I sat down in my chair that faced out towards the window.

Somewhere out there behind a blanket of darkness, was the same view of the ocean I had witnessed thousands of times, but I sat in the warmth and kept looking, kept staring, always with that perpetual notion that something would change and alter. But here I was after all this time. Even with Ben, whom I lived and breathed for, I was still staring into the darkness.

9

DAISY

‘Are you coming or what?’ I hollered through the hallway of the flat, knowing that my loud booming voice that I reserved for my fitness classes would reach Ben’s ears in the bathroom where he had been hiding away for the last twenty minutes. I was waiting at the front door wearing earmuffs and a brown sheepskin jacket. Waves of nausea swept through my body. I thought I was done with the last of the morning sickness sensation but it had reared its ugly head again. I took deep breaths and stroked the fabric of the coat to distract myself.

I had no desire to spend Christmas Day with Annie. I’m not sure Ben did either. But she had asked and he accepted for both of us. The way I was feeling I needed to crawl into bed and stay there for a few months.

It would only be my second time meeting Annie and I still felt a bit weird about the teapot incident and, of course, her impertinence at mine and Ben’s decision to marry one another and getting pregnant so soon. But I was trying to put it down to her pure frustration. Without Ben around any more, she was probably quite lonely.

I was desperately trying to see it from her perspective, to analyse her behaviour, from the scalding my finger on the teapot, to the way she scanned my face for too long.

As I waited for Ben, I looked through the glass pane of the front door. Outside, it was bitter. No snow, just a frost that covered everything but it was the perfect back drop to Christmas Day. Our first Christmas Day together as husband and wife. A time of year I knew Ben was not wholly keen on but had yet to tell me exactly why. So did I know my husband yet? Can you truly ever know anyone? We all have secrets. Secrets we must hold on to. Our past has a funny way of showing up and ruining everything and with the pregnancy feeling more real to me every day, I was being drawn back to a time in my life I wasn’t ready to confront. So I decided, not today. Today was Christmas. And Christmas was for unwrapping presents – not the past.

Eve arrived in the hallway just then, wearing just a skimpy leopard-print silk dressing gown that barely grazed her backside, accompanied by her fluffy tiger slippers and an amused expression. She stopped next to me and leant her voluptuous hips against the wall.