The Christmas Surprise Read online

  ‘Hello, sir,’ said Rosie. ‘Have they stopped spoiling you to bits at school yet?’

  Edison frowned. He wasn’t very good at being teased.

  ‘I don’t think I am tebbly spoiled,’ he said, pushing up his glasses. ‘I am most likely not to have tantrums mostly.’

  Rosie couldn’t imagine Edison crying about anything.

  ‘I was only teasing,’ she said. ‘Are they being nice to you?’

  Edison frowned.

  ‘They mostly say, “Edison, you can play football with us.” But I don’t play football now. And I didn’t play football before. Hester says ball games are just male greshun.’

  ‘Does she?’ said Rosie blandly. Her thoughts on Edison’s mother’s contemporary parenting style were always best kept to herself. ‘Well, maybe when you get rid of the stick you can play.’

  Edison looked terrified.

  ‘But what if the ball hits me, Rosie, and breaks my glasses?’

  ‘You could just say “Ha ha, I don’t mind” and play on.’

  ‘But if I was hurt and there was blood?’

  ‘It’s only a ball, Edison.’

  ‘I’m scared of balls,’ said Edison gloomily. ‘Can I have some Edinburgh rock?’

  Rosie pulled down the jar.

  ‘Are you sure,’ she asked, as she always did, ‘you don’t want to try something else?’

  Edison looked confused.

  ‘But I know I like Edinburgh rock.’

  ‘Yes, but you might like something else even more.’

  ‘But that would be A RISK.’

  Rosie smiled and shook him out his little bag.

  ‘Here you are. How’s Marie?’

  His baby sister had been born on Christmas morning. Edison could not be talked out of calling her Marie, after Marie Curie, and now Rosie rather liked it. With a thrill of half panic, half excitement, she realised that Marie and her baby were going to be close in age.

  ‘Noisy,’ said Edison shortly. ‘And I wanted to play Lego with her, and everyone said, “OH EDISON, NO.”’ His face looked pinched and sad. ‘You know she can hold things! I thought she could hold my Lego Chima!’

  Rosie smiled.

  ‘But what does she do with the things?’

  Edison thought about it.

  ‘She puts them in her mouth.’

  ‘There you are,’ said Rosie. ‘You can see that might be a problem.’

  ‘But Lego isn’t nice in your mouth.’

  ‘Well you know that,’ said Rosie. ‘She doesn’t, she’s only a baby, she doesn’t know anything. That’s why she needs a big brother to show her that Lego is bad.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Edison. ‘I could teach her all of that stuff.’

  He wandered thoughtfully out of the shop as Rosie moved over to serve some of the more indecisive children. She yelled after him, ‘But don’t give her any Edinburgh rock!’

  Edison rolled his eyes at her. He was definitely growing up, she thought.

  After they’d shut up shop, Rosie couldn’t settle till Stephen came home. Often he was in before her, with huge stacks of marking, but he had some gruesome Ofsted meeting tonight he couldn’t miss. She made a chicken pie, but couldn’t concentrate and put weird ingredients in it. Mr Dog hopped around and she didn’t tell him to stop jumping up. She lit the fire, but her hands were shaking. She spent a lot of time examining herself in the mirror in the bathroom. How could she not have noticed the swelling in her breasts, the new blue veins that had appeared under her pale skin? Her stomach was the same as ever – i.e. not quite as flat as she would like it to be – but her thick dark curly hair seemed to have extra bounce in it for some reason, and wasn’t growing as quickly as it usually did, and she realised that that was because her body was diverting all its resources to nourishing the life within her.

  She was still in the bathroom, slightly stunned, when Stephen turned up, with his heavy, slightly uneven tread – a result of being blown up by a landmine in Africa while working for Médecins Sans Frontières – and his emphatic greeting for Mr Dog.

  ‘Does having a baby make you burn food?’ he called. ‘I had no idea. Where ARE you?’

  ‘I’m in here,’ she managed weakly. Stephen banged open the bathroom door.

  ‘Have you spent all day in dodgy bathrooms?’

  As soon as they saw each other, though, all banter and bravado was gone, and they simply stared at one another.

  ‘Crumbs,’ said Stephen, looking at her in the mirror, a hint of wickedness about his normally serious steely blue eyes.

  ‘Innit,’ said Rosie, looking back at him.

  ‘You know, we couldn’t even name a dog,’ said Stephen.

  ‘Lord, I hadn’t even thought of that.’

  And laughing with their secret, the special thing of their very own, in the little cosy cottage under the big frosted sky, they fell into one another’s arms.

  Chapter Two

  Lilian Hopkins was sitting smugly in the day room, with a petition. The petition was to stop the football being shown on the TV downstairs. The four men in the old people’s home were displeased.

  Her frenemy, Ida Delia, who had been married to Lilian’s first love before he had been presumed lost in the war, stood behind her, for once on the same side. Both women had made an enormous point of being in mourning for Henry Carr, wearing black every day. Rosie teased Lilian and said it was turning her into a Spanish condesa, which troubled Lilian not at all. Continuing with her conversion to Catholicism, she had added a mantilla, which Rosie was quite shocked at. But she had to admit it was rather dashing, with Lilian’s slash of red lipstick and pale face.

  ‘Also, I might take up smoking,’ Lilian said, at which Rosie really got annoyed. ‘I’m just trying to hasten being back with my Henry again, and I’ve heard it’s nice.’

  ‘It’s not nice, it’s foul,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Well, all right, perhaps just some heroin.’

  ‘If all the sugar you exist on hasn’t killed you’ – Rosie obviously approved wholeheartedly of sweets as a treat, but Lilian’s commitment to them as a full-time diet caused some tension between them – ‘then I can’t imagine a bit of heroin is going to do it.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Lilian. ‘Get me some heroin. Ask Moray.’

  ‘Moray doesn’t know how to get heroin.’

  Lilian looked at her over the tops of her glasses, as if disappointed at Rosie’s naivety.

  ‘He’s a doctor!’ she said. ‘When I was a girl, all you could get was morphine. When Ebidiah Lumb got his arm chopped off in the thresher …’

  Rosie looked at her.

  ‘Yes, well things are very different now.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Lilian. ‘That old miser Hye never throws anything away.’

  Rosie thought of the dispensary at the surgery, which she’d had cause to visit once or twice, and figured there was probably something in that.

  ‘Well anyway. I’m still not getting you any heroin.’

  ‘After all I’ve done for you,’ said Lilian.

  ‘Lilian, I have something to tell you …’

  They had hugged their secret to themselves for weeks like fairy treasure, bedazzled by what they had created with their love. However many people had done so before them (about nineteen billion, Stephen reckoned), it could not diminish their private joy by an iota. The outside world, on the other hand …

  ‘Do you think Lilian will guess?’ Rosie had asked.

  ‘Yup,’ said Stephen. ‘Though it doesn’t matter if she guesses or not, because like everybody else, she asks us every ten seconds anyway. Oooh, when are you getting married, are you going to take on your title, when are you going to have a baby, she’s not getting any younger.’

  ‘They actually say “she’s not getting any younger”?’ said Rosie, stung. She was thirty-three.

  ‘Never,’ said Stephen quickly. ‘They never say that.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Rosie, who was on her way up to see her great-aunt with
a little black bomber jacket, very Mary Berry, that she’d been unable to resist for her in the January sales.

  ‘The problem is—’

  Stephen was there before her.

  ‘If you tell Lilian before you tell your mother, you’ll be in a heap of trouble.’

  Rosie shivered.

  ‘Can you IMAGINE?’

  Angie, Rosie’s mother, was fiercely protective of Rosie, even all the way from Australia, where she lived looking after Rosie’s brother Pip’s children, whom Rosie adored.

  ‘In my head,’ said Stephen, ‘they would both rise up into the sky and have a great fight.’

  ‘Then your mother would grow to the size of Godzilla …’

  ‘Let’s not tell my mother till it’s here,’ pleaded Stephen, stroking Rosie’s soft curls. ‘And maybe not even then. She’ll barely notice. Hide it every time she comes round. If she finds out, tell her we sent it to boarding school in the womb.’

  ‘That’ll totally work,’ said Rosie. Her eyes widened. ‘Oh my God, does it matter whether it’s a girl or a boy?’

  Stephen looked away.

  ‘Seriously? Screw that.’

  Stephen was set to inherit the huge, unprofitable, crumbling estate currently being run by his mother. His elder sister Pamela had quite a lot to say about that.

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘Oh God, if it’s a boy, Pamela is going to do her nut.’

  They looked at each other and started giggling.

  ‘So,’ said Stephen. ‘Is there anyone who isn’t totally going to do their nut about this poor baby?’

  Angie first. If this had been a cartoon, Rosie thought, there would have been heavy hairdryer lines coming out of the phone. All Angie’s doubts over Stephen’s suitability as husband material for her only daughter were blown away in an instant.

  ‘Oh moi Gawd?’ she shrieked, in her hybrid English/Aussie accent, even though she’d only been in Australia for two and a half years. ‘A boybee!!!’

  ‘Speak English, Mum,’ said Rosie, pink with pleasure.

  ‘WANNA SPEAK TO ROSIE.’

  Rosie could hear Meridian, her favourite niece, on the other end of the line, and a bit of fumbling as she grabbed the phone.

  ‘HEYYO, AUNTIE ROSIE. WHEN ARE YOU COMING FOR SLEEPOVER?’

  ‘Soon,’ promised Rosie. ‘Hello, my darling Meridian.’

  ‘I JAMES BONG.’

  ‘Hello, James Bond. Listen up, James. You know I am going to have a little baby for you to play with! She’ll be your cousin and you’ll be the biggest.’

  There was a very long pause. If Rosie hadn’t been able to hear Meridian’s noisy breathing down the phone, she’d have thought she’d hung up or wandered off.

  ‘James Bong?’

  ‘DOAN HAVE BABY, AUNTIE ROSIE,’ came the voice very clearly. ‘BABIES ARE PIG’S ARSE.’

  ‘Meridian!’ Angie said sternly.

  ‘Okay,’ said Rosie. ‘Well, you know I’ll still like you very much.’

  More noisy breathing, then Angie grabbed the phone back.

  ‘I’ll tell her it’s not coming for ages. It’s not, is it? I mean, darling, you were looking quite well-rounded at Christmas …’

  Rosie rolled her eyes. Anything larger than a size 8 her mother made a fuss about. She was, and always had been, quite a bit larger than a size 8.

  ‘No, Mum.’

  ‘Oh, okay, good! Right, Meridian, don’t worry about the baby.’

  ‘I WILL KILL THE PIG’S ARSE BABY WITH MY ROCKET CAR.’

  ‘She’s thrilled,’ said Angie. ‘And so am I, my love. How are you feeling? Are you sick? Have you told that old dingbat yet?’

  She meant Stephen’s mother. Rosie had called her worse.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Oh man, don’t let her get her claws into the baby. She’ll be sending it out chasing horses and trying to make friends with Prince George and whatever posh people do.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Can it make friends with Prince George?’

  ‘No, Mum.’

  ‘Ooh, I’ll have to come over. Or you guys come to us!’

  ‘You want me to fly to Australia with a newborn baby?’

  ‘You’ve got the ticket!’

  Her family had given her a ticket to Australia for Christmas.

  ‘Anyway, babies are easy. Just coat the dummy in sugar water and you can basically pop to the shops.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ said Rosie, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Also, on the flight, you give them a little bit of valium …’

  ‘Mu-um!!!!!!’

  ‘Oh my Rosie-Posie, this is so amazing.’

  ‘Well, Pip’s got kids.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Her voice softened, and she sounded English again. ‘But when it’s your daughter, it’s something else. Something a bit special … PI-IP!!!! YOUR SISTER’S EXPECTING!’

  ‘Bonzer!’ shouted Pip from what sounded like a long way away.

  ‘Are you out in the garden splashing in the pool this early in the morning?’ asked Rosie suspiciously.

  ‘Yip,’ said Angie proudly. ‘You’d love it here, Rosie.’

  Rosie looked out of the window at the frost-spattered trees and the sparkling garden.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But here is pretty good too.’

  ‘Is it as cold as it was at Christmas?’

  ‘It is FAR worse than it was at Christmas. And there’s not even any Christmas!’

  Rosie moved to the front, where Farmer Isitt was walking his old horse. On her back were two of the village children, screaming and laughing, their breath visible on the dark air.

  ‘Brr,’ said Angie.

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ said Rosie, smiling. The fire was crackling invitingly down below. ‘And I’m fine. Hungry.’

  ‘You’re always hungry.’

  ‘Yes, thanks for that. And my bosoms … Uh, never mind.’

  ‘I never will know where those came from,’ said Angie wonderingly. ‘Lilian and I are flat as pancakes.’

  There was a pause while they both wondered, briefly, about Rosie’s father, a travelling man Rosie had never known.

  ‘That child is going to have plenty of family,’ said Angie fiercely, putting Rosie’s thoughts into words. ‘Too much probably. You don’t have to worry about that.’

  ‘No,’ said Rosie.

  She rang off promising to send a picture of her bump week by week, though the idea that she would even have a bump seemed very odd to Rosie, some kind of medical miracle that she couldn’t imagine happening.

  She went back downstairs. Stephen didn’t quite look up; he was gazing at his laptop, as usual cursing the ridiculous slowness of their rural internet connection. It never really bothered Rosie. Angie posted pictures of the children on Facebook every single day, along with inspirational messages about guardian angels and things you had to ‘like’ if you loved your daughter or your niece or stuff like that, and Rosie normally let it load at its own speed then crawled through it later. It was nice keeping up with her old friends – Mike and Giuseppe both changed their relationship status about once every two days – and she ordered supplies for the shop, but apart from that it wasn’t something she was crazy about. Stephen, on the other hand, liked to read the papers and keep up with rugby teams and so on, and was always grousing about how long it took.

  ‘So, you know,’ she said, ‘we’ll have to move to Peak House. We’ll freeze our bums off.’

  Stephen looked up.

  ‘I didn’t think of that,’ he said and bit his lip thoughtfully.

  When Rosie had arrived in Lipton, he had been living in Peak House, the draughty Georgian pile that belonged to the big house. It was right at the top of the hill, open to the wind and rain, but the views were staggering. Stephen’s memories of it were not, however. He associated Peak House with cold and loneliness; and Lilian’s little cottage, where they now lived, with cosiness and warmth and coming home, and being happier than he’d ever known
.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘Babies are only little.’

  ‘I’ll be sure until the first time it crawls straight into the road and gets run over by Isitt driving his sheep to market.’

  ‘Well Lilian and her brothers all grew up here.’

  ‘Yes, and they slept four to a room and had an outhouse in the garden.’

  ‘Sounds cosy enough.’

  Rosie looked at him.

  ‘Seriously?’ he said.

  ‘Seriously. Talk to your mother.’ She smiled tentatively. ‘If we’re going to be a family …’

  ‘Oh, pulling that one, are you?’ said Stephen, smiling, and dragged her over to sit on his lap. ‘You’ve got this all figured out, haven’t you?’

  Rosie shrugged.

  ‘It does have a lovely big garden,’ she said. ‘And maybe … maybe we could put double glazing in.’

  ‘No, it’s good for children to grow up totally freezing in a haunted house,’ said Stephen airily, and she knew she’d won him over.

  ‘And,’ she pointed out, ‘we should sell this place anyway. Lilian’s home is getting so expensive, and if I’m going to be taking some time off …’

  Stephen winced.

  ‘I hate being skint sometimes, it sucks.’

  He turned and kissed her.

  ‘Would you have preferred it if I’d gone off to London to become one of those banker boys after all?’

  She grinned.

  ‘No! Anyway, you’d have been rubbish. Always staring out the window and thinking about the hills and reciting poetry.’

  ‘Rubbish doesn’t matter if you’re a banker. They give you millions of pounds anyway. And if you don’t make millions of pounds, they get the taxpayers to give it to you.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Rosie. ‘Maybe we should all do that.’

  Then they both looked cosily into the fire together and smiled at the same time.

  ‘Neh,’ they both said, as Mr Dog came up and lapped at their hands.

  ‘I am the smuggest witch in the entire world,’ said Rosie, getting up to put the kettle on, already feeling pleasantly drowsy although it was only early in the evening. Stephen went back to his computer. She heard him from the kitchen.