SLEEP perchance to dream............Chance would be a fine thing for Dane. He was exhausted but beyond sleep and still totally confused about what had gone on at Sarah's place. She was acting hurt and angry and yet he was the one wronged.
Of course Dehlia had stepped in before they could talk leaving just as bewildered when he got home.
The world had been turned on its head and he needed to stop it for at least 12 hours and just curl up and sleep.
He needed to switch off and forget about everything. Maybe when he woke up it would be back to normal again. His friendship with Fox would be how it was, she wouldn't be pregnant and all would be good with the world.
No he shouldn't wish that, no matter how it came into being, there was a little person in Fox's life now. Maybe he was jealous? Maybe he was frightened she'd replaced him, didn't need him anymore.
Maybe he was fucking delirious due to chronic lack of sleep.
Yes, Dane needed to crash out.
He would go for a run but it was too late and too cold. He had the treadmill in the spare room, maybe that would help?
So he ran four miles until he was bone tired.
But his brain was still working.
Still trying to process.
If she was 12 weeks pregnant then the way she'd been acting would make sense. He would feel lousy for not contacting her but he'd understand why she was acting like this. It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility, that he could be the father of her child. It's not like they hadn't been intimate in recent times – the night of her birthday to be exact – 12 weeks ago.
At the time Sarah warned him she'd gone off the pill, worrying that she'd been on it too long and just wanting to let her body detox a bit.
Of course, Sarah had read several articles about possible side-effects of prolonged use and with no regular lover, she figured there was no point.
So they'd used a condom but lust had got the better of them that night and they had been in too much of a hurry to go upstairs where there was a supply of the damned things.
No, instead they'd used the lucky condom in his wallet; he'd kept it for six years – a marketing souvenir from one of his early movies. It was stupid, he usually had a small supply – just in case but he'd used them months ago and then was too busy with work and hadn't got around to replacing them.
So lucky condom had been the only one there that night in his wallet and it was probably well past its use by so it really wasn't a surprise when it broke. Mind you even a normal freshly picked condom might have been under a bit of pressure – this poor old thing didn't stand a chance.
They'd been what he'd describe as "enthusiastic" though he suspected that Sarah's description would be closer to the phrase "fucked like rabbits". Whatever the description, they'd gone at it up against the wall and on the lounge and the condom had failed. It broke apart before he realised.
And now he knew he'd lost his talisman – seemingly for no good reason.
He sighed thinking about it. They'd even talked about the possibility of her getting pregnant, deciding that as their friends were all having trouble conceiving at 35, it was highly unlikely anything like that would happen from one little mishap.
Well, that's what he thought was happening.
But it wasn't the truth, was it?
She knew she couldn't get pregnant because she was already was.
Well wasn't that just fucking fantastic.
She could have been honest and he'd still have his condom.
Would he have still gone there though?
If he'd have known she was pregnant would he have slept with her?
That's the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn't it?
If he'd have known then, they wouldn't have been drinking, they wouldn't have been so relaxed, so playful, so horny.
It had been such a fun night, joking about old times laughing, downing the wine, eating pizza. He hadn't had that much fun, been that relaxed for so long. Being with Fox was always like that though; he didn't really feel like he was home until he'd spent a bit of time with her. And this had seemed like the perfect night, the perfect way to celebrate her birthday - a night of old movies and pizza was better than a fancy restaurant where one, or both of them might be recognised. It was happening more and more to Sarah these days. People knew her as the Shakespeare Lady. He suspected she kind of liked being asked for her autograph occasionally by someone who recognised her from TV or the RSC though she was never really comfortable with it and while it was a normal part of Dane's life was an unwelcome intrusion when he was with friends and family.
So he'd brought her here and one thing had led to another.
And now here he was, a lovely memory changing into something else.
He didn't like it one bit and it was so unlike her, so unlike the person he'd known and trusted since they were 13. The little girl who helped him understand his parent's divorce, who'd kissed him in their tree, the young woman who had helped initiate him into manhood, who'd cried in his arms when he broke the news about her father and who'd been there to pick up the pieces every time one of his relationships went pear-shaped.
It all seemed weird and upside down that this woman would keep something like her pregnancy from him, especially from him.
Oh god, maybe she'd been impregnated by someone else and seduced him to cover her tracks and then got cold feet?
Maybe she didn't know she was pregnant, if the process had worked, maybe he'd been the insurance policy?
Maybe he was really tired and delusional now and seriously in need of alcohol and sleep?
He slumped down on the lounge, the infamous lounge, and stared at the mindless, late-night television sipping a scotch, trying to lose himself. Of course the scotch was Sarah's brand and the glasses a present from her.
She was omnipresent in his life.
He couldn't escape her – here or anywhere to be honest.
He had Thea's birthday on Friday.
A trip to his mother's in Devon.
Normally he and Fox would travel together but would that happen now? Maybe a couple of hours in a car together were what they needed?
She'd been weird.
It was starting to sink in that she was hurt that he hadn't rung. He was a coward, but so was she, she hadn't told him. He shouldn't find out via someone else.
He really was all over the shop – jet lag.
But so was she.
Pregnancy hormones?
Dane just wanted his friend back.
He'd tentatively asked Barb if something was going on with Sarah but her answer was "not that Dehlia had told me, you need to talk to her yourself". And that was that Dehlia was obviously formidable but her partner was quietly so.
He was still trying to work it all out when he drifted off into a deep sleep, deep and uninterrupted, uninterrupted until the knock on the door.
A block away Sarah rested her hand on her stomach. She'd been watching it, waiting to see some sign that she was pregnant. Staring in the mirror wondering when Bean would show itself. Looking at her reflection now, standing side-on, you could see a bump. It wasn't huge but then she was a little on the tubby side. She was usually obsessive over exercise when she wasn't working. But there wasn't a lot of time currently when she wasn't working. She went from filming, to the library to the RSC. If she took a moment to think about it, she knew she'd feel exhaustion and she knew she'd have to slow down soon – Bean would see to that and so would Dehlia.
Standing here now checking her changing body she wondered why she hadn't spoken to Dehlia earlier. She'd stewed in her own juices, keeping the secret from everyone.
It was actually hard not to tell people, well at least someone, hard not to have a sounding board but she hadn't. She supposed it was shock and disbelief that kept her from talking.
Dehlia had been the perfect person; she and Barb hadn't given her platitudes or danced around the subject. Her old friends and family had congratulated her and not really questioned her (other than Neville – who had offered support and comfort but, well she couldn't tell him the details). Dehlia had insisted on them, staying on after the rest of her guests left and helping her tidy up. In fact, she and Barb would have done all the washing and clearing-up if she hadn't insisted that she "wasn't a bloody invalid" just a bit pregnant".
Not that you could really be "a bit pregnant" could you? You were either pregnant or you weren't and she was – she had the pictures to prove it. There had been a small scan two weeks earlier – just routine, checking on Bean's spinal cord and development and despite all the nausea (which wasn't abating as fast as promised now she was 14 weeks) it was a shock to see a little someone staring back at her in that grainy, "is that an alien?" picture on the screen. A picture makes it real, and it gave her a warm feeling that she really hadn't expected. She'd had friends who told her that seeing her child would be the greatest thing ever (until the moment she held it) but others said they didn't get the fuss. She expected to be in camp B but she wasn't and it was a bit of a surprise. She didn't believe in "motherhood being natural and motherly instincts kicking in" that was a load of shite forced on women by long ingrained stereotypes. But she'd felt something for Bean, something warm and sweet. She wondered if it was that she was missing having Dane in her life? Not that Bean looked like her best friend, it didn't look like anyone well other than ET and she'd have remembered having sex with him (though she always thought penises looked like they came from the same planet as Spielberg's alien creation).
But Bean was there and hers and now she'd told someone how it got there.
Not that she'd had any choice.
Dehlia wasn't about to let her off the hook.
Dishes done and the kitchen sparkling, she was ushered, with a cup of earl gray, into the lounge where the fire was still going, where she'd been talking to Dane just an hour or so earlier.
She hadn't been given the third degree, just allowed to talk, to talk about their childhood and their past and then about that night, about what happened and what came after. The confusion and disbelief, the sense of loss, the sense that if she told him he would either overreact and smother her with attention for the sake of the baby – and then hate her, or not believe her.
She was still trying to work out how he'd reacted, hurt yes but he seemed convinced that she'd been artificially inseminated but what happened was anything but artificial. Had George and Petra got the dates wrong? How could he accuse her of drinking when she was pregnant?
She was at a loss.
It was Barb that gave her a possible answer, one that knowing Dane was so plausible it wasn't funny.
"My son-in-law kept saying they must have the dates wrong, he wasn't home when the baby was conceived," she said patting Sarah on the back. The two women had sat either side of her while she talked, offering support but not advice. Just being there. Dehlia acting like a big sister and Barb like the mother that she was – thanks to a 20-year loveless marriage which ended when he'd walked out to be with another man and she'd found Dehlia.
"Took us a while to realise that he was taking the pregnancy from the weekend he was home after working away and not from the date of my girl's last period.
"Men don't have a clue."
"Yeah, but he can be a bit a of a dweeb!" Dehlia laughed.
"Well there is that," Barb sighed.
"Dane is the smartest man I know but when he's in the acting zone he's so tunnel it's not funny – I sometimes think he's more Aspergers than I am – poor Bean," she giggled patting her tummy. It was the first time she'd really acknowledged the other half of the baby's DNA, really thought about what that meant. She hadn't wanted to, that made it even more real and made her think about him.
And that was shit.
Thinking about him.
Though she thought about him a lot anyway and she felt like a bitch now.
Dane was going to be a father. She was his friend; she knew he wanted that...........one day. But was she taking away from his dream of a happy family, a beautiful wife, being there when they discovered they were pregnant, having the picture-perfect existence. He believed in that crap, the cockeyed romantic that he was. She didn't, she'd always been the realist of the pair.
Was she sullying his ideal, his dream? She didn't know what was more selfish, telling him or not.
Of course, her friends were thinking on the same wavelength.
"Will you give him the benefit of the doubt, go see him? Tell him the truth? At least let him make his own decisions about being a dad or not?" Barb asked gently.
And then she admitted the truth to herself. Yeah, the truth sucks.
"I don't want to lose him!" she said quietly and that was the blinding truth. She could raise this child on her own, no problems, especially now she had a bit of support but even without that she thought she'd cope. What scared her was that Dane would distance himself. She'd had three months without him in her life and it wasn't something she wanted to repeat. He'd always been there.
Two pairs of arms went around her and hugged her tight. She didn't cry, she drew strength and made decisions. They had more tea and more talk and at 1 am her friends left – they had work in the morning and Sarah had an appointment with destiny – and a trip to Stratford in the afternoon. She'd be there all week until she traveled to Margaret's on Friday morning.
Sleep was broken but there was some and by 10 am she was packed and ready to leave (and had been wasting time - putting it off going to Dane).
In the end Sarah drove to his house and parked outside.
She knocked on the door.
Loudly.
Pressed the intercom and spoke.
She hoped he'd be awake.
The intercom crackled into life.
"Yes?" a young accented voice came through – very French and very female.
The shock hit Sarah like a wave, nausea followed (bugger she'd had a good morning).
Yes, of course, she'd be there
She wondered why he hadn't taken her to Petras?
Or maybe he had and then dropped her home?
"Um this is Dane's step-sister Sarah can you just tell him I'm off to Stratford and I'll see him at his mum's on Friday."
She'd moved away by the time he had yelled in the intercom, running down the hall where he was making tea for Sabine who had arrived 20 minutes earlier.
Dane opened the door in time to see her car disappear around the corner.
"Fuck!" he cursed running his hand through his hair.
She stopped her car a block away and threw up in her own garden before turning off her phone and driving away.