Ch12: Stolen May 20th

The night of that barbecue changed everything. My nineteenth birthday was just weeks away, and by my calculations, the night Dad decided to make amends and make a try at knowing Chris, is the night I got pregnant.

I don’t realise at first, who does? But I must have had an inkling, and the morning of my planned booze-up birthday bash, I use a pregnancy test. I’m at the little flat with Chris, and or a moment neither of us say anything.  We sit on the edge of the bed, pressed up against each other, and stare at the white plastic stick with its blue cross. It tells me I have a baby on board.

“Oh shit,” are the first words to come out. They are mine, and I’m waiting for Chris to do something, anything. Why do I feel like I’ve done something wrong? It takes two to make a baby, yet I feel like I just destroyed our lives.

When he looks up at me, there are tears in his eyes and a big grin on his face. He wraps me in a powerful hug, then pulls back. “A baby, us?” He grabs onto me again. “All I want is you, all I’ve ever wanted is you.” He puts a hand on my flat tummy. “We’ll make it work. I promise you.”

The initial nugget of fear at the sight of that blue cross dissipates a little, and I try to allow myself to get caught up in Chris’s excitement. He’s left my side and is pacing around the room, throwing his arms out as he thinks things through.

“I’ll have to save up and get a car, can’t put a baby on the back of a moped.” He’s walking in circles. “And you’ll have to move in here.”

I don’t say a thing. I’m smiling, watching the cogs in his brain turn.

“I’ll start pushing them at work for that promotion. The boss mentioned it a couple of times. I need to make sure it happens…”

But my mind goes to my father, and what his reaction is going to be.

“Mum will help with the baby, I’m sure yours will too…”

Dad’s going to flip. Since the barbecue we’ve had two get togethers. Each time there has been an undercurrent of awkwardness with my dad. He’s not comfortable with Chris nearby, but makes an effort for me. I think he’s secretly hoping that Chris and I will run our course and I’ll go find a nice white boy to settle down with. No hope of that now.

“There’s enough room for us to live here for a while, the bedrooms big enough for a cot. That’ll save us money.”

He laughs, Chris is really enjoying this. I should be swept up in his delight, instead I’m worrying about my father.

“Maybe I can get Mum to swap with us, and she can live in the flat and we can live in the house…”

Now he’s just dreaming, and I have to let him, because once my dad finds out, the atmosphere will be horrid.

I put the notebook away, dragging a sleeve across my face at an errant tear. Vanir is calling to me, telling to me to go outside and heal in her beauty. I grab the map I’ve glanced at before, an old ordinance survey map, and head down to the bay.

Sat on the end of the pier, I unfold the map and find my island. I let out a wry laugh, not my island, Ian’s island. Feels like mine after just a few days. The tide is on the turn, I watch it creep up the shingles and feel it lift the floating pier beneath me.

Looking to the west, I can see a leg of land that sticks out. I find it on the map and read the name: Helli Ness. They named things so oddly around here, I think as I look north. I can’t see much as my island is in the way. If I had the binoculars I might be able to make out parts of Lerwick before the hills interrupt my view. My estimate is Vanir is about five miles east of Mainland and five miles south of Bressay.

There are odd names on the map, like Giant’s Head and Thief’s Hole, and those are the more normal ones. Other names I guess have Viking origins and there are lots of rocks indicated just off the shores that start with ‘stack’.

My heart’s not in it. Despite the peace of sitting out here, the wind trying to steal my map, the birds chattering away noisily nearby, all I can think about is Chris and the little baby that we made together.

I gather the map up, somehow working out how to fold it back up and return to the cottage. My stomach is rumbling, and I indulge in a quick pot of soup, not even bothering to put it in a bowl, but spooning it from the pan. My plan is to clean up and get the diary back out, and it’s not until I go to wash the pot that I realise the hot water’s not working.

“Shit,” I mutter and try one of the lamps in the main room. Also not working. The turbine’s gone down, just as Ian suggested it would.

There’s a manual on the bookshelves along with a small toolkit. I wonder if I’ll have any chance of fixing it. Dad would know what to do, and for the first time since I arrived, I feel the sharp pain of homesickness. It grabs me in the guts and twists and before I know it, I’m curled up on the sofa sobbing, wishing for my dad, wishing for home, and most of all, wishing I could have Chris back in my arms.