Page 114 of Christmas Eve at Cranberry Cross
She had made it to the bathroom just in time when Edward stood outside the door.
‘Do you need me to call the doctor?’ he asked.
‘No, it’s just a stomach bug,’ she said but she sat on the toilet and wondered.
They weren’t trying to get pregnant but they weren’t trying not to. She counted back the days to her last cycle and realised.
A baby? She was thirty. That was far too young, she thought and then remembered her mother was only twenty-two when she had her. A baby – what would Edward say?
She opened the door and stood in front of him.
‘I think I’m pregnant,’ she said.
‘Really? That’s wonderful,’ he said and then he checked, ‘Is it wonderful?’
‘I think so, maybe. I don’t know, I’ve never been pregnant before.’
Eve was indeed pregnant and had a daughter called Agatha, because she loved Agatha Christie and because she liked the name. Aggie was her father’s daughter, with a passion for throwing books at the fireplace if she didn’t like them.
And Edward wondered often how he became so lucky and Eve wondered more often why she had stayed working for Serena for so long. But perhaps things are meant to be a certain way. You need to meet the dragons head on to get to the jewels you deserve. Or something like that, Eve thought. Zara could say it better. And then remembered what she had said to Zara once and she made a call.
‘Hey, friend, what are you up to?’
‘Not much. Working, slowly atrophying from the corporate life and toxic politics.’
Eve paused and then said, ‘I don’t know if you remember but ages ago, like two years or more, I made a joke about you writing a book for young women. Anyway, I was just wondering, is that something you might be interested in doing? I think the world needs a best friend like you.’
Zara laughed. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
‘Come up for the weekend and we can plan and Ed can take care of Aggie?’
‘Deal, I’m booking the train now.’
Eve put down her phone and looked out across the garden to where Flora and Hilditch were digging in the vegetable beds.
Hilditch had moved to Leeds with them and had started to help at the animal shelter with Donna.
Myles had a girlfriend who was also the lead singer in the band with the twins and they played any event that would have them. He was going to be a rock star he told Edward and Eve, and there was something about him, a charm and charisma, that certainly made him different. The band was slowly getting a following.
Donna and Sam retired and came to Beecroft to be with the children every week. Donna would have come daily if allowed. When Aggie was born, Donna cared for her when Eve went back to work and often when she came out of her study, there would be Aggie throwing food for the dog, Christmas the cat sitting on the kitchen table. Myles walking around playing his guitar without an amp and Flora dancing on the flagstones in a new pair of tap shoes.
It was a busy, sometimes chaotic life but what remained steady through it all was Edward at his desk, writing as the world at Beecroft Vicarage swirled around him. He had learned to write through the hardest time of his life, so writing in the best times was a cinch.
And neither Eve nor Edward would have wanted it any other way.
‘This is what we wanted,’ Eve reminded Edward when he looked as though he was about to lose it, and he would pause and look around and smile as Hilditch handed him a glass of wine.
He would kiss his wife and say aloud, ‘Yes, this is what we wanted.’
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