This is set when Alfie left for Australia.
If the reality of their predicament hadn't sunk in last night with the pile of cash in his hands, it was certainly hitting home now. The length of time that he had left in his pregnant wife's company for the next month was equal to, he guessed, a fifth of the duration of the flight that lay ahead. He'd never fancied himself as a Mathematician, but then he was in no sense enthused by the prospect of leaving her either, especially now. He had everything now that he had wanted right from the first moment they met; Kat, a family of their own and in-laws that weren't a total nightmare. Alfie never wanted to leave her side; most definitely not now. It wasn't just that Kat was finally having his babies which made him feel that way, although it made the need to share in every part of this pregnancy all the more intense. The part which bothered him the most was the thoughts that his impending absence would be putting into the mind of his other half. He'd missed out on all that time when she'd been carrying Tommy; the sickness, the appointments, noticing the bump for the first time; he'd be missing some of that over again, and worse than that, would she fear that he'd leave her for even longer than a month?
Despite his insistence that he had no desire to fill their final hours together with any Masood talk, Kat had gone off at a bit of a tangent at how his luck was going from bad to worse. Being dumped by the only woman he'd allowed himself to grow close to since Zainab had left him, losing money; they'd been down on their luck of late, but they'd had each other and their twins, a brighter light than either had dared to hope for at the end of a dark tunnel.
"Kat, darlin'," Alfie began gently. "I know you don't want to think about it but we can't avoid talking about it. I have to go. I've tried the market, I've looked for bar work, what other options have we got?"
Nodding sadly, Kat found herself admitting defeat, something that was quite unknown to her. "I'll just miss you, that's all," she claimed. If she allowed her true feelings to emerge, things would get more emotional than they needed to and it would surely make the issue of saying goodbye harder.
"I know you, that's not it." There was no way Alfie was letting this one go when he was about to jet off for a month.
"What if Tommy won't sleep? You know he only likes your stories; I need my rest with these two."
"Kat," Alfie uttered warningly, knowing that she was still hiding something from him. The blessing here was that he was certain it wouldn't be anything sinister, but that didn't mean that it was fine. It was very far from ok; she needed his support now more than ever, and he was determined to provide it in any way possible; be it texting on every break and calling every evening, appointing a few extra people to keep an eye out for her, or soothing her doubts in the present. He was sure that Bianca and Terry would see Kat just fine in his absence, but if he needed to rope in Mick and Ian to support her also, he would.
"You'll think I'm pathetic," she told him, in a barely audible muttering.
"I think you're silly, I could never think that of you. Look at everything you've been through; how you've changed and the way you'll do anything for family. I think you're amazing," he smiled reassuringly.
"What if you meet someone else, or decide that I've trapped you, or both?"
Alfie looked confused. "Trapped me?" he questioned.
Shrugging, Kat continued to reluctantly lay her fears out on the table, so to speak. "You know; we haven't even been back together two months yet and already we're having twins."
"This is what, eight, nine years overdue. I could never think that, or give you up. I tried that and look what happened," he reminded her, referring of course to the brief period that he had been with Roxy. It may not have seemed so brief to Kat, but the truth of the matter was that it was just that; a mere flash in the pan in comparison to the years that they had spent, and would spend, together. "You trapped me the moment I set eyes on you; there could never be anyone else."
"I love you."
"I love you more."
"Not possible."
"I think we should just agree to disagree on this one Kat, I don't want to spend the rest of our time together debating this one either," Alfie announced. "I'm gonna go and fetch Tommy down here," he added, before placing a gentle kiss on her forehead and leaving the room.
Kat, Alfie and Tommy had it seemed been sitting together in the lounge for no time at all when Alfie announced that he had better start saying his goodbyes. Obviously, the reception that this fact received was somewhat frosty.
"Already? Alfie, your flight's not until three. It's what," Kat hesitated, as she checked the time on her phone. "Quarter past ten."
"Longer the flight is the earlier you have to check in," he lied. It didn't sound quite right to Kat; America was a long flight and they hadn't checked in that early then, but there were more pressing matters to deal with here, and she thought nothing more of it.
Twenty or so minutes later and Alfie had said his goodbyes to Tommy, telling him to be a good boy at nursery and to look after his mummy and little sisters or brothers. He seemed to have grasped this about as well as he had done the news that his Daddy would be working away for a month; that being not well at all, as among other things, he'd asked that Alfie bring him back a bucket and spade. He understood that his Daddy was leaving, but the idea that this was not for a holiday and the concept of how long a month was remained alien to his three year old self, even if he had been exposed to far more than any child of his age should have to be.
Terry was presently loading Alfie's cases into his cab, but for all the notice that Kat had taken of this, you could have told her that they had been moved there by the suitcase fairies and she'd likely have believed it. Her attention was better off focused on her departing husband, and that was exactly where it would remain until he had left.
"Call me," she urged him, doing her best to manage a smile moments prior to his departure. It was no mean feat; she'd never tire of him, and through the seven weeks or so that they'd been back together, despite everything, they'd remained in the honeymoon phase as it were. The prospect of a month apart was a terrifying one.
"Course I will," he agreed, throwing his arms around her for the final time.
It was a challenge for Alfie to extract himself from the embrace a few minutes later, as Kat had taken to holding onto him as if her life depended on it. As far as she was concerned, it did, but perhaps this being in the sense that she never wanted them to split up again was more appropriate. "I want text alerts alright?" he added, kneeling down to kiss her stomach.
Kat nodded, with most of the words that followed passing in a blur, as she began to cry softly.
"I'm not going to say it okay, it'll set me off. I'm going to say hello; hello to our new life once we get this month out of the way." He'd have been grateful for a job in the Vic as barman, in Scarlett's as a cleaner, even at the Arches as a general dogsbody, but this particular opportunity he wasn't viewing with gratitude; it was merely something that had to be done in order for them to move forward. He didn't even perceive it as an opportunity as such, all it was was the reason that he would be missing out on the next month with his wife and children.
Rolling her eyes at his transposed greetings, Kat could do nothing but cling to Tommy and try her best to see straight through her tears as Alfie walked reluctantly up the path.
Kat was staring at the phone number for the suppliers as her mobile bleeped to signal that she had received a text message. Bianca had been fibbing when she'd informed Mr Lister that they were thinking of branching out into the accessories market, but maybe it wasn't such a daft idea. If she could negotiate some free accessories if the two placed a larger than usual, maybe a larger discount too, perhaps Alfie could return home sooner. How were they to know that Fat Elvis wasn't a top clothes supplier? She and Bianca had sourced enough stock from him just lately that it implied they had obtained a better deal elsewhere.
Quickly pulling the offending object from her pocket, Kat hoped for some good news. All flights to Australia were grounded for the foreseeable; there was a bad connection and this bar was actually being opened in Sidmouth and not Sydney; it had all turned out to be a big con and he wouldn't be going anywhere, anything would do. She'd nagged and nagged him to get a job, but she was certainly regretting that right now. It would almost have been better if he'd resorted to pulling more scams; he might have wound up in the nick for the third time, but at least she'd have been able to see him every day.
Her face turned to one of surprise as the words appeared across the screen.
"Meet me in Southend, quick as you can xxx," the text instructed. Who this was from didn't need saying, it was him all over; romantic to the end.
Kat wasn't even aware of it, but she must have taken this in, for she was almost immediately shouting out for Mo. "Nan, can you watch Tommy for a bit?"
For perhaps the first time, Kat was doing exactly as she had been told, as far as it was in her control to do so anyway. This would be a whole lot easier if she didn't have to get a tube and a train to get there, but she wouldn't miss it for the world. He'd been gone what, half an hour; already she was missing him like crazy.
Kat tapped her foot impatiently as she waited in the queue for a ticket machine to come free. Why was it that people were incapable of making up their minds before they caused a mass hold up? Alfie would really be needing to check in at this rate and they'd miss their chance. They'd missed enough chances in the past, she didn't want them to miss any more.
Having eventually got to the front, Kat was getting a serious sense of deja-vu at the alternatives presented to her. Why so many? It was Southend, not the middle of London. Southend Airport. Southend Central. Southend East. Southend Victoria. How was she supposed to know which station was closest to the pier? She hadn't been on so much as a bus since Alfie had crashed the wedding more than ten years previously. Alfie hadn't said that that was where he wanted to meet her, but he didn't need to say it. It was their place. Some might have branded her a cynic, but the way Kat saw it, any ticket collector would tell you that the most expensive option was the closest. That and she really didn't have the time to lose her place in the queue and start all over again. Glancing over at the departure boards, Kat saw that the next departure was bound for Southend Central and quickly selected that option, hoping for the best.
Kat had to admit that she had almost been bowled over when she'd realised that she had picked the correct station, almost at random. She was never lucky, and having Alfie back and twins on the way, she felt as though she'd had her allocation of luck for the next five years all at once.
"Kat!" Alfie called, catching sight of her from the bench that he was sitting on, on the front naturally.
"Alfie," she grinned back, as she dashed toward him. "I'm sorry; earlier, I just couldn't bear to watch you drive off."
"Sit down there you," he gestured, as Kat joined him on the pier. Technically, he was telling her what to do, but he was never bossy with it. With Alfie, there was always a very good reason for it, and she'd be foolish to refuse him. "What are you like ey?" he asked rhetorically.
"You were planning this all along weren't you?" she asked as she popped herself down next to him.
The cheeky grin that was plastered across his features was enough to give him away as he replied innocently, "I might have been."
"Couldn't have chosen somewhere closer could ya, like the playground?" It wasn't that there always had to be a problem; only most of the time; but negotiating public transport on a Friday, in her condition?
"This is our place, well except from the Vic," he admitted sadly. "It had to be here."
"What did?" Kat questioned, wondering whether she'd missed something here as she looked out to sea dreamily.
When Kat turned back to Alfie, he was on his knees before her, hand outstretched. "Kat, will you marry me… again?"
"Alfie, course I will!" she squealed, leaving Alfie with quite a challenge as he tried to put her engagement ring back where it belonged.
"Sit still will you, you dozy mare," he urged, as he unsuccessfully attempted to hold an excitable Kat still with one hand and slip her ring on with the other.
"What a lovely way to speak to your fiancée!"
Smiling, Alfie responded, "You know I don't mean it," as he finally managed to get her ring back in its rightful place. He then kissed the spot where the ring lay adoringly, before Kat pulled him up to face her by the neck of his jacket.
"Alfie, how are we gonna do this? We need all the money we've got for Tommy and these two," she worried aloud.
"I didn't mean on my first day back or anything," Alfie tried to reassure his fiancée. "With the money I get from this bar, we've got enough to do Tommy's room up nice for him, paint the nursery for the twins, get the second cot, get them some clothes, stock up on nappies. It's enough to set us up, then we can look at it."
"It might be thousands we're talking about here but it's not going to last forever. You still don't have a job when you get back," she voiced nervously.
"I know that Kat, but it's enough to get us started; take the pressure off while I look for something else. I'm not holding you to a date here, just one day… yeah?" Was she having second thoughts?
"Yeah," she muttered contentedly, cuddling into his shoulder as he sat back down beside her.
"I promise you, we're going to be just fine. You, me, Tommy, Bert and Ernie."
"I hope you know there's no way we're calling them Bert and Ernie," she told him seriously.
"No, what should we call them then?"
"Depends if they're boys or girls."
"I thought you thought they were boys."
"I do, but I've been wrong before, I can be wrong again." She'd been so wrong she could continue to list her errors almost non-stop until Alfie returned, some more serious than others. Being too stupid to see what a good thing she had, taking him for granted, lying to him, cheating on him, all five times. And those were just the Alfie themed wrongs.
"Kathleen Moon, be wrong, surely not," Alfie joked playfully.
Kat didn't want to put it into words, or even to go as far as to allude to the issue; today would prove to be the saddest day for a long while, and she had no desire to add to that by referring again to the biggest mistake of her life. As she stared again into Alfie's eyes, she realised that she didn't need to. Again, he knew precisely what she was thinking and nodded to reaffirm that it didn't matter anymore. "So what should we call them then?"
"I thought of it the other day when Terry was ranting on about Carol and David," Kat began, leaving Alfie wondering where this was headed, or rather, what names she would want to inflict on their unborn children. It wasn't as if Carol and David's families had a normal streak between them when it came to naming their children. Billie, for a boy; Deano, Jimbo and a dog called Wellard. "Victoria."
Breaking out into a smile, Alfie let out a gasp, while resisting the urge to hug the life out of her for about the fiftieth time that day. He needed to know that she was serious first. "You mean it?"
"I miss her too Alfie."
"I thought you'd want to name her after Jean," confessed Alfie. It was as if the two were now certain that they would have a daughter.
"We still can, she's got to have a middle name. I never got my parents giving Lynne a middle name and none of the rest of us," Kat told him, quickly adding, "It's got to be Victoria don't you think? Like we said before, if it wasn't for her, we wouldn't be together." She was desperate to avoid the Mum topic at the best of times, so she certainly wasn't discussing it today. "How pretty would that be hey, Victoria Jean?" Kat trailed off. "Alfie, what do you think?"
"It's beautiful, you're beautiful and she'll be beautiful," he gushed. Every time he called her beautiful she told him that he was a flatterer, but he couldn't help himself, not when it came to her.
"Of course she will, with us two fine specimens as parents," beamed Kat.
"What about if we have a boy?" Alfie asked softly.
"Alfie Junior, after his father and the only man I'll ever love."
"Really?"
"Why wouldn't I?" She was the first to admit that Alfie could be a bit stupid at times, but this was off the scale.
"I remember when I wanted to call Tommy Alfie Junior, you didn't want to."
"Alfie, this'll probably sound stupid now but at the time, I just couldn't risk it. It wasn't that I didn't want to," she told him.
"Risk it?"
"Alfie, you said you'd be Tommy's dad but there was a time that Billy said that to Mo about Freddie. Look how that turned out. I couldn't call him Alfie Junior when I didn't know whether it would work out," she admitted, hoping that he wouldn't take it the wrong way. She would never have held it against him if it hadn't have worked out; when she'd decided to keep Tommy, she'd perceived it as a clear choice between her husband and her child. It'd been far more than she'd ever dared hope for when he'd offered the chance of a family life. It couldn't have been easy for him, she knew that; taking on someone else's child when they'd spent the four years prior dreaming of their own, even more so later on when he'd believed that he could never have that. It was a fairly inappropriate consolation; you can't have children, but here's one I made when I was out of my skull.
"It makes sense, we'd probably have argued about it until we were blue in the face back then but I get it. I really do," Alfie said, speaking a little slower than usual. The words had literally fallen from his lips as his mind had worked back through that time. "So what's Alfie Junior's middle name going to be then?"
"You choose," offered Kat. "I picked the rest of the names."
"No you didn't, you suggested, I liked them and we agreed."
"Think of some ideas while you're you know…" Kat told him, not wanting to say the words going away for fear that it would make it more real.
"You think of some too and we'll compare notes when I get back. Together, all the way," he reiterated, leading the parents-to-be to lose themselves in their own little world for a time.
"I better go," a reluctant Alfie told his expectant; what was she? Fiancee? Wife? Partner? Lover? All of them?
"Alfie, I love you for this, but I hate you for it too."
"Kat, darlin', we've been through this…"
"I don't mean about you going, I mean for making me say goodbye twice in one day. I've got an extra dose of hormones you know," she interrupted him, doing her upmost to put on a brave face.
"I've told you, it's hello, not goodbye. I'm coming back. I knew you'd panic when it came down to it so I arranged this. We might not get remarried any time soon but it's a symbol, okay?"
Kat nodded, doing her best to keep her tears at bay, at least until he'd gone and she was en-route back to the train station. "You be careful, right? We need you back here in one piece."
"Scouts honour," Alfie remarked; it had become something of a private joke between them now. He climbed to his feet and held his hand out to Kat, which she took without question. She didn't want to see him drive out of her life; temporarily though it may be, but she would follow him anywhere, just as she always had. America, Spain, anywhere.