St Piran’s: Rescuing Pregnant Cinderella

‘So you had a good day?’ her mother checked as Izzy idly opened the brown paper bag and took out a handful of tiny tomatoes. They tasted fantastic, little squirts of summer popping on her tongue, helping Izzy to inject some enthusiasm into her voice.

‘Marvellous,’ Izzy said, smiling at the choice of word and remembering Diego’s smile.

It was actually a relief to hang up.

She was so damn tired of putting others at ease.

So exhausted wearing the many different Izzy masks…

Doctor Izzy.

To add to Daughter Izzy.

Domestic Abuse Victim Izzy.

Grieving Izzy.

Mother-to-be Izzy.

Coping Izzy.

She juggled each ball, accepted another as it was tossed in, and sometimes, sometimes she’d like to drop the lot, except she knew she wouldn’t.

Couldn’t.

She could remember her mother’s horror when she had for a moment dropped the coping pretence and chopped off her hair. Izzy could still see the pain in her mother’s eyes and simply wouldn’t put her through it any more.

Oh, but she wanted to, Izzy thought, running her bath and undressing, catching sight of herself in the mirror, her blonde hair way-too-short, her figure too thin for such a pregnant woman.

How she’d love to ring her mum back—ask her to come over, to take over.

Except she knew she couldn’t.

Wouldn’t.

Since that night, there had been a huge wedge between them and Izzy truly didn’t know how to fix it. She just hoped that one day it would be fixed, that maybe when the baby came things would improve. Except her mother could hardly bring herself to talk about the impending arrival.

Damn Henry Bailey!

Whoosh!

The anger that Jess had told her was completely normal, was a ‘good sign’, in fact, came rushing in then and, yes, she should do as Jess said perhaps, and write pages and pages in her journal, or shout, or cry, or read the passage in her self-help book on anger.

Except she was too tired for Henry tonight.

Too fed up to deal with her so-called healthy anger.

Too bone weary to shout or cry.

She wanted a night off!

So she lit six candles instead, the relaxing ones apparently, and lay there and waited for them to work, except they didn’t.

She had to relax.

It was important for the baby!

Oh, and it would be so easy to cry now, but instead she sat up and pulled the plug out, and then she had another idea, or rather she decided to try out Diego’s idea.

She’d fake it.

Cramming the plug back in the hole, she topped up with hot water and feeling stupid, feeling beyond stupid, she lay back as the hot water poured over her toes and she sang the happiest song she could think of.

A stupid happy song.

And then another.

Then she sang a love song, at the top of her voice at midnight, in her smart townhouse.

And she was used to the neighbours banging on the walls during one of her and Henry’s fights, so it didn’t really faze her when they did just that. Instead she sang louder.

Izzy just lay there in the bath, faking being happy, till her baby was kicking and she was grinning—and even if, for now, she had to fake it, thanks to a male nurse who wasn’t a frustrated doctor and certainly wasn’t the other cliché, by the time her fingers and toes were all shrivelled up, Izzy wasn’t actually sure if she was faking it.

For a second there, if she didn’t analyse it too much, if she just said it as it was…

Well, she could have almost passed as happy!

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