Baker's Gonna Bake

Chapter 44

She passed a few nurses in the corridors, a few worried-looking relatives and a hospital porter man, as she made her way to the bottom floor of the busy building.
She wondered again wether she looked different to people now? Now that she was a murderer. She thought that when people looked into her eyes they might discover her dark, foreboding secret and so since it had happened she found it almost unbearable to look into people's eyes at all, walking with her gaze cast to the floor.

Grace Shelby stood up as she entered the maternity waiting area and beckoned her over to the front desk to check in.
Tommy's wife had become a shoulder to lean on in the past few weeks since she took her father's life, from soothing her during episodes of massive guilt-ridden anxiety, to helping her realise that despite the man being a relative he was also a monster and she had therefore done the world a service.

"He rapes me every few days now. I can't stand the feel of him inside me and every sense I possess seems to reject him from my body so the force of it hurts even more.
I wish he would stop Alfie, but it's been this way for as long as I can remember.
John Limbert is the devil and he will kill me one day ....."

The words in the letter would haunt her more than what she had done, ever could.

The devil.

Cora shut it out and greeted the lady at the front desk.

"Mrs Cora Solomons, to see Nurse Abrahams please" she said to the kind lady with blonde hair and spectacles.
She had taken a Jewish midwife on Abigail's pushy instruction and she actually rather liked her, the midwife that is. Abigail was being a thorn in her side but she knew once Alfie came back he would put a stop to his mothers interference.
She had also taken to calling herself his wife, for the sake of professional matters at least. She wanted due care and diligence in her treatment and women that were expecting a child out of wedlock were outcast so it was easier all round to change it to a name that made her smile.
There was also the small matter of her maiden name belonging to the devil and she swore she would never do so much as whisper it again.

Grace sat beside Cora for support as she had her urine sampled and her blood pressure recorded against a chart. She was given a prescription for vitamins and an assistant in the corner was waiting to sketch the baby's image once she had been sized and measured. This was the exciting part that she wished Alfie was present for, but she wasn't altogether sure being present was his intention yet, for he knew nothing of all of this. The last time he saw her was when she ran out on him in prison and she wasn't entirely sure he didn't hate her for it.

A few days after the shooting, Cora was still continuing to vomit everyday, as well as feel exhausted, bloated, and tearful.
Now, as a young woman who had just been forced to kill her own father at point blank range to prevent him killing her fiancé, she should probably expect all of these symptoms and many more. The fact that Alfie was also in a coma was keeping her brain in a constant state of hyper anxiety, and her body was feeling the affects.
It took her realising that she had not had her time for as many weeks as she could remember, to even contemplate the symptoms were not coming from shock or worry.
And the further realisation that she had felt this same way before the incident even happened, cemented the theory.
She had confided her suspicions to Grace when she brought her groceries one morning and so when Cora took a hot bath and collapsed in the tub the same day, Grace gave her the confirmation she had already suspected.

"You're with child love, I guarantee it" the older lady quipped in her Irish accent.

As if she hadn't known this would happen when her and Alfie had been passionately mating every minute they could steal all those weeks ago.
An appointment with a doctor had confirmed it and here she was, waiting to see how far along.
It was a lot to wrap her head around but as soon as she knew for sure, everything changed.
There was going to be a baby. And it was going to be loved. And it had a Mother and father that despite the cold hearted world surrounding them, loved one another enormously.
Everything would be ok. Alfie would recover and she could hide the secret she held inside so that they could live a moral, normal life as a Proper family. A full stop following a happily ever after: or so she desperately hoped.