Page 38 of Strictly Business

THE WOMAN in the chemist shop smiled at Alice. ‘This is our most popular brand. It comes with instructions. One blue line means a negative result, two lines positive. And you get two testing kits.’

‘Two?’ Alice repeated with a gulp.

‘Some people like to double check.’

‘Yes. Right. Thanks, I’ll take it.’

Clutching the packet to her chest, Alice hurried outside and almost jumped into her car. Then she opened the packet, took out the box and sat for several minutes staring at the printed words:Pregnancy Test.

She couldn’t believe this was happening to her. Her period couldn’t really be five days overdue.

Except... she’d checked the calendar and her diary a thousand times this weekend. And every time she’d arrived at the same answer. So here she was on Sunday night, so unable to bear the suspense any longer that she’d rushed out to find a 24 hour pharmacy.

She felt a bit silly really testing when she knew the kit was going to show one blue line, a negative result. She couldn’t be pregnant. It simply wasn’t possible. Todd had been desperate for a son and they’d tried for almost two years with no luck.

His doctor had run tests on him that proved without a doubt that it was her fault. She shuddered now just remembering Todd’s anger and the ghastly names he’d calledher. He’d made her feel so useless, so unfeminine and unlovable; her self-esteem had hit rock bottom.

By the time he’d finished abusing her, she’d accepted the blame, of course. Why wouldn’t it be her fault? She’d let him down in every other way.

She realised now that she should have double-checked Todd’s assertion with fertility tests of her own, but at the time she hadn’t been able to face going through painful medical procedures just to confirm something she already knew.Besides, what was the point? Almost immediately, Todd had turned to other women.

Setting the box carefully on the seat beside her, she started the car and drove home through the quiet suburban traffic. It was raining. Tyres swished through puddles and headlights slanted across shiny roads. Even though she knew it was pointless, she couldn’t suppress a tiny kernel of crazy excitement. But it felt so unreal. This couldn’t be an ordinary Sunday night with families at home watching television and wishing the weekend could last a little longer.

By the time she reached home she was a bundle of nerves, but it was time to put an end to the awful tension that had made a nightmare of her weekend. With the test over and done, she could go to work tomorrow confident that at least one potential problem had been overruled.

Okay.

She set the testing stick on the bathroom bench, sat on the edge of the bath tub and closed her eyes while she counted the minutes.

All weekend she’d felt as if she were teetering on a knife edge, on the brink of toppling into someone else’s life, some weird other dimension, like Alice falling into Wonderland. Very soon now and her own life would rock back into place.

Once she knew for sure that she was right, that she wasn’t pregnant, she could –

Oh, my God. She leapt to her feet.

There were two of them.

Two blue lines.

Trembling, she stared at the tiny window on the testing stick. Good heavens. Sinking back onto the edge of the bath tub, she tried to take it in.

She was pregnant.

No, it must be a mistake.

Heart pounding, she rushed back to the kitchen to grab the second kit. It had to be an error. The woman in the chemist shop said people liked to double check. That was probably because the first test was often wrong.

She felt shaky and sick with a weird kind of excitement as she stood staring again at another tiny plastic window, watching the first line form and then, oh good grief, the second one.

Oh,heavens. Oh, Liam.

What have I done?

In a daze she wandered through her flat, trying to take it in. The test said she was pregnant. Her period hadn’t come and her breasts felt unusually tight and tender. Her body said she was pregnant.

It didn’t make sense.

‘I don’t understand. How could it have happened?’ she asked the doctor next evening.

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