance up at Meredith who has the grace to look sheepish.

“Relax.”

So I do. I spend the next fifteen minutes staring at my baby on screen, watching its hands wave and legs jump about. It looks like it has one of its hands jammed in its mouth.

“That’s so cool,” Meredith says in complete awe; the same awe that I am feeling well up inside me.

The more I watch the screen, the more I start to wonder about the baby inside my tummy. I’ve never really thought of it as an actual being before. It’s always just been the reason I have been throwing up. Now I can see it move, and wave and just look bloody amazing. I start to wonder if it will have Ben’s black hair and blue eyes. Or will it have brown and grey like me? I wonder if it will be tall and artistic like Ben, or short and stubby like me?

Tears start to fall quicker and I brush them away. They don’t stop though.

“What’s the matter, babe?” Meredith whispers.

”I wish Ben was here.”

She does not say anything, but just gives my hand a little squeeze.

After we have finished we walk back out into the glaring sunshine and try to locate Deathtrap Cooper.

“Can I drive?” I ask.

Meredith pulls a face and reluctantly hands over the keys. We are just heading back onto the A3 when I finally say what is on my mind.

“Mer?”

“Yep?”

“Will you help me try and get Ben back?”

She gives a little sigh and settles back, grinning at me from the passenger seat.

“I’ve been waiting days for you to say that.”

“I need to make a plan.” I say.

“What plan?”

“The Get Ben Back Plan.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I have no idea. That’s why I recruited you.”

She muses on this for a moment.

“Well first we need to get you integrated back into Uni. The more you act out of character the more people are going to notice. And then, before you know it, someone is going to guess and blab. You need to be the one to tell him Lil. I have a feeling he is going to hate himself for walking away.”

“Mer, I’m not sure that if he finds out about baby it will change the way he feels about me. I just need him to know.”

“Well we won’t know until we find him. So you need to come out a bit and be seen on campus. Just breathe in so no one notices the weight gain.”

“What! How can I have put weight on?!”

She eyes me up and down.

“Well it’s not weight gain as such. It’s just your tits. They look bigger.”

Such a way with words.

“So I have to be seen on campus?”

This thought is not appealing to me in the least. If I could hide for the next seven weeks, I would.

“Yes starting tonight, we are going out.”

“Ooooh but, Mer, I am soooo tired.”

She turns and gives me a stern look.

“Lilah, you do realise you are going to have a baby? This is not tiredness. This is just mild fatigue.”

I have nothing to say to this, so I stick my tongue out instead.

Froebel Bar

So this is how I find myself at Froebel bar at seven-thirty on a Friday night, instead of at home snuggled up on the sofa in my pyjama’s, with my friend Google open on my lap, participating in some serious Ben stalking.

Tristan has come along for moral support, which is probably a good thing because Meredith is drinking all the alcoholic beverages that people are unwittingly buying me. She has already had two large wines and her eyes are looking a little glassy—we’ve only been here for half an hour.

Beth and Jayne are ecstatic that we are all out together. They still seem to be in best friend mode, which is good news. I am not sure I could cope with any more drama right now.

Barbie is here, but she’s right over the over side of the bar which was a relief because I do not have to worry about punching her. Richard’s over there with her, along with some of the other football players.

That is also a good thing. I was not sure I could handle another awkward date related conversation with Rich. He seems to be getting over his break up with Fiona very well. That’s nice.

I wish I could show everyone my scan picture. It’s burning a hole in my purse where I’ve hid it amongst six months’ worth of receipts. I showed Tristan the Arse earlier before we came out, the conversation went like this:

“Look it’s my baby.”

“That’s nice.”

“No look, you are not looking properly.”

“I am looking, Lilah, I am not sure what you want me to say.”

“Tell me it’s beautiful.”

“Um, it’s beautiful.”

“Look at it’s cute fingers.”

“Mm, lovely.”

“Look at it’s cute toes,”

“Mm, even lovelier.”

“Oh sod off Tristan you really are a complete Arse. You are never allowed to touch my baby, ever.”

Half an hour later

Meredith is having problems sitting up straight and keeps shouting at Trev behind the bar to put some “tunes” on.

This is definite Lilah-behaviour. I am going to have to start keeping a close eye on her.

Trev keeps shouting back that she is two hours too early and she should learn to pace herself.

Ha.

We are all gathered around and have started making the Ben Plan.

It’s become clear that Ben is not talking to anyone, not Beth, not Tristan, and we all know that he is definitely not talking to me. This makes creating a plan interesting.

Another problem with the plan is that everyone else is so drunk they haven’t come up with one useful idea. I still have a plan though.

The Plan

Sound Box is supposed to be playing the Isle of Wight Festival. This was always their plan and one of the reasons why Ben thought he would be home with me for the summer. I am going to go to that damn festival and climb on that stage if it means he will notice me.

I am going to write my book—okay I know this is going to take some time and our child will probably be at school by the time I’ve finished but I am going to do it, just like I always planned. I am going to write down every moment of our time together in the vain hope that one day, far off in the future, he may read it and realise that I truly did love him even if I was too much of an arse to show it.

Worst-case scenario—I will ring Ben’s mum. I really don’t want to do this. I want to talk to Ben, and tell him. Not his mum.

At the moment I feel the Isle of Wight is the strongest section on my plan. If I can just get myself in front of him then I can get him to listen to me, and that will at least be a start.

I don’t expect him to take me back. I am pretty sure that Ben and Lilah no longer exist. If we did I would have heard from him by now. This separation would be causing him as much hurt as it is me. But I haven’t. Still, regardless of the end outcome I still need to tell him the truth and I still need to tell him that I am sorry.

That’s all there is to it.

Me:
I have never missed you more than I have today. You should have been there.

10
th
May

Ben:
Nothing

Oh bugger it, I have got to go to work. The good news is that I can now go to work without the fear of being sick. I haven’t been sick for an entire twenty-four hours. This is mighty impressive and a dramatic improvement. I am putting it down to the stern talk I had with the baby after the scan yesterday.

You don’t make me sick and I promise to eat properly. There, you can’t say fairer than that.

Who said parenting was hard?

Ten minutes later

“What on earth are you doing?” I ask.

Meredith is face down on the couch wearing last night’s clothes.

“I have no idea.”

“Have you been there all night?”

“I think so, my neck really hurts.”

She rolls over to face me and I burst out laughing.

“You’re going to be in so much shit. You have got mascara all over the sofa.”