Island Life

ISLAND LIFE

SAMPLE

Copyright William Meikle 2001

Anne looked out over the cliff-tops as she washed the dishes, but she wasn't seeing the view. She was seeing the letter - the one that had arrived that morning, the one from which she could only remember one word, a word which she could almost see, its giant red letters dancing across the internal screen of her mind - POSITIVE.

How was she going to tell Jim? Only two days ago he had been saying how much he was looking forward to Meg getting old enough to fly the coop, how much he was looking forward to them having some time on their own. How was she going to tell him that, at the age of forty-four, she was going to be a mother again?

She wondered when it could have happened. Taking the pill was one of the things she was scrupulous about. Every night before bed - the packet placed in a prominent place in the bathroom to remind her.

'Anti-babies' Jim called them. 'Have you had the anti-baby?' he would ask at bed-time, every night without fail. Well, almost every night.

It must have been her birthday - that was the last time she had forgotten to take her pill. Both of them had been drunk. Too drunk to take precautions, not drunk enough for the dreaded brewer's droop to have occurred.

It was ironic really - at his last visit the doctor had told her that her chances of fertility were so low as to be negligible. At the time it had seemed a liberation, a chance to escape the heavy-bodied curse of the pill. But her body had betrayed her, much in the same way that it had done with Meg all those years before.

She could still remember Jim's reaction then: 'What do you mean - pregnant? How did that happen?' At that moment he had looked like a confused schoolboy, his lip stuck out in petulance. She had almost walked away from him then, left the island and scurried back to her mum's cosy suburbia.

Instead she had tried to be flippant.

'Well - you put your dick inside me, waggled it about a bit, and there it was, a baby. Didn't they teach you anything at school?'

And then she had burst into tears, unable to contain it any longer. There had been a long moment when they were apart - only by a foot, but it was like a gaping chasm between them. Jim was the first to move. He had held her tight, and everything had been all right again. She hoped he would take it as well this time.

The main thing she was worried about was having to leave the island. She loved this place, loved the peace and tranquillity of it, but it was no place to bring up a youngster. The nearest school was 100 miles away, the nearest family was twenty miles away, and it sometimes took six hours for the doctor to answer an emergency call - six hours too long in the event of a real emergency.

They had got away with it in Meg's case - their youthful exuberance and zest for life had blinded them to the dangers. It had been difficult, but they had coped, taking turns with the nightly floor walking. But now they were older - a bit wiser and a lot more careful.

Except when it came to taking precautions. Heavy tears ran down her face, falling to mingle with the washing up water, and she wasn't sure whether they were tears of joy or tears of sadness.