Molly

"Why Sam? I thought we was okay, you and me, why did you do something so" She paused looking for the word she wanted "Shitty?"

Molly had got used to Sam's reluctance to look her in the face, to the fact that he avoided being alone with her, with the fact that he'd stayed at school for the last couple of weekends, saying that there were rugby matches he didn't want to miss, even though Molly knew he hated rugby, but this was crap behaviour in anyone's book. He'd promised his dad that he wouldn't tell Chloe and he had gone and done exactly that, choosing the half term weekend when Charles was away on exercises leaving Molly to deal with him sniggering and Chloe smirking. She wanted to question Chloe to find out exactly what Sam had said, fearing a repeat of his 'medal' explanation but she was reluctant to do it until Charlie was back, she didn't want to listen to some crude description of how babies are made from their eight year old daughter.

"I'm sorry"

"No you're bleeding not, Sam, what the fuck's up with you?"

"If I used that word in front of you or dad, I'd be in the shit"

"You're gonna be in the shit anyway when your dad finds out"

"Are you going to tell him then?"

"Why wouldn't I?" She took a deep breath "There were reasons why we didn't want Chloe to know just yet and we trusted you, thought you was a grown up not a silly kid"

Molly had walked away from him, because she had a very tenuous hold on her temper and if she'd stayed she'd have said a lot more to him about his recent behaviour. He'd really pissed her off, acting as though them having a baby was some sort of personal insult to him. She knew that teenagers can have a hard time with their parents having sex, she'd hated it herself when she was a teenager and her mum kept getting pregnant, but that was because they had no money and couldn't look after the kids they already had, and she was always having to stop at home and help out, none of which was the case with Sam. He was just behaving like a spoilt brat.

Chloe was curled up on their bed pretending to read a book, but obviously waiting for her and she looked almost as if she was spoiling for a fight.

"Why are you mad at Sam, Mummy?"

"What did he tell you about, um…..?" Molly was struggling to find the right words to find out what she needed to know without going into the sort of detailed questioning that would lead to long and embarrassing explanations which she wanted to put off until she'd practised what she was going to say, or at least bought one of those books she'd seen advertised.

"He just said that you were going to have a baby, what's wrong with that?" She still sounded truculent so Molly knew that wasn't all he'd said.

"And that's all? He didn't say about how babies are made or nothing?"

"I already know all that, Mummy, we did it at school with Mrs. Jeffers"

Shit, did you? Molly remembered now the letter they'd received from the school about sex education, but although she'd meant to read it, she couldn't for the life of her remember doing so.

"Oh yeah so you did" She lied "So what else did Sam say? And don't say nothing Chloe"

"He said it was an accident, that you and Daddy didn't mean to have another baby and I don't understand how you can make a baby by accident. Mrs Jeffers said …"

"Sam's talking bleeding rubbish; of course we wanted another baby" Molly interrupted her; she'd absolutely no wish to hear what Mrs. Jeffers had said, they could talk about it some other time if they had to, but not now, when she wanted nothing more than to go and wring Sam's neck for him.

She contemplated finding him and asking him where the hell he'd got that idea from and why he'd thought it was okay to tell Chloe that sort of shit, but decided to leave it for Charles to sort when he got back. She was a bit worried about what he might have said to give Sam that idea anyhow.

She really missed Bashira, she knew Charlie was right and that she'd made a lot of work for herself treating Bashira like one of her own kids and ferrying her back and forwards to college 'n that, but she was good company, she was someone to talk to and she was good with the little ones and Molly felt like she was doing something to make up for stuff. Bashira was doing okay on her college course but had been finding the commute a bit of a bind; so despite her protests Molly had turned herself into a sort of taxi service, dropping the children at school and then Bashira at college. She'd ignored Charlie's concerns about her driving so much when she was still suffering from acute morning sickness and exhaustion, falling asleep in the chair by 8.30 every evening. Then three weeks ago and out of the blue, Bashira had arranged to move into a shared house with three other Muslim girls, two Pakistani and one Iraqi girl, and up till now, it was all working out fine, or so she said. Molly wasn't sure she would tell her if it wasn't, but she had to accept that she couldn't keep on treating her as though she was Chloe's age.

They had been and looked at the place where she was moving to, ostensibly to check that it was in good condition, and that it wasn't a damp dump in an iffy area, but really because Molly wanted to check the roommates out. She'd been worried that they might be sort of radical or something which had made Charlie wet himself laughing. He pointed out that it was just as well no-one had checked her roommates out when she was Bashira's age, because she was sleeping in a tent with eleven other squaddies, all male and getting herself tangled up with a Rupert who was almost ten years older than her. Molly said that was how come she understood innocent young girls like Bashira and Charles had almost wet himself again as he raised his eyebrows and said "You? Innocent?" so that she called him a cheeky sod and flounced out of the room pretending to be offended.

Despite her concerns about Bashira, Molly was actually quite glad when it was just them again, although she missed her job badly. She'd told them about being pregnant and they'd scheduled her on for the first-aid training sessions so she was over the moon with that, but there were nothing like as many of those as there were of the front-line sessions and they were solitary, so that she found herself missing the camaraderie of the other EMTs. The front-line shifts would have dropped off by now anyway with the end of the summer season but the Christmas gigs were coming up fast, and Molly knew that she wouldn't be scheduled on for any of them, which made her feel a bit shit. The adrenaline rush she'd experienced when she'd saved someone's life had made her realise just what she was missing by stopping being a Combat Technician. She knew at the time when she'd saved the bloke that she was more than likely pregnant, even if she was trying to deny it to herself, but the buzz was addictive and she couldn't help being a bit upset that she couldn't see it happening again in the near future, they wouldn't let her take a tiny baby with her.

Quaseem had moved out well before Bashira, renting a small converted flat in an old terraced house near the Tramlink Stop in West Croydon and had got a job as an Interpreter for the Home Office in Lunar House; which was fortunate as they were the people who were processing his application for exceptional leave to remain. Molly felt it was a good sign because she thought that they were unlikely to chuck him out if he was working for them, but Charlie told her that she was far too optimistic about the way Government Departments worked and that they didn't always do joined up thinking. Quaseem had started to make a large circle of friends, which Charles was very glad to see, he'd always thought that Quaseem was a fairly lonely man, but despite his new found popularity, he still made a lot of time and space in his life for Bashira, seeing her at some point over most weekends now that she'd moved out of The Barn.

Charles

I've been camping all weekend on Studland Bay in Dorset, very beautiful scenery, lovely in the summer, but it was decidedly bloody cold and wet. I think I'm getting a bit long in the tooth for all this shit as I stood in the driving rain and watched a bunch of naked nineteen year olds freezing their knackers off jumping in the sea, something I would have done twenty years ago, but not now, not at any price. What I want to be doing is curling up in a nice warm bed and cuddling my nice warm wife and maybe getting up shortly to have some breakfast and read the papers.

I have given a lot of thought lately to the future, and have put some feelers out with some organisations that appeal to me, top of the list is the Disasters Emergency Committee who co-ordinate charity responses to emergencies all over the world so that individual charities don't go rushing off in all directions like headless chickens and they have invited me to go and have a 'look see'. I'm pretty sure that I don't want to go on and make full Colonel, especially as I will probably be sent to Colchester or Catterick or Pirbright, anywhere but here, and I can't do that to Molly again, or I don't want to.

Bloody Sam has been playing Molly up all weekend, I don't understand him at the moment, but I specifically told him not to open his mouth to Chloe and he let me down, so to say I'm disappointed in him would be an understatement. Even Molly, who is almost always on his side, whatever the issue, is mad at him, mainly because she didn't want Chloe to be filled with some teenage crap about how babies come about but apparently Chloe learned all that at school last term, I didn't realise we were paying shed loads of money for her to learn all that, well not at her age anyway, but also because she's still worried about the possibility of a miscarriage and didn't want Chloe too involved in case that happens. Then she found out that Sam told Chloe that the baby is a mistake, an accident, where that came from I don't know, but not from me that's for sure.

I was going to have a long chat with Molls about the DEC and the army and see what she thinks is the best thing to do, but now I've going to have to take Sam for a walk instead. I'm not going to give him the chance to slam off into his room and lock the door, so I got him come with me to take Patch out for his walk so that I can bollock him then see if I can find out what's going on in that head of his. I know he isn't exactly thrilled about Molly being pregnant, but we can't just send it back to suit him and I'm not going to apologise to my sixteen year old son for us having a baby. It won't be that many years before he'll be having children of his own, on second thoughts more than a few I hope, because I'm not ready to be a grandfather any time soon, Molly would piss herself.

I couldn't get anywhere with Sam, he just clammed up and said he'd apologised to Molly so what else did I want him to do, and anyway it was too late now to change what happened, and when I asked him where he got this 'mistake' bollocks he just shrugged. As apologies go, it was fucking pathetic, not an apology at all, just some very defensive crap with a hint of self-pity thrown in for good measure. I've no idea why he won't just open up and talk to me, I always thought we had a good relationship but you couldn't describe it like that at the moment. He said he was going to Skype his mother when we got back, but as they're three hours ahead, it'll have to wait until tomorrow; he won't be very popular if he calls her after midnight to whinge. No doubt I'll get my ears bashed tomorrow after he's spoken to her on account of my many faults as a parent, not to mention all my other failings as well.

Molly and Charles

Charles was hoping that Molly would still be up and waiting for him when he got back, talking about DEC and his career and stuff didn't seem nearly as pressing as it had done during the drive home, but he wanted to talk to her about Sam and Chloe and he just wanted to cuddle up with her and feel better about everything. She'd already gone up but had made him a sandwich which had a post-it note on it saying "eat me", a bottle of beer out of the fridge which had a note saying "drink me, then come to bed" which made him smile, almost against his will. He ate the food then trudged up to bed swigging out of the bottle, feeling suddenly weary and incredibly old.

As he looked at her curled up in their bed, all warm and sleepy, he felt the familiar tightening in his groin and wished more than anything that the "come to bed" had been meant as an invitation, as it would have been once upon a time. Those days seemed to be long gone but his body didn't appear to have got the message, and he missed the way things had been when she'd been pregnant with the others and they couldn't keep their hands off each other.

Molly watched him get undressed through half-closed eyes and felt the familiar slow curl of lust in the pit of her stomach; making love using their hands and lips gave them pleasure, but she missed the feel of him and the way he held her when she came and the whole way he looked at her when he'd just come. She'd felt far too shitty to want anything for weeks, but the exhaustion and sickness had worn off now, it was just that she was still too tense and nervous to relax, still afraid of it setting off a problem with the baby, and so she kept avoiding sex by going to bed early or pretending to be asleep.

OGOGOGOG

Author's notes: Thank you for your kind reviews; I am glad that so many of you enjoyed re-visiting The Barn and I hope that you enjoyed this chapter as well.

In the next chapter, Sam gets a wake-up call, Molly starts to worry about Christmas and Bashira and Charles moves closer to making a decision.