Chapter Forty-Three
So it was that, just before my fifty-second birthday, my career and Hot Wife lifestyle went on hold, I took maternity leave and for the fourth time in my life became a new Mum.
It was to within a week, the anniversary of my first seduction by Tony. In a mere twelve months I had gone from being a faithful-if-slightly-kinky wife and mother to what I was now; the promiscuous, unfaithful bearer of an illegitimate lovechild.
In a strange way, I was very happy. Pete was happy. Despite it all, we were still very much a couple.
Being so premature, they kept Leanne and me in hospital an extra two days to make sure she really was healthy despite her early arrival. But there was nothing to worry about; however close to its Best Before date my egg might have been, Darren's sperm had been young, fresh and perfect and had done its job well.
The evening before my birthday, Pete brought us home in his car. A happier father could not be imagined - neither could a more nervous one. But my husband's concerns were not just for the wellbeing of his new daughter. Although the more dangerous, physical part of our problem was over; the more enduring problem of bringing up a child at our ages was about to begin.
And with that child so obviously not my husband's, who knew what might happen?
Cards, gifts and flowers flooded in from friends and family, including my favourite chocolates from Julie and a hand-delivered card from Tony, which I concealed from Pete inside a book in our bedroom.
The message inside the card congratulated me on my 'miracle baby' and hoped to hear from me 'as soon as I felt up to getting together.' The idea was outrageous but made me tingle every time I read it.
Leanne's brothers and sister also put in appearances, if only briefly, including to my delight, our reclusive second son Timothy who arrived in a smart sports car driven by Thomas, an impressively built, six-foot-three, rugby-playing friend from college, whose physique made my own son look positively frail in comparison.
The new baby gave Izzy an excuse to come home from University too. As her boyfriend Jack had deliberately arranged to be home at the same time, their presence around the baby was sporadic and Izzy looked permanently flushed in the face and chest all weekend.
Enough said about that. At least whatever they did - in bed and out - took place in Julie's house, so I didn't have to listen to it. Interestingly, neither of them ever visited Jack's father Tony. Perhaps his flat lacked the privacy their excessive libidos required.
Predictably though, the first problems were all practical. In some ways, Leanne might as well have been my first child, so much had changed in terms of what I was supposed to do to look after her 'the right way'. Things we routinely did with our first three children were now frowned on; things we thought ill-advised were now obligatory. It was baffling.
It didn't help that most of the so-called advisers were decades younger than me and were full of good ideas about how an older parent like me should bring up my child.
I had to bite my lip on many occasions.
As the first few weeks passed it became clear that Leanne's olive-gold skin was not just a birth phenomenon; it was going to stay and if anything, was becoming more obvious. Her eyes seemed to become an even deeper shade of brown and her hair grew darker too, which added to the exotic nature of her appearance and made her look even less like Pete's daughter. But to his credit, my husband carried on regardless.
The general assumption among the childcare experts looking after me was that Pete and I had been having IVF for years and had finally struck lucky at an advanced age. I suppose the disparity in looks between Leanne and her father might have suggested a sperm donor was involved too, but I doubt the real nature of that third party ever crossed their minds.
Pete and I did nothing to correct this impression, but the look of shock and surprise on the experts' smug faces when they met one or more of our adult children was pleasing to see.
Even then, the assumption was that our grown-up kids must be products of previous marriages and that Pete and I had been desperate to have a child from our new relationship. The thought that a woman my age might have conceived naturally simply did not enter their minds. Fortunately, this made the deception that much easier to continue.
Still, it could have been a lot worse, I reflected as I stood in the doorway of Leanne's room, a mug of tea in my hand, watching her sleeping in her travel cot. Six weeks into my fourth attempt at motherhood, things could hardly have gone more smoothly. Yes, I was exhausted. Yes, I was sore, and in places I had forgotten could be so sore, but compared with my worst nightmares, being a Mum in my fifties had so far been tolerable.
A month premature, Leanne had weighed less than five pounds. Though not ideal, it wasn't a very worrying weight, but it had made the actual physical process of giving birth that much easier. The much-lamented lack of tightness in my vagina had probably helped too so, unlike with Isobel, I had not torn during childbirth.
In fact, the damage between my legs had been minimal enough for Pete and me to make love a week after the birth. Having been seen in the ultimate indignity of childbirth once again, I desperately needed to feel close and attractive to my husband again.
It hurt, but after a few gentle thrusts, I began to derive some pleasure from it as well as the intimacy I so badly craved.
It also became clear that my tummy wasn't going to recover anything like as quickly as my vagina. I still looked at least three months pregnant which did little for my self-esteem. And no matter how much cream I rubbed in, the number of stretch marks on that tummy was definitely going to increase. I tried to hide the worst evidence from Pete but to his credit my husband seemed neither to notice nor care about them.
Regaining my skinny figure would take quite a bit longer. Once Christmas was out of the way, a lot of attention to diet and exercise would eventually take care of that.
When out with the buggy, we were often mistaken for new grandparents helping our son or daughter with their first child and were congratulated on our new status. If we knew the person concerned at all, we corrected that misperception but after a few strange reactions, we decided to take the path of least resistance and said nothing.
Everyone who saw Leanne said how beautiful she was and how tiny she was - both of which were true and very evident. She had a lovely, placid nature too and most of the time, was full of those facial expressions we like to believe are smiles but are usually wind.
What everyone must also have seen was that much of her undoubted beauty came from the equally obvious fact that she was of mixed race. She wasn't black, she wasn't even brown but the shape of her face, the colour of her eyes and her remarkable olive skin made this obvious to any moderately observant visitor.
But it simply was not mentioned.
Over the years, a lot has been said about the British stiff upper lip and our ability to keep calm in the face of adversity. A lot of it is clearly rubbish or propaganda, but in this case, I have to say that if it wasn't for the traditional British desire not to cause a fuss, my life would have been unbearable.
It was truly extraordinary how it all happened. Despite the obvious in-your-face evidence that I had given birth to another man's child, none of our friends mentioned it to me at all. I have no doubt that behind our backs we were the main topic of conversation for many months but the worst crime that a Brit can commit is to create problems socially, so no-one did.
Only my daughter Isobel dared to mention to my face what I believed everyone was saying behind my back; that her new baby sister did not look like Pete's child at all. But even Izzy didn't voice the inevitable inference that if that were so, I must have been impregnated by a man who was not my husband, which in turn meant I must have been unfaithful at least once.
On the rare occasions any observations arose, I pointed out the many cases where babies had been born as genetic throwbacks to previous generations. The internet was very helpful in perpetuating this form of deceit. I also pointed out that babies often changed considerably as they grew up. Izzy's own brother been born blond and blue-eyed but now had dark hair and his eyes were brown. Family photos helped with this deceit too but despite all this, I could tell my daughter remained unconvinced.
Fortunately, the fact that my husband accepted the new arrival without comment and was behaving just as if Leanne really was his daughter added a great deal of weight to the misinformation we were putting out.
Predictably our son Josh was too tied up in his own imminent change in status to express any real opinion of his parents' predicament.
The person I least expected to react badly was our middle child Tim. Normally placid and slow to take or give offence, he seemed troubled by the whole affair as if something important was on his mind. If that was so, his didn't share it with me but as his mother, I could tell something was amiss.
Interestingly, the person I thought would be most upset about her mother's embarrassing new offspring - my daughter Isobel - turned out to be the most supportive. Though I knew she was both baffled and highly disapproving, Izzy was a godsend as far as Christmas was concerned. What with all the nocturnal activities associated with new babies, the lack of sleep I believed I had left behind twenty years ago and the constant need to feed Leanne, I was exhausted.
Despite her obvious distaste for this evidence of her mother's bedroom activities, when she wasn't in bed with her boyfriend, Izzy stepped into the breach calmly and without fuss, relieving me of most of the kitchen drudgery and changing her sister's nappy with only the slightest look of revulsion on her face.
