The Year that Changed Everything Read online

  Women had been doing it since the beginning of time, she had to do this. Couldn’t fail.

  Now, now, now, please let it be now . . .

  And then, the last push—

  The baby let out a little bleat and Ted began to cry too.

  ‘A little girl,’ said the midwife with pride and Sam began to cry, tears of joy and exhaustion.

  ‘Good breath sounds, pinking up,’ said the paediatrician, swooping in.

  When she was finally put in Sam’s arms, Baby Bean – seven pounds exactly and scoring a perfect Apgar score – was the most infinitely precious creature her parents had ever seen.

  Almost afraid to touch this little person, astonished that she had grown this child inside her body, Sam touched the tiny fingers with awe. The baby’s little nails were translucent, her fingers tiny but perfect. Even with some of the film of childbirth over her, she was exquisite.

  Her lovely eyelids were so delicate, like petals draped over blue eyes that stared up at Sam as if she could see her perfectly.

  ‘She’s ours,’ said Sam, staring at her baby.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ said Ted, and Sam looked up to see his eyes brimming with tears and the trails of more tears down his face. ‘Just beautiful. I never thought this would happen,’ he said, choking the words out, ‘and look at her: perfect and ours and we get to bring her home, bring her up. We are a family . . .’

  At that moment, something strange happened to Sam.

  Something that made her feel fiercely protective, deeply in love and terrified all at the same time.

  This tiny little being was hers to take care of.

  She would kill for her baby.

  ‘Mummy loves you with all her heart and will injure anyone who tries to hurt you,’ she murmured into the baby’s fragile skull with its covering of downy dark hair.

  Suddenly, she understood all those nature programmes where lonely leopard mothers risked taking down bigger animals all for their cubs, where birds flew across dangerous deserts to sip water at deadly waterholes surrounded by predators so they could regurgitate the water later to keep their tiny baby birds alive.

  She would rip out the throat of anything, anyone, who hurt her baby. Anyone.

  And then, the great love and the great sense of protectiveness were overwhelmed by another, fearful thought. The one that had been stalking her.

  All her life, she had been in charge. The woman people went to when they wanted a task accomplished and fast.

  Suddenly she didn’t feel any of those things. Not organised, not competent.

  She had a tiny baby in her arms. In a couple of days, maybe even the next day, she and Ted were going to bring this tiny creature home.

  Sam had simply no idea how to do this. No mental template from her own childhood.

  How could she now become a proper mother with no background to help her with what was supposed to be the most natural thing in the world?

  On her fortieth birthday, cradling her new baby, Sam made a wish.

  Please let me learn how to be a good mother. Please.

  Ginger

  Ginger Reilly danced with her head on Stephen’s shoulder and tried to ignore the wire-like bite of her control tights into her waist. She was impervious to such things, she told herself, inhaling the scent of Stephen’s spicy cologne and resting her face against his dinner jacket, not caring that it was hired and had probably been to more weddings than the band currently murdering ‘Unchained Melody’.

  She wasn’t, for once, wondering if she looked hideously enormous, despite today’s bridesmaid’s dress – peach taffeta on a woman who wore head-to-toe black at all times – being a bit too Scarlett O’Hara to disguise Ginger’s substantial bosom and curvy hips. Sometimes, Ginger stood outside rooms and wondered how to walk in as thinly as possible, or else how to walk in so that nobody noticed a larger girl daring to exist in a skinny-girl world.

  But none of that mattered today: what mattered was that she was dancing with a man who’d just asked her to go out with him. A good-looking, tall man who’d chatted her up, admired her and had asked her – unpushed by relatives, even though he was Liza’s cousin – out onto the dance floor five times.

  ‘People will talk,’ Ginger joked weakly the second time Stephen took her hand for a slow dance. She’d even looked around to see if Liza, the bride and her best friend, had manoeuvred this second dance so that Ginger wouldn’t have to be her normal wallflower self. A wallflower who did a remarkable impression of a woman having a fabulous time, because nobody was going to pity Ginger Reilly, but still, in the deepest, most hidden part of her brain, a wallflower.

  ‘Let them talk,’ Stephen had said, looking down. He was really tall and clearly a sporty guy, with big shoulders and a slightly too-thick neck. But he had wonderful dark hair, matching dark eyes and a smile just for her. How had she never met him before?

  For the first time in her life, Ginger did not mind a man looking down into the Grand Canyon of her cleavage. In work, she wore polo necks or crew necks to cover up and had a smart retort to anyone who eyed her 42EE chest with leering interest.

  In work, she was sassy Ginger who nipped all smart remarks in the bud.

  But today, clad in a dress that had buxom wench written all over it, she found she liked Stephen openly admiring her cleavage. He’d also admired her hair, the auburn tangle of curls that had meant that when her eldest brother called her Ginger as a child, the nickname had stuck.

  Her hair, wrapped up into a sheeny coil at the back of her head by the bridal party’s hairdresser that morning, was her most beautiful feature, Liza often pointed out.

  ‘Wish I had hair like that,’ said Liza, who’d got bum-length extensions onto her platinum hair, which she’d had tonged into long curls that trailed down her fake-tanned back for the wedding.

  Ginger’s father, Michael, said his only daughter’s best features were her kindness, her sense of humour, a warm face and eyes like her mother’s: huge, trusting amber eyes with eyelashes longer than any giraffe’s. Michael had brought up his two sons and Ginger all on his own when his wife had been killed in a road accident on the way back from visiting relatives in her home town of Ballyglen. Ginger’s hair was like her mother’s too, her father said.

  ‘What about next week?’ Stephen was asking as they danced. ‘We could see a film. What do you like?’

  Ginger, who quite often went to the cinema as it was something you could do alone, had seen all the films she wanted to. But pleasing a man, Liza insisted, meant kowtowing to him without him knowing. As she’d had at least fifteen steady boyfriends, from the age of fourteen onwards, Ginger – current boyfriend total to date: nil – felt that Liza must know what she was talking about.

  ‘What do you like?’ Ginger asked, quashing the feeling that she was letting down the sisterhood by not answering honestly. But she had to give it a try. The initial kowtowing clearly was only part of the process. When you knew someone, then you could be honest with them.

  She envisioned her and Stephen when they were happily in love, perhaps on holiday in a cold country because Ginger didn’t do beachwear. ‘I lied that first night about films I like,’ she’d say and he’d laugh. ‘I know, silly. It made me fall in love with you faster.’

  Stephen led her off the dance floor as the band finished up, and he began talking about the new Fast and Furious spin-off movie he’d take her to see.

  Ginger, who had two brothers after all, and had been forced to sit through most of the original series, already knew the entire plot. She did not mention this but instead said: ‘That sounds wonderful.’

  And it would be: a date with something other than the remote control.

  Ginger Reilly, thirty years old today, and a spinster of this parish, as her Great-Aunt Grace might say jokingly, had only ever been on one other date in her whole life. He’d been a guy f
rom college who’d eventually asked her out to the pub. He’d then proceeded to tell her about how much he fancied her college mate. End of date.

  ‘You’re curvy, not fat, and you’re a late bloomer,’ Mick, her eldest brother, had said, kindly, as she’d sobbed to him that it was because she was fat, wasn’t it? ‘Your time will come, sis.’

  And it had.

  Being thirty, Ginger decided, was going to make all the difference.

  She had more confidence, more experience of Life, more . . . more something, she was sure of it.

  Working for Caraval Media had sharpened her up, helped transform her into the tough cookie with the smart mouth who made gangs of people from work think she was the funniest thing ever. More money, thanks to her agony-aunt column in an online teenage girl mag, meant she could afford cool, well-fitting black clothes. She was getting places.

  Except with the opposite sex.

  Her sex life was a wasteland. Always had been.

  To Paula in work, she pretended she had lovers on speed dial. Telling Paula was the gossip equivalent of WhatsApping the whole planet.

  Therefore in Caraval Media, Ginger Reilly was seen as one of those large, sassy girls who had men falling at her feet so fast, she had to kick them out of the way to leave the house in the morning.

  With Liza, her friend since they were four, Ginger dropped the facade and fell into the relationship they’d had forever: a size eighteen woman who would not stand in front of the mirror naked and who had never, ever had a proper date with a man, never mind actual sex.

  Liza knew Ginger’s secrets, knew she dressed to hide herself, knew she longed for real love.

  And then tonight had come . . . and with it came Stephen, sexy, kind and liking the version of Ginger in the poufy dress she’d worn purely to please her best friend.

  As the wedding band shuffled off and the hotel staff brought in sandwiches and pretty wedding-themed cupcakes for the latecomers who would arrive for the after-party with the DJ, Stephen led Ginger out onto the hotel terrace and leaned her against the wall in a dark corner.

  ‘You look so beautiful in that dress,’ he murmured.

  His hands were touching her bare shoulders and he kissed her briefly on the lips, so she tasted the heavy red wine they’d both been drinking.

  As bridesmaid, Ginger had merely had a glass of champagne early on during the toast. She knew she must be on call all day, ready with anti-shine powder and perfume. But Liza was happy now and Charlene, the other bridesmaid, who was as thin and beautiful as Liza herself, had been sitting beside Liza for ages, giggling and chatting, so Ginger had allowed herself a half-glass of wine with Stephen. Now she felt the wine and sheer passion warming her up, not to mention Stephen’s large body pressed against hers.

  ‘You’re so gorgeous, Ginge,’ he said.

  Normally, anyone who called her Ginge got their head verbally ripped off, but she could allow beautiful Stephen the luxury.

  Then his mouth moved in a fiery line down her neck and it felt so wonderful that she didn’t care what he called her. This was passion. This was what other people had had. Why had she waited so long? Why hadn’t she joined an online dating site or even tried out something as openly sexual as Tinder and put herself out there instead of hoping for someone to ask her out? Why not be what she’d pretended to be for so long? A sexually modern woman who enjoyed the glory of her own body and the pleasure sex could bring.

  Stephen progressed down towards her breasts and Ginger felt herself surge with sensuality. This was wonderful.

  She cradled his large head against her and, despite having read hundreds of erotic, historical fiction novels where sex by chapter three was a given, sheer lack of experience in the real world meant she wondered what to do with her arms.

  She could only reach his head, so she began raining kisses on it. He nuzzled the curve of her breasts, rising like Venus out of the foam of the dress, and Ginger felt a burning heat inside her. Ginger had had orgasms before – on her own – so she knew what that burning heat meant: the slow rise of passion as her body awakened. Imagine a real man touching her where she’d only touched herself.

  But this was so different from being in her own bed, this was real. As she felt his hands start to slide up under her flouncy dress, Ginger froze. Not from fear of sex, no. From fear of what Stephen would find if he kept exploring: the hated control tights, and even though she was wearing her nicest knickers – coral lace Victoria’s Secret hi-thighs – the first thing he’d feel was the sausage-like encasement of her lower body and the fat spilling out over the top of the tights.

  It would ruin everything. No blog or book she’d ever read had said that men’s groins went as hard as lead pipes at the feel of ample curves spilling over control tights.

  ‘No,’ she said, shoving his hand away, attempting to sound sophisticated instead of panicked. ‘Not here.’

  ‘But you’re so beautiful, darling Ginge,’ coaxed Stephen.

  ‘I mean . . .’ Ginger paused. ‘We need privacy.’

  Privacy for her to first get the bloody tights on and let the Victoria’s Secret hi-thighs work their magic, and privacy so that her first ever sexual encounter could be in an actual bed instead of against a wall outside a ballroom.

  Despite both her fierce desire for this man and her fierce desire to offload the millstone of her virginity, she wanted this to be right.

  Sure, she wrote an online column where she told teenage girls about the perils of letting some guy have sex with them and then slut-shame them via social media.

  But they were young and she was thirty.

  It was time.

  This was real, not a one-night stand. She would not seem easy if she told him she had a room in the hotel. And as for her millstone and what he’d think when he found out she was a virgin – the studly guys in the historical fiction novels loved virgins. Unsullied women were the ultimate prize, which did offend Ginger’s feminist hackles, but hey, that was historical stuff. Pre-condom, pre-pill. Modern virginity was absolutely not a prize men should use to keep women in check.

  ‘Whaddya mean privacy?’ said Stephen, his hand no longer able to burrow as Ginger kept pushing it away.

  ‘I mean, not here, darling. We need privacy,’ purred Ginger, astonished at her own daring. ‘Somewhere we can be alone.’ She’d called him darling, she’d purred like a sex kitten to a real man and she was implying that serious action would take place in a room.

  But the control tights, which were possibly now cutting off the circulation to the bottom half of her body, would ruin all plans of the serious action. One feel of them and Stephen would bolt.

  ‘I think I’ll wear Spanx,’ Liza had decided early on, even though she was as slender as a twig and Ginger – who knew all about control garments and owned a panoply of them – wondered where Liza would find Spanx small enough to fit her.

  As Ginger herself knew that wearing the all-encompassing hold-it-in garments was like being wrapped in bulletproof cling film, she had gone with control tights and the prettiest minimiser bra she could find, a bra that was fighting a losing battle.

  Nothing had ever minimised her breasts and nothing ever would, not since they’d appeared like downy pillows on her chest almost overnight when she was thirteen and boys had stopped asking tomboyish Ginger to play footie and had started staring at her breasts instead.

  Bridesmaid dresses with tight waists, billowing skirts and tight bodices were not designed for buxom women with body issues.

  Still, Stephen didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘Oh sugar, come on,’ he murmured, nuzzling her neck again.

  ‘Give me a moment, babe,’ she said in what she hoped was a sultry, come-hither voice. ‘I’ll be back. And then . . .’ She channelled someone sexy and said: ‘I actually have a room in the hotel.’

  Stephen’s face lit up.

 
‘I’ll wait, Ginge,’ he said.

  She grabbed her handbag from the table inside and half ran to the small, discreet loo the wedding venue manager had told the female members of the bridal party about to save the bride schlepping up to the bridal suite every time she needed a moment to herself.

  In the stall, Ginger sighed and thought again, this was the best day ever. Better than the day she’d got into college to study journalism, better than the day she’d got her first job, better than all that. Today, she’d found someone special and that mattered more than anything.

  She hauled up her voluminous skirts but stilled when she heard some people come in.

  She must pretend not to be taking tights off because that might be an ‘about to have sex’ sign, she thought, registering what they were talking about.

  Just idle mutterings, women’s room stuff.

  ‘You don’t need more blusher.’

  ‘The base is good, though, isn’t it? Glowy.’

  The voices belonged to Liza and Charlene, and Ginger relaxed as the conversation meandered on. It was now well after ten and the wedding party was going strong.

  Ginger would never admit it to Liza, but she was not a big fan of Charlene’s. She’d entirely taken over the organising of the hen do, which they’d all attended the previous weekend. As chief bridesmaid, Ginger had set up dinner in an elegant restaurant in Dublin because Liza said she wanted ‘something classy’. Despite this, Charlene had quietly booked a club for afters and a neon pink stretch limo to take them all there.

  Liza had loved it, which was the most important thing – but Ginger had felt out of place the entire evening. She’d felt she’d failed her friend. Liza must have wanted a wild night and not a sedate dinner. And what a wild night it had been, with all sorts of mad dancing, plus members of the bridal party attempting to pole dance and doing shots.

  Charlene had called her a boring old cow for not joining in.

  Determinedly, Ginger pushed it all out of her mind. Tonight was going to be her night.

  She heard perfume spraying and she began wriggling again with her tights which were as hard to get off as they had been to get into. She was nearly there, and once she was, she’d come out of the stall to ask Liza all about Stephen.