Quiet Isaac picked up the box. It was the one she had brought her new trainers home in. Was she saying something cryptic about them …? The box was too light to contain trainers; it didn’t seem to weigh anything at all. Was it empty? He opened the lid to find lots of white toilet roll bunched up to be wrapping paper. He delved a bit deeper. There was something inside. He pulled out the central package, wrapped in the same paper. He guessed it might be a pen; it was that kind of shape and size.
It wasn’t a pen. As he unwrapped it, Isaac took a couple of moments to understand just what he was looking at. He had never seen a pregnancy test indicator before. Inside the wardrobe, Hope almost passed out with the tension and her breath held too deeply and for too long.
He had his back to her, so she couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking. He seemed to hold it in his hands and peer at it for an age, but gradually, she saw his shoulders sink and his head lolled forward on to his chest. Her heart sank; he seemed sad. She couldn’t hide away any longer, so she flung the door open, and rushed to him. ‘Isaac, I’m sorry …’
Quiet Isaac almost jumped out of his skin with fright at the sudden shock. He yelped, and his arms flailed up in the air like a berserk windmill. Hope dodged an inadvertent clout by millimetres. She flew at him and flung her arms around him, knocking the test out of his hands and pushing him to the bed, all in the propulsion of one bear hug.
‘Whaaa!’ he shouted.
‘It’s just me!’ she yelled as they fell on to the bed.
‘Be careful, Bubs, watch out.’ He was worried. He quickly sat her up next to him on the bed and she could see that he still had a tear on his cheek.
‘Are you OK? I’m sorry. I thought we were careful … I’m so sorry …’ She tried to reassure him. She felt panicked. She didn’t want to lose him – Quiet Isaac was the best person she’d ever known. Maybe this was a disaster for him?
He spoke breathlessly, ‘Yes, yes, it’s OK. I just … You scared me then. I didn’t know what the hell … but this …’ He leant over and picked up the pregnancy test. ‘This doesn’t scare me. No. This is us. You and me. It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault, because it’s not a fault. A life can’t be a fault. God makes life, so it can’t be wrong. Can it? We made this life together … right here in this bed. It’s gotta be good, it’s gotta be OK. It’s beautiful, Bubs. You are beautiful. Don’t worry. We’ll do this together; we’ll manage it somehow. We’re blessed. Now I need you to be careful. No falling down …’ With that, Isaac started to well up again and Hope saw that his tears were a kind of gratitude, not the anger or sadness she had supposed. She pulled him in close to her.
‘We can do anything, Isaac. If we’re together,’ she reassured him quietly, close to his ear, but as she said it she realized that so many reassurances in her life, both told to her and by her, were no more than words of comfort, often without any real truth to them. Her mother’s hollow drunken reassurances, however constant, weren’t that real. Doris forgot them by the next day. Hope’s own reassurances to her sister in difficult times were her dearest wish that the two of them would be OK, not her certain knowledge. However, this, now, with Isaac, was the incontrovertible truth and, as such, was a beautiful relief. Yes, together they would be mighty, and inside that strength would be a great place to be a baby.
Hope had felt her fear flood away back then. She wasn’t frightened with him alongside her, and he made it clear he wasn’t going anywhere. She had a rock to stand on. Solid and reliable … and quiet. Isaac.
And Isaac had known, at that precise moment, that for the first time ever he was surely in love, with both Hope and their baby she was carrying. Abundantly in love.
Now, here, in the car as they drove home from the hospital with an empty baby seat, and an empty Hope, Isaac seriously prayed that she would still believe in his love … and that he would also. He had come to know and adore Hope for all the good stuff she clearly was. He hoped that it wouldn’t matter that there was no baby. He hadn’t known the baby before she died, of course he hadn’t, not in actuality, but the two of them had spent many hours imagining so much, thinking about her, and who she might turn out to be. Wondering what name might suit her, and how they might raise her. They’d thought about her all the time. They’d called his parents and told them. It was a shock, but his mother especially was supportive, so long as he promised to bring the child home at some point. Hope told her sister, and left it for her sister to tell their mum and dad. She was better placed than Hope to choose the right moment, when Doris was sober and receptive and when Zak was cheerful and present, rather than in the depressed paranoid slump he so often lived in. So, everyone knew this baby was arriving.
Sitting together side by side in the car, they both tacitly understood that they would have to explain what had happened that night to everyone. It would be difficult but it had to happen.
Hope had been very quiet for most of
