Paulette has to get two buses to work, the 61 into town, then a walk across Cathedral Green to catch the number 18 going north. Right near the bus stop, there’s a new children’s shop with pushchairs and cots in the window. She checks her watch. Ten minutes before the bus comes. She walks up to the front door and pushes it open.
It smells fresh, clean and new. There’s a choice of three different prams and a white highchair with a row of coloured balls on a loop that fixes on to the front, and then, when you want to feed the baby, it moves aside. Not too expensive neither. At the back of the shop there’s a little pretend baby’s bedroom with an ABC rug and a rocking chair with a footstool for nursing the baby. And in the centre of the room there’s a cot that becomes a little bed when you pull the levers on the side. Paulette’s never seen anything like it. A cot for a baby and bed for your boy or girl all in one. Bright yellow gingham baby quilt on top with a white-and-yellow tiger pillow. Just beautiful. Smooth wood, not made in some factory on the other side of the world. No, this is made by a proper carpenter with half-moon glasses and a little chisel in his hand.
A girl comes and stands next to Paulette. ‘Adele’ says the badge on her chest.
‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ she says.
‘Beautiful,’ says Paulette. ‘How much is it?’
‘Depends on whether you want the natural wood or the white wood. Or we do a limed oak. We’ve also got an opening offer, the whole package with the bed, the covers and the linen.’
Paulette likes the idea of a package where you get everything one time and you don’t have to wait.
‘And we do finance,’ says the girl quickly. ‘Is it for yourself ? Or . . .’
‘Yes,’ says Paulette and without thinking, without no plan, Paulette’s hand moves over her stomach and stays there. The girl does the same and whispers, ‘I’m three months gone. Not really showing yet.’
‘Nor me,’ says Paulette and because she’s started and she wants to know what it’s like to say it out loud, because she wants the feeling that it could be true, because it might as well be, she just carries on. ‘I’m three months as well.’
‘Oh, congratulations!’ says the girl. ‘What’s your due date?’
But Paulette doesn’t have a calendar at the tip of her tongue so she just says, ‘Summertime.’
The two of them stare at the cot that becomes a bed until Paulette says, ‘I want the baby’s room ready early. How much did you say it was?’
When the bus comes, Paulette sits up at the front on her own. She faces the window but she sees nothing. Not the weaving, stuttering cars, not the headscarved women shopping for vegetables, nor the tears of rain chasing one another against the glass, nor the dark, dark sky meaning more rain, meaning Paulette getting soaked before she even starts her shift. No, Paulette is all the way back home, standing at the door of her second bedroom, seeing the carpet that she will rip up and change to mint green. And them purple curtains so thin you can see the morning sun right through them? Change them for pale green velvet with little silver moons and stars sprinkled all over so the baby has something to look at while it’s going to sleep. She sees the cot that becomes a bed and wonders if she should go ahead and put a down payment on it. But maybe that would be inviting bad luck. No, better to wait until she’s actually pregnant. Whenever it is, Paulette’s baby will have the best of everything and won’t be waking up too early because the mattress is uncomfortable or she didn’t invest in good blackout curtains, no. But then again, a baby will do whatever it wants and it’s the mother that works around it. So Paulette’s heard.
Paulette was lucky. She slept in the same bed as her grandmother until she was six years old. A small house at the bottom of the hill in Basseterre with a verandah wrapped right round the front and two steps down to the trickle of river that would dry up every summer. The smell of the Caribbean sea, the night rain beating down on the corrugated iron roof, soft as a lullaby, fierce as a fight. Granny slept hot like a furnace, same as Denton, and little Paulette would slide to the far corner of the bed to keep clear and get some sleep.
Sometimes when she woke up in the morning, Granny would be looking at her and smiling, calling ‘My Sweet Pea’ in her sing-song voice. Then breakfast of scrambled egg with chopped onion and pimento, Johnny Cakes and tea in Paulette’s special enamel cup, three sugars and condensed milk. Paulette sat on the floor between Granny’s legs to get her hair oiled and plaited.
‘What time is, Paulette?’ her grandmother would ask and Paulette would have to recite the Lord’s Prayer before she went off to school.
‘You hear that? Lead us not into temptation. That’s the most important one, Sweet Pea. And then love. And forgiveness,’ her grandmother would say. ‘Remember, now.’
Okay, so Paulette told the girl in the shop a white lie but really it was only telling the truth in advance. Sooner or later, she will have a baby. She doesn’t nag Denton about it because he likes to take one step at a time, but she knows he wants children, he told her so enough times, just not yet.
When Paulette’s baby is born, she’ll have it christened in the cathedral in town where all the upstanding people gather, where good families walk slowly up the path, arm in arm, in suits and hats and handbags. That’s where Paulette will thank the Lord and baptize her child into the Christian faith and have a little party afterwards. With her own hands, she’ll bake an iced-white fruitcake with pink edible roses round the edge. She will probably be married by then, but if she’s not, then their own child can be bridesmaid or pageboy, throwing petals on the floor.
Honeymoon is obvious. Jamaica for Denton and St Kitts for Paulette. There’s a few old aunties and a couple of cousins there. Not really people she keeps in touch with but if she had to call on family they’re the only ones left out there. So, a good couple of weeks in the sun while someone looks after the baby. But stop! There is no one on this earth Paulette would ever trust with her child, not one single person, so the baby will come too. Maybe by that time there would be two children. Maybe there would be three, who knows? But anyway, they will all go away together and make it a family holiday as well as a honeymoon. Sweet Pea, Denton and their little tribe.
Princess Alexandria Hospital, Men’s Ward, day shift. Every auxiliary nurse comes to the job with their own ways. For example, Paulette doesn’t mind feeding people, bed-making and cleaning, but she can do without bedpans and washing. If she’s on with Marcia and Tanya, they have a good system, swapping jobs and helping each other out until the shift runs sweet and quick and it’s done before you know it. Sister McKenzie always says that when the three of them are on shift, the world is a better place, but then Sister McKenzie knows how to get the best out of her staff.
Marcia just got married last month. Paulette was invited and Marcia said she could bring someone but Denton was on a job in Amsterdam so she went on her own and told Denton all about it while he was eating his dinner. Stew-down chicken, yam, green banana, sweet potatoes and coleslaw on the side.
Paulette likes to eat quick and then bustle about in the kitchen, chatting to Denton while he cleans his plate.
‘Who is Maria again?’ he says.
‘Marcia, Denton. She works with me. The one whose boyfriend bought the BMW. Well, it’s her husband now.’
‘The Three Series?’
‘I don’t know. It’s green.’
She fills his glass, wipes up a few grains of rice from her plastic tablecloth.
‘She looked lovely, Denton. They must have spent some serious money, that’s all I can say. White Rolls-Royce and six bridesmaids with little silver shoes and ribbons in their hair. And one pageboy at the front. Flowers everywhere. Shame you couldn’t come. Food, as much as you could eat, and a DJ all night. I got you a piece of the wedding cake for later. There was a really good sound system so I even had a little dance but some of the guys were getting too fresh. You know what they’re like when there’s a lot of drinking. Anyway, I didn’t get in too late but it was a really good night. Wish you could have come, Denton.’
‘Three Series is a good car but the Six or the Eight Series is better. Me and Garfield saw a nice one up Baldwins Lane last week. Garfield couldn’t stop talking about it. It was nice, man. Good shape.’
He reaches out and slides his hand around the top of her leg.
‘Talking of good shape . . .’
He tugs her away from the sink and on to his lap. ‘You’d look good in the passenger seat of a Six Series with a fold-down top, Paulette.’
She digs his fork into the last piece of yam on his plate and holds it to his lips, but he rears back.
‘No, P, I beg you.’
Paulette picks up his plate and slides the debris into the bin. ‘Marcia’s dress was what they call “blush” with pretty embroidery all up the edge of the veil. Tight, fitted here round the chest. She had her hair straightened as well. And a tiara.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ She looks at him loosening his belt. ‘But you know what, Denton? Like you say, I could think of better uses for that kind of money.’
He takes the last sip of Appleton’s rum that she’s diluted with a little bit of water. He sits back in his chair. ‘My God, Paulette, don’t give me so much next time. My belly is hurting.’
‘You don’t have to eat it all, you know.’
‘I can’t say no to anything, Paulette, you know that,’ he says, grabbing her again, drawing her down. ‘I always want more.’
Marcia, who is thirty, and Tanya, who is thirty-four, are both married and Paulette is not. Then again, both of them had the good sense to choose a man who doesn’t work in European construction and can come home every night.
Not a man who still keeps a room in his best friend’s flat, especially when that same best friend, Garfield, happens to be a fool with scutter-level morals. And Paulette has never seen this room, never been in it once. Denton says he’d be embarrassed to bring her there, because Garfield has different women every night, low-grade women he wouldn’t like Paulette to meet, and anyway, the place isn’t kept nice. Denton’s own bedroom is full of his records and his hi-fi and not much else, stuff that would mess up Paulette’s tidy house. And it’s cheap. Garfield doesn’t charge him much and it’s useful to have somewhere to lay his head for them rare, rare times him and Garfield go out late and come in making a whole heap of noise. Garfield is like that, a drinker and a playboy, and Denton is good to keep him around. Anyway, all in all, Denton will keep his little room until they’re ready to make the move to their new house together.
If you want the truth, Paulette’s getting impatient. Can’t help it. Tanya has a little boy, eight years old, and Marcia will take exactly five minutes to get pregnant because she’s like that, very ambitious and a bit superior. Paulette will be last. And they’re always saying that Paulette should put her foot down and make Denton show her that he’s serious. Both of them asking why she doesn’t bring him round to their houses and let everyone meet him. Or at the very least, make some kind of date for moving in. Nothing she hasn’t thought herself, but at the end of the day, Denton is different to other men. Denton is better looking, funnier, a big thinker with big plans and a big heart. And that’s all that matters.
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From Sweet Pea by Kit de Waal. Used with permission of the publisher, St Martin’s Press. Copyright © 2026 by Kit de Waal.
