The Book of Love. Fionnuala Kearney

herself to be grateful to Dom for putting this together so quickly – on his own, without much help from her or anyone. ‘I’m going for a quick pee,’ she whispered before heading to the back of the function room towards the corridor and the loos. Just as she was about to turn the corner, a voice she recognised stopped her in her tracks.

      ‘She’s shameless.’

      Erin’s hand automatically protected her stomach. Every nerve ending in her body told her to turn around; that she had no business listening, but her feet had rooted to the tacky carpet.

      ‘You’re tired. We’ll go soon.’

      ‘Gerard, do not patronise me! I’m not tired. I simply can’t stand the girl.’

      ‘That “girl”, as you call her, is carrying our grandchild. Keep your bloody voice down.’

      Erin backed herself up against the wall. She tried to edge each vertebra, one by one against it, suddenly caring little for the off-white dress she had carefully chosen in a small vintage shop near Putney. Closing her eyes, she willed herself invisible.

      ‘Is she?’ Sophie hissed. ‘We don’t know that, do we, and he’s too besotted to care!’

      ‘Stop!’ her husband snapped. ‘You want to go, we’ll go, but this is not the time or the place for a scene.’

      She should walk on up there, Erin told herself. Just walk on up that narrow, dirt-brown corridor, make her way slowly past them, brandishing her bump between them. She should smile sweetly at her mother-in-law, and widen her grateful eyes at Gerard, the man who thankfully seemed to have donated most of Dom’s character. Erin knew what she should do but, instead, she pleaded with her bladder and backed into the room to mingle with their friends as best she could.

      ‘You look angelic,’ Lydia whispered.

      ‘Divine,’ Hannah agreed.

      ‘Well, I would,’ Nigel, Dom’s best man grinned. ‘Seriously, there’s something very sexy about pregnant women.’

      And with one eye on Sophie emerging from the corridor, Erin laughed.

      Later, as they were leaving, everyone made a guard of honour to an out of tune ‘Here Comes the Bride’. It was only as Dom steered her underneath, past Fitz and her brother Rob, that Erin saw Sophie waiting at the very end. She would be waiting to whisper that he’d always have a home if he changed his mind. Erin stooped low. Dom was not going to change his mind. Dom loved her. He hadn’t stopped smiling since she’d told him about the baby. And even though she had never asked it or expected it of him, Dom had asked her to marry him within days of the news. Dom had married her. Because he loved her.

      He pulled her through the arch and as she stood, she leaned into Gerard’s kiss, matched her mother-in-law’s air kiss, and gripped her new husband’s hand. At the door, she was pulled into another hug as Dom tried to help her with her coat.

      ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ Lydia squeezed hard. ‘Get some sleep.’

      Erin nodded. It had been a long day, but she hugged her sister-in-law back.

      ‘Look after that brother of mine.’ Lydia smiled. ‘He’s the only one I’ve got.’

      Erin nodded, pulled Hannah, her other bridesmaid, into the hug and scanned the room until her eyes rested on Fitz and Rob, who, hating goodbyes, had moved away from the door. When her father placed his fingers on his lips and blew her a kiss, and her only brother winked, Erin nodded and fought back tears.

      Nigel handed Dom the car keys and smiled at Erin. ‘It’s outside and all warmed up for you, love.’

      ‘Thanks, Nigel,’ she whispered. Sometimes it was the small acts of kindness from people that made her fill up. She looked at Sophie, who was wringing her hands. And sometimes, she thought, it was cutting words that did it. Against all her better instincts, she turned back to her mother-in-law and whispered. ‘I love your son and he will always know that. Always.’

      Her response was the tiniest nod, a minute jerk of the woman’s disapproving head, a cold but noticeable acknowledgement.

      In the car, they both shivered. Dom reached over and rubbed her arms with his hands. ‘Who the hell gets married in December?’ he asked, laughing. ‘Right, let’s get you home to bed.’

      She closed her eyes briefly, wanting to commit that moment to memory – his desire to keep her warm, to get her back safely. At twenty-seven, Dom’s wedding night should have involved honeymoon sex, lots of it. Part of her felt she should apologise – not just for the lack of wedding night love-making but the whole thing. The whole ‘meet a girl and within seven months find out she’s pregnant and five months later marry her’ thing. Whirlwind didn’t cover it.

      He placed a hand inside her coat and squeezed her knee, bare but for the flesh-coloured tights she’d worn with her short, fitted, lace dress. ‘Never more,’ he said.

      She laughed. ‘How did you know what I was going to ask?’

      ‘Because I can read your mind. Plus you ask me every night if I’m happy.’

      She stared out the window at the shadows of the icy fir trees that lined the edge of the street. ‘Just making sure …’

      ‘Erin?’

      ‘Uh-huh?’ She leaned forward towards the heated air coming from the front vents.

      ‘Promise me something?’

      ‘Anything.’

      ‘Believe that I’m happy. I wouldn’t be here with you, with you both, unless I wanted to be. So, after today, no more making sure, okay?’

      ‘Okay.’

      ‘Promise?’

      ‘I promise not to ask you if you’re happy again, unless I’m really unsure for a very good reason.’

      Dom shook his head. ‘Negotiating already! Christ, what have I done?’

      Minutes later he pulled the car to a stop just outside the building they lived in. ‘Thank you, parking fairies,’ Erin whispered. 27 Hawthorn Avenue had, in Victorian times, been home to single families; gentile people whom Erin often imagined roaming through the rooms. Today, the building was divided into three flats and she and Dom lived in the high-ceilinged rooms of the ground floor, giving them access to their own private garden. Despite having Gerard and Sophie Carter as landlords, Erin loved living there; loved the original ornate cornice and ceiling roses, loved the stone fireplace in the living room, the picture rail in their bedroom, and the groaning wooden floors with years of story in every creak. Having come from a sixties-built, two-up two-down that her parents had mortgaged to buy from the local council, Erin loved the fact that she could feel the history in this house.

      ‘Right,’ he said, putting an arm around her and locking the car with the remote. ‘How are we going to do this?’ he asked as they neared the main front door. ‘Is this the threshold or is it the door to the flat?’

      ‘Dom, no, it’s too awkward, I’m too—’

      Before she could finish the sentence, he handed her the keys and scooped her up into his arms, carrying her with one arm under her back and the other under her knees. She opened the door laughing. ‘That’s enough!’ she cried.

      ‘No! We have to do the other one too. Just in case. It might be bad luck!’

      After entering the flat, Erin was lowered to the floor. And as Dom feigned an injured back, rolling on the hard, varnished wooden planks, his hand hitting against their three-foot plastic tree with its red and green baubles, her own hand rested on the moving child. Their baby was laughing too.

      It was, according to things she’d read on the subject, nature’s way of preparing her but Erin was tired of being tired, of not being able to sleep at night and having to snatch catch-up naps during the day. She shook the kettle on top of the Aga and moved it to the centre of the