Page 27 of Escape to the Country

A baby scan picture was passed across our knees. ‘I was so happy to know I was having Theo’s baby after the initial shock wore off. I thought he’d feel the same way. The rest you know.’

Mum looked sad but unburdened at the same time. ‘Darling, I’m so sorry that I’ve never shown you these things before. The last time I looked at them was just after you were born. I was so ecstatic to have my beautiful baby daughter that I loved with all my heart, but so immensely sad to be without Theo. My emotions were all over the place. My hormones, too! I really thought that my parents would have been there for me. I know I haven’t told you this before, because I was not only hurt but also totally mortified by what they did, but they disowned me the moment I told them I was pregnant. I know they were disappointed in me, understandably, and horrified, as was I, that Theo was married and was not going to be able to make an honest woman of me. They were embarrassed and didn’t want their friends to find out. At the time when I really needed them the most, they weren’t there for me.’ Her voice wobbled.

‘He should have been there with me. To see his beautiful daughter.’ She banged her hand on her knee and raised her voice. ‘He should have been there for you, for us.’ Then all her anger dissipated as she whispered, ‘He should have been there for us,’ once more. Tears streamed down her cheeks as those feelings of betrayal from the people she thought cared about her came flooding back to her and the hurt came tumbling back into her life. She took a deep breath to steady her nerves.

‘This is why I packed everything away in a box and hid it in the loft. I couldn’t bear to look at them and think about how quickly it all went wrong. Obviously I didn’t hide it well enough though, Miss Eagle Eyes.’ She smiled at me through her tears. ‘Can you ever forgive me? I was just trying to protect you.’

‘Mum, there is nothing to forgive you for. You can only ever do what you feel is right at the time. You dedicated your whole life to me and to making it the best it could be. You gave me more love than any other child I know. You worked around the clock so we could have a nice life. I couldn’t have asked for a more dedicated, perfect, wonderful mother.’

Mum ran her thumb down my cheek. ‘My beautiful, kind, sweet girl. You are beautiful inside and out. He has missed out on so much. I’m so proud of you and love you so very much. There was a point in my life where I wished nothing more than that one day, before my time was up, we would meet again, and I could hold my head high and tell him that we never needed him. That we did OK.’

‘We did more than OK, Mum, we – well, mainly you – did brilliant. But can I ask you one more thing?’

‘Anything, darling, anything at all.’

‘What was his surname?’

Mum took in the deepest of breaths and time stood still for what seemed like minutes because she knew that the words she would say next would be life-changing. She breathed out and whispered, ‘Knight. Theo Knight.’

14

Once she realised that I’d got over the initial shock, Mum said that she was going and that she’d be back the following day after she’d given me some time to think. She kissed my head as she left. ‘Sleep tight, darling. I love you.’

* * *

I sat for ages just staring into space, completely bowled over by the fact that I now had a name. I rolled it around my tongue. Theo. Knight. It was a good strong name, and I wondered what a name said about a person. Once I started to come to my senses, I grabbed my phone from my handbag and started to look online for my father.

However, Theo Knight was nowhere to be found. I tried to cyber stalk him by looking for him on Google, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. But I kept drawing a blank. In hindsight, if he was older than Mum by five years, and Mum was sixty this year, that would make him sixty-four or sixty-five, so maybe that made it less likely that he would be on social media? I thought there was a chance that I might track him down but even before I’d really started I’d hit a dead end. What now?

I thought Beth might have some suggestions when I’d pop in to see her tomorrow. I could get her on the case while she was resting. It would give her something to do.

My sleep was fitful that night; I was tossing and turning with my mind whirling in all directions, but in the middle of the night everything always seemed a million times worse, and the harder I tried to go back to sleep, the less able I became. As the sun rose across the orchard, I trudged downstairs in my ’jamas and slippers and made some coffee. I desperately needed a caffeine boost to start the day. As I boiled the kettle, I remembered that Mum was coming over mid-morning to go shopping and it gave me the kick up the bum I needed to drag myself out of this daze.

* * *

Around 9a.m. the post thudded onto the front door mat and made me jump from my daydream. Looking at my watch, I realised it had been a while since I’d moved from my book and it was about time I got myself another drink to liven me up. I was waking up early these days and really enjoying having a coffee and reading to start the day. I flicked the switch to reboil the kettle and picked up the post which had been directed from the apartment, rifling through to see if anything looked interesting. One A4 manila envelope had the Ronington’s franking stamp and I opened it to find some final paperwork from the HR department. My heart thudded as I recognised the sweeping handwriting on one of the other envelopes that was also included. Propping that particular bit of post next to the kettle, with my hands shaking, I made a drink but was definitely really out of sorts because of it. I sat back down on the sofa and tried to ignore it, but it was staring at me, calling me to open it.

How could something like this have got me so worked up? It was no good; I decided I may as well get it over and done with, like ripping off a sticking plaster. I stomped over to the envelope, counted to five and opened it. A sheet of A4 paper dropped from my shaking hands onto the floor.

Maddy, it’s been a while. How are you?

Cheeky bastard. ‘It’s been a while!’ It had only ‘been a while’ because the last time I saw him, he was literally in the middle of shagging one of his clients, and that was on top of the fact that I’d been devastated about what had recently happened too. My blood was beginning to boil.

Over the last couple of years I’ve spent time with other people, but none of them are like you. They don’t make me laugh like you do, they don’t turn me on like you do, and they don’t work as hard as you do. They’re just not you. I miss you, Maddy.

I know about the redundancy and it doesn’t matter to me. What I want, Maddy, is for you and me to be together again. I want us to work together again and be a couple again. A team. You and me against the world, just like we used to be.

I’d love to chat to you, to see if you’ll forgive me and take me back. I need you and would love to hold you in my arms again. Please get in touch and say we can try again. I have always and will always love you, Jx

OMG! What the hell was this? It was so totally and utterly out of the blue, I literally did not know what to make of it. This was what I’d longed for so many times after we split up. I wanted him to apologise and tell me it meant nothing to him. To beg me to reconsider and take him back. That I was all he ever wanted and needed and that he’d been stupid and given in to ridiculous primal urges. If he’d done that, I’m sure we could have got through his dalliance if that were the only issue.

It had taken me a long time to get rid of the image of his arse pumping up and down while Alisa smirked at me over his shoulder as I stood in stunned silence. It took far too long for him to even realise that I was there and jump up and have the decency to cover himself up, whilst at the same time exposing Alisa to the elements so that she flashed her snatch right at me! Bloody hell, there are some things you really just can’t unsee!

I couldn’t believe he’d done that to me and especially not then. I thought that my heart would literally never recover from such a betrayal. I wondered if it was my fault. Whether it was because of what had happened…

Three weeks beforehand, I’d found out I was pregnant. I was on the pill, but it must have happened when I’d had a bad stomach after a dodgy curry so the pill wasn’t effective. I’d realised recently that my period was late, which was very unusual for me, and I’d worried about it for days until I decided one day, without saying anything to anyone, that I should probably do a test. I knew there was a pretty remote chance that I was pregnant but thought that perhaps stressing about it was making it worse, so I decided it was time to find out once and for all and put my mind at rest.

With shaking hands, I picked up the test after the required two minutes and read the wordpregnant! I was shocked. I had no idea what to do. Should I tell Jamie yet? I felt I needed a bit of time to get my own head around it before I told him. For two days, I’d worked late, gone in early and tried to avoid him as much as possible. I made a doctor’s appointment and it was confirmed that I was definitely pregnant. Over that time it had started to sink in. I was going to be a mum. At first, it was scary. I worried about whether I could be a good enough mum, like my wonderful mum. I’d never really thought about being a parent. Jamie and I had never really talked about it, even though we’d been together for years. I didn’t think he particularly liked children, to be honest. He was always commenting about people he worked with putting their kids before work and he couldn’t understand it. But once it had started to sink in, I began to think about a future as a family. Jamie, our baby and me. And I liked what the future had in store for us. We’d already committed to living together and being together forever; we often talked about growing old together. This way there’d just be more of us in our family unit. The more I thought about it, the more excited I became. I pictured walking down the street pushing a pram, with our baby inside it. Once I’d got used to it, I loved the idea and I wanted to share it with Jamie, sure that he’d feel the same way.

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