Have your cake and eat it (Chicklit contest finalist)

bonus chapter

"Are you sure?" Steve asks me for what feels like the tenth time in ten minutes, reaching again for the wine bottle. He's already drunk three quarters of it on his own. I'm sticking to water.

"Am I sure?" I echo in faint disbelief. "Of course I'm sure. I did two tests of my own and the doctor confirmed it today."

Really, I was sure even before I was sat, with my knickers round my ankles, about to pee on a stick. I'd been through this three times already, after all. I knew the symptoms. But, I nonetheless decided to shell out twenty quid at Boots and then sit for two hours in an overcrowded, overheated doctor's waiting room so as to be absolutely certain.

"Well," Steve exhales and raises his wine glass to his lips. "Congratulations, darling."

"It's a shock for me too," I say quietly. And it is. I'd certainly had no plans for a fourth child. No more sleepless nights, no more dirty nappies. Not ever. But there is no doubt that we will have this child. We just need to adjust to the idea, that's all.

"We'll have to get a bigger car," Steve says. "Move house, probably."

Yes," I agree, although I hadn't thought about such practicalities.

"What about your cake thing?" he asks.

"What about it?" I ask, starting to feel annoyed that he isn't jumping up and down with joy at the news of another baby. I'm not either, to be fair, but that's beside the point. "All my plans still stand," I tell him. "Everything we talked about."

After selling out of my cakes at the craft fair, Steve and I had excitedly sat up half the night, plotting how I would take over the world, one sweet treat at a time. I'd open a café, we'd decided, one with a little courtyard filled with wrought iron tables and chairs where people could sit in the summer. We'd decorate it in pale blue and grey and maybe make our own ice cream to sell. We'd excitedly gone online and had already found the perfect premises just a couple of miles from where we lived.

Hard to believe that was a mere 24 hours ago.

"How will you do it with a tiny baby?" Steve asks. "We won't be able to afford a nanny again."

"Maybe I can take on some freelance PR work. Rachel can help out at the café and the baby can sleep in a basket under the till when I'm there."

"It's not a bloody cat, Bella," Steve all but shouts. "Your son or daughter isn't going to sleep for 16 hours a day without waking. Remember what Jessica was like?"

Oh god, he's right, and oh yes, I do. Jessica cried from the minute she woke up from the minute she went to sleep. I'm ashamed to admit it, but her being such a difficult baby had more than a little to do with the fact that I hired a nanny and went back to work just three weeks after she was born.

"Well then I don't know," I hiss. "Do you have any other suggestions? Am I supposed to give up my business idea and become a fat, stay-at-home earth mother who spends her days in smocks made from hessian sacks?" My eyes fill my frustrated tears. Why shouldn't I bloody have it all? Men do.

"Bella," Steve's features soften and he reaches over to take my hand. "I'm sorry. Forget what I said. It's just a shock, that's all."

"Of course it's a bloody shock," I snap, snatching my hand away. We're not a pair of teenagers. You'd think we'd know enough to avoid an unplanned pregnancy. I'm nearly forty, for Christ sakes.

"Bella," Steve repeats. "Calm down." He doesn't try to take my hand again. Instead, he runs his fingers through his hair so it's sticking up in soft peaks, like a meringue.

"Me calm down?" as soon as the words are out my mouth I want to take them back. Why am I trying to start a fight when Steve is clearly trying to backtrack and apologize? It must be the hormones. Oh god. At just nine weeks pregnant, I'm already more irrational than I thought possible. Abruptly, Steve gets up, and for a moment, I think he's going to storm out, but instead he walks over to the mantelpiece and picks up a silver framed photograph.

Steve smiles as he gazes down at the photo. It was taken when Jessica was only a few hours old. Even though it was eight years ago, I remember it like it was yesterday. Her tiny, pink fingers are curled in a fist around Steve's index finger. She's wearing her hospital bracelet; he's wearing his wedding ring. I glance at my husband and I can tell that he's not the only one who's got a lump in his throat.

"Do you remember what it was like when Jessica was born?" I ask as I walk over to him. It's hard to believe that I was so naïve. I'd had no idea how much a baby would change our lives. Those three, exhausting weeks that I was with her before our capable nanny swept in and settled her into a routine were the hardest three weeks of my life. I had no idea what I was doing. I was exhausted. I was paranoid. Jessica wouldn't sleep. She wouldn't feed properly. She wouldn't stop crying. Every time she was sick or had a slight temperature I wanted to rush her to hospital. I felt overwhelmed and out of my depth.

"How could I forget?" responds Steve. I remember how hard it was for him, too. He'd shuffle off to work in the mornings, grey with lack of sleep, and come back, exhausted, in the evenings to a messy house, an empty fridge, a screaming daughter and a near-hysterical wife.

"It's going to be impossible," I whisper. 

"It won't," he whispers back, wrapping his arms around me and resting his chin on my head. "The nanny had two weeks off when Tamsin was born and you coped then. And you'll cope with the new baby, too. Believe in yourself, Bella. I promise you, it's going to be OK."

And in that instant, I know he's right. It's going to be OK. Not because I'm Superwoman, or because I think that having a fourth child will be so much easier than having a first, but because Steve believes in my abilities. As a mother, a wife, a cake maker. And that, right now, is the most important thing. With Steve beside me, I know we can cope with anything.