Scandalous (44 page)

It was going to be a good Christmas after all.

T
HERESA SAT IN
the waiting room of the Bridge Street doctor’s office, flicking through a three-year-old copy of
Country Life
and marveling at how cheap the property prices were back then…back when they’d seemed astronomical. The property market had been on her mind lately, ever since an extremely polite American couple had knocked on the door of Willow Tree Cottage a few weeks ago and asked her at what price she would consider selling.

“It is just the most utterly charming house we’ve ever seen,” gushed the wife. “We were planning to buy in the Cotswolds, you know, around Oxford?” She pronounced it “Arksford.”

Theresa suppressed a smile. “Yes, I know the area. It’s lovely.”

“But then we came out here and Cambridge just blew us away, didn’t it, Bill?”

“Blew us away,” the husband agreed. For a moment Theresa wondered whether he was being literal. She loved Cambridge as much as anyone had ever loved a city, but the February winds were brutally bitter. With its bare trees and gray, plaintive skies, and the last of the holiday snow turned to sludge in the streets, neither Cambridge nor Willow Tree Cottage looked at their best.

“You’re very kind, but I’m afraid I couldn’t consider selling,” Theresa explained, taking their telephone number and e-mail
address anyway because they were so insistent. Ironically, had the couple knocked on her door three months earlier, she might well have entertained their offer. When she first heard that Theo had applied for the St. Michael’s mastership, she’d jumped off the deep end, vowing to abandon her own bid for the job and leave the university altogether. As usual, it was Jenny Aubrieau who got her to see sense.

“Are you out of your mind? In fact, forget that, you can scratch the question mark. You
are
out of your mind.”

It was the morning after Theresa’s passionate night with Horatio Hollander. Theresa had woken late, hideously hungover and in complete emotional turmoil. Thank God Horatio had left early. There was a note from him propped up against the butter dish on the kitchen table, but she didn’t have the strength to read it yet. Last night had been amazing, incredible, a complete revelation, and one of the most meaningful experiences of Theresa’s life. But she already knew she mustn’t repeat it.
What can I offer a boy his age? Once his infatuation wears off he’ll want children and a normal family life. All the things I can’t give him.
She pictured Horatio at forty, still handsome and youthful, pushing her around in a wheelchair. Admittedly, it was a bit of a stretch. When Horatio was forty, Theresa would only be sixty-one. But the basic truth remained: she was too old for him. He would grow to resent her, and rightly so. Downing two extra-strength Alka-Seltzer, she crawled back to bed but was woken by a phone call from Jenny, demanding to know where she’d been last night and insisting she come over for brunch.

“I really can’t, Jen. I’m too hungover to drive.”

“Fine,” said Jenny. “I’ll come and get you. Throw on a sweater, I’ll be there in five.” An hour later, fortified by a hefty slab of Jenny’s homemade chocolate cake and numerous cups of hot, sweet tea, Theresa had confessed that she was thinking of leaving. “I can’t face bumping into him every day. Well, maybe I can, but I don’t
want
to face it.”

“So you’re just going to pull out of the mastership? Roll over and let him win?”

“Come on, Jenny,” Theresa laughed joylessly. “He’s already won. You know how strapped for cash St. Michael’s is. Who are they going to want as master, a penniless woman Shakespeare scholar no one’s ever heard of, who’s too inexperienced anyway, or a world-renowned superstar with a sex-symbol wife who can raise the six million they need to reroof the chapel just by fluttering his eyelashes? It’s hopeless.”

“It’s not,” said Jenny robustly. “Not if you don’t give up hope. Besides, isn’t there a principle involved here?”

Theresa took another big bite of chocolate cake and tried not to think about principles.

“I mean, why should you give up everything you’ve worked for just because
he
has some passing whim about coming back to his roots? What sort of message does that send your students, especially the girls?”

“I’ve never set myself up as a role model,” mumbled Theresa guiltily, thinking about Horatio. What the hell was she playing at?

“Maybe not. But you’ve never been a coward, either, not while I’ve known you,” said Jenny. Theresa was shocked by the anger in her voice. “You love your life here, you love your work, you love that house. Don’t let him drive you out, T. Don’t do it.”

And in the end, Theresa hadn’t. She’d channeled her inner Blitz spirit and hunkered down at Willow Tree Cottage, working harder than ever on her book and her teaching, doing her best to impress the St. Michael’s fellowship with her quiet industry and determined professionalism. She’d also told a devastated Horatio Hollander that she couldn’t go out with him. For a few weeks afterward she would see him at supervisions, but it was torturous for both of them. Shocked by how much she thought about him and horrified by the degree to which her ending their short-lived affair had affected him physically—hardly stocky to begin with,
he’d become positively gaunt, his cheeks caving in like a prisoner of war—she was relieved when Horatio eventually requested a transfer to another professor.

“It’s not personal,” he told her, sadly. “Well, it
is
personal, but I’m not angry or anything. I just…can’t.”

“I understand,” said Theresa. She felt like she was going into a decline herself, although her version unfortunately involved eating rather than starving. While Horatio’s ribs became more prominent daily, Theresa seemed to have developed a layer of blubber around the middle that no amount of brisk walks into college would shift. As the nights grew shorter and the weather progressed from chilly to cold to arctic, she would sit curled up by the fire at the cottage, eating Marks & Spencer’s sticky toffee pudding and forcing herself not to think about either Horatio or Theo, whose arrival was now set for mid-March, a mere three weeks before the actual elections. All the other candidates, including herself, had been diligently lobbying the college authorities for months, but not Theo.
Of course not. He’ll just waltz in and steal it from under our noses, like the king that he is.

“Ms. O’Connor?”

The doctor’s receptionist, a fat, surly jobsworth of a woman who reveled in the power she wielded over her tiny, linoleum-floored fiefdom, summoned Theresa imperiously to the desk.

“You didn’t fill out your forms. I’m going to have to let this gentleman go in ahead of you. We’ll try and squeeze you in before five, if you’d like to do these now and bring them back to me.”

“But my appointment was at three thirty!” said Theresa wearily. “I’ve been waiting forty minutes already.” She wouldn’t mind so much if she weren’t so damn exhausted all the time.

The receptionist shrugged. “We need the forms. It’s part of our patients’ charter.” She pointed to a laminated sheet on the wall.

Theresa returned to her seat and began ticking boxes murderously.
Patients’ charter indeed. I’d like to show her my “out
of patience” bloody charter.
She’d been feeling low for weeks now, but had put off coming to see the doctor for fear he might advise rest (impossible with the election so close) or, even worse, a diet and exercise regime involving neither sticky toffee pudding nor sitting vegetable-like on the couch for three hours a night devouring old episodes of
Downton Abbey
. By the time she’d finished the forms, provided urine and blood samples, and exhausted the paltry supply of magazines—you know you’re bored when you’re reduced to skimming through a dog-eared copy of
Cambridgeshire Today
—the waiting room was all but empty. Finally, the doctor showed her into his office. A short wisp of a man with the sort of pale, freckled complexion that looked even worse on men than it did on women, he nevertheless had a genial way about him, like a friendly leprechaun.

“Ah, Ms. O’Connor.
Professor
O’Connor, isn’t it?” He smiled disarmingly. Theresa nodded. “Well I must say, Professor, it is nice to end a long, dreary Wednesday on such a positive note.”

“Positive?” Theresa rubbed her eyes tiredly. “I’m not with you. You mean you don’t think there’s anything wrong with me?”

“There isn’t anything wrong with you.”

He was so definitive about it, Theresa found herself getting irritated.

“What you mean is, you don’t
know
what’s wrong with me. Because I can assure you, I’m not in here for the fun of it. I don’t know what it is, if I’m anemic or I’ve picked up some sort of virus. But my energy levels…
what
?”

He was laughing at her now, his pale-blue eyes creased at the corners, chuckling quietly to himself. “I’d stick to the literature if I were you, Professor. You make a lousy doctor.”

Too annoyed to think of a comeback, Theresa folded her arms sullenly.

“You’re pregnant, my dear.”

Theresa went white. Without thinking, she grabbed the chair for support, sinking down slowly into it. It took a second or two
to process what he’d just said. When eventually she spoke her voice sounded croaky and odd.

“That’s not possible. I’m infertile. I tried for years…my ex…specialists.” Her powers of sentence construction seemed to have deserted her. “There’s no way. I’m forty-four.”

“Well, sorry.” The doctor shrugged. “But you
are
pregnant. I can tell you that with one hundred percent certainty. You’ll need to have a scan, but I would guess you’re somewhere in the region of three months along. Does that ring any bells?”

Yes. Christmas bells.
Horatio’s loving, tortured face loomed into mental view. It was ridiculous, impossible. All those years of trying and hoping, of ovulation tests and IVF and sperm spinning and macrobiotic diets. And here she was, ten years and one drunken one-night stand later…

“You must have missed at least one period.”

“Probably,” Theresa mumbled. “I’m so irregular anyway. I thought”—she laughed nervously—“I thought it might be menopause.”

“Again, I’d stick to the poetry. So I take it the pregnancy is…unexpected?”

She nodded, stunned.

“But, you’re planning to go through with it?”

She looked up as if she’d been stung. “Go through with it? Yes. Of course.”

“Sorry,” said the doctor. “We have to ask, NHS policy, I’m afraid. But I’m very pleased for you, really. Congratulations.”

Ten minutes later, armed with a stack of papers about sonograms at the Addenbrooke’s Hospital maternity ward, Theresa walked down Bridge Street in a daze. Her heart was pounding so fast she felt as if she’d just been chased by muggers. Adrenaline coursed through her veins until she wanted to laugh out loud, or shout, or run very fast up to a random stranger and hug them until she’d squeezed the breath out of their bodies.

Of course, this meant the end of the mastership. She’d faced long enough odds as a woman in the first place, even before the whole drama with Theo. But a single mother in the Master’s Lodge, pregnant by one of her students? Not even Jenny could tell her
that
wasn’t hopeless.

Jen. I must call her!
Jenny had been there all those years ago when Theresa had been trying so hard for a baby with Theo. Jenny had held her hand as her hopes soared and then dashed repeatedly, each failed implantation chipping away another tiny piece of her soul. After her divorce from Theo, Theresa had finally accepted defeat, grieving privately for the baby she had longed for but knew she would never have. It was hard at first, but over time the pain subsided. Eventually even the dreams stopped. Motherhood was not Theresa’s destiny. Shakespeare was her destiny. Shakespeare, and cats, and sticky toffee pudding.

It was a strange feeling, to have the dream that you had buried and mourned handed back to you, alive and vibrant and suddenly miraculously real. The feeling was two parts ecstasy, one part terror. Theresa walked back to college in a dream, starting her car and almost killing two kitchen staff as she swerved wildly onto Jesus Lane. She had no recollection of the drive home, nor of walking through her front door. All she knew was that she was suddenly there, in the living room, with Lysander and the other cats mewing for food like neglected children, curling themselves hopefully around her legs until she nearly lost her footing.

“Stop it! Go away, all of you!” she shouted, instinctively shielding her belly with her hands. Then she felt guilty and started pulling cans of Kitty Kat out of the pantry, spooning them onto saucers.
It’s not the cats’ fault I’m knocked up. Maybe I should go and lie down?

In the end, with an effort, she pulled herself together, lit a fire, and did what every sensible Irishwoman does in such circumstances: put the kettle on. After two cups of PG Tips and half a packet of Hob Nobs, the fog in her brain at last began to clear.

I’m pregnant. I’m going to have a baby. Or am I?
Suddenly she was gripped by panic.
I’m forty-four. What if there’s something wrong with it?
She pictured herself at the sonogram, a nurse shaking her head as she ran the ultrasound machine over Theresa’s jelly-slick belly, the doctor squeezing her hand. “I’m so sorry, Professor O’Connor. I’m afraid there’s no heartbeat.” It was ridiculous how much anguish she felt at the possibility of losing a baby that, until a few short hours ago, she hadn’t the faintest idea existed. Then there were the practical things to be considered, a list that grew longer every time Theresa thought about it.