She denied it all over Christmas by wearing baggy jumpers and telling her bemused mother that she was trying to ‘cut down’ when asked why she wasn?
??t drinking.
And still the days ticked by—until one morning, after dashing to the bathroom to be sick, she gripped the washbasin with still-shaking hands and stared at her white-green reflection in the mirror.
She was pregnant with Finn Delaney’s baby!
A man who despised her, a man she barely knew—a man, moreover, who had walked out of her life with the clear wish of never setting eyes on her again.
She was going to have a baby.
And with that one focused thought all her options and choices dissolved into one unassailable fact.
She was going to have a baby.
She booked an appointment with her doctor, who raised her eyebrows questioningly at Catherine when she’d finished her examination.
‘Yes, you’re pregnant, though you’re fine—fit and healthy.’ The doctor frowned. ‘You really should have come to see me sooner, you know.’
‘Yes, I know.’
The doctor appeared to choose her words delicately. ‘And you’re going to go ahead with the pregnancy? Because if you’re not…’
Catherine didn’t even have to think about it. Some things you just knew, with a bone-deep certainty. She drew a deep breath, scared yet sure. Very, very sure. ‘Oh, yes. Very definitely.’
The doctor nodded. ‘How about the father? Will he be able to support you?’
Another pause. There was no doubt that he would be able to. But… ‘I’m not expecting him to. We’re not…together any more.’ How was that for managing to make the truth sound respectable?
‘But you’ll tell him?’
Catherine sat back in her chair. ‘I don’t know.’ She didn’t feel she knew anything any more.
The doctor straightened the papers on her desk and looked at her. ‘A man has a right to know, Catherine—I really believe that.’
Catherine walked back to her flat, scarcely noticing the light drizzle which slowly seeped into her skin and clothes. The doctor’s question refused to go away. Should she tell him? Did he really have a right to know that he had fathered a baby?
She sat in the sitting room, nursing a cup of tea which grew cold and unnoticed, while the floor where she and Finn had made love seemed to mock her nearly as much as her idealistic thoughts.
Made love, indeed!
She might have been swept away with the passion of seeing him again, but Finn’s seduction had been cold-blooded in thought, if not in deed.
And yet the responsibility was just as much his as hers, surely?
She could be proud and vow never to tell him that his child was growing inside her womb, but what of the child itself?
Was she going to subject him or her to a lifetime of what she had had to endure? The terrible insecurity of not knowing who your father was? Of growing up with one vital half of the gene jigsaw missing? And with her having to nurse some terrible, pointless secret?
So did she pick up the telephone and tell him? Or write him a letter detailing the consequences of their moment of madness? She winced as she attempted to compose a clumsy paragraph inside her head. Impossible.
The sun began to dip in the sky and she put the cup of untouched tea down on the coffee table as tears began to slide down her cheeks. She angrily brushed them away, her heart aching for the new life inside her. Why should her baby suffer just because two adults had acted without thought?
She needed courage, more courage than she had ever needed before, because there was only one way to tell him something like this.
Face to face.
Chapter Eight