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In spite of the special occasion, a strange solace is there to be found in the white walls of the kitchen. While the lively nature of the New Year’s Eve party remains just a crack of light under the doorframe away and a pocket of sound pressed behind the wood itself, there’s quiet apart from the slow drip of the tap. Leaning back together against the polished chrome of the sink, the velvet stroke of his thumb makes slow patterns against her hip and the span of her fingertips finds an anchor in one of the belt loops of his jeans.
Behind momentarily closed eyelids Sharon relishes in the languor set deep in her bones because she knows it emanates from the impossible-now-possible peace of the knowledge that she is carrying the child she never thought she would have.
The fragile thread of her contemplative calm is broken by Jim, who ambles in from the living room, shutting away the noise as quickly as he had let it in.
“Everythin’ alright?” “Only Dorothy said you’d been up the hospital last week.” Glass clinks as he slides a beer bottle across the worktop opposite with measured caution. “And, well,” he continues with a firm nod towards the couple, “you’re not normally joined at the hip at things like this.”
“I’m better now, Jim, thanks,” Sharon replies, taking a quick sip from her water. She feels grateful for his concern but also fleeting sadness that she is not quite ready to share the secret that her and her husband have been keeping for the last week.
“As long as you’re alright.” His tone is quiet as he raises the beer bottle in acknowledgment and strides slowly away to rejoin the revelry in the other room.
It only takes the slightest shift for her to rest her head against Dennis’s shoulder, blood-warm and solid beneath her skin. Comfort once again fuses between them in the near-solitary stillness, but it’s the amusement in his voice that stops her from drifting too deep into reverie again.
“It’s not the joining at the hip that’s the issue.”
Her laughter meets his wolfish grin as she moves to hold his gaze, and he watches her mirth turn to wistfulness in a fleeting moment, as quick as clouds drifting over the moon.
“What are you thinking?” It’s a gentle inquisition mirrored by the soft, still-rhythmic cadence of his fingertips at her hipbone, never breaking contact.
“Just that there’s been a lot of secrets in this house. Chelle bein’ pregnant; Mark bein’ ill; Arthur’s affair.”
“Is that when he caught the wrong end of the frying pan?” Somehow the image of Pauline Fowler branding kitchenware as a weapon is endlessly hilarious to him, and he almost feels thankful he’d only felt the stinging edge of her palm or the sharp-tongued barbs she loved to cast his way.
“Yeah,” Sharon confesses, feeling the sudden weight of remembering. “All those secrets and none of them good. All things that caused pain.”
“Well, Vicki can be a pain, yeah,” Dennis jokes, throwing lightness in to try and dissipate what little remains of her unease.
“It’s just nice to have a good secret, right?” Light dances in her eyes as she feels that same surge of absolutely untainted happiness she encountered one week ago, all the remaining threads of bad memory broken open and rewoven into a blissful tapestry. A slow smile chases after her words as he moves so that they are face-to-face, needing their closeness like breathing, knowing that his emotions mirror her own.
“Not just a good secret,” he says, “but the best,” feeling the emphasis in that final word coupled with the joy it represents.
Framing her face with his hands, his deep, slow kiss serves as an affirmation of all that has gone before and all that will come to pass, a moment of tenderness that almost seems out of place in the quiet order of the kitchen.
“Oh, put her down, will you? It’s not even close to midnight yet!” Pauline’s shrill tone cuts through the air in exactly the disruptive manner intended.
“I’ve heard all about people who misbehave and your kitchen. Next in line for the frying pan, am I?” Dennis wonders if there is anyone else in the world who would tell a man off for kissing his wife while Sharon tries to hide her laugher by chuckling into his shoulder.
“Size of your ego, it would probably bounce right off you,” she retorts, reaching to the counter opposite for a knife and chopping board.
“Here, make yourself useful instead of acting like a teenager. Martin’s got some of those Mexican beers and these need cutting up,” Pauline explains, angling a porcelain bowl towards her guests to show them it is brimming with fresh limes. She rattles it down with the other implements before turning back towards the living room without another word.
“I’m a bookmaker, not Jamie Oliver,” Dennis says, trying to continue the sparring that Pauline always seems to engage him in, but the door creaks shut and contented silence once again fills the room.
******
The clean scent of sharp citrus soon fills the air as they work side by side at the counter, quartering each brilliant-green lime with precision and placing them back into the bowl. At reaching the penultimate fruit, Sharon stops for a long moment and holds a lime between thumb and forefinger, testing its size and letting out a grin that she cannot quite suppress.
“Why are you looking so pleased at gettin’ roped into this?” Dennis feels slightly perplexed by his wife’s strange delight at this unexpected and mundane task.
A carefree shrug rolls across her shoulders before she leans across and close to him again. “Maybe I just always enjoy our teamwork,” she confesses with more than a sultry edge to her voice.
“That’s not usually happening in the kitchen, though,” he admits with a laugh, before continuing to fix his gaze on her in order to coax out further explanation.
“I saw this website the other day that compares the size of the baby to fruit. And as we’re at about 12 weeks now, our baby is currently the size of a lime.” Even saying the words our and baby in close proximity still feels a thrill that she is growing more accustomed to by the day.
“You’re not gonna be so pleased when he or she is the size of a melon.” At this point, he’s wondering if he’ll ever look at Martin’s stall in the same way.
‘I think that’s about 35 weeks. That will mean that they’re nearly here.” Excitement rises unbidden as she knows that time will pass as quickly as ever: from the bitter chill of winter to the lush green of spring and the warmth of summer.
Summer. When the baby is due.
Last lime carefully quartered, Sharon picks up the bowl. “You think we should go back in there? They’ll think we’re hiding away out here.” Not that she minds having these sacred, peaceful moments where it was just the two (three) of them.
“Depends. Do you think there’s a wrong way to cut a lime?”
*****
Near-midnight is accompanied by the velvet-black of dark and the sharp cut of frost that bites at lungs and fingertips. While the older contingent gathers around inside for more sherry and to shield Betty from the noise of the revelry, the others venture outside.
“So, you wanna tell me what the secret is of having that much fun in Pauline’s kitchen?” Jane seems eager to find out just what was the source of the intermittent laughter that came from behind the closed door.
“You’ll find out soon enough, Jane.” Sharon doesn’t mean to be so enigmatic, but finds the temptation of giving very little away too much to resist.
Still smiling, she slips her arm around her husband’s waist as they pace slowly along to find a vantage point for the upcoming fireworks. A gentle murmur of sound soon dulls to an expectant hush as the countdown to Big Ben’s chimes pours out from somewhere inside.
Glitter sparks against the sky in the first seconds of the New Year as they embrace again, kissing softly and nearly oblivious to anything else as colours merge in the night and cheers raise into the air.
“Happy New Year, darlin’,” she breathes, feeling nothing but warmth and safety even out in the frigid air.
“Happy New Year,” he replies, before drifting his fingertips, soft as silk, over her abdomen, before adding, low in her ear, “Times two.”
Even in the midst of the raucous noise and pressed together once again in the tight circle of a hug, they both know that the silence of their precious, perfect secret will not last for much longer.