MacAllister's Baby (24 page)

He was beaming, and Jo and Mr Keeling were practically on the edge of their seats. Elisabeth slid her bag under her chair.

His long body was folded into the chair beside her. His thigh was close to hers. She remembered Chanticleer, where she’d felt his knee under the table like an electric field, where he’d warmed the very air.

She knew every muscle of his body, every hair and every place that the bones were visible underneath his skin. She couldn’t imagine knowing somebody else so intimately. Or opening herself to anyone else. He’d taken her apart and put her back together, overwhelmed her so much with pleasure that she’d laughed, helpless in his hands.

And what would their child look like? Dark hair, grey or brown eyes? Tall, surely, but with a dimple in the chin? Would it be a doer or a reader, a charmer or a teacher? Or something entirely new?

The minutes ticked by. She heard Angus and Joanna and Mr Keeling talking around her, and at times she replied, but she didn’t know what they were saying. Instead she was trying to get up the courage to go to the ladies’ room and take the pregnancy test.

Then the announcer said that time was up and the judging would begin and Elisabeth wondered frantically where those twenty-six minutes had gone, how they’d passed without her really appreciating them. They’d never come again. And it was too late to go do the test because now Jennifer had finished cooking and she was standing looking at them for support.

The judges went from student to student, tasting their dishes and dissecting them. They wrote comments on their clipboards.

‘Jennifer’s got a more ambitious menu than most of the other students,’ Angus told them, ‘but I’m not sure what view the judges will take of her modifying it because of her saucing disaster. She’s presented it beautifully, though.’

‘Do you think she’ll win?’ Elisabeth asked him.

He raised his shoulders. ‘She’s in the top five, I’d say. But I can’t taste it, and that’s what counts.’

It took a long time for the judges to make their way around the room, and then they huddled around a table to confer. Jennifer was exhausted, Elisabeth could tell; her thin face was pale and she leaned against the counter, watching the judges, while some of the other contestants talked with each other.

Elisabeth couldn’t make her win. She couldn’t even make her own life easier. She dug her fingers so tight into her thighs that they hurt and she wanted to stand up and scream.

Finally the lead judge took the microphone and, after a speech thanking all the contestants and their teachers and recounting some of the highlights of the day—a speech that was both necessary and right, Elisabeth knew, but which sounded in her ears like fingernails down an old-fashioned blackboard—he cleared his throat and started to announce the winners and to comment on their menus.

Second runner-up was a girl from Hackney, who’d made an Indian meal. ‘Danny’s was better,’ Angus said to Elisabeth conspiratorially. She smiled, her heart sinking, at his loyalty.

First runner-up was a boy from Tooting. Angus’s face was stormy. ‘They’ve chosen him on the strength of his pasta; I’m not sure they’ll choose a winning menu that features the same technique,’ he muttered.

The judge paused and let the applause die away before he announced the winner. Elisabeth watched Jennifer. The girl was so alone down there. She’d barely been able to face her schoolmates and her teachers, the simplest things like raising her hand to speak in class, and now she was facing a moment that would tell her whether she’d succeeded or failed.

Jennifer lifted her chin. She straightened her spine. She turned her eyes, full and brave, on the judge.

The movements were subtle, unremarkable to anybody who didn’t know Jennifer. Elisabeth drew in a breath of admiration.

Even if she didn’t win, she was going to be okay. Elisabeth could see that Jennifer had made that decision.

‘We debated about the winner,’ the judge said. ‘Though the quality of her work was clear, some of us were uncertain whether she should win. However, we all agreed that she put every ounce of her effort into her cooking, and when she failed she created something new with a creativity that cannot be taught, no matter who the teacher is.’

Elisabeth barely heard the rest, because Angus had thrown his arm around her and hugged her tight to his side and he was whispering, ‘Yes!’ through his broad smile, and it was too many good things at once. All she could understand through the confusion in her own head and heart were the words, ‘First place, Jennifer Keeling.’

‘Yes!’ Angus roared. Jennifer turned to the audience and as the applause washed over the girl Elisabeth saw that she was smiling, bright and wide, straight at her father.

It was exactly what Elisabeth had wanted to happen, what she and Angus and Jennifer had worked so hard for over the past weeks. Jennifer had found her bravery and proved herself.

And Elisabeth felt numb.

It could be the last moment.

Mr Keeling burst across the row of seats and ran down the aisle to his daughter to take her in his arms. Jo was jumping up and down cheering and hooting. They didn’t need her right now.

She had to know, and then she could feel.

‘Sorry,’ she said to Angus, and slipped under his arm and into the aisle without meeting his eye. Quickly she went to the back of the room and found the Ladies’.

Her fingers could barely lock the cubicle after her and it took several fumbling attempts before she got the Cellophane off the box and the pregnancy test in her hand. She followed the instructions and then stood, her hand shaking, in the cubicle waiting for the result in the window.

When the window began to colour in blue, she was no less numb than she had been before.

Slowly, she slid the bolt on the door and opened it and stepped out.

Angus stood before her. His dark hair and jacket stood out in the gleaming white room; he looked too big for the small sinks, the women’s lighted mirrors, but he was the first thing on her mind and it seemed natural he should be there.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, his gravelly voice echoing off the tiles.

She couldn’t speak. She handed him the test.

He squinted down at it. ‘What does this mean?’

‘A blue line means you’re not pregnant. A blue cross means you are.’

Angus gazed down at the bright blue line. And then he looked at her, and his face was such a picture of her own emotions that she suddenly wasn’t numb any more.

The tears came out of deep inside her without warning. She stepped forward and straight into his arms.

He enfolded her. Her safe forest, her most beautiful dream. He held her and rocked her and she cried deep racking sobs that she could control no more than the wind.

‘Elisabeth,’ he whispered to her. ‘Darling, sweet Elisabeth. It will happen. You will have a baby, please God with me, but you will. Everything will be fine. I promise you.’

‘I wanted,’ she gasped, and couldn’t finish.

It was too much loss, all at once. This hope, the thought of her baby lost beforehand and the tears that had never come, not in two years. It was all the pain she had been so afraid of. Everything she had fought and fought against, and she was feeling it anyway.

Her walls had never helped her after all.

And Angus was holding her, kissing the top of her head. Promising everything would be all right.

She leaned against him, heard his heart beating and felt the cloth of his shirt wet against her cheek. She thought of the teenager she’d just watched facing her worst fears and winning.

Be here now and for ever.

‘I wanted a baby,’ she said. ‘With you.’ She tightened her arms around him and lifted her chin. His face was blurred with her tears and his own eyes were bright and wet. ‘I love you.’

He sucked in a breath. And stared at her. ‘You mean it.’

Something in his face made her start to smile. ‘Yes.’

‘Say it again.’

‘I love you.’

A tear spilled down his cheek and it was blinding, brilliant, beautiful.

‘And you’ll stay with me,’ he said. ‘Please.’

The choice had seemed so difficult before, and now it was so easy. She could put herself in his hands, because he was in her hands, too.

‘I want to be with you for ever,’ she said.

He kissed her and she had never realised how perfect a kiss could be.

‘We’ll get married,’ he murmured against her lips, ‘and then we’ll try for a family together. That’s the order you want to do it in, isn’t it?’

She kissed him and she wiped her eyes. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘it’s the trust that matters. Not the wedding ring.’

‘But we’ll get married anyway.’

The door to the ladies’ room opened, letting in some of the noise of the crowd beyond it.

‘Oh, goodness, I am sorry,’ a voice said, and Elisabeth and Angus glanced over to see a brown coat and high-heeled shoes retreating.

Angus cleared his throat. ‘I forgot this was the Ladies’.’

Elisabeth couldn’t help giggling.

‘Angus, do you realise that our first kiss was in a refrigerator and you’ve just proposed to me in a toilet?’

His eyes glinted with mischief. ‘Are you implying that I’m acting in bad taste? Do you want me to get down on my knees and ask you if you’ll marry me?’

‘No,’ she laughed, and then realised she didn’t know which question she had answered. ‘I mean yes—I mean no, don’t get down on your knees.’

‘Just say yes. It’s less grammatically complicated.’

‘Yes.’

She felt a funny tickling in her stomach. Not like the tension sickness she’d felt earlier, or the butterflies she’d had through the judging. More like the sparkling bubbles of champagne. A glorious intoxication, thrilling, unpredictable, and precious. The two of them together could face down any fear.

She kissed him, full of promise and embracing the uncertainty. More delicious than any other pleasure.

He pulled her up against him and trailed his hands up and down her body.

‘What do we do next?’ he murmured.

‘Later, tomorrow, we tell everybody in the world. And then we spend the rest of our lives making love.’ She straightened his collar, brushed back his hair, felt so right touching him. ‘But now, let’s go help Jennifer celebrate.’

EPILOGUE

‘A
LL
ready,’ Angus said.

Before she put her book down on the crocheted afghan that covered the back of her favourite chair, Elisabeth reread two lines in preparation for tomorrow’s lesson.

But my true love is grown to such excess

I cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.

Shakespeare said it better than she ever could. She smiled, stood, straightened her dress, and went into the kitchen after Angus.

He’d set the table with candles and fresh flowers, but they were no match for him, tall and sexy in tailored trousers, a blue shirt rolled up to expose his muscular forearms and dextrous wrists and hands. She knew every scar, every mark, every moment of his life.

Angus pulled out a chair for her and dropped a kiss on her head when she sat down.

The plate in front of her was a work of art. She heard the pop of a bottle of champagne and when he leaned over her to pour her a glass she breathed in his scent, more seductive than the aroma of the food he’d cooked.

‘Is this something new?’ she asked.

He grinned. ‘Danny designed the menu in our honour and taught me how to make it. He’s been experimenting at Magnum all week.’

‘The apprentice is teaching the master, huh?’

‘I learn something new every day. At work and at home.’

‘And you’re going to have to learn how to cook vegan meals when my parents get here for their visit. My father hasn’t eaten meat since nineteen sixty-one.’

‘Not a problem. I learn quickly, as you know. For example, I knew I was going to fall in love with you from the first moment I saw you terrorising my chicken.’

Elisabeth threw back her head and laughed in delight at the pure, magic wonder of Angus MacAllister. She lifted her champagne glass.

‘Happy first anniversary,’ she said.

‘Happy first anniversary, Mrs MacAllister.’ They chimed glasses and leaned over the table to share a lingering, tender kiss.

‘The food looks delicious,’ Elisabeth breathed. ‘But aren’t you forgetting something?’

‘What’s that, love?’

‘Your son can’t use a fork yet.’

They both looked at their dark-haired, brown-eyed, dimple-chinned son, gurgling happily in his high chair, and waving his hands at the meticulously presented dish of food in front of him.

‘It’s never too early to appreciate good plating. Isn’t that right, Ewan, mate?’

Angus kissed his son on his cheek and picked up his plate. He took it to the worktop and scraped the contents into the food processor.

‘We can’t have him thinking that all food is mushy and comes in bowls, can we?’ he called over the noise of the machine.

‘For him, it pretty much does.’

Elisabeth accepted the bowl of processed food from Angus and spooned a bit into Ewan’s mouth. The little boy held his mouth open for more.

‘See, he likes it. He’s got good taste. I think he’s going to be a chef like his old man.’ Angus leaned over the table and ruffled Ewan’s fine hair.

‘At the moment, he’s more interested in becoming a nudist like his grandparents.’

‘There are definite benefits to being nude,’ Angus commented, sitting back in his chair. ‘I’ll show you some of them after his bedtime.’

Elisabeth fed Ewan another spoonful and glanced at her husband’s face. Angus was regarding them both with an expression of pleasure and pride. Exactly the way she felt.

‘Yes, Chef,’ she said, and watched his smile broaden.

A tiny grunt brought her attention back to their baby. Ewan screwed up his face, pursed his lips, and blew. A splatter of processed food sailed across the room and landed squarely in Angus’s champagne glass.

Elisabeth felt the smile grow on her own face.

‘Bad news,’ she told Angus. ‘I think he’s going to grow up to be a critic.’

ISBN: 978-1-4268-0411-3