One More Tomorrow
Sam Vickery
The Gratitude Page
Thank you to everyone who has helped to bring this book to the world. I was blessed to have a wonderful team of beta readers for this book, each bringing something different to the table. Julianne Vanstone, JL Morse, Sue Clarke, Anne Ross, Kirsten Meiklejohn, Philippa Wilmot, Vikki Young, Nicola Williams and Elizabeth Acheson, thank you all for your feedback and support.
To my readers, the people who buy my work, and especially to those who have been waiting, emailing and asking for updates on the next book release, thank you so much for your support and encouragement. It means the world to me that there are people out there who are looking forward to another story from me. Your enthusiasm motivates me beyond all measure.
And to my family. My children. My husband. Thank you. Thank you for giving me the time to write. Thank you for being who you are and letting me be me. I love you guys.
For Nana Jean and for Grandad Bill.
Your love, support and memory live on in the hearts of those you left behind.
Chapter One
I can't remember a time in my childhood when I ever dreamed of being a mother. Whilst my sisters were cooing over their Tiny Tears dolls, rocking their chubby plastic bodies and jamming magic milk bottles into their oddly triangular mouths, I was in the garden digging a hole to Australia, or climbing up the tall oak tree to launch my teddy from the topmost branches, testing out the latest parachute I'd invented out of a paper napkin and a tangled ball of my mother's wool. I was reading about how planets are formed, or making clay sculptures – which I was sure would make me a famous artist. I was busy, and curious and relentless in my thirst for knowledge. Babies did not interest me in the slightest.
Susie next door had one, a dribbly, demanding six month old brother called Davey – runny gravy, I called him behind her back – who I heard squealing and crying through the thin walls of our terraced house every morning before the sun was even up. I would roll over, huffing and grimacing, pulling my pillow hard over my ears as I tried to block out his piercing intrusions. Babies did not let people sleep, I'd deduced from these frequent unwelcome awakenings.
Susie was a typically proud big sister. She would grin indulgently as he knocked over her carefully constructed tower of bricks, not caring that he was rudely interrupting our game, dragging us out of our imagined world of pirates, magic and adventure to wave a chewed rusk in her face. I hated him.
As I lay in my huge, grown up sized bed now with the pre-dawn haze filtering through the sheer blue curtains, Lucas's warm strong back pressed up against my side as he slept, I wondered if that was why I was being punished. If I had brought on my own misery through some sort of wicked karma. My disdain, or at least my disinterest in babies had carried on right up until I turned twenty-eight. I'd managed to come through school, university, marry Lucas and get a job teaching anthropology – a subject I adored – without ever considering the possibility of motherhood. Lucas had been surprised at my certainty that children were not to be on the cards, but he was willing to box up that dream if it meant keeping me. Everything had been just as it should have been. Life was ticking by, following my carefully crafted plan. Everything was perfect. Until my twenty-eighth birthday.
There had been too much vodka for both of us. Laughter, fumbling in the dark, wrapped together in a tangle of limbs and lust. A torn condom that went unnoticed until it was too late. A shared glance of panic and bewilderment in the morning that followed. And then, though I held on to my sense of normal, my orderly, controlled reality, though I grasped onto it with all my might, there was nothing I could do to take back that night. In a few moments of reckless passion everything had changed.
Suddenly, those doors which had been bolted shut, the lock rusted and unmoving, had been burst open with an explosion that shattered them into tiny little splinters. We had done something that could not be undone, and all at once a whole new path lay before us, shining with possibility. And for no reason I could fathom, without reason or logic, I just knew, I knew that I had to follow it. As soon as I realised a heart beat other than my own was fluttering inside my womb, depending on me for it's very existence, I knew. I was going to be a mother. I wanted it more intently than I had ever wanted anything. I felt fierce and strong and primal. This was what I was meant to do, I knew it.
Except it wasn't.
Eleven weeks. Eleven precious, wonderful weeks. That's how long I managed to keep him alive. Don't ask me how, but I knew it was a boy. My son. Eleven weeks he grew and developed and changed me in ways that could never be erased. And then, in a wave of crippling cramps and clotted blood, he was gone. My son. My angel.
After he left me, I found I was no longer complete. I was not the person I had been before, I was something new, something empty and lost. I couldn't go back now that I had seen what could be. I couldn't forget how it had felt to be a mother, to be needed so deeply, to love so hard. I couldn't undo it.
Lucas stirred beside me and I glanced through tear fogged eyes at the small silver clock on the bedside cabinet. It had been my mother's and hers before that, and every time I looked at it I remembered with vivid clarity how it had felt to wake up in her big bed as a small child, her tanned arm slung loosely over my torso, the shining silver clock ticking quietly beside us.
She would wake groggy and grumpy, and I would have to cajole her into the day, convince her it really was morning time, though she would groan and refuse to open her eyes. “Just five more minutes, my darling. It's still dark,” she would moan from under the covers. I would huff and sigh and fidget impatiently beside her as she ignored me, trying to get a few more precious moments of rest. Then, as if a switch had been flicked on, she would suddenly be ready, throwing the blankets to the ground and grabbing me tight, pulling me in for a hug and kissing me all over my face. I would squeal and try to get away, though really I loved it. She would jump out of bed singing at the top of her voice, her grumpiness forgotten and buried, at least until the next morning. The clock filled me with nostalgia and sadness, yet I refused to part with it. Painful though they were, the memories of my mother were all I had left. They were better than nothing at all.
Lucas stirred again. I wiped my swollen eyes against the pillowcase, though I knew he would know right away that I'd been crying for hours. That my night had been filled with the endless pacing and wicked nightmares I was fast becoming used to. He always wanted to talk, to get me to tell him every little detail of what was upsetting me. To share the horror of the nightmares, the stories I told myself in the dark quiet hours. It was pointless. He knew that as well as I did, but he kept on trying, pushing, wanting to be there for me, to fix everything. But I couldn't be fixed. He knew that too.
Sometimes Lucas would wake in those dark, lonely hours, despite my tooth-marked fist, my swallowed, muffled sobs. When he found me in such a state, he would look at me with those big brown eyes glistening in the moonlight with tears he wouldn't shed, his mouth pursed in indecision and sadness. He would take me in his arms and hold me tight until I pretended to fall back to sleep. His comfort never helped. I didn't deserve it. I wanted to suffer alone. I didn't want to see the look of anguish in his eyes.