Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
SIXTEEN YEARS AGO
Camilla
It’s so hot outside, I feel like I can’t actually breathe properly and I’m grateful to get back to the shitty motel room where at least the air conditioner works.
Three weeks have gone by since I told Reese what I did and my whole life has been torpedoed.
I haven’t found a place to stay because the few people I called about rooms to rent recognised, actually recognised, my name and asked if I was the woman who slept with her friend’s fiancé.
I feel like I’m living in the twilight zone.
I want to just lie on the bed and close my eyes and never wake up again but I can’t do that because I’m late. Not late for a job, which I don’t have, or late to meet a friend, which I don’t have either. My period is late.
I drop my bag and pick out the test and then go to the bathroom.
After two minutes, two blue lines appear and I hear myself laughing because somehow, impossibly, it’s gotten worse. My life has gotten worse.
I don’t want a baby. I certainly don’t want his baby.
Leaving the pregnancy test in the bathroom, I go and lie down on the bed, closing my eyes for a moment, as every terrible thing that has happened over the last few weeks makes me feel sick.
I will get a termination, obviously. Will it be for free on Medicare? Hopefully. I will have to go to a public hospital, drag myself to a waiting room and sit with all the other women who’ve screwed up. No one will take me there and no one will be waiting for me afterwards.
I can call my mother, I suppose, beg her to help me, but I don’t want to do that. She’s still away, anyway, happily touring Europe, safe in the knowledge that her oldest daughter is not living in her house.
A brief image of my life as it will be takes root in my mind. I can see myself, a year from now, homeless, with a baby on my hip, struggling to just get through every day.
The irony of me finding myself in the same situation as Sophie is at sixteen makes me want to cry. I’m twenty-four. I should have my life more sorted than this.
But I didn’t do this to myself. Lawrence was involved. He may not want to talk to me but he will have to now. I don’t want to use the public system. I deserve a private hospital and someone to help me. This is his child as well.
I’m carrying the next generation of his family.
As I open my eyes and stare at the stippled yellow ceiling of the motel room, it occurs to me that maybe this pregnancy is a good thing?
Maybe Lawrence will want me to have the baby?
He told Reese he was ready for a baby. If he doesn’t, he should at least pay for a termination. But what if he wants me to keep it?
He could fund my life forever. He has the money to do it.
I’ll make him pay for what a shitty human being he is for the rest of his life.
And maybe, just maybe, life will be better if I have a child.
I will have someone who relies on me for everything, someone who arrives conditioned to love me. I won’t be alone anymore.
I feel a smile on my face.
This baby is a good thing. It’s going to change my life and it will allow me to finally get everything I wanted.
I don’t know what’s happened with Sophie, if she’s keeping her baby or if she’s told my mother and they’ve sorted things out but I don’t need to worry about that.
Now I need to worry about my own baby. I touch my hand to my stomach, wondering what it is.
I don’t care because whatever it is, it will have to choose me first. I’ll be the mother.
I will be the most important person in this child’s life. I like that idea.
Picking up my phone, I text Lawrence. My fingers tremble as I type because I feel like this is it, this is the change, this is things turning around for me.
Hey. I know this is not the best time. But I’m pregnant and it’s yours.