by Paige Toon
‘Where are we going now?’ Penelope moans from the back seat.
‘For a drive,’ Ethan replies through gritted teeth.
‘I don’t want to go for a drive!’ she snaps. ‘Why couldn’t we stay at Nanny and Grandad’s instead of coming to see her again?’
I tense up.
‘Her name is Amber, and she’s a friend of Daddy’s so don’t speak to her like that.’
‘Mum says she fancies you,’ Penelope states sulkily.
‘Well, your mum’s mental,’ Ethan snaps.
I flash him a look. Jeez, careful…
‘I’m going to tell her you said that!’ Penelope yells.
‘Why don’t you bring them with us to the property?’ I whisper, feeling bad about the whole situation.
‘I don’t want them with us,’ he mutters.
‘I don’t want to come with you anyway!’ Penelope cries, her voice wavering.
I twist round in my seat and see that Rachel has awoken with the racket. Her eyes well up and her bottom lip begins to tremble.
‘Your dad didn’t mean that,’ I say kindly, wanting to kick Ethan as Rachel opens her mouth and lets out an almighty wail. What a git.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ he explodes, swerving off the road.
‘Ethan!’ I exclaim, shocked at his language. He angrily switches off the ignition.
Penelope lets rip. ‘I WANT TO GO HOME!’
Ethan yanks his door open, I presume to go to the back door to comfort his daughters, but a moment later they’re both still howling and he’s standing outside the car with his head in his hands.
‘Hey, hey,’ I shush them, startled at his behaviour. I reach back to rub their knees, one after the other. It makes no difference to the volume of their cries.
God. Is this what it’s always like?
‘I want my mummy!’ Rachel adds to the din.
‘Ssh, it’s okay, let me talk to your daddy,’ I say, getting out of the car. ‘Ethan!’ I hiss over the roof at him. ‘Sort it out!’
He lets his hands drop wearily and flashes me a resigned look before stalking over to the car and opening the back door.
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Hey! Girls, I’m sorry.’
He has to raise his voice over the pandemonium, but eventually he manages to get through to them and they both quieten down. I can still hear them asking for their mummy, though.
‘I’ll take you back to Mummy,’ he promises. ‘You’re going to be able to show her all of those Easter eggs the Easter Bunny brought!’ he says in as merry a tone as he can muster. It seems to do the trick.
With a few more sniffs and snivels, we’re on our way again.
Sadie does not look at all happy when she answers the door to the three of them, and the sight of her sets the girls off again. With Rachel snivelling in her arms and Penelope desolately clinging to her legs, I see her silently mouth a torrent of swear words at Ethan. I can’t see his face, but from his body language I’m guessing he’s giving as good as he gets. Finally he storms back to the car.
‘See you Wednesday, girls!’ he calls over his shoulder with exaggerated exuberance.
They don’t answer, their heads still buried against their mum.
Sadie retreats inside and slams the door with a loud bang.
Fifteen minutes later, Ethan is still in a foul mood. I haven’t even dared to speak to him. He’s turned the music up really loud and currently Arctic Monkeys are rocking the car. I’ve been looking out of the window, trying to get my head together. Is he always like that with his daughters? Or was that a one-off meltdown?
He reaches over and turns off the radio.
‘Sorry,’ he mutters.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I reply, cutting him some slack.
‘Christ,’ he says. ‘They sure know how to push my buttons.’
How am I supposed to respond to that?
‘Why couldn’t I have had a couple of boys?’ he continues. ‘I’m sure they would have been easier.’
‘Ethan!’ I reproach. ‘You can’t say that!’
He sighs heavily. ‘It’s true, though. Those three gang up on me.’
I shift uncomfortably in my seat and he glances at me.
‘What’s going through your mind?’ he asks, a touch unwillingly.
‘That that was really stressful and that you shouldn’t speak to your daughters like that,’ I tell him honestly.
He sighs again. ‘I know I shouldn’t, but you show me a parent who doesn’t lose it sometimes.’
‘NAUGHTY GIRL!’
‘Exactly,’ he says quietly, noticing me wince. He can read me so well.
Unwelcome thoughts rage through my mind. I wonder what Ned would be like as a parent. When I think of how he woke me up on my birthday last year, kissing my tummy with our tiny baby still inside… In a couple of hours he’ll be woken up by the excited shouts of his nieces and nephews. And despite the fact that he’ll undoubtedly have a sore head from the drinks he had with his family last night, he’ll still get up and watch the egg hunt with good humour. I know, because I’ve been witness to it on several occasions.
Ned and I may not have spent our first Christmas together with the enormous Matthews clan, but I’ve had countless other celebrations in their company. They’re warm and all-encompassing. Daunting at first – there are so many of them – and Ned’s mum is a frighteningly efficient bundle of energy, but then she would have to be, being a mother to five boys.
I’m including her husband in that number count – she waits on him, hand and foot.
I’m very fond of them all.
Ned’s oldest brother, Christopher, is in his late thirties and is married to Simone, who has a wicked sense of humour. They have three children: two boys and a girl, aged between seven and twelve.
Then there’s Michael, who’s a couple of years older than Ned, and he and his lovely wife Marian have two girls under the age of ten.
Ned is next in the age spectrum, being thirty-one, but even his younger brother, Benjamin, has a two-year-old toddler, and his wife, Susie, is four months pregnant with their second.
I adore Susie – she’s my favourite of the three wives and the one I’m closest to both in age and in personality. We have a good giggle.
It’s no wonder Ned wants children. He wants to be a part of the club. And he would be such a great dad. I feel like I’ve let him down.
I’m unexpectedly overcome with emotion.
Ned would be devastated having to tell his family that we’d broken up. I picture their traumatised reactions and hot and cold flushes wash over me in quick succession. Bile rises up in my throat and I swallow it back down, but my stomach is churning even more violently than usual.
Oh God, I really am going to be sick.
‘Pull over!’ I gasp, relaying this fact to Ethan.
He swerves off the road for the second time in an hour and I unclick my seat belt and practically fall out of the car, heaving and retching into the bushes. Nothing comes up at first, and then – urgh – hello, turkey roast.
‘Are you okay?’ Ethan calls after a minute from the safety of the driver’s seat.
I nod wretchedly.
‘I hope you haven’t got Sadie’s sick bug,’ he comments, reaching into the glove box and getting out some baby wipes. ‘Here.’ He passes them to me through the open door.
I gingerly take them and sit down on the seat, my legs still out of the door, facing the field we’re parked beside.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ I say as I clean myself up. ‘I’ve been feeling queasy for—’
My voice cuts off suddenly and the most intense darkness settles over me. Holy shit.
Holy shit!
Please tell me I’m not pregnant.
Chapter 32
I can practically feel the blood drain away from my face as I look over my shoulder at Ethan.
He stares back at me, bewildered, and a moment later, the penny drops.
‘No,’ he s
ays. ‘No, you can’t be.’
‘We didn’t use protection.’
‘But that was just the once! Are you serious?’
‘It only takes the once.’ I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience. ‘I meant to take the morning-after pill…’
‘Fuck!’ he erupts, his eyes wide with horror. ‘Why didn’t you?’
‘I don’t know!’ Hysteria builds in my gut. ‘I meant to go to the doctor – I thought about it. I just didn’t get round to it, and like you said, we only did it the once.’
Ethan clasps his head with his hands and neither of us says anything as the awfulness of the situation sinks in.
‘When is – when was – your period due?’ he asks eventually, glancing at me.
I shake my head. ‘I’m just trying to work it out. I think I was due this weekend – maybe a couple of days ago. Oh God!’ I feel like I’m going to cry.
‘We should get you a pregnancy test,’ he says firmly, putting the car in gear.
‘Yes.’ I nod. ‘Yes. We need to find a chemist.’ I pull the door shut and buckle my seat belt as he tears away from the kerb.
I feel slightly – but only very slightly – better, knowing that we have a plan. Maybe it is just a sick bug… Maybe Liz under-cooked the turkey…
Of course, it’s Easter Sunday, so can we find a chemist open in any of the tiny towns we pass through? No, we cannot.
I get on Ethan’s phone, but the only open chemist I can find is back in the city. We’re about to turn round and give up the ghost when the woman on the other end of the line asks me what I’m after.
Reluctantly, I tell her, and she suggests trying a petrol station. I thank her and begin a new search. Miracle upon miracles, I call one not too far from where we are and the man who answers confirms he has two tests on the shelf.
We drive straight there, our hearts in our mouths, not speaking to each other at all.
I feel like I’m going to throw up again as I go inside to the grubby station shop. Ethan waits out in the car.
‘Bit of an emergency, is it?’ the middle-aged man behind the counter says with a smarmy smile as I walk in and tell him I was the one who called.
‘Yes,’ I reply feebly.
He looks amused as he leads me to a shelf where the pregnancy tests are. He really does have only two and they’re exactly the same make. I pick up one and go to pay.
‘I take it this is a bit of a surprise?’ he asks, obviously bored and keen to chat.
‘How much?’ I respond, refusing to indulge him.
He looks put out as he tells me the price. I place a note on the counter and tell him to keep the change.
‘Don’t you want to use the toilet?’ Ethan asks as I open the door and climb in.
‘No, just drive, please.’
From the look of the place, the toilets will be filthy, and I’d have an audience waiting for the ‘happy’ news outside. I couldn’t bear it.
‘Where do you want me to go?’ he asks. ‘Pub?’
‘Are we far from Eden Valley?’
‘Ten minutes,’ he replies.
‘Can we head there? At least it’s private. I’ll go behind a tree.’
‘Not like I haven’t seen it all before,’ he says weakly.
‘Shut up.’
He does.
As we drive down the dirt road, all around us are burnt-out eucalyptus trees and scorch marks across the ground from the recent fire. The wire gate to the property is still standing, but the shed on our left as we drive in has been burnt to the ground – a pile of mangled, twisted metal. Up ahead, I see what I assume are the remains of Ethan’s Jaguar.
The dry grassy slopes are scorched black, but there are occasional patches of green grass pushing up through the soil after the recent rainfall. I glance up at the rocks and am heartened at the sight of a lazy mob of kangaroos, hopping away from us.
Ethan sighs heavily and I feel a pang of sorrow for him before remembering what I’m about to do, and then I feel only anxiety.
He pulls up and switches off the ignition and I climb out of the car and look around for a tree. The nearest one is a huge, blackened gum with brown, crispy, dead leaves. Further behind it is a pile of boulders. They’ll do.
I set off across the charred ground, the pregnancy test clutched in my hand.
Once out of sight, I shakily unwrap the packaging, glancing around with apprehension to make sure there’s no unwelcome wildlife in the vicinity. I shudder as I remember the black snake that slid so close to us in its bid to escape the fire. Sinking its fangs into humans was probably the last thing on its mind that day; now I might not be so lucky.
I can barely concentrate on the instructions for the test – it’s an old-fashioned one, not a digital one, so I have to pee on the stick and wait for the lines to appear. One equals good; two equals bad.
I feel a surge of guilt. Since when did pregnancy become a bad thing?
Since I screwed a man who wasn’t my husband, that’s when.
I feel like I’m going to throw up again. How could I have got myself into this position?
I take a few deep breaths to quell my nausea before getting on with it. A moment later, I’m done.
I feel faint as I stand back up again and tentatively come out from behind the boulders. Ethan shoots his head round to look at me, panicked. He’s leaning against the car boot, tense and expectant.
I shake my head at him and he visibly slumps with relief. Oh no, he thinks I mean…
‘No!’ I call to him. ‘I don’t know yet! I have to wait two minutes.’
I hold up two fingers and his body becomes racked once more with tension as I make my way back across the grass towards him. I don’t look at his face until I’m only a few metres away, and when I do his green eyes regard me with trepidation.
‘Can you see anything?’ he asks.
‘It hasn’t been two minutes,’ I reply in a small voice.
‘Just look,’ he snaps, reaching for the stick.
I hand it over and squeeze my eyes shut, and then I hear his sharp intake of breath and ping them open again.
‘You’re pregnant,’ he whispers.
‘No!’ I cry, slapping my hand over my mouth and staring at him with shock. His face is deathly white. ‘No!’ I cry again. ‘Oh no. No, I can’t be!’
I snatch the test from him and stare at the two blue lines. He buries his face in his hands.
‘No, no, no, no, no,’ I say, over and over again. ‘Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe this test is really old. Does it have an expiry date? Oh God! Ethan, what am I going to do?’
‘Fuck!’ he shouts suddenly, striding away from me. He stops after a few metres and stares at the distant hills. ‘Fuck,’ he mutters again under his breath. When he looks over his shoulder at me, his face is full of remorse. ‘Amber, I don’t want another baby.’
‘You bastard!’ I practically scream. ‘Don’t talk to me about whether or not you can have another baby! This is not about you! I’m married! Ned… Oh Ned…’
I burst into tears.
This is going to kill him.
The baby he’s always wanted belongs to another man. How will I ever break that news to him?
‘I’m sorry,’ Ethan says gruffly, putting his arm around my shoulders. I turn away from him and continue to bawl my eyes out. ‘I’m sorry.’ He pulls me back towards him and kisses my forehead, stroking my hair with his other hand.
‘I can’t believe this!’ I wail. ‘God, I’m evil. I know I should be punished for what I’ve done. But not with a baby… He doesn’t deserve this… Oh Ned!’ I sob my heart out as Ethan holds me in his arms. What am I going to do?
I could have an abortion…
My crying stops abruptly.
‘What?’ Ethan asks in confusion as I stare into space, dazed at the direction my thoughts are taking.
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’
‘Are you thinking about—’
‘Do I get any say in the matter?’ he asks glumly.
Hatred, directed at him, surges through me. ‘No, you don’t,’ I reply coldly. ‘You’ve already told me what you want. You want me to kill it.’
He stiffens at my directness.
‘I’ve already had one miscarriage,’ I tell him flatly, shrugging out from beneath his grasp. ‘If you’re really lucky, maybe I’ll have another one.’
He looks away from me.
‘I want to go home,’ I say miserably. And for the briefest of moments, home is cuddled up on the sofa with Ned, and not here in Adelaide, South Australia.
But it’s too late for being sentimental. Far too late.
Chapter 33
‘Have you been crying?’ Liz asks in astonishment.
I’ve spent the last twenty minutes of the car journey trying to compose myself. I obviously didn’t do a very good job.
‘Where’s my dad?’ I deflect the question.
‘He’s just gone to bed,’ she replies, still looking confused. ‘What on earth’s wrong? I thought you didn’t do tears?’
‘I don’t know what gave you that idea,’ I snap. ‘Just because I don’t cry in front of you, doesn’t mean I don’t cry.’
Her mouth abruptly shuts.
‘I’m going to bed,’ I say, making to move past her.
‘Before you go,’ she interjects quickly, ‘I’m afraid I have some unfortunate news.’
She nods towards the living room so I guardedly follow her in there. She pushes the door to so we don’t disturb Dad.
‘Barry Wayburn called,’ she tells me, looking grave. ‘Doris has had a fall. She won’t be able to come and see you on Tuesday.’
My face crumples. I can’t cope with any more upheavals today.
‘Oh dear,’ Liz says, and for a rare instant she actually sounds sympathetic.
I slump onto the sofa and stare up at her with misery, tears starting to trek down my puffy cheeks.
She takes a seat beside me. ‘I don’t think it’s serious, if that’s what you’re worried about?’
My heart skips a beat. I hadn’t even considered the possibility of Doris passing away before she’d had a chance to relay my mum’s last words. But she’s ninety-four! The idea is not farfetched.