Chapter 9

When all the customers had left and the interior of the pie shop was cleaned with care, Mrs. Lovett left Toby in the parlor and retreated to her bedroom. She hadn't told the boy yet about the 'sibling' he was hopefully going to have soon. She felt rather guilty about this, but she still didn't know the right way to tell him. The baker did know that she couldn't wait too long; he was going to know about it sooner or later and she wanted to tell him the news herself. It would be horrible if he would heard the news, or even rumors about it, from gossiping customers, who would doubtlessly try to make him believe that the child was not quite as legitimate as it was. She absolutely didn't want the boy to think that she was that kind of woman.

But Toby wasn't the one who was in her mind. She expected Mr. Todd to arrive any time now, and that was why she was in her bedroom already. If she was going to discuss her pregnancy, she rather wouldn't be in the same room as the still oblivious Toby was.

Although she feared that Sweeney's plan was something that she probably wasn't going to like, she was grateful that there was at least someone who knew of her secret, especially since he seemed to be willing to help him. His motives weren't as noble as she wanted them to be, but rather his dubious help than no help at all. And usually she was clearly the most practical of the two, but lately she found it difficult sometimes to think clearly, especially about things concerning her child. Had she been rational, then she would've found a solution for a lot more problems concerning her child than she currently had. Mostly, she strongly felt that should have thought of a way that made it absolutely clear that the baby was not the result of a night of passion including her and any man who was not as fat and immobile as her poor Albert had been for quite a long time.

She hoped that Mr. Todd could think of something good, although it also saddened her that she needed his help in this aspect of her life. But if things were going well, she was going to need his help with more than just that. No one had ever explained her how things like diapers and breastfeeding were supposed to work exactly. She had been the youngest child of her parents and thus she was the girl who was being taken care of by her mother and older sisters instead of learning to do so herself. After that, she had ended up marrying at the age of nineteen, and that marriage had remained childless on purpose. Not that anyone knew that Albert and she chose not to have any children; a good Christian woman was supposed to pop out babies as if it was the sole purpose of her life after all.

But the marriage of Albert and her hadn't been one in the traditional sense of the world. It had been a bond of friendship and protection – or so Nellie had thought. Only after many years she had found out that Benjamin Barker wasn't the only one who was completely blind when it came to the feelings of persons that were closest to him. Only in the last month of his life she had known how deeply Albert had been in love with her, all this time, but that he placed her happiness above his own and hadn't forced her to do anything that she didn't want.

In retrospect she was both grateful and ashamed. She was glad that she didn't have to share a bed with a man she didn't love or didn't even feel attracted to, but it saddened her that her husband had been just as unhappy as she was when it came to love. She and Benjamin could never be together, she knew that, but Albert and she… they were together already, and yet, she was almost as far away from him as Benjamin was from her. If only she would've known, they might have been able to make it work… But it had been too late already and what was left for them was one night, only one night, to make up for all the time that they had not been together.

But no one had known of all that, no one had ever known, even not the barber and his wife who rented the room above their home in the first years. Even when time passed and the Barkers were seemingly gone, no one had ever suspected that it was not nature that prevented the young baker from becoming a mother.

People however did presume, always just a bit too loudly, that the Lovetts were having very, very bad luck when it came to children. Surely there was something wrong with his body – or hers, you could never know. Nellie had always pretended not to hear it and although the lack of subtlety of her acquaintances and neighbors hurt her, there were always her husband's soothing words and calming presence to comfort her. During the years, she had been perfectly happy with their unusual arrangements; and more than once she had enjoyed the irony of the fact that it was marriage, which chained most women to often uncaring husbands, that saved her from a miserable life as an inferior human being.

But now that she was pregnant after all, no one would ever believe that Albert was the father of her child – not only because of his physical appearance, but because most people had believed that the unhealthy looking man was the reason she hadn't been pregnant before in the first place.

Her thoughts were interrupted when Sweeney entered her bedroom without knocking. He closed the door quietly behind him, making as little sound as possible, as if he didn't want to be noticed in this certain part of her house – and he doubtlessly didn't indeed.

Blinking, she forced herself to think about the current problems. She had been so focused on the past that she had hardly been aware of the passing of time in the present.

"Couldn't you think of a room more appropriate?" he asked, while looking at the bed that she was sitting on disapprovingly.

" I couldn't really send Toby to the bake house to give us some privacy, could I?" she asked, trying to sound annoyed and patient at the same time. "You were the one who wanted to come down."

The barber didn't reply. The fact that he didn't verbally attack her (yet), indicated that he wasn't in a very bad mood. Perhaps she was going to be able to have a say in the thing after all. She didn't feel like being part of a plan that she didn't like at all. Deep trouble or not, she still had some dignity.

"Well," she said, gentler this time, intending to start the conversation politely at least. "Do you have a good idea that allows me to have my child without me – us – being banned from society?"

"Yes," Sweeney said, his blank expression gone for just a second, but it happened so quickly that she couldn't understand the flash of actual emotion beneath it. "I certainly have."

"Let's hear it then," she replied, in spite of herself very curious what he was going to say.