Me and You by Claudia Carroll

Author:Claudia Carroll [Carroll, Claudia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-07-31T23:00:00+00:00

As long as she lived, Jean would never forget sitting alone in the bathroom that night, perched on the side of her bath, eyes glued to a minuscule screen on a Clearblue pregnancy test.

She couldn’t be, she thought, half out of her mind with frantic worry. Not someone like her, surely it wasn’t possible? For God’s sake, she was only twenty-two years old! With her whole life ahead of her, etc. etc. Last thing she needed right now was this. She still felt like such a big kid herself, how could she possibly start facing into parenthood?

Come on, come on, come on, she willed the thin, plastic stick she was holding with one hand, while mopping cold, clammy, panicky sweat off her forehead with the other.

Be negative. Just be negative. Please, for the love of God, be negative.

Besides, her reasonable mind told her, it really can’t be possible. He’d told her a long time ago that he couldn’t have kids, something to do with chicken pox he’d had as a kid. Which was the only reason she hadn’t bothered with birth control as diligently as she should have been. So barring this was some kind of Immaculate Conception, how in the name of arse could it have happened?

Because men lie, the same nagging voice in her head told her. And gobshites like you are always there to believe them.

She glanced back down to the skinny white stick she was clinging to.

And as soon as the one single word she’d been dreading slowly began to appear, it was as though her whole life suddenly shrivelled in front of her.

Maybe it wouldn’t be half as bad as she’d feared, she desperately tried to reason with herself at first. After all, he hadn’t had an episode, or one of his ‘outbursts’, as he referred to them, in a long, long time now. Quite the opposite, in fact; for months, he’d been nothing but contrite, mortified, apologetic even. Had seriously upped the romance in their relationship too, and lately had consistently been surprising her. Being so utterly attentive and caring, it was actually unbelievable. Bringing her home big bunches of ridiculously expensive roses after work, buying bottles of wine to have with dinner, whisking her off for romantic weekends away, just the two of them. Constantly telling her over and over again just how much he loved her, how he’d die without her.

And she really did love him, course she did. Besides, ever since … well, ever since his last ‘outburst’, everything was now completely back to the way it used to be. For the past few, magical months it had all been so romantic and wonderful, like when they’d first got together, years before. So she slowly started to relax, allowing herself to get swept up in it all, falling in love with him all over again.

What happened was just a blip, she’d half-managed to convince herself. Has to have been. Because just look at us now! Love’s young dream all over again. Well, in his case, love’s middle-aged dream, but still.

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