The Christmas Surprise Read Online Free Page B

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