‘Pregnant! Oh my God, no!’
The effort it took to keep behaving normally in the face of this entirely unexpected and completely unwelcome news deserves an Oscar. The shock and horror almost made me faint; my blood ran cold and a strange buzzing noise came into my ears. For a moment I thought I was going to pass out; thank goodness I still had the presence of mind to slip the test with its dreadful news into the pocket of my dressing gown before my daughter could see it.
Izzy didn’t notice but she was so relieved with her own escape I doubt she would have noticed anything anyway.
“I’m okay, Izzy,” I mumbled. “Maybe it’s a hot flush beginning.”
That couldn’t have been further from the truth; if I really was pregnant then menopause was the last thing that could be blamed for any strange behaviour.
“Want some water?” she asked.
“Please.”
A few gulps later I had recovered a little of my composure. Half a glass more and I was back to normal, at least outwardly. Izzy had gone back to her room to get dressed, a bouncy spring in her step that made my own situation feel even worse.
‘Me pregnant? At the age of fifty-one? How could this be?
What kind of nightmare was this?’
My legs felt like lead as I returned to the bedroom I shared with my husband, the slim white home test; the harbinger of doom with its clear, unambiguous message still in the pocket of my robe. Had Pete been there he would have seen a ghost of a woman stumbling across to the bed where she sat down hard on its edge.
But my husband had gone to work for an early theatre list that morning. At the time it had seemed so fortunate; his absence would leave Izzy and me in privacy to re-take the pregnancy test she had been so very worried about.
Who would have guessed when we two girls entered the family bathroom that morning that it wouldn’t be my irresponsible daughter but me, her slut of a mother who would be leaving fifteen minutes later with her life in a spin?
Perversely, in a way, I should have been pleased. After all, had it not been for my daughter Izzy’s lax morals and her foolish attitude to birth control – something she probably inherited from me – I wouldn’t have taken the test myself and wouldn’t have discovered that I was pregnant for many weeks or even months.
By then it might have been too late… but too late to do what?
I most certainly was not pleased. I was angry; angry and frightened.
Izzy herself was so relieved at her all-clear result that she was actually singing in the family bathroom in which we had performed our respective tests. I thanked God that she was so distracted she was unlikely to have picked up the sudden and profound change in my demeanour; a change I had to hide at all costs.
Continuing my Oscar-worthy performance, I showered, dressed then watched Izzy eating a hearty breakfast as if nothing had happened. I was too upset to eat anything at all but blamed it on my supposed hot flush again. Then I waved her off to the library to catch up on some of the work she had missed the previous two days.
Izzy would go back to University the following morning, light of step and happy.
She would leave behind a truly terrified mother.
I called the office, explaining that I would be working from home for a few hours but would be at my desk by eleven o’clock. Then, alone in the house, I paced around the kitchen, my mind racing, my hand playing constantly with the slim white test in the vain hope that its message would disappear or at least change to something less frightening.
It didn’t; I was pregnant!
‘But how could this be?’ Okay, my menopause hadn’t started yet but I would be fifty-two this year, for Christ’s sake. ‘And who could the father be?’ Both my husband and my ex-lover Tony had had vasectomies long ago.
Had one of those operations failed? Had their tubes re-joined making one of them fertile again? It was rare but I knew it did happen sometimes.
Or had Tony been an even bigger shit than I had imagined and lied to me about his vasectomy? No, surely Julie had let that bit of information slip a long time ago.
Then the obvious truth hit me like a sledgehammer.
Darren!
‘Oh my God!’
It had to be Darren, my one and only one-night-stand; the twenty-nine-year-old Personal Trainer in whose bed I had spent one foolish but unforgettable night just over a month ago when Pete and I had temporarily separated.
During that amazing but unrepeated night, Darren had inseminated me at least four times and, stupid woman that I was, neither of us had used any form of protection at all. What was more, my body filled with his semen, I had spent the entire night in the boy’s grubby bed, mostly on my back; often with him on top of me or inside me. There could hardly have been a better opportunity for one of my few remaining eggs to be fertilised by one of his millions of active, youthful sperm. Darren must have had assumed I was on the pill or that I, like many of his other older conquests, was past the point where conception was possible.
I laughed hollowly. ‘Don’t be naive Penny; with the prospect of an unexpected free fuck in front of him, Darren hadn’t thought about protection at all!’
But I had been no better; ‘stupid, stupid woman!’ Thanks to Pete’s vasectomy, I hadn’t had to think about birth control for over fifteen years. Tony had been snipped too. When the opportunity had come, I had been so flattered that a boy as drop-dead-gorgeous as Darren wanted to fuck me at all that the idea of protection hadn’t entered my stupid middle-aged head either.
For a second I wondered if it was just a mistake; if the test had been faulty; if a repeat in the morning would show it had all been a simple error. But in the real world I knew just how consistent and reliable those tests were.
It hadn’t even been inconclusive; if the test said I was pregnant than I was pregnant!
There was a real baby growing in my womb.
I sat slowly down on the edge of the kitchen table, my hands instinctively falling to my rumbling tummy, a feeling of nausea rising within me.
Was it just fear? Was it psychosomatic? Or had morning sickness already started?
‘Oh my God! What was I going to do?’
***
I went to work that morning extremely distracted. Fortunately it was a day more for research than for patients so I didn’t do too much harm to too many people. What I did do was use the hospital’s resources as anonymously as I could to research the whole concept of middle-aged, peri-menopausal pregnancy.
What I found was both reassuring and alarming. Although there were many examples of women my age becoming pregnant and carrying a child through to full term, most of these were through IVF. Natural conception was far less common in older women but not unheard of by any means.
The risks both to the unborn child and the mother were greatly enhanced with older parents but with my baby’s father most likely being Darren, only one of us was significantly older than normal. If a woman my age could conceive naturally with the sperm of a much younger man, she could carry the baby through to birth and there was a fair chance that the child would be healthy.
There was, however a strong possibility that the baby would spontaneously and naturally abort within a few weeks of conception. Usually when this happens it only feels like a very heavy period and the mother usually doesn’t know she had conceived at all.
The fact that this had not yet happened to me did not mean it would not happen in future. I was probably no more than five weeks gone; twelve weeks was considered the minimum period to be considered ‘safe’.
Early in the afternoon I made a few anonymous enquiries through acquaintances followed by an important phone call making an appointment for early the following morning.
When I arrived home, Izzy had already made dinner for the three of us. This was such an unusual event that it spoke volumes about the relieved state of her mind. I tried hard to greet her and her culinary creations with the appropriate degree of enthusiasm but still she asked me several times if anything was wrong.
I was off-hand and distracted with Pete too when he finally came home from work and joined us at the dinner table. Something within me was desperate to tell my story; to share the terrible news and ease my mind but with Izzy home it was impossible.
As well as being revolted by the idea, telling my daughter would simply let the cat out of the bag as far as my sex life was concerned and I couldn’t have Izzy-Oh-God passing judgement on my morals as well as my husband. Despite her own considerable sexual misadventures, I was sure that, like most of her contemporaries, my daughter would be highly judgemental where her parents were concerned.
No, if I was to tell my husband at all, it would have to be in an air of absolute privacy with time to talk things through. With Izzy in the house this would be impossible so I had to keep my terrible secret to myself; at least until I was sure there was no alternative.
Pete wanted to have sex with me that night but I couldn’t face it. I could feel his disappointment and knew he would be a little suspicious of my motives in refusing but he didn’t force the issue.
I did see him checking my phone just before I dropped off into a rather fitful sleep.
***
“I’m afraid it’s true, Mrs…. er, Doctor Barker,” the young man corrected himself, not knowing whether to smile encouragingly or frown in sympathy. “You are most definitely pregnant.”
I looked at him as blandly as I could when what I most wanted to do was burst into tears. I felt terribly sick and had done since I had woken that morning, as if there mere knowledge of being pregnant could bring on the morning sickness that had apparently been missing so far.
“Congratulations!” he said, apparently deciding a professional noncommittal expression would be the best option.
It was eight o’clock on Friday morning, forty-eight hours after the shock of my entirely unexpected test result. I was sitting in the private consulting rooms of a well-respected gynaecologist in a quiet area of a city some thirty miles away from the one in which we lived.
Before driving there, I had dropped my daughter off at the railway station shortly after seven to catch the first train of the day. At this stage of her University course she could not afford to miss any more lectures. If I was lucky, there was just time to have my appointment, drive to work and be in time for the regular Friday morning meeting at ten.
But my luck wasn’t too good at the moment.
I looked at the bearer of this bad news, stunned, as he flicked through the small wad of test results before him. In his trendy, open-necked shirt and rimless glasses, he looked a good twenty years younger than me. ‘Given I would be fifty-two next birthday, this was actually possible,’ I thought wryly.
“I didn’t think a woman my age could…” I began.
“Conceive? Certainly! If you’re still menstrual you can still conceive. It’s unusual but by no means exceptional; you are the fifth naturally-pregnant patient in her fifties I have seen in the past three years. There are plenty of precedents.”
“Could I carry it through to term?”
“You’ve had three successful pregnancies in the past, you’re still in good physical shape – very good in fact. Your bloods are fine; there is no history of problems. I would say yes, you could well carry this child through to a natural birth – if you wanted to.”
My heart was thumping. I didn’t know what I had wanted to hear but I knew this wasn’t it.
“How healthy the child might be is a different question,” the consultant added.
My mind reeled as he began a well-rehearsed speech explaining in terms even I with my medical background struggled to understand, exactly what effect eggs and sperm from older parents might have on a developing embryo.
It did not make good listening, even though it only partly applied in my case but I didn’t correct his assumption. Even in the privacy of a consultant’s office, I couldn’t tell him that the sperm involved was not from my husband or indeed any man my age; that in fact it had come from the body of a boy young enough to be my son.
He went on to explain what I had already discovered online; that if there were any foetal abnormalities then my body would most likely abort the pregnancy of its own accord. This wasn’t uncommon in older mothers-to-be.
“We can of course test for some of the more common problems as you will know from your previous pregnancies,” he continued. “But even now these tests are not without risk to the unborn child. It would be better to wait until we know whether the foetus is viable.”
My mind was spinning now as I tried to remain calm and as professional as I could.
“And finally, though I am prevented from recommending it, you will of course be aware of a more significant and permanent alternative,” he left the statement hanging in the air.
He didn’t need to finish; although I had tried not to think of it, the word had been on the tip of my tongue ever since the terrible test result. Abortion; termination: words hardly ever uttered in our household.
On the surface he was right; a termination would indeed make the immediate physical problem go away and life could in theory carry on. But, as I knew only too well from my long career in medicine, even if I could bring myself to do such a thing it would bring with it physical and emotional complications that would last the rest of my life and might seriously damage my already-weakened relationship with Pete.
But then how might having another man’s child affect my marriage?
And what about our careers? If it ever became known that I had had a termination, it could have a profound effect on both my career – even more on my husband’s.
“I suggest you have some professional counselling,” the consultant concluded. “To help you consider the options. I’m not permitted to recommend anyone in particular but we do have a list of properly accredited professionals we have used in the past. My secretary will give you a copy.”
He passed me a letter. It had my name and date of birth horribly clear and unambiguous on the page along with the dreaded words confirming my pregnancy.
“Shall we make an appointment for six weeks time?” he asked.
***
I was a little late for my morning meeting but I wasn’t the last to arrive. The meeting itself was noisy and full of controversy which helped distract me from the issue at the front of my mind. Even so, every now and then I would find my hands had moved unconsciously to my lower belly. Whenever that happened I would angrily move them back to the desktop and join in the discussions with renewed vigour.
Eating at lunchtime was impossible; I was still feeling nauseous and no amount of paracetamol would ease the discomfort. Distant memories of my three previous pregnancies began to filter through my subconscious mind; now I actually felt pregnant it was easier to believe the result of the test if not to accept it.
I needed support and I needed it badly. There was no alternative; I would have to tell my husband and tell him soon, picking my moment with great care.
I prayed to God that he would still be the Pete I had known and loved for so long.
***
“How big… was his cock?” Pete panted above the knocking of the headboard against the bedroom wall.
His handsome face was merely inches above mine as his powerful hips thrust his long, slim erection deep into my loose, unresisting vagina over and over again.
“Thick! Long and thick!” I hissed in return, my eyes wide to convey the surprise I had genuinely felt when my vagina had first been penetrated by the young man’s member over a month ago.
It was Sunday night and we were in bed having our usual, pleasant-but-not-very-satisfying end-of-the-weekend copulation. As had become common since the Geneva Convention, our lovemaking had been dominated by explicit talk about my one night stand with Darren; a very brief episode at the very end of my previous months of infidelity but one with which my husband had become completely obsessed.
The night I had spent with the twenty-nine-year-old personal trainer had indeed been the most exciting, most satisfying sex of my life up till then but Pete’s constant stream of detailed questions and assertions had forced me to abandon my real memories some time ago and embark on a series of increasingly vivid fantasies to keep my husband’s excitement at the sky high levels he was now enjoying.
That night, of course, the fantasies had a much sharper edge for me. Deep in a breeding frenzy and close to my third or fourth orgasm of that amazing evening I had begged my young lover to knock me up; to fuck a baby in my belly; something I had begged my original seducer and previous lover Tony to do many times.
Knowing that with Darren this had actually happened and that my young lover’s child was even then growing in my womb made it difficult to concentrate on anything else, especially as at that moment the head of my husband’s cock was separated from the baby only by the meaty ring of my sealed cervix.
Pete as yet knew nothing of this as he fucked me with an energy and passion that before my infidelity had been very rare in our lovemaking.
“Did he make… make you cum?” he grunted as his thrusts grew faster.
“Yes! Yes he made me cum!”
“Did you cum hard?”
“Yes I came hard! The hardest I’ve ever cum!”
This might not have been true but I couldn’t remember ever cumming harder than I had with Darren.
“Did you… scream… as you… came?”
“The loudest I’ve ever screamed, Pete!”
Pete’s thrusts were getting painfully hard and deep now, his smooth end battering my cervix brutally as he bottomed out within me at the end of every stroke. Having had three babies already I knew it would cause no damage to the child inside me but still it was unnerving. I tightened my pelvic floor as hard as my middle aged muscles would allow in an attempt to bring him to orgasm quickly.
“Oh God… That feels good!” he growled, his back arching as his thrusts began to lose their rhythm. “Did you beg, Penny?”
“Yes I begged!” I replied, tightening again. “I fucking begged!”
“What did… did you beg him for?”
“To cum in me! I begged him to cum in me!”
“Where Penny? To cum where?”
“In my cunt! In my married, cheating cunt!”
“Oh my God, I’m going to cummm!”
He didn’t need to tell me; after over twenty years of marriage I could tell when the father of my children was about to ejaculate. ‘Well the father of three of my children,’ I corrected myself.
“Cum in me Pete! Let go and cum in me!”
I urged him on, faking my own approaching climax as convincingly as I could. Fortunately, my husband was too wrapped up in his own orgasm to notice anything amiss.
“Did he cum in you when you begged, Penny?”
His voice was half choked as the peak of Pete’s orgasm was reached, his hips slamming into my spread thighs jackhammer fast.
“Yes! Oh God yes! He came in me so many times!
“Fuck Penny! You’re. Such. A. Slut!”
And with that, his climax broke and he began to ejaculate, his semen spurting against my cervix barely centimetres from where the baby was developing inside my womb. It was a powerful climax by Pete’s standards, his erect cock throbbed and pulsed in my belly and his hips ground hard against my inner thighs, his pubic hair rasping against my sparse triangle as rope after rope of warm sticky fluid was pumped into my body.
“Oh my God, that was intense,” Pete eventually gasped once the pulsing within me had slowed to a halt.
He was still above me and inside me, his cock taking much longer to soften than normal. I looked up into his eyes and tightened my pelvic floor once again. There was still resistance; his cock was barely softening at all.
A smile crossed his handsome face, the eyes warm, dark and adoring.
“You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever known, Penny Barker,” he whispered then kissed me on the lips. He tasted salty.
A surge of emotion washed over me; a wave of love for my husband. Suddenly I knew the right moment had arrived; I had to tell him; that I couldn’t keep my condition secret any longer. However frightening it was, the only right thing to do was to let him know the truth and to do it now.
“Pete…” I began falteringly.
“I know; you’re too tired to do it again,” he grinned, wriggling his hips, his cock still refusing to deflate. “I’ll just stay here until you feel up to another round.”
I smiled wanly.
“It’s not that. There’s something I need to tell you. Something important.”
I froze, his body tensed. The last time I had said anything like this had been followed by the news that I had been cheating on him with his best friend for over a month.
“What is it?” he asked anxiously.
His erection was suddenly gone; his cock slid from my body and he sat up on the bed alongside me, clearly dreading unwanted news.
“Have… have you been seeing someone else again?” he stammered, clearly expecting what he considered to be the worst possible reply.
“No, Pete,” I said, stroking his arm as reassuringly as I could manage.
“Thank God for that,” he smiled.
I sighed at his apparent relief. It was premature; ‘the real news wouldn’t be much better. But how to break it?’
“No, Pete,” I tried again. “I haven’t broken our agreement. I’ve been faithful but…”
“But?”
The words ‘old sins cast long shadows’ came through my mind but I didn’t say them out loud.
“I’m afraid the old days aren’t over yet,” I said instead.
“What do you mean?”
I took a deep breath.
“There’s no easy way to say this Pete.”
“To say what, Penny?”
I took another deep breath and steeled myself before changing the rest of our lives.
“I’m pregnant!”
“You’re what?” he laughed, rolling onto his side and kissing me on the shoulder.
“It’s not a joke,” I said calmly. “I’m pregnant.”
Pete sat up with a start and stared at me, his eyes wide, suddenly stone cold sober.
“Seriously? Pregnant?” he asked in a stunned, disbelieving voice, the beads of sweat on his forehead quivering.
“Yes, pregnant,” I repeated slowly and clearly. “It’s not a joke, Pete; I’m going to have a baby.”
“But you can’t be,” he stated in the ‘don’t be silly’ voice he used to use on the kids.
I reached over to the bedside table and passed him the letter from the consultant. He read it in silence.
“Jesus, Penny! I can’t believe it!”
“YOU can’t believe it?” I hissed. “How do you think I feel?”
“How far gone are you?” he asked.
“Five or six weeks I suppose.”
“Is it his?” Pete asked.
I assumed he meant my original lover Tony.
“I don’t think so,” I replied. “He’s had the snip like you.”
“So it’s Darren’s,” Pete deduced, looking at me suspiciously.
“He’s the only possible alternative,” I said a little angrily. “There’s no one else it could be. I haven’t lied to you Pete. Not about that.”
“But how did it happen? Didn’t you use protection?” Pete asked incredulous.
I shook my head in shame.
“I just didn’t think about it,” I replied, my voice cracking with emotion. “It’s been so long since I’ve needed to. It didn’t even cross my mind.”
“Jesus! I can’t believe you could be so careless. After all you’ve said to Izzy over the years!”
He was angry and I couldn’t blame him. Just when our relationship was getting back on an even keel, I had landed him with this unbelievable complication. I didn’t reply; Pete was quite right but it was hard to hear.
Then he sat bolt upright in bed.
“Shi,t Penny! You could have caught something from him too. Who knows who he’s been tomcatting about with?”
My blood ran even colder; I hadn’t even given a thought to the possibility I might have picked up an STD. Being pregnant was awful enough in itself but again Pete was right. And if I had picked up an infection, by now Pete would probably have it now too.
“Please, Pete. Don’t make me feel any worse than I do already,” I pleaded, tears running down my cheeks.
He lay back down on the bed. For a moment I felt more alone than ever in my life before. Then I felt him take my hand in his and squeeze it.
“I’m sorry, Penny. It must have been a terrible shock.”
I turned to face him and a moment later was wrapped in his strong, reassuring arms. The tears rolled more determinedly down my cheeks now but the fear of having to face alone whatever ordeal lay ahead had lessened considerably.
“How long have you known?” he asked quietly.
I told him.
“And you’ve kept it secret since then?” he asked.
I nodded.
“How did you find out? It’s very early on.”
I couldn’t tell him the truth; that it had been an accident; that his precious daughter had thought her own careless promiscuity had landed her in the same boat. So I lied.
“I’ve had three children already. I could feel something was changing inside me. I did a test and I was right.”
I began to cry. It was completely unlike the calm, competent Penny who held the important, responsible research post in the hospital but after all that had happened, I knew that the tough Penny was only skin deep.
To my eternal relief, far from being repulsed by the idea of his stupid, unfaithful wife having another man’s child inside her, Pete demonstrated again why I loved him so very much by wrapping my trembling body in his strong arms without hesitation.
“It’s okay… It’s okay,” his voice was calming as he hugged me. “We can deal with this. We can deal with it together.”
It was exactly what I needed to hear. I lay in his arms for a long time, feeling the heat of his well-muscled chest against my tiny boobs, his strong hairy legs against my skinny smooth thighs.
“Have you thought what you want to do?” he eventually asked. “Or is it all still too much to take in?”
“I… I don’t know,” I snuffled. “It’s not just my decision.”
“It’s your body,” he said softly, kissing me on the forehead.
“It’s our life,” I replied. “Our marriage.”
“That’s true.”
We hugged for a while longer. My head was spinning, so God knows what was going through Pete’s mind. Eventually I plucked up the courage to ask the question that had been in my mind since Friday morning.
“Could you live with me having another man’s child? Could you live with another child at all?”
“I honestly don’t know,” he said and I believed him. “My first reaction isn’t positive I have to say but there’s more than just my wants to think about.”
It was characteristically generous of him.
“Does anyone know it isn’t mine?” he asked. “Did you say anything to the consultant?”
“No, nothing. And he’s the only other person that knows anything at all.”
There was another pause as we both adjusted to the new reality. The obvious and permanent solution was buzzing round my mind but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. The same idea had to be going round Pete’s mind too but he showed no sign of mentioning it either.
“What would everyone say?” I asked eventually once it became silently clear that neither of us was going to propose the unthinkable route out. “What about our family and friends? Some of them know about your vasectomy; you’ve even joked about it in the past. They’ll know the baby can’t possibly be yours.”
“You’re right,” he replied. “We could say the operation failed,” he suggested after a few moments. “That my tubes re-joined. It does happen.”
“After all this time?” I asked. “Most of our friends are medics. They’ll know that’s practically impossible.”
“Never mind them,” Pete exclaimed. “What about the kids?”
‘Oh my God; the kids!’
The idea of our three adult children realising what kind of parents they really had was far worse than anything our friends might say or do.
“Do they know about my vasectomy?” Pete asked.
“They’re not stupid. And they’ll have overheard; you’ve never made a secret of it.”
“Shit!”
“So what’s the alternative?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he sighed. “I just don’t know. Maybe we just have to have another baby and face the consequences.”
“Having a baby at my age is no joke. The risk of birth defects is high too.”
“That’s true,” Pete said. “But Darren’s at the prime of life. His sperm would be extremely viable. And effective,” he laughed hollowly. “As we now know, right?”
He squeezed my hand to show it was a supposed to be a joke, however weak. I squeezed his in return before a cold feeling of fear washed over me.
“Maybe nature will find its own solution and take the decision out of our hands,” he suggested.
This was no answer. As this story has shown, up to then my life had been characterised by taking action – however inadvisable that action turned out to be – not just sitting and waiting in the hope that something would turn up. In this case the hope would be that I would miscarry naturally.
“Oh God! All those sleepless nights?” Pete eventually moaned, rolling onto his back and covering his face with his hands. “We can’t go through all that again, please no!”
“There’s only one alternative,” I stated.
We looked at each other in silence, neither of us wanting to be the first to use the ‘T’ word. Apart from the pain and morality of such a decision, given my husband’s professional specialism, if it became known that his wife had gone through a termination his career might have been severely damaged.
Indeed my own career would be harmed too, though for different reasons, to say nothing of the profound effect it would have on my emotional and mental wellbeing.
No, a termination could only be a last resort; that much did not need to be said.
“Do you want to have another baby?” Pete asked softly. “Whatever I feel, it would have to be your decision in the end.”
“You know I don’t,” I replied honestly.
“How long before we have to decide?”
“A month – six weeks maybe. The sooner the better if… ”
I let the words fade away. Pete sighed, rolled alongside me again and took me in his arms.
“So we wait and see?” he said, his voice unsettled and doubtful.
“We wait and see,” I repeated.
“But whatever happens,” Pete continued. “We face it together, right?”
***
“Will you book us both into the clinic?” Pete asked the following morning as we stared listlessly at our unappealing bowls of breakfast cereal.
Neither of us had slept much the previous night. Instead we had talked into the small hours, going over the same ground again and again, agonising over what to do.
Though neither of us dared be the first to mention it, we both knew that termination was the obvious solution. We both also knew that it would involve a moral compromise on both our parts that neither of us was yet prepared to make.
To his credit, at no time did Pete even hint that my predicament either disgusted him or made him want me any less. Indeed by mutual consent we had made love again in the small hours, gently and caringly, falling asleep in each other’s arms straight afterwards. Without that physical manifestation of his continued love, I doubt I would have enjoyed even the few hours of sleep that I had.
With such an enormous ‘elephant in the room,’ there was inevitably a strange atmosphere between us that morning that is impossible to convey in a few words. We had been woken by the alarm and, our heads thick with lack of sleep. We had showered and dressed in a near silence which, though not in any way threatening was still unusual for us and therefore unsettling. I was glad of the distraction even the prospect of STD tests brought about.
“If you think we need to,” I replied.
“It’s just a precaution, Penn. I’m sure there won’t be a problem. We just need to get tested for safety’s sake.”
Irony was getting popular; it was exactly the attitude I had taken with Izzy after her night of infidelity with Simon when he had still been a stranger. Of course my husband knew nothing about this; as far as he was concerned, his pretty, sweet daughter was pure as the driven snow. As far as Pete knew, I was the only slut in the household, a position my unwanted news had just reinforced with a vengeance.
Given all I had said to Izzy about her unwise all-night fornication with Simon, my stupid, thoughtless, unprotected fuck with Darren had been an extraordinary lack of judgement on my part.
But then my life had been full of extraordinary misjudgements, hadn’t it? Little did I know this wasn’t to be the last of them.
“Okay,” I replied without enthusiasm.
We kissed our goodbyes more slowly and tenderly than usual and went off to our respective jobs.
***
Two days later the two of us went to an anonymous clinic – the same one to which I had taken Izzy only a few weeks ago – and had ourselves tested for sexually transmitted diseases. They found none straight away which was a relief and did not expect any to emerge – a conclusion confirmed a few weeks later when the final results came in.
At least I had escaped one possible consequence of my stupidity.
***
Unable to make a decision one way or the other, there was nothing else Pete and I could do but try and get on with our lives as if nothing had happened. Paradoxically this proved easier to do than to choose what to do about the baby growing in my middle-aged belly.
This early on in my pregnancy there was nothing about my body to give away my terrible secret to family and friends and, apart from an hour or so of blessedly mild nausea every morning, there was little to remind me as I went about my usual work, home, gym and social routine.
If I hadn’t accidentally taken the test I’m sure would never have guessed what had happened.
For a week, life outwardly returned to normal. When things at work were busy I could spend whole mornings or afternoons without remembering the time bomb inside me that might any day blow my whole work, social and family life apart forever.
At home though, things were very different. Having got over the initial shock, the idea of another man’s baby having been implanted in his wife’s womb completely dominated Pete’s behaviour towards me. I had expected jealousy, I had expected anger and resentment and yes, these emotions were present on a daily basis.
What I had not expected was the massive surge in arousal and desire that my condition would evoke in my hitherto calm and relaxed husband. It was almost as if, with another man’s child in his wife’s belly, he had lost his alpha male status as badly as a man possibly could. As a result he was being instinctively and irresistibly driven to reassert it by inseminating me as often and as passionately as he possibly could – even if it was much too late.
But an even bigger surprise was the equally powerful surge in my own libido that arrived, matching my husband’s new sex drive blow for blow and fuck for fuck if not actually orgasm for orgasm.
Nature red in tooth and claw? Once again, my psychology students would have had a field day!
The wife sharing fantasies we had enjoyed for so long continued but now with a much sharper edge. Just as my affair had shown us what it was really like to live a Hotwife-cuckold lifestyle, so my actual conception showed us how it really felt to have your wife impregnated by another man.
As Pete explained one night after marking me badly on the neck with his teeth during a particularly energetic fuck on the lounge sofa, the mix of anger, jealousy and enormous arousal were beyond anything he had ever imagined any emotions bringing. The desire to hurt me; to punish me for my betrayal could only be controlled by repeated and passionate sexual conquest of my body even though his conscious mind knew it was far too late.
The orgasms he enjoyed, his head only inches above mine were, he said, the most intense of his entire life.
From the expressions that crossed his handsome face as he came, I believed him.
Meanwhile we were a week further into my pregnancy and no closer to knowing what to do about it.
***
“Mrs Barker! Hi!”
I turned towards the vaguely familiar voice to see a slim, athletic young man in his early twenties walking down the corridor towards me dressed in a smart, sporty uniform of dark green trousers and polo shirt.
He looked familiar but for a moment I couldn’t quite place him
It was eight thirty the following Wednesday evening and I had just emerged from the Ladies’ changing room at the sports club to which Pete and I belonged and where my one-off lover Darren still worked. In my hand were my car keys and gym bag, just recovered from the locker where I had put them for safekeeping during the spinning class I had just completed. It was the second class of the day for me; I was pink and sweaty and was looking forward to having a long soak in the bath when I arrived home.
Pete was in London on one of the interminable conferences he and I had to attend and would be away for two nights. Although my husband could be trusted to remain faithful in a way I had proved I could not, I couldn’t stop myself wondering whether any temptation in the form of female company had come his way.
I had been filling the time by catching up both on my work and on my exercise. Apart from distracting me from Pete’s absence, if I was going to carry my growing baby through at my age then I needed to keep as physically fit as I could.
“Mrs. Barker?” the young man repeated.
“Hi, errr… ” I replied, wondering why the sight of his young face should unnerve me so much.
“It’s Will, Mrs. Barker,” he smiled pleasantly but with a twinkle in his eye. “I share a house with Darren. We met the other morning, remember?”
An icy cold wave washed over me. ‘Oh my dear God!’
Will was Darren’s housemate; the one who had let me out of the front door when I was trying to sneak away unseen the following morning on my ‘walk of shame’. Given the circumstances and the freshly-fucked condition of my body at the time there was no way he could be in any doubt what I had been doing in his friend’s room.
“Um… er… ” I stammered.
Will smiled a sweet but knowing smile.
“I hope you got home alright,” he smiled.
“I… yes thank you,” I stammered.
“The buses aren’t too good round our way. I would have been happy to drive you.”
“That was sweet of you but I was fine.”
“Darren said you left before he woke up,” he continued. “He was a bit upset; he was hoping to have breakfast with you.”
“I… I had to get ready for work,” I floundered. “I had a meeting… ”
“I’m sure,” he smiled.
There was a brief pause during which my head buzzed with all the possible directions this conversation could go. None of them were in any way appealing.
“Did Darren tell you I work here too?”
“He did say something about it,” I mumbled awkwardly.
“I’m on the maintenance staff. At least I am now – I’m actually qualified as a personal trainer.”
I wondered where this conversation was going.
“I hope you make it,” I smiled, using my motherly voice. “Sorry; I’ve got to go.”
I made to leave but Will touched me on the arm. I turned back to face him, my eyebrows raised in question.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I… I wondered whether you fancied a drink later,” he continued in a direction I was not expecting. “I feel like I know a lot about you already; it would be nice to get to know you even better.”
The words sounded innocent and might even have been innocent but their potential implication was obvious and could not be ignored. Now he and Darren knew who I really was, the risk to Pete and my future had just jumped up to a new level.
A knot came into my stomach so tight I thought I would be sick on the spot. If Will had been in the house all night it was possible – indeed probable that he had heard my orgasmic wailing including, if I was really unlucky, my breeding frenzy begging for Darren to make a baby in my belly.
Little did any of us know as I thrashed wildly beneath my lover, his huge, erect cock spurting semen against my pulsating cervix for the umpteenth time, that my professed wish was about to come true.
“I’m not sure I can tonight… ” I began, desperately searching for some way out.
“My shift ends at ten,” he persisted. “I’m locking up tonight. I’ll be the only one here. From what Darren said, we have a lot in common. We could have a drink here or there’s a nice pub we could go to, not far from where I live. I think you know it already.”
“My… my husband’s expecting me.”
I was lying and very unconvincingly; Pete would be away that night and the following one. The rest of the evening was entirely my own.
“That’s a pity. I thought you and I might get on really well. Husbands, eh?”
Will countered with just the slightest hint of menace, stressing the word ‘husband’ strongly. He looked very disappointed but again his voice was so calm and sweet that the hidden threat – if it was there at all – was almost unnoticeable.
“Why don’t I go and see him then come back?” I suggested, my heart thumping in my chest.
“Good idea,” Will replied with an almost childish beam of pleasure. “If you come back around five past ten, no-one will see you. We could go to the pub afterwards.”
‘After what?’ I wondered, but there was no way of asking.
What on earth could I do? There was no mistaking the unspoken threat in all Will had said no matter how soft and friendly his words. The boy was in a position to ruin my reputation, my social standing and possibly my marriage. If it ever got out that I was pregnant, he would be perfectly placed to reveal who the father was too.
There was no way I could simply ignore the danger. I had to find out what it was he wanted.
“I… I’ll be here,” I replied, my voice so low it was almost inaudible.
“See you later. You look great by the way,” he said cheerfully as he continued on his way. “Really great!”
I felt faint and reached out to the wall for support, my head spinning as I tried to take stock of my car-crash of a life.
A few short months ago I had been a normal, professional PhD scientist and happily married mother of three grown up children.
Since then, and with a momentum I found hard to believe, I had been seduced, fucked, adulterous, exposed, abandoned, dumped, fucked again, cheated on, knocked up, mistrusted by the man I loved and was now trapped by a boy with God knows what intention in mind.
Would the nightmare ever end?
