Page 76 of The Spark

Back at the house, I peed on the test, then we sat on the sofa together and waited.

‘What do you think Jamie will say, if you are?’ Lara asked. She was holding my hand for support in a way my mother had never quite got the hang of.

I’d been thinking about my mum all morning. About whether she’d wanted me. About whether a pregnancy test had been her Sliding Doors moment. I’d never asked her outright, because I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to see the tell in her face that gave it away: the confirmation I hadn’t been wanted. Not wholeheartedly, anyway. That I’d started life as a weighing-up, a list of pros and cons that, knowing my mother, was probably still crumpled up in a drawer somewhere. I was surprised she hadn’t whipped it out for fun on my eighteenth birthday.

I released a breath. For some reason, I was having trouble picturing Jamie’s reaction to my being pregnant. ‘I have no idea,’ I said, in reply to Lara’s question.

She nodded at the test, face down on the coffee table. ‘That’s it. Three minutes.’

But I didn’t even need to look. I knew what it would say. The bell in my body had already chimed.

I turned the stick over, swore, then surprised myself by laughing.

Lara swore too, her fingers squeezing mine.

I realised later that my laughter must have been instinctive. My body’s subconscious expression of a joy I hadn’t been fully certain I would feel.

Jamie and I had made a whole other life. There was a baby inside me that was half him, half me. We were going to be parents.

If I hadn’t dared to admit how I felt until that point, I knew it then. I was exultant. I thought back to what the woman in the shop had said, and realised she must have wanted what I had now.

‘Are you happy?’ Lara ventured.

‘Yes.’ I started to cry.

She wrapped her arms around me. ‘I’ll be here for you. Whatever happens. You and me – we can get through anything.’

You mean, if he doesn’t want this.

‘You don’t have to tell him straight away,’ she said. ‘If you need a bit more time to think about it.’

I pictured Jamie, head bent over his work at uni, oblivious, and felt a tug of love as I thought about the things he always said, like, When we’re parents, or When we have kids of our own. And yes, maybe this was all happening a bit earlier than we’d anticipated. But I was starting to feel more sure that he would want this. Or, to be more accurate – that he loved me enough to want it.

‘I know it seems mad, Lar, because we’re students, and we don’t have proper jobs yet, or anywhere permanent to live. But we’re in love. We can do this.’

Jamie was going to see his parents that weekend. Even Harry was apparently going to put in an appearance, home on a rare sojourn from Zurich. I couldn’t quite imagine Jamie telling Chris and Debra they were going to be grandparents. I was pretty sure they would hit the roof. Should I go too, so we could make the announcement together?

Lara disappeared into the kitchen to concoct a sugar-hit we usually reserved for hangovers, bad grades, time of the month. Microwaved chocolate puddings, half a Mars bar melted over the top of each one.

After a couple of minutes, she returned and passed me a bowl. I was still experiencing a slightly unsettling, uncontrollable urge to laugh.

‘What will you do, though?’ she said, sticking a spoon into her pudding. ‘About a career, and stuff? It’ll be harder, if you have a baby.’

I thought straight away of the brilliant time I’d had at Kelley Lane Interiors last summer. Lara had been right, before – I’d felt more fulfilled during my internship there than I had in a long time. Possibly ever.

But a baby didn’t mean I couldn’t have a career. It just meant it might be slightly more complicated.

‘We can make it work. We’ll find a way.’

‘Do you think,’ she said gently, ‘that you want this because of everything that happened with your parents?’

This wasn’t the first time she’d said this to me. I knew she thought I was looking to Jamie for the stability and loving family unit I’d never experienced at home.

But even if I was, so what? I felt almost blissful in that moment, high on some sort of hormone, one that made me believe my baby and I – or the clump of cells inside me, at least – were already protected by a kind of shield, a bubble, something that would keep all negativity at bay. ‘Does it matter?’

She shrugged. But then she seemed to be readying herself to say something else.

‘Go on,’ I said.

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