CHAPTER 2
Aeroplane mode was a wondrous thing. A tiny icon transporting people to a liberating time when phones weren’t smart and TikTok was a Play School sound effect. Poppy needed aeroplane mode for her brain. During her half-hour with Wenda she’d already missed four texts.
Mum: Dear Poppy, how did it go? Remember you are my STRONG brAVE GIRL and this will be a WONDERFUL ADVENTURE. Lol, Mum .
Mum: Dear Poppy, did you receive this? I thought the appointment finished at 11.30 .
Poppy checked her watch. It was 11.36 am.
Mum: Dear Poppy, just thinking—the appointment may run over time if they want to discuss Patrick, family health history, mental health, services for single mothers etc etc. Make sure you stay and listen to that information. IT COULD BE IMPORTANT .
Dani: Call me when you’re done, my dear. Love you xx
Poppy began walking and dialled her best friend.
Dani picked up on the first ring. ‘PARPEEEE!’
Poppy laughed. ‘DARNEEEE!’
What had started as a stupid joke while they were travelling around Croatia after uni had morphed into a years-old ritual—one that made Poppy smile every time she spoke to her friend.
‘Dude, we may need to cut that shit out soon,’ Dani said. ‘The other mums in the park already think I’m a weirdo because of Nella’s fixation with chewing the pram wheels. They don’t need any more ammo to use against me.’
Poppy laughed. ‘Dan, if I didn’t say your name like that you would legit think I was mad at you.’
‘True,’ Dani agreed. ‘And for that, we have to thank old mate in Croatia for his gift of loud and shit pronunciation.’
‘Such a gift,’ Poppy said.
‘Unlike the visual of his belly button hair.’
‘And the memory of his body odour.’
‘And the sex lessons.’
‘STOP!’ Poppy gasped, giggling as the memory of the beer-bellied restaurateur humping a plastic chair flashed behind her eyes. ‘I’m actually dying! You will make this baby pop out of me.’
‘Mate, that would be my gift to you,’ Dani said. ‘If your baby just pops out, I will be so bloody jealous. If you get anything less than an eight-hour labour, I’ll be pissed. You need to know what I went through or our friendship will be missing this deep level of understanding.’
‘Thanks, Dan. So selfless of you.’
‘I’m the Dalai Lama in Lululemon,’ deadpanned her friend. ‘So how did the appointment go? Was it okay?’
‘It was fine.’ Poppy sighed. ‘I’m walking out of the hospital now. It was the same as my appointments in Sydney. No big deal. The midwife was okay, the hospital seems normal. Literally, it’ll be the same as having a baby in Sydney—just no good options for Uber Eats afterwards.’
‘That’s a pretty big deal-breaker, you know. You sure you don’t want to have the baby here? I’ll deliver RaRa Ramen to the ward and comb your hair and change nappies and stuff. I’m ace at that shiz now.’
‘Um, sorry, why would you comb my hair?’ asked Poppy, wincing as she stepped through the automatic doors back into the shuddering heat.
‘Um, because I am maternal now, and I would look after you because I am a caring legend.’
‘Well, thanks, legend, but I’ll be a-okay out here in the sticks, so long as I stop yelling at vigilantes in the car park.’
‘Wait, what?’
Poppy groaned, a fresh layer of perspiration building at her temples. ‘I just yelled at some random dude in the car park. It was full crazy-preggers-lady mode. He rocked up and was being a douche about where I could park and I lost it.’
‘LOL—actual LOLs,’ Dani said, chortling. ‘You actually got rowdy at some poor old guy in the car park?’
Poppy groaned again. ‘He wasn’t even old. He was, like, our age.’
‘Was he hot, at least?’
Poppy smiled to herself. Her best friend was nothing if not predictable.
‘The main takeaway from the encounter was that he was a giant douche of the douchiest kind, but I guess he wasn’t terrible-looking,’ she admitted, thinking back to the man’s broad shoulders. ‘But in a really clichéd Ken doll kind of way,’ she clarified. ‘Not like a Ryan Gosling Ken; more like a basic model Ken, wearing scrubs. Boring. Totally wholemeal bread.’ She breathed deeply, trying to expel the heat from her throat. The back of her dress was stuck to her thighs. ‘Seriously, Dan, who does that? I don’t know who I am anymore. I mean, I’m fine, but—’
‘Are you though?’ Dani interrupted. Her friend’s tone was serious now.
Poppy sighed. ‘Honestly? I don’t know. I’m on autopilot. If I stop to think about it, I’ll get overwhelmed. It’s becoming so much more real now. I have no idea whether I’ll be a good mum or if I’ll cope on my own. I mean, you have Sam and it’s still been a whirlwind for you.’
‘Pops, I cannot even imagine how crazy this must feel, but you have to trust me when I say I know you’ll be okay. You’re clever, you’re strong, you’ve got your parents there. This baby is so lucky to have a mum like you. I mean that.’
It wasn’t that Poppy didn’t believe her friend; she knew Dani was sincere. It was just that her friend thought way too highly of her.
‘Thanks, Dan.’ Poppy reached into her handbag for the car keys as the LandCruiser came into view. ‘I love you.’
‘No worries, my dear,’ replied Dani, instantly jumping out of serious mode. ‘If you’re ever feeling overwhelmed, just close your eyes and imagine I’m right next to you, calming you with my melodious voice.’ At this point, her friend began belting out an enthusiastic rendition of ‘Lean On Me’.
‘Hanging up now!’ yelled Poppy, pressing the red button on her iPhone. She heard Dani begin to cackle before her name vanished from her screen.
It was amazing how such terrible singing could make her feel so profoundly soothed. Her fingers drummed the tune to ‘Lean On Me’ all the way home to her new rental, which, in every aspect, was worlds away from her old place. Her apartment in Sydney had been on the sixth floor, which felt fancy but not nauseatingly high, and if you did suffer from vertigo-induced queasiness you could always nip downstairs and self-medicate at the twenty-four-hour pharmacy or the wine bar across the street.
Her new place was in pure suburbia—unadulterated in every sense of the word. If a wine bar opened nearby it would have to serve sherry and port in a non-ironic way, given the median age of her neighbours. Poppy suspected she was the youngest in her new suburb by about forty years. The broadband was excellent, mind you, which was probably because most of her neighbours were still on the faxing bandwagon.
Everything was beige: the bricks, the roofs, the outfits. Poppy’s house looked like the house next to it, and the house next to that. The 1980s brick veneer was sun-faded and chipped, the grass was starched and prickly, and the verandah was tiled with pavers the colour of Betadine. When she’d given Dani a tour over FaceTime, her best friend had shrieked in faux delight, ‘Love a poo-brown palette!’ That pretty much summed it up.
Secretly, though, Poppy didn’t mind it. The street was lined with sprawling oaks and, most significantly, her rental had a garden. No-one in Sydney in their early thirties could afford a garden unless they were a nepo baby or a white-collar criminal. To have grass and actual trees—plural!—felt almost Kardashian-level luxe.
Poppy walked across the dusty verandah and unlocked her front door. The view inside was starting to improve. A week ago it had been a labyrinth of cardboard boxes, so disorganised that on her first night she couldn’t find the cutlery so had eaten her takeaway with her bare hands. Seven days later—put it down to the prenatal nesting or a desperate instinct for self-preservation—the boxes had all been unpacked, flattened and deposited in the recycling bin. The gaping lack of furniture was a stark reminder of her new-found aloneness and everything left behind in Sydney, but slowly she was cobbling together a neat, if sparse, functional three-bedroom home. Ready for a family , she thought grimly. Of sorts.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Mum.
‘Darling, I just saw two-for-one summer dresses at Rockmans!’ her mother announced by way of greeting.
Poppy rolled her eyes. Her mum was an avid bargain hunter and prone to excitement at very mundane things. Weed killer, umbrellas, a well-boiled egg. ‘That’s great, Mum,’ she replied. ‘You should treat yourself.’
‘Not for me, darling—for you! Lots of snazzy prints. They’d go very nicely with the baby bump. And some of them are that stretchy fabric you could yank down for breastfeeding!’
‘Mum, I don’t think I’m the target market for Rockmans.’
‘What do you mean, darling?’ Chrissie McKellar still thought she and her daughter shared the same taste in fashion despite a clear divergence at age nine, when Poppy had asked Santa for a Roxy bikini and board shorts combo (still an iconic look) but ended up with a paisley-print Cancer Council rashie instead. It was pathetic that two decades on she still didn’t know how to admit she hated paisley without hurting her mum’s feelings. Poppy sighed. ‘Thanks, Mum. I’ll take a look tomorrow.’
‘Excellent!’ said her mother. ‘Now, how did the appointment go? Was there much discussion about your situation ?’
Her mother always said ‘your situation’ in a loud stage whisper, clearly intending to spark intrigue, which Poppy knew it definitely did among her mum’s golf friends.
‘No, Mum, we did not discuss my situation. It’s the twenty-first century. I am not the first woman to become a single mum.’
‘I know,’ her mother replied, ‘but I thought they might encourage you to reconnect with Patrick. Or invite him to the birth?’
‘Mum! Why would they do that? I saw a midwife, not a relationship counsellor!’
‘Yes, but you know those airy-fairy job descriptions these days. Everyone does a bit of everything. I thought they might recommend it. He could just be busy with his job, you know. He was always working such late nights. Have you tried to—’
‘Mum,’ warned Poppy.
Thwarted, her mother relented. ‘I’m just trying to help.’
‘I know,’ Poppy said. ‘But trying to convince me to get back together with Patrick is not helping.’
‘Wait!’ cried her mother. ‘I just remembered—I have more good news for you!’
Poppy groaned. ‘Better than the Rockmans sale?’
‘Yes!’ said her mother, oblivious to the joke. ‘Henry Marshall has moved home!’
Poppy felt her throat constrict. ‘Mum! Stop this right now! I am thirty-seven weeks pregnant. I am looking for breast pads and nipple gel and one-size-fits-all undies that don’t strain my vagina! I am not looking for a man!’
‘Darling, don’t yell “vagina”. You sound a bit crass.’
Poppy almost screeched with exasperation. Her mother, who loved to tell her friends she had read the Kama Sutra (‘a fascinating read—quite intellectually stimulating’) could also be a real pearl-clutcher. Her contrariness routinely drove Poppy insane.
‘Mum, I don’t care that Henry has moved home. I don’t care that Patrick has no interest in being a dad. I literally just care about getting through the next few days without wetting my pants. Now, I am going to go and try to put together a flat-pack cot, so I am saying goodbye and I will speak to you later.’
Her mother was quiet at the other end.
‘Mum?’
‘I was just trying to—’
Poppy softened. ‘I know, Mum.’
‘But, darling …’
‘What?’ asked Poppy cautiously.
‘Darling, if you want some help with the flat pack, call me and I’ll drag your father away from the sports channel and send him over with the drill.’
Poppy smiled. ‘Thanks, Mum. I love you.’
Poppy’s phone dimmed to black and she considered the flat-pack box in the corner. Frankly, she’d never intended to put it together without her father’s help, so she unlocked her phone again. Opening Facebook, she typed two words into the search bar: Henry Marshall .