Chapter Twenty-Four
Juliette
When I leave James’s house, I sit in my car for a moment, not starting the engine. It’s getting harder to be with Henry and not be with him, and I can feel something building, like a thunderstorm about to break. My head hurts, and I don’t feel well, and the last thing I want is to go back and listen to Kathy’s hysterics. So I ring Roy with the intention of telling him that I’m going to stay at my apartment for the night. But he tells me Kathy has had a particularly bad day, and he sounds angry and frustrated, so in the end I drive around there, my sense of duty too strong to fight.
As soon as I walk in, though, Roy gets a beer out of the fridge, puts on the TV, and leaves me to handle Kathy alone. Gritting my teeth, I run her a bath, as that normally helps to calm her down. But even though she gets in, she’s too low to wash herself, so I end up helping her. I wash her hair, then help her out, dry her and her hair, and get her dressed in her nightie. Finally I put her to bed, and I sit by her side as she cries and says she’s sorry, until she eventually falls asleep.
Exhausted and frustrated, I go into the living room. Roy is sitting there watching an old comedy show, laughing and swigging his third beer.
I go over to the TV and switch it off.
“Hey!” He sits up and glares at me.
“You can’t do this,” I tell him resentfully. “You can’t just leave me to deal with Kathy. It’s not fair. She’s not my mother, and I’m not a nurse. I have a life to live.”
“So do I,” he snaps.
“But she’s your wife! You married her, Roy. She’s your responsibility.”
He sits back, looking moody and sullen. “What if I don’t want that responsibility anymore?”
I stare at him. “What do you mean?”
“This isn’t why I got married. She’s supposed to look after me. I’m the one who goes to work, who pays the bills. It’s her job to run the house, not lie in bed moping. I didn’t know it was going to be like this. I don’t want to be married to her anymore.”
Panic fills me. Normally I’d have ripped into him for his misogynistic attitude, but if he leaves Kathy, the burden of her care is going to fall on Cam’s—and therefore my—shoulders.
“All right,” I say, taking deep breaths and trying to calm down. “I understand how you feel, and it’s natural to have bad days and to feel like this. But I know you don’t mean it. You love her, and you just want her to be better.”
He lifts his chin. “I don’t love her anymore. She’s just a fucking millstone around my neck.” He picks up his beer and walks away, out of the sliding doors into the garden. Shocked, I can only watch as he disappears into his shed—his Man Cave—and closes the door.
I sink onto the sofa. I’m shaking now. What am I going to do? I don’t want this responsibility. But I can’t just leave.
Feeling sick, I call Cam. It’s early evening in Sydney, and he answers after half a dozen rings.
“Hello?”
“It’s me,” I say.
“Hey. I’m at the hospital.”
“How’s it going?”
“Okay. Alan’s improving. And Em’s contractions have stopped. They think they were Braxton Hicks. I’ll be taking her home soon.”
“Oh, well, that’s something.”
“How about you? How’s your day going?”
I cover my face with a hand. “Not great.”
“Why, what’s happened?”
I tell him what his father just said.
He snorts. “He’s just fed up. He’ll get over it.”
“I don’t know, Cam, he looked pretty serious.”
“He wouldn’t leave her.”
I take a deep breath. “Cam, I need you to come home. I can’t deal with this. I don’t want to deal with it.”
“I can’t, you know I can’t. I’ve got to make sure Alan and Em are all right.”
Tears prick my eyes. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
I hear him inhale, and then he gives an audible, frustrated sigh. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t get hysterical.”
That makes me angry. “I’m not hysterical. I’m tired and frustrated. These aren’t my parents.”
“No, maybe not, but when you’re in a relationship you help each other out, right?”
“That’s true, but what am I getting out of it, Cam? Tell me. What’s in it for me?” Tears run down my cheeks.
He’s silent for a long moment. I don’t speak, though, and eventually he says, “All right. I’ll come home. I’ll try and book a flight tomorrow.”
I wipe my cheeks. “Thank you.”
“Can you stay there tonight?”
“Yes, I’ll stay.”
“Thank you. You know I appreciate everything you do.”
This is always how it is. He drives me to the edge, then spends the next few days pulling me back from it. I’m so tired of it. So tired.
“I’ve got to go,” he says, “Em is waiting for me. I’ll let you know what flight I get.”
“All right. Bye.”
“Bye.” He ends the call.
Leaving Roy in his shed, I go to bed. Before I turn off the light, I check my phone.
There’s a message from Henry. Love you. Miss you. Want you. Always x
Everything that my partner should be saying to me. Oh God, that hurts so bad.
Another text pops up as I’m watching. It’s a link to a song on Spotify—Bill Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine. I press play, turning the volume down so it’s just a murmur.
Bill wonders where his girl has gone, and tells us there’s darkness every day she’s away, and tears run down my face again.
I don’t know what to say to Henry. So instead I just send him a heart. Then I turn off the phone and the light.
Within minutes, I fall into an exhausted sleep.
*
The next morning, as soon as I open my eyes, I know I’m in trouble.
I barely make it to the bathroom before I throw up, vomiting whatever’s left in my stomach into the toilet. I retch and I retch. When I’m finally done, I rinse out my mouth and sink onto the toilet seat.
I sit with my head in my hands for a few minutes. Then I get up, go into the bedroom, and retrieve my purse. I take it into the bathroom and extract the pregnancy test I bought yesterday, and read the instructions. Apparently it’s ninety-nine percent accurate.
With shaking hands, I take off the wrapper and pee on the stick. Then I let it sit there while I wash my hands.
After the longest three minutes in the history of mankind, I check the result. In the box is one clear word.
Pregnant.
I sink back onto the toilet seat. I knew, of course. My cycle is a little longer than average, but even for me, forty-two days is extreme. Realistically, I’m around ten days late.
I’d hoped that all the hassle of the past week—the grief and shock following Maddie’s death, and the stress of looking after Kathy and dealing with Cam—might have been the reason I was late. But I should have known better. All week, I’ve been hoping my period might appear, hoping that the symptoms—sore breasts, tiredness—were just a sign of PMS. But deep down, I knew.
And now I’m in love with one guy and pregnant by another. I don’t love Cam anymore. I’m convinced of that. But it’s not just about me now. I have to think about the baby.
I wouldn’t want to bring up another man’s child. Henry’s words ring in my head. Ever since he said that I’ve felt a sense of futility settle deep inside me. He’s not going to want me if I’m having Cam’s baby. He isn’t a choice for me anymore. My choice is now Cam or nobody. Stay with a guy in a broken relationship. Or bring up the baby on my own.
And now I start crying for real.
*
I ring Alex and call in sick. He’s concerned, but obviously hears the emotion in my voice and doesn’t press me. “Take as long as you want,” he says, “and let us know if we can do anything.”
Half an hour later, I get a text from Henry. Hey, Alex said you’re unwell. How are you doing?
I can’t keep ignoring him, so I message him back. Yeah, just a bit under the weather, that’s all. J.
I send it before I can add a kiss.
He doesn’t come back.
I cry again.
*
I get up and go through to the kitchen. Roy’s there, eating a slice of toast and drinking a cup of tea, but when I walk in, he picks it up and leaves the room. Heart sinking, I put more toast on, butter a slice and make a cup of tea, and take it through to Kathy. She’s awake, lying there pale and listless.
“When’s Cam coming home?” she asks.
“Soon,” I promise. “A day or two.”
“I miss him,” she whispers.
“Yeah, well, it won’t be long now.”
“You do still love him, don’t you?” she asks me.
I stare at her, shocked by her query, and unsure how to answer. I don’t want to upset her, but I’m not going to lie. “Don’t you worry about that,” I tell her. “Eat your toast and then let’s see about getting you up and about.” I leave the room before she can push me further.
Cam messages me mid-morning to tell me that Em is home and doing well. Alan is being released Wednesday, and he wants to wait so he can bring him home too. So he’s booked a flight home for Thursday.
I don’t want to wait that long, but I don’t have a choice. I feel bad for making him come home when Alan and Em could probably do with him staying there, but I need to talk to him, and I need him to be here and sort his parents out. So I stop myself from doing what I’d normally do—tell him to stay as long as he needs—and just text back Thank you, see you then.
*
In the end, I speak to Alex and decide to take the whole week off. Most of the staff don’t start until next week, and my deputy, Claire, is happy to start the ball rolling for me and begin scheduling appointments, so it’s not absolutely necessary that I go in. I need to sort myself out first. I need to speak to Henry. More than anything, I want to talk to him. But this is Cam’s baby, and I owe it to him to tell him first. I need to see his reaction, and then I can decide what I’m going to do.
I also need to sort out Kathy and Roy. I have to get this sorted, or it’s going to be an unbearable burden for me. I go with her to her doctor’s appointment, and she doesn’t argue when I suggest I go in to see him with her. I tell the doctor how bad she is and that she needs help now. He does everything he can. He takes it seriously. Ups her meds. Talks to her about the importance of taking them every day. Tells her she needs to look after herself with diet and exercise. Refers her to a psychiatrist. Recommends a new therapist. Gives me a phone number to call if things get bad.
But none of it seems to get to the root of the problem. It’ll be weeks, if not months, before she gets her appointments. She’s overweight and miserable, with terrible self-esteem. She’s in no position to think about diet and exercise, and she forgets her meds unless someone is there to remind her to take them. How do you make someone care about themselves?
I should be angry with Roy for leaving me to deal with it, but on Wednesday evening, after the doctor’s appointment, I sit down with him to tell him about it, and for the first time he opens up and begins talking. He tells me how she’s been like this for most of their married life, which is over thirty years. He’s spent much of that time managing her, trying to get her to take her meds, encouraging her to eat well and exercise, and she does well for a while, then hits one of her bad patches and plummets, and there’s nothing he can do about it. Without him having to say it, I can tell they have no physical relationship, and I can see he’s lonely and he’s reached the end of his tether. And how can I criticize him for that when I feel the same?
“Cam takes after his mother,” Roy says, surprising me. “I’m sorry about that.”
We study each other in the quietness of the evening. The sliding doors are open, and I can smell grass from where he mowed the lawn earlier today.
“This is hard on you,” he says. “And it’s not fair.”
I swallow hard. “It’s not your fault.”
“It’s nobody’s fault. Not even Kath’s. But it sucks.” He finishes off his beer. “You should get out while you can.”
I stare at him, shocked, as he gets up and goes out, down to his shed.
Is he right? Is this going to be me in thirty years if I stay with Cam? He doesn’t suffer from depression in the same way as his mother, but there are definitely similarities. It’s only now that I realize how I’ve had to handle him for seven years. How I tread on eggshells sometimes to try to keep the peace. How hard I’ve worked to keep our relationship going. How I’m the one who gives, and all he does it take. And if I complain, he gaslights me and says I don’t understand him and I’m unsympathetic.
I was so close to leaving him. And now, even if I walk out, I’m tied to him for the rest of my life by the mistake we’ve made.
I lean back on the sofa and rest my hand on my belly. And it occurs to me then for the first time. I could terminate the pregnancy.
I sit there for a moment and let the thought settle over me.
It’s too late for the morning after pill—the last time I slept with Cam was back in December. I know that because it was on my birthday—December the tenth. So it would have to be an abortion.
I could do it without telling Cam or Henry. Just go down to the clinic, pop a pill, and let nature take its course.
I cover my face with my hands. Ahhh….
Hindus believe in the principle of Ahimsa, or nonviolence toward all living things. Abortion is only allowed to save the mother’s life. But I don’t consider myself a Hindu. Or a Christian. Or a pagan. My DNA, my culture, and my faith is a mish-mash, and I pick and choose the bits from it that I like and that I feel fit me. So where abortion is concerned, I’ve always been pro-choice. I believe it’s better to terminate a pregnancy than to bring an unwanted baby into the world.
But now? It’s one thing to tell others what you believe. It’s another to carry out the act yourself.
I’m responsible for this baby. If I terminate the pregnancy, it’ll be my choice. What was it that Henry told me that Rangi said? I made a baby, and he won’t get to be born. What would Jesus say about that?
I press my fingers to my lips as tears well in my eyes. It’s just baby hormones, I tell myself. Pull yourself together. You’re a fucking professional woman with a career. You’re in control. You’re not one of those women who cry at the first sign of trouble.
But just the thought of there being baby hormones in my system is enough to make the tears impossible to stop. My body is already preparing itself to have this baby. Do I have the right to end the pregnancy?
Oh jeez, I can’t think like this. Anyway, I know that something like forty percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. Women often think they’re late and then their period starts, and they don’t realize they’ve actually miscarried. It’s still very early for me. There’s no point in panicking yet.
But Cam’s home tomorrow. If I’m going to terminate it without telling him, I need to make the decision before he gets here, because I know what I’m like. I can’t keep a secret, and I’m going to have to talk to him about it.
So I sit there, going around and around in circles, while it slowly gets dark and I have to get up and shut the doors to stop the moths flying in.
*
The next day, Cam arrives at ten a.m.
He’s exhausted. Alan came home yesterday, and Cam was busy all day, ensuring their cupboards were stocked, making his brother comfortable, and reassuring them that he’d be back soon.
“I’ll have to go back next week,” he tells me. “Em just can’t cope, and the baby’s going to come real soon.”
“What about your job?” I ask, frowning. “You can’t keep taking time off work.”
He doesn’t reply for a moment. Kathy is in bed. Roy is in the shed. It’s just me and Cam in their living room.
“I quit,” he says. “On Monday.”
I stare at him, jaw dropping. “What?”
He studies his hands. “My boss told me I couldn’t have the time off. So I had to.”
I’m so shocked, I can’t think. “Cam, we’ve got bills to pay.”
“I’ll get another job. I was looking around in Sydney. There were several jobs there I could walk straight into.” He finally meets my eyes, resentful, challenging. He’s trying to force my hand.
“What about your parents? You can’t leave them, Cam. Your mum is in a terrible mess, and your dad’s had enough of looking after her.”
“I’m going to talk to them about them moving out with us. She’d be much happier there, nearer to Alan and Em and the baby.”
He’s figured it all out. He’s obviously been thinking about this for a while.
“What about me?” I ask softly. “How do I fit into all this?”
He rolls his eyes as if it goes without saying. “I want you to come with me.” I think it’s the most unromantic thing he’s ever said, and that’s saying something.
My hand creeps to my stomach without meaning to, and before I can stop myself, I say, “I’m pregnant.”
His eyebrows lift. “What?”
“I’m pregnant. I found out on Sunday.”
We stare at each other for a long moment.
“Is it mine?” he asks.
I nod.
“How can you be sure?” he demands.
“Because Henry can’t have children. He has a low sperm count. He spent two years trying to get Shaz pregnant. And anyway, we used a condom. But the last time you and I had sex, we didn’t, remember?” It was the night of our first big argument, so I know he won’t have forgotten.
He continues to stare at me. “Shit.”
I give a short laugh, and my eyes sting. “Is that all you can say?”
“Well, it’s not great timing. But we’ll make it work, I guess.”
I’m speechless with frustration. I don’t know what I’d expected, but something more than this. I wanted him to look excited. To hug me and say it was amazing news. Something, anything to give me a reason to stay.
I get to my feet and go over to the window, wrapping my arms around myself defensively. After a moment, I turn to face him.
“I don’t want to move,” I tell him. “My family and friends are here.”
“We can make new friends together.”
“I happen to like my old friends. And my mum and dad would be devastated if I moved to Australia. They’re going to want to see their first grandchild.” Probably their only one, too, as Antony is gay.
“I can’t stay here,” he says helplessly. “I want to go. And I’d hoped you’d support me.”
“What about you supporting me, Cam? Why is it always the other way around? I don’t ask you for anything. I have a career. People I love. Why should I give them up for you?”
“Is this about Henry?”
I don’t reply for a moment.
“It is,” he says angrily, getting to his feet. “Jesus.”
“It’s not about him. I don’t think I have a future with him. But it is about the fact that he makes me feel wanted. He makes me feel cherished. And you don’t.”
“I’m sorry. I know things need to change. Come to Australia with me. We’ll go to Melbourne. You can study there. Let’s start over again. You, me, and the baby. Perhaps we’ll be able to make it work. But I can’t do it here. I don’t want you to see Henry anymore.”
“You’re making me choose?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Maybe I am. I think that’s fair. Don’t you?” He walks over to stand in front of me. “This is our baby. Mine and yours. For its sake, we should try to make it work, don’t you think?”
Oh God. This is so hard.
What am I going to do?