‘Do you think our lock is still there?’ I nodded towards the myriad padlocks that clamped their love onto the fence bordering the beach.
‘Doubtful. They’ve probably got rid of loads to make way for more. It’s a tourist attraction. The souvenir shop over there is selling them for ten euros.’ He pointed to an A-Board. ‘Hey.’ He noticed the way my face collapsed. ‘Don’t be sad.’
But I wasn’t just sad because part of our history had been rewritten. I was also nervous. Scared of the things I needed to say. Scared of his reaction.
‘Fancy an ice cream?’ he asked.
‘No. A bottle of water would be good though.’
My mouth was dry, too full of the words I couldn’t speak.
While Adam was in the shop, I stared out into the distance. A yacht bobbed towards the opposite island.
‘Here you go.’ Adam handed me a bottle of Evian. ‘And this is for you. Us.’ He rustled a paper bag towards me. Inside was a lock and a pen.
‘Can we do it later?’ I pushed the bag back towards him.
‘Anna, what’s wrong?’ He looked at me with such concern. Such love.
I had to tell him.
Today.
Now.
‘Nothing… I… Let’s do the lock. Can you write it?’
‘What shall I put?’ Adam removed the cap of the marker with his teeth. ‘Adam and Star?’
He hadn’t called me Star for such a long time. It was being back here, the nostalgia making us feel nothing had changed when of course, everything had. More than he knew. Why couldn’t I just say it?
‘I think…’ I took a deep breath of salty air. The sun was dipping over the ocean, burning a fiery red ball into the centre of the sea. In the distance, a guitarist strummed a ballad. I couldn’t understand the Spanish words he was singing but I felt his emotions.
All of them.
I had wanted the perfect moment and it didn’t get more perfect than this. ‘I think you should write “Adam & Anna” but leave a space underneath.’
‘For a love heart?’
‘For another name.’
‘I don’t get it?’ His eyes drifted from my face, to the hand I had placed protectively over my stomach. ‘Do you… You’re not…’
‘I am.’
The sun shifted once more, the sky turning coral.
Suddenly he was crying and I was crying and, although I knew it was impossible, although I knew I was only six weeks pregnant, I swear I felt the baby – our baby – turn cartwheels of joy inside of me.
It would all be all right. Without the pressure of trying to conceive. The crushing disappointment when I didn’t. It would all be all right.
It had to be.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Adam
Stretching my hands towards the sky, I roared, ‘I’m going to be a dad!!’ My elation was carried in the salty sea breeze, lightly touching a clutch of tourists snapping the sunset. They turned and smiled. Sharing my joy.
Our joy.
‘I’m going to be a dad!’ I couldn’t stop saying it. I picked up Anna and swung her round and round, until I was dizzy with the movement, dizzy with her news, dizzy with the responsibility. ‘Oh God.’ I rested her down gently but didn’t let go of her. ‘Do you feel sick? Do you need to sit down?’
‘I’m fine,’ she laughed. ‘A bit tired but fine.’
She did look pale but there was something else in her expression. Relief? She couldn’t have thought I would be anything but over the moon.
‘But when… How?’ I sounded like a knob. But… fuck. We were having a baby!
‘I found out on Saturday. It was horrible keeping it from you. I’m not… I’m not going to keep anything from you again.’ She looked so serious. ‘I thought this was the perfect place to tell you – here was the beginning of the story of us.’
‘And now it’s the start of a whole new chapter. Part two!’ I picked up the lock and pen where I’d dropped them on the ground.
Adam, Anna
&
I wrote on the lock before I passed it to her. As she secured it to the fence, I placed my hand over hers, the way I had after I’d slipped the wedding ring on her finger.
My wife.
Soon I can say my wife and child.
A lucky bastard, Josh would say.
He’d be right.
Excitement nudged me awake. Anna was still sleeping, her hair fanned over the pillow. Quietly, I pulled on yesterday’s shorts and T-shirt and headed down to the shop where I had bought the love lock yesterday. I had seen the perfect gift for my wife; I just hadn’t known it at the time. When I returned, a purple velvet pouch nestled in my pocket, I was hoping to slip back into bed for a cuddle but Anna was dressed so instead we went for breakfast.
‘Can I get you more tea? Toast?’ I asked for the hundredth time.
‘I’m fine,’ she said again but she hadn’t looked fine. I was irritating her with my constant fussing, but I couldn’t help it. Last night, as she had slept, I had googled pregnancy and learned that the baby was roughly 7mm long and the size of a pea. Next week they would have doubled in size.
‘Have you told your mum?’ It only just occurred to me that I might not be the first to know.
‘Not yet, but I’ll tell her as soon as we’re home.’
I had a list of people I wanted to tell: Josh, his parents. My parents.
‘This might bring you closer to Nell.’
‘I hope so.’ Anna’s face was relaxed. She looked like a different person. ‘I don’t want to tell the world until after my twelve-week scan though.’
‘We don’t have to tell anyone until you’re ready.’ I liked having a secret that just the two of us shared. ‘But those Japanese tourists from last night know, and the barman, the hotel receptionist—’
‘You couldn’t help yourself!’ The corners of her mouth briefly upturned. ‘But if anything does go wrong—’
‘Nothing will go wrong,’ I said, as though the determination in my words could make it so.
We had waited too long for this.
My wife and child.
I would lay down my life to protect them.
‘Bugger. So much for a quiet afternoon.’
It was only eleven o’clock but the closest beach to our hotel, Pacifico, was a riot of noise and colour. Music and laughter. Red and green bunting hung between wooden poles pushed into the sand. A BBQ sizzled the scent of beef. A makeshift bar was laden with goldfish-sized glasses filled with milky pina colada, garnished with chunks of pineapple, straws and pink paper umbrellas.
‘Do you want to walk the extra fifteen minutes around to the cove where it’s quieter or head back to the hotel? Lay by the pool instead?’ I asked.
Culture Club asked if you really want to hurt me.
‘And tear you away from free booze and all the terrible Eighties music you love?’ Anna gestured with her rolled-up towel. It was the only thing I had let her carry and only then because she said I looked like a donkey about to buckle under the load of sun cream, windbreak, books, camera, hats, lilo.
‘An ass, you mean?’ I had replied.
‘An arse more like.’