Chapter 74 #2
“I think he’s a very damaged man that was trying to be a good one. But he failed and that failure might have cost you big.” She eyed my stomach. “You’re late?” she asked and shame burned over me again. I nodded. I’d been so stupid.
“I have a test.” It had been waiting at the bottom of my bag for days now.
It could give me a result within three days of conception.
Conception. Had I conceived? Had it been three days?
I counted back. We’d last had sex on Tuesday night, after our fight over Angie.
The scene of that night played over in my head.
I wanted to press stop, to eject the reel altogether and set fire to it, but I couldn’t.
It played anyway. He’d been so determined to get inside me that night and the look on his face when I’d pulled him out of me and forced him to spill on my stomach instead…
What was that look? Anger that I’d foiled his plan? Anger at himself for what he was doing?
Alfie…
My stomach roiled, revolted at what we had become. I made it to the bathroom just in time to throw up again. My stomach was empty. All that came up was bile-ridden heartbreak and dry-heaving misery.
I flushed the toilet and leant back against the wall to catch my breath. A glass of water appeared in front of my face and I took it, washing my mouth out and spitting. Keira sat on the floor next to me as I rinsed and drank. My hands shook. I couldn’t make them stop.
“You’re in shock,” she said, her voice soft. “You trusted him and he violated you.” He violated me. Alfie, my Alfie, had violated me. And I’d let him.
Keira handed something to me and I looked down to see the pregnancy test in her hand.
“Are you ready?” No. I wasn’t. But I couldn’t look away from reality anymore.
I took the test from her. She stayed on the floor, not bothering to leave as I pulled my jeans down and peed on the stick.
It was clumsy. I’d never done this before.
Keira was uncharacteristically silent as I fastened my jeans and washed my hands.
I felt the numbness set back in as if my brain was trying to protect me from what was coming.
I was grateful for it and welcomed it like an old friend, because an old friend it was.
I’d felt it before. I’d held the numbness close as I’d cared for my dying gran, and when my mum died it had been weeks before I’d broken.
Weeks of waiting for the glass to shatter, and when it finally had I’d been here, on Keira’s bathroom floor, with her hand holding onto mine.
I resumed my seat on the pale blue tile and stared at the test. Two minutes. Two minutes was a fuck of a long time.
“You have options, Lo. No matter what that says, you have options.” Her hand slipped into mine, letting me know that she had my back whatever I chose to do.
Options. More roads in front of me. Abortion.
Adoption. Alfie. Getting rid of our baby, a baby I desperately didn’t want but was still an innocent part of him and me?
Giving that baby away wasn’t even an option.
Alfie would never allow it and I knew that I didn’t have the strength to do it.
So what was left? Raising a baby with Alfie?
A man who had manipulated me into a pregnancy I didn’t want and had possibly murdered someone?
I could almost laugh at myself, that I had allowed my life to devolve into this mess.
That these were my choices now. It was ridiculous.
What if I wasn’t pregnant? What were my options then?
Forgiving him and forgetting about what he had done?
Moving on without him? I didn’t want any of those roads.
I hated all of them. But I might have to pick one, the best one for me.
Not Keira, not Alfie, not anyone. Me. And I would.
I’d find the strength to do it. I felt broken and so fucking lost, but some old cobweb-covered part of me still remembered that I was Lola fucking O’Connell and I was a god-damned showgirl. Or at least, I had been. Before Alfie.
“If I’m…if it’s positive, if I keep it, I have to try with him. Keira, I—” My voice broke, unable to finish that sentence. There was no way to hide a pregnancy from Afie, no way to keep our baby away from him, and even if I could, I knew that I wouldn’t.
“I know.” Of course she knew. I’d grown up without my father. I wouldn’t do that to my own child if I could help it. But that raised more questions. What kind of father would Alfie be? The terror of pregnancy, of childbirth, of raising a baby I wasn’t ready for, sickened me. I can’t do this.
I closed my eyes. My head ached, my mind spun with questions unanswered, pain uneased, and confusion unresolved. I felt everything and understood nothing.
“And if it’s negative?” she asked.
I gritted my teeth, swallowing down pain so acute I could taste it.
“Then I have to let him go.” I had no choice. Not really. If he had done this, forgiving and forgetting wasn’t an option. Not anymore.
Keira squeezed my hand as the clock ran down and we watched the tiny piece of plastic tell me my future. I stared at it, reading the result over and over, a pit of resignation at the hell ahead of me settling into my stomach.
“Well, I guess now you know what you have to do.”
I stayed silent. There was nothing left to say. Did I know what I had to do?
Yeah. I did.