Times Like These

by Laura Carter

  She could add to that, a shitty boss and an awful example of a leader. Since firing Hannah, on the spot and in front of the entire secretary pool, no one in the office had spoken to her unless they absolutely had to, which she understood was entirely deserved. She had let emails slip, lost documents and failed to show up to a meeting.

  Not only was she alone and realising how hard work life was without Hannah, she also had zero motivation. Work was, for the first time since she could remember, pointless. Admin and accounts, meaningless crap that nobody cared about.

  She had fired her best friend, with three children. The fact Hannah outed her to Rosalie at all meant Andrea had lost her trust even before she fired her.

  Worse, she had fired Hannah for exposing her relationship with her other friend’s father.

  How had she gotten here? How had she put sex before friendships and people she had cared about for years?

  This wasn’t her. She was supposed to be the one who held other people together when they were broken.

  She had promised herself as an eight-year-old girl that she would never fall to pieces again. She would never be hurt the way her mother had hurt her by abandoning her.

  There weren’t many people in a position to break Andrea’s heart and that was how she liked things. But of those who could, she had left her sister with Jay, forced Rosalie out of her life, and pushed Hannah away.

  Now, there was a little person growing in her stomach and she had no idea who the father was.

  Was it Hunter’s? Who was probably having affairs with multiple other women and still lying to his wife. A self-obsessed A-hole.

  Was it Tommy’s? A rock star turning over a new leaf, who could head out on tour with his band at any time and get back to sleeping with another groupie every night.

  Did it matter whose child it was because Andrea was no better than either Hunter or Tommy? She had lied to those closest to her, just like Hunter. She had run out on Tommy countless times because… because…

  She squeezed her eyes shut as she sat in the waiting area for her obstetrician, trying not to scream or stomp her feet in frustration or cry a thousand tears.

  She had run out on Tommy countless times because deep down, she cared for him. They had so much in common. They loved music and, more, they loved making music, together. He had changed, she knew that. But what would happen when he left her? Because that’s what people did when you loved them, they left or they died or they turned to drink and shut you out.

  ‘Andrea Williams?’ the doctor called as she stepped out of her consultation room and into the waiting area.

  Andrea held her breath, staring at the doctor with what felt like steel legs, unable to stand. She managed to nod her head and the doctor responded by saying, ‘Come on in.’

  ‘Take a seat, Andrea. I’m Doctor Stead but please call me Maria.’ She smiled from her seat behind the desk as she gestured to the blue chair opposite for Andrea to take. ‘I can see you’re nervous. There’s no need to be.’

  Andrea said nothing. What was the correct response? Doctor, I am nervous but I’m fairly certain I’m pregnant. When what the doctor would surely be expecting was, Doctor, I’m nervous in case my home test kits showed a false positive.

  ‘I assume you’ve taken a test?’ Maria asked.

  Andrea nodded. ‘Yes. Three.’

  Maria smiled. ‘They were all positive?’

  Andrea nodded, again.

  ‘Well then, I think it’s safe to say you’re pregnant, Andrea. Congratulations.’

  ‘W-wait. Don’t you need to, do something… a test? To verify.’

  Andrea’s panic was replaced with shame as the smile Maria had been wearing changed to something that looked very much like disappointment. ‘Sure, we can, yes.’

  As Maria moved around the room, Andrea’s nerves built. This was it. After today, if the doctor confirmed she was pregnant, she could no longer think about that slither of doubt before trying to sleep at night.

  ‘There’s a restroom at the end of the corridor,’ Maria said, handing Andrea a sample pot.

  Even as she went about the necessary to complete the test, Andrea knew, in her heart, that there was no doubt.

  So, when she was faced with Maria telling her a matter of minutes later, ‘You’re officially pregnant,’ Andrea could only stare at her, expressionless.

  ‘This is the point when a lot of people jump for joy or recoil in shock,’ Maria said, scrutinising Andrea’s face, as if looking for dysfunction – emotional ineptness, inhumanity.

  ‘When?’ She eventually managed.

  Maria nodded, as if accepting that Andrea was not one of those people who could sit in a chair and bare her feelings until she was cured of heartlessness.

  ‘You said the first day of your last monthly was April tenth.’

  ‘About that.’ Andrea shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I can’t… I can’t think. I can’t remember. Sometimes it’s three and a half weeks, sometimes five. When I’m especially stressed I miss.’ She gave a sombre short laugh. ‘I’m stressed a lot of the time.’

  Maria reached out and pressed a hand to Andrea’s knee. ‘Look at me. We’re going to work this out. Take a deep breath for me.’

  Was she losing it? Oh, God, she was losing it. She took a deep breath and nodded quickly. ‘I’m good now.’

  Maria smiled. ‘Try to think of something around the time of your period. Maybe an event, a meeting, a dinner, where you were irritated you had your period or it was awkward having to slip off to the ladies’ room. That often helps.’

  Of course, there was something that came to mind. Hunter. She had been nearing the end of her monthly the night she got promoted. She’d worried when he took her in her office that she might leave a mark. Her vision tunnelled and came back to light, then she darted for the biological waste bin and threw up. It wasn’t morning sickness. She threw up again and again at the thought that the spawn growing inside her was Hunter’s child.

  When she stopped, Maria handed her a tissue and they started to work through dates. The doctor estimated that Andrea was due in January. The precise date hardly registered because what really concerned Andrea was the date of conception.

  ‘Well, generally, we would say 14 days from the first day of your last period is the most fertile point of a woman’s cycle. In your case, because your periods aren’t regular, it is more difficult to pinpoint the date. Sperm can live inside a woman for five days and there would be scope for a couple of days either side for ovulation. It’s safe to guess at the end of April, though.’

  End of April. She thought about the last time she had slept with Hunter, right after the Presley John commemoration concert. And the first time she slept with Tommy a matter of days later and they got… carried away.

  ‘Is there a date that’s more… likely?’

  Maria sat straight in her chair, the proverbial light bulb above her head turning on. ‘I see.’

  ‘I’m not – I don’t just sleep around.’ Didn’t she? ‘There just happened to be one person who I was… in a relationship with.’ As far as an affair could be called a relationship. ‘Then the guy that I’m… who I was seeing.’

  ‘Are you single now?’

  For the first time, she truly missed Tommy, as she said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would it have an impact on your pregnancy if you knew who the father is?’

  Andrea knew the question was a polite way of asking if she would terminate the baby. Would she?

  If the baby was Hunter’s, would she want it? She felt her eyes begin to fill and her throat tighten. No. She didn’t want Hunter’s child. How could she want his child? He had thrown his credit card at her and told her to terminate the pregnancy. He was married. He was Rosalie’s father.

  Christ, the child would be Rosalie’s brother or sister. Hell, she felt sick again.

  What if the baby were Tommy’s? A mini rock star. An empathetic, talented child. It would love music and he or she would play guitar and sing li
ke Daddy. They would play records like Grace, her mother’s first charted album, and sing the baby to sleep.

  But then Tommy would go on tour. What was she supposed to do? Give up work and travel the world with Tommy, a baby and Tommy’s groupies and band? Or stay home, a single mother struggling to hold down a job and bring up a child. Never seeing it because she worked long hours, or abandoning her career to be a good mother.

  What kind of mother would she really be? She wasn’t a good person.

  She looked down to her non-existent bump. You could be my little boy or girl, she thought. Mine and Tommy’s. Her heart swelled and she brought her hand to her tummy. Did it know she was its mother, yet?

  God, what if it did? What if it could hear her thoughts?

  ‘Andrea, can I make a suggestion?’ Maria asked. ‘I suggest you go away and decide whether you want to have a baby. For you. Only you. Forget the father for now. Believe me when I say, lots of women not as strong or as stable as you manage this without Daddy being around.’

  ‘They do?’

  ‘Yes. You’re stronger than you think, believe me. If the father chooses not to be around, or isn’t around, for whatever reason, you can do this. The real question is, do you want to be a mom?’

  A mom. She thought of her own mother. Her sweet face, how she would play the guitar and sing, sitting on Andrea’s bed until she fell asleep.

  But she had left. She had left Andrea and Sofia and Jimmy. And it had hurt every day since.

  ‘I’m not sure. How am I supposed to know that?’

  ‘Take some time out. Maybe get away for a few days and clear your head, if you can. There’s no right or wrong decision here, remember that.’

  ‘What if I decide that I don’t want to keep it?’ Andrea asked, already wondering whether she could go through with a termination.

  ‘It’s still early days so the procedure is quite straightforward.’

  ‘What if I only want to keep it if… When could I find out who the father is?’

  ‘The earliest time we can check is around eight to nine weeks.’

  Andrea took a slow, steadying breath and nodded. ‘Okay.’ She had no idea what she meant by that – okay, I’ll keep it; okay, I don’t want to go through with it; okay, I’ll keep it if Tommy is the father and not if it’s Hunter’s.

  What in hell was she supposed to do?

  ‘The last thing I would say is, if you ever do want Daddy to play a part in Baby’s life, you should think about telling him sooner rather than later.’

  Andrea shook Maria’s hand and for the first time in as long as she could remember, she didn’t run from one appointment to another. She hung her purse over her arm, covered her clouded eyes with her sunglasses, and slowly walked along the riverbank, turning every question she had asked herself in Doctor Maria’s office through her mind.

  The stark reality was, Andrea was not fit to be a mother, and she couldn’t do it alone. Alone was exactly what she was. No Hannah. No Rosalie. And once Sofia found out about all of this, she would be so ashamed.

  For years, she had been so angry with her mom for leaving her. For choosing Sofia over her. Now, she had never wanted to be able to speak to her mom so much in her life.

  She squeezed her eyes shut but this time, she couldn’t stop her tears from falling, wetting her cheeks as they dripped to the ground.

  ‘What should I do, Mom?’ she asked, desperately needing an answer.

  Andrea had rarely spoken to her mother in the years since her death. She had spent a night crying herself to sleep after they had said goodbye to Grace. Then her sorrow had turned quickly to anger – anger because her mother left; anger because her father turned to the bottom of a bottle, rather than looking after her; and anger because she was just a young girl, left without a mother, with a baby sister to look after and shield from the endless hours that Jimmy had spent inebriated.

  ‘Please speak to me, Mom. I know you can hear me. What would you do?’

  But even as she asked the question, she knew what Grace would have done. Grace would have sacrificed everything. She had given her own life to deliver Sofia.

  As she pressed a hand to her stomach, for the first time, Andrea saw things as they had been in Grace’s mind. She hadn’t chosen to leave Andrea, she had fought to save her unborn child. Grace had been faced with an impossible situation and Andrea realised now, in her mom’s mind, she had no choice but to try to save both her daughters.

  A sound stole Andrea’s attention, drawing her eyes to a park bench, where a woman bounced a young girl – maybe eight months, at best guess – on her lap. The girl wore dungarees with a pink long-sleeved top underneath. She had crazy hair – blonde and messily curled, as if it had never been cut. And the sound of her laughter brought Andrea to a stop. She smiled when the girl’s mother caught her looking but she couldn’t take her eyes away from the joy on the girl’s face, or close her ears to the sound of the childish giggle.

  She watched a man approach the woman and child from behind the bench, pressing his lips to the woman’s hair before handing her an ice-cream in a cone.

  He came to sit next to her, taking the baby so that Mom could eat her ice-cream.

  Andrea’s heart ached. Her stomach ached.

  She knew what she wanted and who she would want to sit on a bench with one day as she bounced her child and ate ice-cream.

  Her knowledge came with a million reservations and doubts but the only thing she knew, for certain, was that she couldn’t give up on her baby, no matter who the father was.

  21

  Rosalie

  ‘I don’t even want to buy these shoes,’ Rosalie sobbed, as she sat on a beige leather seat in Gucci on Fifth Avenue, turning her feet right and left, considering the classic pump in Gucci’s signature shamrock colour.

  A store assistant handed her a cotton handkerchief, no doubt adding a pack of them to her account.

  ‘I don’t want to run to shoes and clothes because I have troubles. It isn’t healthy,’ Rosalie said, pausing to blow her nose in as ladylike a manner as possible.

  The assistant propped his hands up on his hips. ‘Oh sweetie, I know. But sometimes we need a little something to help us feel better than talking it out can.’

  Rosalie shook her head. ‘It isn’t going to work. Not this time.’

  The thing was, she couldn’t talk about the fact that her dad had been having an affair with one of her best friends. She couldn’t tell anyone. Kaitlin, Clarissa and Madeleine would love it – imagine the gossip and the speed at which it would fly around those socialite circles. Everyone who was anyone in New York would know about the affair within hours. And Rosalie hadn’t even worked out what to do about her mom, yet.

  Was she supposed to tell her mom the truth? How did she break to her own mother that the man she called husband and father to her child, the man she had thought she had been in a trusting and honest relationship with for more than thirty years, had cheated on her?

  Rosalie needed advice but the people she would turn to – Hannah and Andrea – had betrayed her. Andrea was dirt as far as Rosalie was concerned. The lowest of the low.

  True, Hannah had told her the truth but only after they got in a fight about Lance and Hannah effectively calling Rosalie racist!

  As crazy as it was, she thought about Seth, about their conversations in Nashville. How he had listened. But the only place she knew to find him was Sanfia Records. And Sofia must have known about the affair. Andrea was her sister. Did she know? Had Sofia known the whole time Rosalie had been in the studio lately? That thought took her sadness to a new level, where it weighed heavily on her heart and in her limbs.

  ‘So, you don’t want the shoes?’ the store assistant asked.

  Rosalie looked down to the pretty shape of the pumps and her feet wearing them and whimpered. ‘No. I have to find a new way of coping with tragedy.’

  The assistant slipped the shoes off her feet and placed them back in their Gucci protective bags, before
placing them in their box. Then he stood, collecting the Rajah shoulder bag Rosalie had picked out to try with the shoes.

  ‘Oh, I’ll take the purse,’ Rosalie said, snatching it back from him. She wasn’t that strong yet. One step at a time.

  She left the store with her new purse and the other bags of shopping she had picked up on Fifth Avenue – not because she was buying her way out of her troubled state of mind but because she had needed certain staple items, such as new perfume and beauty products, lingerie and a blouse to match a tapered pant that she already owned prior to her entire existence falling apart.

  It had been days since Hannah blurted out the affair. Days since she had immediately called Andrea and screamed at her down the phone. Rosalie had shifted between denial, rage and hurt, all by herself. She hadn’t been able to tell anyone. There had been no one to put an arm around her and tell her that things would be okay, eventually. She wasn’t sure they ever would be.

  As she made her way back to her apartment on the Upper West Side and dropped her bags inside the door, Rosalie looked around at all her things. She had all this stuff and yet nothing and no one.

  Was she more like Kaitlin, Clarissa and Madeleine than she thought? She truly hoped not.

  Was Hannah right to storm out of their lunch together? Rosalie was not racist. That she refuted wholeheartedly. But Hannah had challenged Rosalie’s suggestion that a baby with Lance wouldn’t ‘look like hers’ and Rosalie had meant in saying that, that the baby would be mixed race.

  She brought her hands to her mouth and shook her head. What a horrific thing to have said and to have said to Hannah of all people. She hadn’t even meant it, had she?

  Seth was right, things couldn’t make you happy and Rosalie needed to seriously consider who she was and what kind of person she wanted to be.

  A diary reminder chimed from inside her purse that was still dumped on the side table at the entrance. Tonight, she had dinner with her parents.

  Her life had become a clusterfuck.

  * * *

  Rosalie parked parallel to the sidewalk outside her parents’ home and turned off the headlights but she rested back in the driver’s seat and listened to Lady Gaga’s ‘Million Reasons’ until the track ended and Calvin Richards’s voice came over the airwaves. As the song ended, she braced herself to face the real music.