Living a life less ordinary Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Triss had pulled herself together after she had gotten over the shock of the pregnancy test and allowed the joy to shine through. She did decide to break the news to Pierce gently, err.. not.

She had about half an hour to get a hold of herself and then we trooped down for dinner. Her face seemed to go between shock and joy and back again. If Pierce had been paying attention he would have known something was up, but he came in, apologising for not being earlier, and sat down. Maria brought out the food. Bee could see something was up but didn't know what to ask.

Maria usually cooks too much and rather than wasting the food and overloading our plates, she puts it all in the middle of the table for us to help ourselves. We say Grace and then start diving in. Triss or Bee usually help me. Not that I really need it, they just do it automatically and I don't want to upset them by looking ungrateful.

“Dear, will you pass the potatoes, by the way, I'm pregnant,” Triss remarked.

Bee gasped, but Pierce was clearly still preoccupied with work. “That's nice dear,” he said distractedly, passing the potatoes.

I laughed, which brought a confused look from Pierce. He looked around and caught us all looking at him. Bee was grinning, and Triss was smirking at him.

We could all see him try and work out what he had missed and replay the conversation.

Bee put him out of his misery, sort of. “When is the baby due?” she asked.

“Whose baby?” Pierce asked.

“I'm not sure, I have only found out tonight,” Triss replied to Bee, ignoring Pierce.

“Whose baby?” Pierce asked louder and there was a bit of sharpness to it this time which made me frown.

Triss looked him straight in the eyes, “Our baby,” she replied softly.

Rather than the joy I was expecting, Pierce's face went expressionless.

“Excuse me,” he said very formally and got up and left the room.

I could see tears in Triss' eyes as she got up and hurried after him. I wanted to go too, but Bee stopped me and told me they needed alone time. Later I heard some shouting and Pierce left the master bedroom to sleep in a guest room. When I heard the door slam, I sneaked in to see Triss sobbing in bed. I climbed into bed with her and hugged her. She turned around to hold me, still crying like the world had ended.

I wanted to ask what was wrong but didn't want to make her feel any worse. When she calmed down, she did tell me.

“He doesn't believe the baby is his,” she whisper sobbed, “he said he is infertile.”

I felt a rush of guilt. I had caused this. Although to be fair, he should know that Triss would never be unfaithful. My guilt turned to anger towards him. How could he think such a thing?

That anger helped tremendously with my characterisation of Charlie. There were lots of scenes where Charlie gets really angry and I had struggled to express sufficient anger for the director. I stopped calling him Daddy and started just calling him director, so he knew I was angry at him.

He even tried to justify himself to me. “When we hadn't had children for some time, I took some tests and found out the problem was me. I was sterile. If Triss is pregnant and the baby isn't mine, whose is it?” he asked. His voice was as expressionless as his face, but I knew it was hiding a world of hurt.

“Did you know that hundreds or even thousands of people each year who are told they are going to die from cancer, spontaneously get better. No one knows why. They are ill, horribly ill and then ... they are not. Medicine does not know everything.”

“Are you saying I could have got better?” he asked me.

I almost laughed at the idea of a grown man asking an eight-year-old girl such a question. Instead, I answered seriously. “What is more likely, you got better, they got it wrong or Triss has cheated on you, director.” I added 'director' to give a little sting to my words and let him know exactly what I thought.

I left him to stew on that. That night, Triss and Pierce didn't come home to dinner and the next morning there was a huge bunch of roses in a vase on the table. I still called him director until he formally apologised to all of us the next day. He called himself all kinds of self derogatory words and begged us, subtly hinting that we were kind and generous, to forgive him. I waited to see how Mummy reacted and when she smiled at him and opened her arms I was able to let it go and hug him as well. The memory of feeling such indignant anger stayed with me, though, helping me with my acting.



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