“Yeah, and you’ll start by not dropping the F bomb around them.” I warned him. My brother actually looked a little sheepish as he mouthed sorry to me.
Sasha pulled the bottle of champagne I’d bought earlier from the fridge and grabbed glasses from the cupboard. Liam—who hadn’t said a word but hadn’t stopped grinning—popped the cork and topped everyone but me up. Sasha poured me a glass of lime flavoured sparkling water—yay!
“Sarah . . .” Liam started and then took a moment to compose himself. I felt my lips tremble as I watched him struggle. I didn’t think he was even this emotional at our wedding.
“You’re the person that has given me things that I never even knew that I wanted. You’ve filled my life with things that I never even knew I was missing and now . . .” He stopped again, placed his hand over his mouth, and rubbed his lips with the tips of his fingers. “And now I’m gonna be a dad. We made a baby, pretty girl. Thank you. Thank you for sticking with me. I know it’s been hard these last few months with all the hours I’ve been putting in, but I promise to do better. I promise.”
I actually managed to hang on to my sob until I looked at my brother and saw him cry. That was when I lost it too.
We had a few moments of enjoying a laughing, crying group hug before getting down to enjoying the rest of the evening. We spend hours celebrating and eating pizza and agreeing that until we had more details, our news would remain just between us.
I really wanted to tell Nan and Grandad, but they had already left on their Christmas cruise. They enjoyed it so much the previous year that they were going further afield and for longer this time, taking in the Canary and Balearic Islands around Europe. By the time they returned in the New Year, we would know exactly when I was due.
Sasha was a drunken crying mess by the time Luke carried her up to one of our spare rooms just after ten that night. I was feeling absolutely exhausted and left the boys shooting the shit downstairs and made my way up to bed a little while later.
I wasn’t sure what was going on with my brother. I’d never known him to be so quiet. Despite my concerns, it wasn’t long before I drifted off into a happy and contented sleep.
2008
“I’m not going.”
“Well, someone’s got to, it’s either there or Canada next week,” Luke replied. “I thought I was doing you a favour by putting myself up for Canada, but I can’t do both.”
“We’ll just have to reschedule.”
“And let Anglo step in and win the contract? Its two nights—tops. Get Sasha to stay with her or send her to my nans.”
My jaw was so tense that I could feel it spasm intermittently and twitch.
“I can’t leave her, Luke. I won’t leave her.”
“Then we’ll just have to step aside this time. We can’t negotiate with them long distance. We need bums on seats around that table, otherwise we might as well just step aside and let Anglo Continental win the contract this time.”
“Fuck.” I attempted to massage some of the tension out of my own neck as I paced.
“It’s only Scotland, can’t you just take her with you?”
“She can’t lift her head without wanting to throw up.”
Sarah was four months pregnant and suffering from severe morning sickness. She was living on water, the occasional black tea, and rice cakes. She’d started this pregnancy glowing, but by early January, the odd feeling of nausea turned into throwing up every morning, which soon evolved into throwing up at any time of day.
She eventually went to the doctor for it, and he prescribed her some anti-sickness medication. Then her nan told her some horror story about how the anti-morning sickness drug that had been around in the sixties caused all kinds of birth defects, so she refused to take it.
Work for me was still busy, even more so since we started supplying labour to the rigs. We started out winning a huge contract in Australia, and since then we had been invited to tender for companies in both Canada and Scotland. Luke and I figured we needed at least one of us in each of these places to negotiate, but we figured that before Sarah had gotten sick.
“We need to take on someone new.”
“Yeah, you’re right, we probably do, but that’s not gonna help us out right now.”
“We could call Shain to come back.”
“Call Shain back? Our only senior staff member based in Australia and ask him to fly all the way here so that you don’t have to fly to fucking Scotland for two days? Are you fucking shitting me right now, all this, over two fucking days away from home?”
“I just got back from a week in Joburg, Luke. Don’t forget the six or seven weeks I did back in Aus last year, leaving on my fucking wedding day.”
“Travel was always gonna be a part of the job. We knew that when we set this thing up. You were never supposed to be based here. You were supposed to be sitting pretty in the Perth or Sydney office. It’s not my fault you came here and chose to fall in love.”
Luke leaned back in the chair he was sitting in on the opposite side of my desk and propped his feet up, crossing his legs at the ankles.