Page 42 of Seashells at The Summer Hotel Lovely Bay
Sophie:Certainly not warm here!!! It’s been raining for the last few days, and it’s quite chilly. Over it a bit.
Nina:Oh dear, well, sorry to tell you that it’s definitely not cold or raining here.
Sophie:How’s the hotel?
Nina:Yeah, really nice, thanks.
Sophie:Recovered from the flight?
Nina:Not sure. I’m really tired.
Sophie:I think it’s called holiday wind-down.
Nina:Yeah, it must be. I was supposed to go to a palace today, but I’ve changed my plans.
Sophie:Sounds like you just need to zone out on a sunbed for a bit.
Nina:Yeah, right, exactly.
Sophie:How is Robby? When’s he getting there?
Nina:He’ll be here in a couple of days. He’s had to extend a bit in Singapore, which suits me tbh. I’m fine just chilling out here on my own. The hotel is amazing.
Sophie:Yeah, sounds like you need it.
Nina:Guess so. Just going to stay here & read my book…
Sophie:OK. I have to get on and do some stuff for the kids, but have a nice time. Send me some pics of the pool and everything. x
Nina:Yes, will do. Speak soon. xxx
Realising that she’d been sitting on the sunbed for ages, Nina watched various goings-on in the pool and read a lot of her book. She had deliveries straight to her sunbed of cocktails every now and then and had enjoyed the best Thai noodles of her life for lunch.
There had been a lot of people-watching going on and not a lot else at all. Under her sun hat and the huge green parasol, Nina watched a mum in the pool with the cutest six-month-old baby she had ever seen. The baby giggled and splashed around and Nina felt a pang in her heart as she thought about the fact that she hadn’t fallen pregnant and wondered if she ever would.She shook her head and tried not to feel too emotional. When she saw other women with tiny little babies, she tried to just suck it up and not think about it too much. She couldn’t deny, though, that huge streaks of jealousy would engulf her in waves. It just didn’t seemfair. So not fair at all. Why couldn’t it have happened on the first go, right when she’d wanted it to?
What she’d wanted, once she’d realised that she would, indeed, like to start a family, was that she would find herself pregnant straight away. Just like Ellie in Lynette’s story she had earwigged. She’d wanted to flick a switch and be having a baby just like that. But that hadn’t happened, and here she was, months and months later, still navigating a path she hadn’t even expected to be on. The whole thing was chock-full of emotions that had hit her like a tidal wave.
As she sat thinking about it whilst idly watching the mum dip the baby in and out of the water in front of her, she picked up her phone and navigated to the Reddit group she’d joined since starting her pregnancy journey. She read through various posts about all sorts, including the best times of the month to try, different foods that people claimed had helped them, various positions to try, and wild and wacky things in the world of fertility.
She scanned down with a smile on her face as at the same time, she observed the woman put the baby into a pram beside her, pull a sunshade down, and begin to push the pram back and forth. Not long after, Nina watched the woman do laps around the pool, jiggling the pram handle as she went, heard a few cries, and then, after it went silent, the woman parked the pram, put on the brake, and collapsed down on the sunbed opposite Nina.
As Nina sat and gazed and flicked back and forth between her phone and the Reddit group, she felt a strange tickle in her throat and sneezed three times in a row. After going for a swim, she realised that she was coughing occasionally and wonderedwhat was happening as she sneezed repeatedly over and over again. By the time she got out of the pool, the cough seemed to be coming more frequently. She wondered if she had caught something or if something was stuck in her throat. Deciding to call it a day, she dried off, put on her cover-up shirt, gathered up her things, and made her way back to the hotel room set on a nice long afternoon nap.
Agood few hours later, Nina was in the hotel room and not feeling great. A whacking great headache had joined the coughing, and after a shower and putting on the hotel robe, she still wasn’t feeling much better. She ordered Thai food from the room service menu and was sitting on the balcony listening to the evening sounds after taking paracetamol and cursing what was happening. She was clearly getting poorly. When her phone rang, she tapped to answer the WhatsApp video call, propped her phone up on the little balcony table by the mosquito candle and smiled as Robby appeared on the screen. He was in a similar position on the balcony of his hotel in Singapore.
‘How are you? Had a good day? Are you nice and recharged now?’ Robby asked.
Nina smiled. ‘Iamfeeling recharged on the one hand, but I’m not feeling that great on the other.’
Robby frowned. ‘Doesn’t sound good. What feels wrong?’
Nina shook her head. ‘I don’t know; it’s really strange. I started coughing earlier when I was in the pool having a swim, and then I’ve been coughing ever since, more or less. It came onsofast. When I got upstairs, I thought there’s no way I’m going anywhere else.’
‘It’s not like you to have a cough,’ Robby noted.
‘I know,’ Nina said, shaking her head. ‘I’ve been coughing and coughing non-stop. That has now been joined by a really cracking headache, so I just took a couple of paracetamol to see if it would make it any better. Yeah, not feeling great here.’
‘Oh dear, maybe you need to have an early night. I’ll be with you soon anyway. I hope you’re going to feel better.’
