Chapter 28
‘I can’t pee with you standing outside,’ Maddie called from the bathroom. ‘Can you wait in my bedroom?’
‘Okay, but be quick.’
My heart pounded as I paced up and down in Maddie’s room. Mam had left me a note to say she’d taken the dogs out for a walk so we had the house to ourselves which was just as well because I was a nervous wreck and she’d have known something was up if she’d seen me.
I jumped as I heard the lock turn on the bathroom door. Maddie appeared in her bedroom doorway moments later and I searched her face for an indication of the result, but it was blank.
‘Well?’ I asked.
She held up a test stick with her right hand. ‘Not pregnant.’
My hand fluttered to my throat. ‘You’re sure?’
She held up a second stick in her left hand. ‘Also not pregnant.’
Relief flowed through me but I was mindful that Maddie had spent the last couple of months believing she was expecting a baby and, even though it was way sooner than she’d hoped, it was possible she’d got used to the idea and had been looking forward to having a baby.
‘How do you feel about that?’ I asked.
As her face crumpled and she burst into tears, I dashed across the room and wrapped my arms around her. Not knowing whether they were tears of relief or sadness, I remained quiet until they subsided. Leading her to sit down beside me on the edge of her bed, I waited for her to speak.
‘I can’t believe the tests are negative,’ she said eventually, still giving nothing away about how she felt.
‘Did you want them to be negative?’
She looked at me as though I was mad. ‘Of course! You think I wanted that asshole’s baby?’
‘By asshole, can I assume you mean Alfie?’
‘Who else would it be?’
I thought it best not to respond to that. ‘Do you want to talk about what happened with him?’
I’d expected her to push me away but perhaps the relief at not being pregnant made her eager to unload everything.
She told me that, when she started seeing Alfie, she’d stood by her intention of not losing her virginity before she turned eighteen and only to take that step with somebody she loved.
She really liked Alfie but she didn’t love him.
Some of the things he said and did irritated her including his fixation with his hair and his obsession with his trainers, which had me stifling a smile.
He was her first serious boyfriend, she was flattered by the attention and there was more she liked than disliked about him so she saw no reason to end things.
Alfie knew early on that she had no intention of having sex with him and he claimed that he thought it was sweet but, after a few months together, he began applying pressure.
Most of her friends were sexually active and she was mindful of her tendency to follow the crowd so it took a lot of willpower not to cave.
‘Carmen kept telling me not to give in to Alfie unless I was 100 per cent certain he was right for me and I thought she was being a great friend looking out for me but I think it was cos she was already hooking up with him and didn’t want me doing that too.
’ She shuddered and screwed up her face.
‘Gives me the ick. Do you know what his excuse was for being with Carmen? Apparently he loved me and respected me too much to push for sex but he had needs. Said I could hardly blame him for getting them met elsewhere. Can you believe that?’
‘That’s pathetic little boy’s logic,’ I said, shaking my head in disgust.
‘Carmen didn’t even try to apologise but Alfie kept begging me to take him back. As if! If only I’d stuck to that.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Do you remember me going to Hattie Johnson’s party?’
‘I do.’ Hattie had been one of Maddie’s closest friends when she started senior school but they’d drifted apart so I’d been surprised when Maddie announced that she’d been invited to a party and sleepover at Hattie’s over Easter. Unless…
‘You went to Alfie’s instead?’ I asked.
‘God, no! Hattie knew about Alfie and Carmen – everyone did – and she felt sorry for me. She promised neither of them would be at her party so I decided to go cos I needed some new friends to hang out with but it was really hard. They were all in their friendship groups and I was on the outside of things, so I had a few drinks.’
I raised my eyebrows, stunned to hear that. Maddie had never shown any interest in alcohol and could get preachy about the state she’d seen people her age get into when under the influence.
Feeling lonely at the party, she’d drunk-messaged Alfie saying she wished he was there and she missed him.
So of course he turned up and, by then, she was even more inebriated.
She flung her arms round him, they started kissing, she led him up to an empty bedroom for some privacy and, in her addled state, it went a lot further than she’d intended.
My heart pounded. ‘Are you saying it wasn’t consensual?’
She hesitated before shaking her head. ‘It was what I wanted at the time and Alfie did check I was 100 per cent sure. Afterwards, he said he wanted us to get back together but I said he had to end it with Carmen for me to even consider that. He wouldn’t do that and that’s when I regretted what we’d done. ’
I grimaced at that but I didn’t say anything. She’d already discovered the dangers of drunk texting and the dubious choice of letting a cheater back into her life so she didn’t need me to point that out.
‘I couldn’t wait for the exams to end so I’d be done with sixth form and never have to see either of them again,’ she said. ‘But then I realised my periods had stopped and it looked like I was gonna be left with more than a bad memory of a crap first time.’
‘Why didn’t you take the morning-after pill?’
‘I did but I don’t usually drink, do I? So I spent the next day throwing up and found out too late that the pill doesn’t work if you don’t keep it down.’
‘Is thinking you were pregnant the reason you told me you weren’t going to university?’ I asked.
‘Obviously.’ She bit her lip. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic. It was that, but also cos I think I messed up my exams with being so stressed out about being pregnant.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this?’
‘I thought you’d be raging with me.’
‘I’m not mad at you for having sex with Alfie.
I do remember being your age and wanting to know what it was all about.
I am mad at Alfie though. He knew you didn’t drink and that, under the influence, you weren’t fully in control of what you were saying and doing.
So, even though you say it was consensual, he still took advantage. Is that a fair point?’
She nodded. ‘I just want to forget about it and him.’
‘Well, now you can, especially given the test results. If it had gone the other way, I hope you know that I’d have been there for you. But having a baby is life-changing whatever age you are and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved for you.’
And myself, although I’d never share that with her.
Being a parent was hard, especially when trying to have a career too, which was why Maddie had no siblings.
As a single teenage parent, Maddie would have needed help from me and that wouldn’t have been easy while trying to build a business from scratch.
And what about Mam? She was an incredible nanna and had been a willing babysitter for Lola and Max but a couple of nights caring for her grandchildren was a world away from living permanently with a newborn great-grandchild.
‘Actually, I am mad at you,’ I said. ‘Not for what happened with you and Alfie – I think you’re punishing yourself enough for that – but for the way you’ve behaved.
I understand you were anxious and presumably scared about the future but that only accounts for a couple of months of challenging behaviour.
What about the rest of the time? You’ve got to stop acting like you hate the world.
Your nanna and I don’t deserve all the attitude.
We both want the old Maddie back and I know she’s in there.
I can pinpoint the change to when you started sixth form so is there anything else that happened then that you want to talk about? ’
Maddie shrugged.
‘Come on, Maddie. There has to be something and I can’t imagine it’s as hard to say as what you’ve already shared with me.’
She shrugged once more and I realised I wasn’t going to get anything more out of her today.
‘I’m not bringing it up for you but, if you want the remote control, it’s in the bookshelf drawers in the lounge. I’ll let you have this morning to yourself but you’re not staying in your bedroom all day. You need to get some fresh air, explore the farm. Can you do that?’
She nodded.
‘Good. And no pressure to make any decisions today but you’ll also need to have a think about what you want to do next. You could still go to university, you know.’
‘I messed up my exams. I told you that already.’
‘You don’t know for sure until you get the results and, even then, it’s not over. Even if you haven’t got the grades for York, you might have got into Warwick.’
‘There’s only one grade difference so I doubt it.’
‘Then you might get somewhere through clearing or you can take a year out and do resits.’
‘You’d support me to do that?’ She looked interested.
‘Of course! Although there probably isn’t any point when you don’t want to be a therapist anymore because you don’t want to be like me.’ Although I said it in a jokey voice, I had my eyebrows raised as I fixed my eyes on hers so she was under no illusion that I’d brushed it aside as a joke.
Maddie winced. ‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘But you said it and it hurt like so many other things you’ve said over the past couple of years. If we’re going to move forward, we need to discuss what changed and why.’
I stood up and headed for the door but Maddie called, ‘Mum!’ and rushed round her bed to hug me. I wrapped my arms round her, my throat tight. I’d missed this so much. She used to be such a huggy person and I’d feared I’d never get the chance to hold her again.
‘What was that for?’ I asked when she let go.
‘To thank you for not shouting at me when I thought I was pregnant.’
‘How would that have helped anyone? And when have I ever shouted at you?’
‘Never.’
‘I’m not your enemy, Maddie. Remember that.’
I left her room and went into the kitchen for a much-needed coffee. I listened for Maddie’s footsteps on the stairs, expecting her to go into the lounge to retrieve her remote control, but there was silence. Was it too much to hope that she might be on the university applications portal?
Whatever she decided for the future, I didn’t think it was unreasonable to insist she found a job for the summer.
If she had any sense, she’d accept our offer to work here as surely the lack of commute was a no-brainer even if she didn’t love the idea of working alongside me after a tough couple of years.