Page 24 of One Day at a Time

She pushed herself up from the floor, and went into the staff loo, then into the cubicle and peed on the stick. The whole time she was sending up a silent plea to her mum.

I’m sorry to ask, Mum, but if you’ve got any sway up there yet, can you please make sure this is negative. And yes, I agree it was a daft thing to do, and I should have known better. And yep, I’ve learned my lesson, I promise. If you could just take care of this, I’ll never have sex again, I swear. Okay, that was a lie, but please don’t hold it against me.

When she was done, she realised that she couldn’t time theresult because she hadn’t brought her phone with her and she wasn’t wearing a watch. Nothing about this felt like a group activity, but she unlocked the door and went outside anyway.

She was holding the stick in front of her as she sat down on the staffroom sofa next to Jessie, while Alyssa stood guard next to the door.

‘I need to time it. The instructions say one minute.’

Alyssa’s gaze went from Maddie, to the stick, back to Maddie again.

‘Maddie, I hate to say it, but I don’t think you need to wait any longer.’

At that, all three of them took their gazes to the window on the white stick.

‘I can’t see a thing without my glasses,’ Jessie muttered.

‘You don’t have to, Jessie…’ Maddie said, her voice barely above a whisper. Clearly her mum hadn’t been listening to a word she’d said back there in the loo. ‘…Because I’m pregnant.’

And that’s when, outside, the choir channelled some cosmic irony and burst into ‘Oh Happy Day’.

12

ORLA

The bench in the front garden was one of Orla’s favourite spots, especially on a warm day in July, when she could smell the roses and the lavender that grew all along the half-height fence that separated her house from Aidan’s place next door.

It was ten minutes before two, and she’d come outside to feel the sun on her face while she waited for Kyle to nip back from work to collect her. Today was their first antenatal appointment at the maternity unit of Glasgow Central. Since the day she had started at the hospital, she’d thought about arriving at that familiar front door, and turning right to the maternity wing instead of left to the lifts that took her to work on the Elderly Ward. Today, for the first time, she’d be making that turn, and just visualising it was making the butterflies in her stomach flutter up a storm.

She closed her eyes and rewound back through the last seven and a half weeks since her life had irrevocably changed on the first day of June. It was crazy to think that they were at the end of July already and she, by her calculation, was around twelve weeks pregnant. Maybe thirteen. Or fourteen. Hopefully the scantoday would help narrow that down, and yes, after being so rigorous with tracking and monitoring her body for the last few years, it was slightly embarrassing that she wasn’t more accurate on that.

Her hand automatically went to the very slight swell of her stomach as she replayed that moment in the staffroom when she’d found out. After the initial shocked silence, there had been screams, hugs and definitely some dancing until Yvie yelped that she’d tweaked a muscle in her calf and had sat down for a cup of tea and a celebration biscuit instead. Emmy and Keli had been equally thrilled for her.

‘Look, you go home and take this all in,’ Emmy told her. ‘Call your mum and work out how you’re going to make this the best day of Kyle’s life by telling him the good news. I’ll stay and do your shift. Cormac is working tonight anyway, so I didn’t have any plans.’

Orla had nodded and tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come.

‘Oh bugger, you’re crying again,’ Keli had chirped, hugging her. ‘Just nod if that’s a yes.’

Orla had laughed through the tears that were indeed streaming and managed to speak. ‘Emmy, are you sure? I would be eternally grateful. My head is so scrambled and I’m so fricking happy that for the first time ever I don’t know that I could concentrate on the job.’

‘I’m sure. Go on. And we want to hear every detail about Kyle’s reaction. Argh, I wish we were there. I’d love to see his face.’ That’s when Orla had noticed that Emmy had a tear in her eye too. This was the best day ever. Best. Day. Ever.

Even now, she still wasn’t sure how she’d managed to drive home without crashing that day. That whole part was a blur, right up until she’d called her mum on FaceTime and watched asNula’s face had broken into the widest smile and her throaty laugh had soared towards her from the depths of somewhere in Eastern Europe.

‘Oh my darling, I couldn’t be happier for you. Was Kyle thrilled?’

‘I haven’t told him yet. I just found out at work. The girls were with me, and Mam, they were so happy for me. I can’t believe this is happening. It feels like some kind of surreal dream.’

‘It is a dream, darling. A wonderful one. I can’t wait to see you. My trip home has been pushed back a week, to the beginning of August, but how about I come straight there and spend some time with you? I’d like to see my grandchild as it grows. And I want daily pictures until then too.’

‘I’ll send them over, Mam, and thank you. I can’t tell you how much I love you and how lucky this little person will be to have you as a grandmother. It’ll be the best excuse ever for you to stay home a bit more…’

‘And I will, I promise. You won’t be able to get rid of me. I love?—’

Orla hadn’t got the rest of the sentence, because, of course, the signal had dropped out right at that moment. Even that couldn’t dampen her happiness though.

She was snapped out of her memories and back to the present by giggling coming from the open windows of Aidan’s house and it was all she could do not to roll her eyes. The guy was such a player. He was always pleasant enough, but the trail of women going in and out of his house was truly exhausting. There were at least four that Orla recognised on sight now and he seemed to have them on rotation, although, slightly worryingly, sometimes two came at once, often late at night, and from the music and the laughter that usually followed, they definitely liked to party. Everyone to their own. Orla was just jealousbecause she didn’t have the energy for anything like that anymore. Between round-the-clock nausea, constant tiredness, restless sleep caused by the warm nights, and Kyle’s work schedule, sex had been off the menu since… since… She tried to think. Had they had sex since they’d found out she was pregnant?