“Wow, you looked buggered.” Merrill put the kettle on and Audrey was content to let her buzz around the kitchen. “What if we took Mia for a sleepover?”
“That would be Christmas rolled in chocolate, turbo stuffed with kindness.” Mia would love it and Audrey could go to bed and stay there without interruption. She closed her eyes in anticipation, it would be bliss.
“Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”
Audrey opened her eyes to find Merrill staring at her. “It would be an immaculate conception.”
“You were sleeping with Reece.”
“And we were responsible. Plus it was impossible.” One close to no good condom, and one risky withdrawal not withstanding. It was still impossible.
“I want you to do something for me.”
“I’ve seen Doc Barber. She should have blood test results this week. I’m sure it’s nothing, just work and Mia and life.” And maybe a dose of depression because God, she missed Reece.
“I want you to pee on a stick.”
“A pregnancy test. You’re kidding me?”
She wasn’t. Merrill put a test kit on the counter. She poured tea. “Drink up, Aud. There is something wrong and I’m worried. What can it hurt? It will eliminate one thing.”
Audrey looked at the test kit and felt all her blood rush to feet and pool in her ankles. She put her head in her hands. There was something not right, and having Merrill express her concern was permission to accept the weight of not feeling well.
Her whole body felt strange to her, as if it didn’t belong. She was too thin but her breasts were swollen and tender. She was drained even after good sleep, and hungry all the time.
She’d been nauseous constantly with Mia and barely able to eat, except for a surprising amount of ice cream. She had no memory of this sapping tiredness though, and anyway it was an irrelevant comparison. She couldn’t be pregnant.
She drank her tea and ate two pieces of cake. Mia was still engrossed in the princess book. So quiet Audrey had to check she wasn’t up to mischief. She drank more tea. Merrill wasn’t making a move to go until pee hit the stick and Audrey wanted sleep more than she wanted to argue the inappropriateness of it.
She took the kit to the bathroom. When she finished with it, Merrill and Mia were dancing in the lounge room. She put the packaging in the bin and left the stick on the kitchen counter and went to watch. Mia’s version of the twist was super cute. Where had she gotten that from? It had to be Reece, because it wasn’t Barrett or Cameron.
All that dancing made Mia thirsty. They went back to the kitchen and Audrey hunted in the fridge for the juice poppers Mia liked. She’d pack a couple for Merrill to take with her in Mia’s sleepover kit. If she packed Mia’s bag, Merrill would take the hint and get a move on.
She turned to tell Merrill that Mia had a new favourite bedtime story and everything in her safe, controlled, organised and reliable world changed. It only took one look at Merrill’s face to make her grab for the stick. That plus symbol, clear as the winter sea stared back at her. She floundered. “It’s a mistake.” She put her hands over her stomach, an involuntary action she dropped as soon as she recognised she’d done it.
“It could be, but it’s not likely.”
“What’s a mistake, Mum?”
It had to be a mistake. There was no need to panic. “Go in the other room, Mia.” She needed to think.
“Can I watch Nemo?”
Merrill took Mia’s hand. “I’ll put it on for you.”
Alone, Audrey pulled the kit’s packaging from the garbage and scanned the fine print for an error rate. In the other room the TV went on. There was a logical way to work through this, she only had to find the threads and pull them together.
“Home kits are ninety-eight percent accurate.” Merrill was back.
“That can’t be right.” She couldn’t be pregnant.
“Joe did the research. ”They’re almost as accurate as a lab test.”
“Well, maybe this one was left in the sun or something.” She picked up the stick and shook it, as if that might set things right.
“It wasn’t left in the sun, Aud. It’s one of mine. You’re pregnant.”
The plus sign was still there. “I can’t be pregnant.”
“You are and I’m not.” Merrill folded her arms tight around her.
“I don’t want to be.”
“No. How fair is that? Everywhere I look there’s a pregnant woman and now you, and you don’t want another baby.”
“Merry, I can’t explain this, but I’m not pregnant.” Merrill was so angry she was unlikely to listen even if Audrey could explain a miracle.
“You’re tired all the time. You’re tits are huge for you. You’re eating like there’s a food shortage. You’re buying ice cream. You had two pieces of cake. You slept with Reece and you weren’t careful enough, you let this happen, and now you have everything I want.”
“It’s not the same as with Mia.”
“Who says it has to be the same?”
They stared at each other. Merrill was furious. Audrey felt sick. She made it to the bathroom in time to get to her knees and throw up in the toilet.
What if she was pregnant? How would she cope? This new job wasn’t designed around the need for maternity leave or the stress of a baby, a second child. She was on probation as far as the promotion was concerned. A new baby could trash her career. Not to mention what it might do to her health. Of course she didn’t have to have it. Women made the decision not to be pregnant all the time and yet Merrill and Joe wanted nothing more than their own child. She gripped the edge of the porcelain and threw up again. It was Reece’s child and she could never harm something they’d created together.
“Mum is sick.” Audrey put her arm out to stop Mia coming any closer.
Merrill caught Mia by the shoulders turned her away from the bathroom. “Go and watch Nemo. I’ll look after Mum.” She knelt behind Audrey and wrapped her arms around her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lose it with you.”
Audrey coughed into her hand to try to clear her throat. “How could you not.” Her face was hot and her chest burned. The tiles were hard on her knees and she wanted Reece’s arms around her, Reece’s words comforting her. There could be no comfort from Merrill.
“I’ll stand by you whatever happens, but I can’t pretend not to be jealous, not to wish it was me.”
Audrey let Merrill help her up. She washed her face and cleaned her teeth while Merrill packed an overnight bag for Mia. She went to the kitchen. The blood test she’d had would confirm if she was pregnant or not, and there was no point getting upset or making plans until she knew for sure.
“You need to tell him.”
Audrey had made a second pot of tea. She poured for Merrill. “There’s nothing to tell him.”
“That’s not true, Aud, and it’s not fair.”
“What am I going to say? Hey, remember me, your former employer, you know the one who abused her position of authority and slept with you when she was half out of her brain after nearly dying? And you know how we used protection and I wasn’t ovulating? Surprise. I might be pregnant because I’m eating lots of ice cream and I peed on a stick and it flashed a plus sign.”
“Yes, tell him that. He’s entitled to know. This is not just about you.”
“He would want me to keep it.”
Merrill choked and turned away. But she had to have known that was an option. She recovered to say, “And if he does and you don’t, what next?”
Audrey sat on a kitchen stool. She had an appalling need to hug Mia, to take her and go find Reece, to tell him she’d made a mistake, that their lives were worth less living without him, but if she did that, and she was pregnant, she’d be trapping him into fatherhood with a women who sent him away for doing everything he could to love her.
It was bad enough one of them was trapped. And for all she knew Reece had gotten over her and moved on.
Merrill was saying something
and Mia was at the fridge. All Audrey could think about was Reece, about the having to face him to give him this news, about how he’d want to do the honourable thing. And how if she did this, had a new baby, she’d want to do it alone because alone was her control point, her strength. She could trust alone.
Merrill had Mia’s bag in her hand. Mia had her giraffe and a penguin. Audrey hugged Mia too hard and too long and Mia fought to get out of her arms.
Five minutes later the house was empty and she was free to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come, maybe it was too much tea, maybe it was fear, loneliness. She should’ve changed her mind about the sleepover and kept Mia home. She could drive over to Merrill and Joe’s and pick Mia up again. She could call Reece, just to hear his voice, just to feel it trill across her body and settle the angina in her heart. But she couldn’t do that to him, it wasn’t fair, because that man loved her and she’d thrown his love back at him as if it was unworthy, like a too small fish, an unsuitable catch.
Audrey lay on her bed and sobbed. She was pregnant with Reece’s baby. Her body knew that truth, had been telling her all along. She didn’t need the blood test to confirm it. She knew it as surely as she knew she’d lost the love of her life when she sent Reece away.
She knew it as truly as she knew he’d do the right thing even if he no longer loved her, and that she loved him too much to let him make that call.
She hadn’t been protecting Mia from his aggression. She didn’t think he was violent or too young, or the stages of their lives couldn’t mesh together. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be his family and have him as hers.
She was simply afraid.
Afraid Reece was too good to be true; a man whose interests and skills were the exact complement to hers and who wasn’t threatened by their differences. Afraid to choose to move from lover to husband when family had always let her down. Because what would happen to her if Reece stopped loving her? Like her father had, like her mother struggled to. Like Reece’s father never had. She might want to die from that, a plant denied enough sunlight. She’d wither slowly, lose her colour and gloss and fail to thrive, and she’d stunt Mia and the new baby with her own inability to flourish.
She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t afford to fail, and if she called Reece now, like she’d wanted to call him every day for the last two months, she would fail. She would collapse into his easy generosity, into his readiness to take charge, and his boundless forgiveness. And she didn’t deserve that from him.
And he deserved more from her.
Now, more than ever, she needed to be strong and focused. She needed to have plans in place for every contingency. She wiped her face with her sleeve like Mia did. These were the last tears she’d cry this year. This was the last moment she’d feel sorry for herself.
She went to the kitchen and made herself a snack. She gave her body what it needed. Her heart would have to wait. She opened her laptop and checked her calendar. She made a list of all the things she needed to do and starting now she did them.
25: Loveless
Reece had taken to coming to the old garden centre site. Polly’s crew had reduced the rubble to a clean slate. There was nothing left but soil, the odd weed and litter that blew in from the street. He liked to imagine what it would look like when they built on it. They’d need shade for the outdoor area that doubled as shelter from the rain. They’d need the inside made with easy care, non-toxic materials, plenty of light but a way to make it dark for nap times. For the second floor, a big wide balcony would give them views to the beach if they got the design right.
He must look off his rocker, standing here in the middle of nothing, daydreaming. Especially as he often appeared worse for wear.
It had only taken a month to realise his drinking had gotten out of hand. Not that he was drunk all the time, that was the problem. He could drink and drink and barely feel the effects, and that was special kind of peril and failed to deliver the numbness he’d been looking for.
The third time he’d walked from the pub to stand outside Audrey’s place in the pitch of night, like a trained guard dog told to stay and too stupid loyal to know he was in danger and bolt, was the night he gave up drinking again. But he’d needed something else to take the craving away, to deaden the loss that pounded inside his body and made it hard to sleep.
He went back to bricklaying. It was the fastest way to get working again and they needed to show they were employed for the loan, even with Pollidore’s going guarantor and construction costs lower than mate’s rates, they were borrowing a bomb. On top of that, his heart wasn’t in it to commit to another nanny job. Whoever the kid was, they wouldn’t be Mia, and he missed her too much to replace her. The replacement he was working on was the new thing that stopped him sleeping.
He’d never run a business before. He was cramming books on small business as well as struggling through the paperwork to apply for a licence to run a pre-school. Charlie helped, and he could’ve asked Les, but by unspoken agreement they weren’t talking about this in front of Les. Reece guessed Polly didn’t want to ask her not to tell Audrey. He didn’t much care if Audrey knew or not. It’s not like it would change anything between them. Audrey would likely be happy he’d found a new focus.
But even with all that going on, he still needed something to help him forget. For a while Sky tried to convince him she was the something, but she was half-hearted and that was never Sky, so it was more about the idea of them than the real thing. They were buddies though, and he liked that she was still in his life. He’d run into Carrie again, but she’d treated him as if he was fifteen and in need of mothering and that was better than being propositioned and having to turn her down. The look in her eyes when they met told him she knew that already.
He found the something in an unexpected place. He was back in the ring. And that’s why anyone who saw him pacing around the vacant lot might think he was trouble. He looked like it. He usually went there from the gym a block away. He was wet through and so ragged tired he could barely pick his feet up after a day on a building site and an evening learning to box within the rules and in his weight class.
It was the combination of sobriety and the structure of a legal fight that were doing him in, along with the realisation he didn’t like getting smacked by blokes who been boxing longer and knew the score. His body hurt, his brain was spinning. He’d packed his life with new ambition and direction and he should’ve been too busy to miss what he’d lost, but it would sneak up on him, a stealth attack, a rabbit punch that rattled his senses and left him disoriented.
He loved Audrey and he’d lost her and he didn’t know how to get her back; now, two months on, he knew he never would. Once he’d shown her the violence in him, he’d wrecked his chances. She’d looked at him with fear in her eyes and that was the death of everything he’d meant to her. And he had meant something to her, and to Mia.
Audrey wasn’t playing office politics when she crossed her own professional line and let him make love to her. She wasn’t negotiating with him when she said she loved him.
She’d struggled to come to terms with how she felt, the surprise of it, the intrusion on her carefully constructed life. It was as much a power play for her to give up that knowledge to him as it was for her to fight for her status at work.
He thought they’d won. Thought they’d found a compromise between Audrey’s need for independence and his need for her. It was shitty to be so wrong.
Audrey and Mia, separately and together, had put him in a clinch and immobilised him in gratitude and happiness, made him punch drunk with the possibilities of a life with them. But in matters of the heart, as well as the boxing ring, he was an untutored brawler and he was down on the mat. In the darkest part of night he wondered if he’d ever get up.
He stood on the site as the sun set and thought about filling it with the noise of a dozen Mia’s. Sticking their surrealist painting up, hearing their squeals of laughter, watching their crazy dancing. The cra
zy dancing should be mandatory. He wanted every kid to dance and sing and feel safe to learn and grow. He wanted every parent comfortable their kid was happy and well cared for, and if it meant a website and cameras then he’d get over the way the idea of being recorded made him itch. He’d go take it out on the canvas, wearing gloves, playing by the rules, against an opponent who wasn’t hyped up on drugs, trying to mark him, crush him anyway he could; because although he was a carer by nature and a child care worker by choice, he was also a fighter, and he’d spent too long denying that part of himself for fear he’d lose control.
He hadn’t, in all these years, but still nothing could be worse than where he found himself now, a carer without his loved ones to care for, a fighter without a family to protect.
Polly had freaked out the first night he’d come home sporting bruises and learned a heavyweight pro-boxer had made him boogie to avoid the sting. He settled when he copped to Reece being sober, gloved, helmeted, and paying for the privilege of the punishment under supervision. Even Gino approved.
And the surprise in the mix—Charlie. She came to watch an exhibition bout. She sat with the other mothers, wives, girlfriends and kids. Hid behind her hands the whole time, but she was there, and she approved. Told him she’d fight for his right to have his sport and his career simultaneously, but she’d castrate him in his sleep with a knife borrowed from a chef at work if he ever thought of turning pro or took a wager.
He’d cooked for her and the girls that night and he’d do it again tonight because Polly wanted the flat to himself. He had a special night with Les planned. He took his weary body back to Polly’s for a quick shower and while he was dressing Polly appeared.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, mate.”
Reece pulled a t-shirt over his head. It was tight. All this manual labour and training had bulked him up and he hadn’t exactly been soft. He’d need a couple of new shirts.
“What are you supposed to be doing?” He checked the bedside clock; he had ten minutes to clear out before Les was due.
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