A Big Secret

Every year, Ed and his old school friends get together in for an early Christmas dinner in the first or second week in December. This year, the venue was Iain's cottage in Carlton and I had offered to do the cooking. The plan was to meet at the cottage on Friday night, but I had been in Birmingham for two days with work so had to rendevous with Ed in Penrith on the way down. I got off the train at Penrith a couple of hours before Ed arrived and headed to Morrisons to do some shopping for the weekend. I had been feeling a bit odd in Birmingham, and noticed some telltale signs like bleeding gums that gave me an inkling something might be up. Of course, I couldn't be pregnant - on Maureen's advice I was monitoring my cycle and we were avoiding fertile times. After the events of earlier this year we were taking a break from trying until after our holiday in New York in January. But whilst going round Morrisons I shoved a test into the trolley just in case. I went to the pokey little loos in Morrisons and went through the undignified process of the test. No doubt about it - the two blue lines appeared straight away, practically screaming out at me. I was completely in shock, and still had a good hour to wait for Ed to arrive. I took myself off to the cafe and had a cup of tea, trying to come to terms with what this meant - a baby. When Ed arrived, I got into the car and blurted out, "before we go anywhere, I have something to tell you". And in the car park of Morrisons in Penrith, I told him that he was going to be a dad. It's not really how either of us imagined it. For some reason I was worried about how he would take it, I suppose because we had agreed that we weren't "trying". But of course he was delighted. We decided to keep it a secret until we were able to find out that everything was okay this time. Easier said than done, when you're on your way to a big knees-up with friends. I managed though, and had the delicious feeling all weekend of knowing that you were there, and that the only other person who knew in the whole wide world was your Daddy.