For the next month, while my pregnancy became my “baby” and I crept ever closer to that three-month mark that chose my path for me, I started to think about how I would explain it. To whom I should explain it. And I started to worry about the logistics. Unemployed, living in a small room in my dad’s house, making excuses not to see my mother. How would a baby fit into that? I remembered distant talk about council houses for single parents, about benefits. I remembered them from snatched snippets of adult conversations, and they weren’t favorable snippets. This world hadn’t been one I’d considered before, certainly not when I lived in Atlanta, with a bathroom bigger than my current bedroom.
And yet I looked out on the little lawn that my dad and Hilary were so proud of and I imagined a little girl or boy playing there. Squashy knees and dimples. I looked at the new table-and-chair set in the kitchen diner, and I imagined a little high chair pulled up to it, wedged between the chairs. I looked down at my body, and I imagined it swollen fully, and I put my hand there and wanted to see it sooner. And then I knew, I had to tell someone.
I asked Hilary and Dad if I could talk to them, and they nudged each other jokily. “This seems very serious!”
When I first got to my dad’s house after our flight from Atlanta, I’d been amazed at how much he’d aged. His curly brown hair had more gray strands than brown, and his face was weatherworn. He moved slower than I was used to but he still had an impish excitement to him, a bubble of energy that Robin said, on one of our rare evenings together, was because I was back. “Don’t embarrass him by saying anything, but he’s been like a bloody kid at Christmas ever since Mum told him you wanted to move back in.”
We sat at the new dining table. They were so proud of it that we seemed to sit here for everything. And now I was about to taint it. I swallowed hard. “I have something to tell you.”
My dad asked, of course, whose baby it was. I’d got a story already lined up: a boy at a party in Atlanta, I didn’t know his name. I don’t think Hilary believed me but my dad did. I could tell by the way his face fell.
“Does your mother know?” Hilary asked, touching my hand lightly.
“No, and please don’t tell her.”
“She’d understand, love, she wasn’t much older when…” My dad left it hanging in the air.
“And how far along are you?” Hilary asked, moving her hand to my dad’s as he stared at his tea, looking a hundred years old.
“Over three months,” I said. “Going from the date that it, you know, that…”
“I know,” she’d said.
“It’s too late,” I’d added. “There’s nothing I can do.” Perhaps I’d said it too soon, but they didn’t push me.
Ever since I told him my news, Dad hasn’t known how to be with me. He never asks about the baby directly but offers me warm drinks and makes me sandwiches. He bought me herbal tea at Hilary’s suggestion but didn’t acknowledge why I was off caffeine. Hilary’s asked about tiredness and sickness a few times, but I can tell she starts to think about her own pregnancy with Callum, and his name carries a black cloud now. He hasn’t been back to visit since I got here. He doesn’t know about his nephew or niece. And he’ll never know that this mound under my baggy sweater actually holds his half brother or half sister.
It’s getting late, but I can hear Robin crashing about in the kitchen, so I go down. She’s making hot cordial and a grilled cheese, smears of melted cheddar trailing between the sandwich maker and the sideboard. She’s drunk.
“Been out?” I say.
“Just practicing with the band,” she slurs. “Few beers. Sorry, I should have thought. You could have come.”
“It’s fine.” I almost laugh, because imagine.
There’s a smirk breaking on her face but I don’t think it’s at my expense. Something about the way she adjusts her clothes and runs her fingers through her tangled hair.
“Are you seeing someone?” I ask.
The smirk flickers fully. “Not really, just a guy who works behind the bar at the Purple Turtle. We…” She rolls her eyes and giggles, a sound I’ve not heard for many years. “Have a connection. Of sorts.”
She breaks her toasted sandwich in two, hopping around with it as it scalds her hands. She slops her hot cordial out of the mug, so I take it from her to help before she ends up with third-degree burns.
We go into the living room and flick on the TV. A different set since I was last here.
We put on The Word and I lay down carefully, sighing as I ease myself into a comfortable position. She looks at me, her head to one side. “What’s going on with you?” she says. “Are you all right?”
So I just shrug and say it. “I’m pregnant.” Just like that.
Her mouth falls open like a cartoon character and she repeats what I’ve said like she’s trying to make sense of it. “You’re…pregnant?”
“Yeah,” I say, and I rub my stomach as if that proves something.
“Um, what? Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously.”
“Did you just smile, Sarah? Are you happy?”
“Well,” I say, because that’s the first time anyone’s asked me that. “Yeah,” I say, and then I let myself smile properly. “Yeah, I guess I am. I shouldn’t be, but I am. I mean, it wasn’t planned.”
She bursts out laughing. “No shit!”
I tell her how far along I am. I answer the questions only she’s asked me. About how it feels. About what Dad had said, Mum. When I tell Robin that Mum doesn’t know, she says I should tell her with my head held high. That Mum is a bitch whose opinion I shouldn’t care about. I say it isn’t just her. I’m emphatic that I don’t want Drew to know. Or Callum, for that matter.
“Why? Who gives a shit what Drew thinks?”
“I just, I don’t know. Not yet, okay?”
“It’s up to you.” She shrugs. “But I don’t see why you care what anyone thinks.”
She’s right. Drew certainly doesn’t deserve my concern, but it isn’t that simple. If Drew knew I was pregnant, he would know it’s his. My biggest fear of all is that he would want the baby. Or, worse, the baby and me. I know I wouldn’t be strong enough to say no. I’d watched my mum snared in his tractor beam for long enough to know that.
“I just…” I fumble. “I just don’t want the earache,” I say. Robin is silent for a good minute, while the sound of Terry Christian’s grating little voice blathers in the background.
“You know I don’t believe you, don’t you? But if you don’t want me to tell them, that’s up to you,” she says. She stops asking questions and falls asleep with toastie crumbs sprinkled around her mouth.
THIRTY-SEVEN
SARAH|PRESENT DAY
Robin’s ringing the bell for the man who’s trying to kill himself, but he’s not answering. My hand is still in hers and the heat makes our palms sweaty, but she grips me tight.
“He’s not going to get down and answer, is he?” Robin says, more to herself than to me.
She starts ringing all the other bells. I worry about annoying people. A man’s life is at stake but it still rattles me.
Eventually a voice comes over the buzzer. “Yeah?” We don’t know which buzzer, but Robin puts her mouth to the microphone and pleads for them to let us in. “One of your neighbors is trying to kill himself,” she says.
“What?” The voice is skeptical rather than alarmed.
“Seriously. Please. We’ve called an ambulance but it’ll take too long.”
Bzzz. The door opens a crack and we push ourselves through. As we’re about to jog up the stairs, still holding hands but looser now that we’re inside, one of the ground-floor flats opens up and a young guy comes out. He’s dressed smartly but his face is ashen.