Resolution (Saviour) (40 page)

“
Naaa Lauren, he loves you big time. Fuck, he’s marrying ya isn’t he? Jeeze, I for one never thought that would happen, never thought I would see Gabe fall in love even and definitely not want to get married again. He’s changed so much since he met you. Like, instantly, overnight, he met you on the weekend and came back on the Monday and was just different and he didn’t keep it secret. He was open and told the boys that he had met someone and that it was just different, I felt so sorry for him; the boys were just taking the piss and saying it was just because you had a great rack. They obviously noticed your tits in the pub. I s’pose because… well, you do have a great rack Lauren, but anyway, I wasn’t there so I hadn’t seen it all unfold but the boys were just laughing and telling me how he couldn’t take his eyes off you. He didn’t deny any of it, he just laughed at himself and shrugged and then said to me. ‘Fuck it, I’ve met someone I like. What’s the big fucking deal? They need to grow up.’”

I smile as I hear this new revelation
. It makes my heart want to burst, I’m missing him now. I could handle being apart if I knew that I was going home to him tonight but I’m not, nor tomorrow night either. God, it’s just two nights, get a grip woman.

“
Stell. Can I ask you something?”

“
Of course you can.”

“
Do you think if I arranged for Gabe to see a counsellor he would go?”

“
A counsellor? Why does Gabe need to see a counsellor? What’s wrong?”

“
Please do not repeat a word of this to anyone ever Stell, seriously.”

“
I swear, I won’t, you’re scaring me Lauren, tell me what’s wrong.”

I take a deep breath
. “Gabe thinks he doesn’t deserve to be loved. He thinks that I’m going to eventually leave him and Ava will one day cut him out of her life. He doesn’t feel he’s worthy of love… Because of what went on between him and Jackie.”

“
Far out. Seriously, why, why would he think that? It wasn’t his fault. It’s not like it was an affair. She abused him, he was under age.”

“
I know, I’ve told him all of this but he just feels so guilty. I think Charlie dying has made him feel worse and he’s really struggling with it all and I don’t know what to do, I want to help him but I don’t know where to start, I need you and your brothers and Sam and Jen in on this one, he doesn’t think any of us should love him. He broke down and told me all this, this morning, that’s why he’s being so paranoid. He thinks that if I’m left alone with time to think, that I will get rid of the babies and go back to Jay.”

SHIT!!! I know what I’ve just l
et slip before Stella takes it in. I watch her face as she digests my words. Her mouth drops open. “Wh…wait a minute. What babies? Are you pregnant?”

Her mouth drops open again as she looks from my water to my belly to my face
. “You are? You’re fucking pregnant aren’t you? Are you serious and you didn’t tell me? When? How far? Oh my god, get him on the phone. I’m gonna kill him, why the fuck didn’t he tell me? Get him on the phone right now.”

There are only one other couple in the restaurant and they are staring right at us
. “Stell. Calm down, don’t ring him yet, it’s supposed to be a secret, no one is supposed to know, I have to have some tests done because of my age, once we get the results back from them and we know everything is okay. Then we will tell people, we have to consider Ava, she will be devastated if there is anything wrong with them.”

“
Them? Anything wrong with them. YOU’RE HAVING TWINS?”

Seriously
, Stella has no volume control, but I can’t help but smile at her enthusiasm. “Yep. We’re having twins, around June the twenty first they are due…All being well”

Stella jumps up from her chair and slides onto the bench seat and throws her arms around me
. “I can’t believe it Loz. I am so happy for you both. Oh my God, he must be over the moon, another set of twins, you two are like your own little fairy tale. Oh my God I’m tearing up.”

We spend the rest of our meal and the rest of our evening in fact, discussing, babies, Gabe and Jackie. Stella ends up sleeping in my bed with me
, but tells me the next morning she had to go to the spare room in the middle of the night because my snoring was so bad. Well I slept fine!

I get up when I hear Stella
moving about in the kitchen. I have to be up at the Palmers place at nine to meet the carpet fitters so I need to get my arse into gear. I call Gabe to wish him good morning and to let him know that as it’s such a beautiful morning I am off to take a walk on the beach for half an hour but he doesn’t answer, I don’t leave a message, those horrible voice to text things never seem to understand my accent and end up leaving a message that makes no sense, I will just call him once I’m back.

As I walk into the house my mobile and the land line are both ringing, I grab my mobile first,
its Gabe. “Morning Ba…”

“
Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been calling you for over half an hour? Fuck Lauren. I told you to keep your phone on you.”

“
Yeah and good morning to you too… Have you quite finished?”

“
No. Where were you? I was calling the land line from the hotel phone and your mobile from mine, you didn’t pick up either.”

“
I went for a walk on the beach. I have no pockets in my leggings or vest.”

“
Well tuck it in your fucking bra. Don’t leave the house again without your phone, are we clear?”

“
Who the fuck are you talking to? I am not a child; do not speak to me like I am a fucking idiot.”

“
Well don’t fucking act like one!”

I hang
up. Who does he think he is, talking to me like that, this paranoia is getting ridiculous, he seriously needs help! My phone starts to ring again. Well if he wants to treat me like a child I will fucking well act like one. Prick!

I flip the phone to silent, put on some mu
sic and get into the shower; an hour later I am pulling up on the driveway of ‘Bella Cliché’, just as the carpet fitter’s truck arrives. I leave them to unload as I take a walk through. The place looks amazing, a complete transformation, I cannot wait to get the pieces in place that I have chosen; the whole house is surprisingly clean. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gabe told the cleaners to do an extra special clean, not just your average builders clean. Shit. Gabe, my phones still on silent. Actually I went a step further and switched it to airplane mode when his calls kept interrupting my music. I pull it out of my bag and change the settings, seventy eight missed calls. Not just from him but from his whole family, and all of my friends, and text messages from all of them too. This is ridiculous, it starts to ring again as I’m scrolling through my messages, most of which are telling me to ‘Ring Gabe’.

“
If you start ranting at me, I will just hang up. What do you want?”

“
Where are you?”

“
I’m up at the Palmers, I told you I had some work to do up here today.”

“
Please don’t ignore my calls.”

“
Then don’t behave like a prick.”

“
I asked you to keep your phone on you at all times.”

“
I called to tell you I was going for a walk on the beach but you didn’t answer. Where were YOU?” I ask smugly, if he can miss my calls then why can’t I miss his? I cannot believe his complete over reaction to a missed call.

“
I went for a run.”

“
So why didn’t you take your phone? You told me you would have it on you at all times.”

“
I had nowhere to put it.”

“
Tuck it in your bra.”

“
I don’t wear a bra Lauren.” I can hear the smile in his voice but I’m not backing down on this.

“
Well then perhaps you should fucking start. Don’t call me up, giving me shit, when it was YOU missing my call that caused all this.”

“
You could have. Fuck Lauren. I was worried.”

“
Yeah, I get that but that’s no excuse for being so rude and shouting down the phone at me like a raving lunatic, you didn’t pick up the phone to me, I didn’t notify NASA, ASIS, MI5 or any other fucker. Nor did I scream abuse at you down the phone when you did call me. You haven’t said good morning, you haven’t even said sorry.”

He’s silent for a moment too long, he’s actually not sorry
. “Are you going to keep your phone with you the rest of the time I’m away Lauren?”

“
Am I? Fuck! But I might drink, smoke, party down Main Street all night and drive with my eyes closed all the way to Woy Woy. Don’t call me again; I will see you Friday night.”

I hang up out of shear frustration, I k
now it’s childish and I know that I will call him later when I’ve calmed down but for now he’s driving me mad with his issues and I refuse to let him get away with talking to me like that. And where the fuck is Woy Woy?

I have a productive day, the carpets are laid, the plantation shutters fitted and the rest of the windows fitted with roman and stacker blinds
. The beds that Karen ordered are delivered at lunch time, I have the bedding in the car that I’ve picked for each room, Gabe’s cleaner washed and ironed it all for me last week for an extra hundred dollars in her wages; I have new doonas and pillows stored in a cupboard and will set to dressing the place when Wendy and Ally get here, they are my dream team, they help me dress any of the places I work on and they do the big clean before I present to my clients. While I wait for them to arrive I check my phone, I’ve turned it back to silent and turned off vibrate because I just knew he would keep ringing me and he has, fourteen times and left countless texts, the first of which tells me that I’m a child and need to grow up. Well telling me that is going to make really me want to call him – not! I can’t help but smile as I scroll through each of his messages, he starts pissed off and gradually gets to begging me to answer because he misses me and wants to hear my voice. There’s only one thing missing from his messages, an apology, and I will not be taking his calls until I get one, despite the fact that I really want to talk to him and find out how his meeting went and if they won the contract.

I finally make it home just after six, I’m exhausted as I head for a quick shower before my girls arrive; we are just getting Chinese takeout so I don’t need to dress up or prepare anything; Lu can’t make it tonight so it’s just myself, Jo and Jemma
, they arrive with food, promptly at seven, great, because I am starving. Instead of sitting up the bench top, I cover the coffee table and put the food containers on there; we dish the food onto our plates and curl up on various parts of the sofa. The girls drink wine, while I have vitamin water, which I seem to have become addicted to lately, best not tell Gabe that though, he will be sure to find something in the ingredients that I shouldn’t be drinking. Although I have already actually googled everything listed on the bottle and we’re all good. What pisses me off more than anything is that he thinks that I’m so irresponsible, like I don’t care about the health of these babies, when nothing could be further from the truth, I’m actually worried sick about them and the fact that if there are any issues, it will be my fault because before finding out I was pregnant, I smoked, I drank, excessively sometimes, I got stoned, more than once, I’ve had a concussion and was out cold for a couple of days, I’ve even had an x-ray. I can feel myself start to hyperventilate as I think about all that could potentially go wrong with this pregnancy. I put my fork down. Jo is talking but all I can hear is air rushing through my ears.

“
Lauren. You okay Loz?”

I’m aware of Jemma taking my plate out of lap and holding my hand
. “Hey Loza, you’re freaking me out, what’s wrong?”

Noise rushes into my ears and I gasp to get my breath
. “What if there’s something wrong and it’s all my fault. With the babies I mean, what if there’s something wrong, he’ll be devastated, would we survive that? So much has gone wrong, shit, everything’s gone wrong so far, I don’t know what… I don’t know if I could go through with it. Am I a bad person, just for thinking that, am I bad?”

“
Calm down Lauren. No, of course you’re not bad. Have you discussed this, you and Gabe I mean, have talked about the possibilities of Downs Syndrome and the like because of your age?”

I start to calm myself down and get my breathing under control
. “We haven’t discussed specifics. We just decided we would have the CVS test done as opposed to the amnio. The CVS can be carried out after the tenth week, amnio not until after the fifteenth; that would make me four months pregnant by the time we got results, I couldn’t terminate then. If I could do it at all.”

“
What’s a CVS? It’s a long time since I had a baby.” Jo asks.

“
Chorionic Villus Sampling. They pass a thin needle through my belly and take a sample of my placenta and test it for any chromosomal defects and the like. I have mine done next Friday.”