The Decision: Lizzie's Story (15 page)

“… Well, then!” Mike interrupted. Another of his stock phrases. Along with “So?”, these two sentences formed the basis of most of his arguments. Again, like a child.
Oh God, what had I done?

“I just want to talk about this. Properly.” I persisted.

“What is there to talk about?” Mike said.

“Everything…” I began.

“… No.” He said.

And there it was: an end to the matter. Mike did not want to discuss anything with me. Mike was only interested in one way of resolving the situation: his way. And if I objected, if I wanted my feelings taken into account too, then I was the one being unreasonable.

“You’re unbelievable.” I said, echoing Shona.

Mike shrugged, turning his back on me. He stubbed out his long dead cigarette at last. “I’m going to university in a couple of weeks.” He declared.

“So am I.” I said, baffled at where the conversation was going.

“Good luck with that.” Mike asserted. “On your own, a kid, rent to pay, studies to do… Yeah, hope it works out for you.”

His words didn’t make sense at first. Then with sickening clarity, they hit me. He was washing his hands of me. He didn’t care what I did about the pregnancy, as long as I did it as far away from him as possible.

I was well and truly dumped.

“You bastard.” I said venomously. I didn’t believe I could hate anyone more than I did Mike in that single moment.

“Just… go, will you?” Mike replied.

I just stood there. Sighing theatrically, Mike began the computer game again: gunfire sounded again around the attic bedroom. I stared at the back of his head, willing him to turn around, look at me, realise his mistake or at least the vile way he was treating me.
What was wrong with him?

But he didn’t.

“Goodbye, then.” I said impotently. Mike gaze was still fixed on the computer game and the carnage on-screen. I turned, my legs felt heavy. I shuffled my way from the bedroom, sure he would call after me.

But he didn’t.

Shona was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. “I tell you, if that guy smells even half as bad as this house, I’m not going near him,” Shona chortled in her too-loud voice. I knew Francis must be able to hear her, but I just didn’t care. For once, Shona’s rudeness was the least of my problems. “So, what did Himself say?”

“He…” I felt hot tears prick my eyelids, a lump rose in my throat. “He, um…”

I didn’t need to say it. Shona’s face became dark as thunder. “Bastard.” She reaffirmed, before moving towards the stairs again. She was going up to confront him.

I stood in her way. “Don’t.” I said, “It’ll only make things worse.”

“How can it be worse!” Shona shrieked. She was right; it couldn’t be any worse. But even so, I wanted to walk out the front door with some dignity. Shona rolled her eyes at me; it was clear she thought I was weak. Shona took my arm, propelled me towards the front door. “Let’s go, then.” She said grimly.

As soon as the front door slammed after us, the tears started. For a few moments they were hysterical gulps of air and snot as panic hit me.
What the hell was I going to do?
Shona just gave me a hankie and guided me down the back roads, away from the park and the high street and other people, dragging me through the front door of her parents’. There, in the hallway, was a huge ornate mirror next to the phone. She pointed at it, made me look at my reflection: in it, my face was contorted and red, my mascara and eye shadow smeared. I looked a mess. And very, very young.

“Remember this.” Shona instructed. I wondered what Shona meant, but before I could ask, her attentions were diverted. She grabbed at the coats on the hook, feeling in the pockets, swearing as she didn’t find what she needed. “Dad? Dad!” She called out. “Borrowing the car.” It was a scene I’d witnessed many times before. Shona never asked for anything, yet always got what she wanted.

“Keys on the hook, darling.” Philip, her father, called from the kitchen. He didn’t even come through and ask where we were going. The car keys were on the hook above the telephone as Philip promised. Sneaky, Shona looked back towards the kitchen, opening the telephone table drawer as she did so. Inside, a very expensive
calfskin wallet – Phillip’s. She checked the cash inside and swore. Only twenty pounds.

“Typical,” Shona breathed, “He always has at least three hundred, four hundred in here. But not today.”

“What do you want it for?” I said wide-eyed.

But Shona ignored me. She drew out a credit card, searched through the rest of the wallet, producing a scrap of paper: Philip’s PIN. “Well done Dad,” Shona said sarcastically, “Always security conscious.” Shona led me through the inner door to their massive garage. Inside, were two of their cars, the third presumably still out with Shona’s mother. Shona wasn’t supposed to drive Phillip’s Jaguar, but she unlocked it regardless, sliding in behind the steering wheel. “Get in.” She told me.

“Where are we going?” I said. All my previous fight had left me. Now I just wanted everything back to normal. First stop in returning to the status quo: Shona telling me what to do.

“To get this sorted.” Shona said, tapping something into her very expensive phone’s satnav. An hour and a bit through the country roads and three run red lights later, Shona pulled up on a side street on a double yellow line. She’d taken me inland, to Exmorton, the next town over from Winby. We were outside a large Victorian house with lots of hanging baskets and a brass bell, though there was a modern intercom system as well. A large, newly-painted sign proclaimed: “The Stevenson Well-Woman Clinic.” A couple of women and a man stood nearby, with clipboards, a megaphone and a sign that read: BABIES ARE PEOPLE TOO. Protestors. They were taking a break, lolling against a well-pruned hedge.

I knew instantly why Shona had brought me to this place. “An abortion clinic?” I said.

Shona shrugged. “I didn’t know what else to do. Do you?”

“I don’t have any money…” I began, then quieted as Shona flicked her father’s credit card at me. So that’s what it was for. “But I can’t afford to pay him back… He’ll miss it?” I said.

“No he won’t.” Shona replied, with undisguised bitterness, not meant for me.

We sat for some moments in the car, in silence, looking at the big white building and its ridiculously jolly flower arrangements. I wasn’t sure how I felt about being there. I could walk in there with Shona’s Dad’s credit card and this walking nightmare of an afternoon would be done and dusted, over in just a few hours. Or I could turn away and figure out another way, whatever that was.

Finally, Shona broke the silence. “Do you want to go inside?” She said.

“I don’t know.” I confessed.

Shona sighed, tried another tack. “Okay. Do you want this baby?”

Baby. I’d been trying to keep that word out of my mind, referring to it as “the pregnancy” instead. Babies had always been positive things to me and my family; something to be celebrated. I remembered attending the hospital with my mother, seeing the twins on the fuzzy black and white screen, my mother’s tears of joy. There had never been twins in either side of the family before. Yet at the same time, the word “baby” to me now inspired a feeling of trepidation within me. Babies meant change and I had things I wanted to do. But…

“… I don’t know.” I said finally.

Shona drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, her irritation with me rising. She had a final go at coaxing an answer from me: “Do you want an abortion?” she enquired.

“No.” I said, surprised at my own words.
Where had that come from?
I guessed it had been there all along, in the back of my mind. Mike had been right.

“So looks like you’re having a baby, then.” Shona said.

I felt sick. I undid my seatbelt, lurched out the door towards the drain by the double yellows, though all I managed was a couple of dry heaves. Shona followed me, leaving the car running.

“You’re alright.” She said again.

Except I wasn’t. I wasn’t alright! I was far from alright. I might have made a kind of decision –
I didn’t want an abortion
– yet still I was struck by fear and dread. Did all mothers-to-be feel like this? I doubted it. My mother had always been so happy to discover she was expecting, regardless of what was happening (or more than likely not happening) with my father at the time. She was built for this. I was not.

“Are you okay?” It was a woman’s voice. Shona and I looked up to see one of the protestors had broken away from her small group. She was a dumpy young woman with a long green coat and a wicker hat jammed over most of her face. A cruel part of me wondered if she had ever had a lover, never mind had to consider something like unexpected pregnancy. Then I remembered Shona and Bobby: there was someone, it seemed, for everyone. Except me, apparently.

“She’s fine.” Shona said, her tone brittle, eager to get away. She could never understand or countenance others’ views if they did not match her own. Over the years I had even seen her argue with reverends and priests canvassing on the steps of their own churches. But the woman in green ignored Shona, despite my friend’s best efforts to jam me back in the car against my will. The woman in green had a selection of pamphlets. She offered me one and I reached out to take it. But Shona got in the way. “Look, you don’t need to convert anyone here, alright?”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do.” The woman said quietly.

I took the leaflet from her: Across the top the words, ADOPTION – A REAL CHOICE were emblazoned. Just as quickly, the woman in green had turned on her heel and rejoined her group of friends outside the clinic doors.

“Do-gooding nutcase.” Shona proclaimed.
There was the Shona I knew.

“Take me home.” I whispered.

Silence descended between us as Shona drove. Halfway home, Shona flicked on the radio and the car was filled with ridiculously jaunty pop tunes about relationships and sex. Stories of how much fun men and women could have; how nothing stands in the way of a boy and girl in love. I had believed them once upon a time, just as I had believed Mike and I had something… If not love, then at least an understanding. Now I realised, too late, we’d had nothing.

I stared at the leaflet in my hand all the way. On the front were pictures of babies, smiling adults. “Give the gift of life to someone who can’t have their own child” the pamphlet’s caption suggested. There must be hundreds of suitable, solvent adults in the world who could give my child the type of home I never could, I reasoned. I could still have the life I was meant to and the child could still have theirs. The more I read the black type, the more I believed it could be a possible solution.

Shona stopped at the top of the lane like she always did, so I might cut across the field to my house. A lurid hand-painted sign protruding from the hedge promised cream teas in the village; another grammatically incorrect board invited people to “pick their own strawberry’s.” Shona turned the engine off and the radio abruptly died. Silence filled up the space between us as quickly.

“Tell your Mum.” She said softly.

“I can’t.” I replied.

“For God’s sake, Liz!” Shona exploded, “If anyone will understand, it’s her. She’s had literally half a dozen babies herself!”

“Exactly!” I argued. “She’s got too much on.”

“Not for you.” Shona said vehemently.

“I’m the good one.” I said plaintively. This much was true. All my life, I had been the “helper”. I had always been the one who could be counted on not to tantrum; to help tidy up, or keep the others in line when my father had gone AWOL. I wasn’t so much as a daughter, as back up. I could remember Mum’s words as far back as a small girl of four or five:
What a good girl you are. You’re such a help to Mummy. What would I do without you?

“Tell her.” Shona said again.

“I can’t.” I repeated, my eye drawn back to the leaflet.

Shona’s gaze followed mine – and, it seemed, my train of thought. “You’re not…?”

“… Why not?” I replied defiantly.

“Adoption? Seriously?” Shona said.

“Adoption is a good thing.” I pointed out.

“Yes,” Shona agreed. “It is. For orphans… And for children whose parents can’t cope. I know it’s not what you expected, but you’d be alright.”

“You don’t know that.” I said.

“This isn’t a soap opera, Liz!” Shona said, exasperated.

La la la
… I wasn’t listening. I had turned into Mike. “I never said it was.” I shot back.

“You’d have to go through the pregnancy… the birth… and then watch a stranger take your baby away!” Shona exclaimed.

“It would be for the best.” I said, doggedly.

“For who?” Shona said plaintively.

“For both of us.” I declared.

Shona actually laughed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She said.

“And you do?” I demanded.

“No,” Shona admitted. “But I know someone who does.” With that, Shona turned the key in the ignition and the engine fired back into life.

“What are you doing!” I cried as the car’s wheels spun around again. They almost stuck in the mud, but didn’t, yielding with a roar. Shona didn’t answer my question. Instead, she reversed, back up the country lane the way we had come, back to in the direction of Exmortion. What the hell was she thinking? In the rearview mirror, her expression was crazed. Shona didn’t turn the radio back on, allowing me to hear the text as it came in. Mum. As ever, she spelled out her displeasure with capital letters: YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN HOME HOURS AGO. But for once I was unafraid of the consequences of ignoring my mother, when Shona was acting so weird. I tapped out a quick message, trying to placate Mum. SORRY, HOME SOON. But even I was unsure of this.

For the second time that afternoon, we sped across the headland. “Where are we going?” I asked, for the hundredth time.

“You’ll see.” Shona said through clenched teeth.

Back in Exmorton, we pulled up outside another Victorian house. This one was grander than the abortion clinic. No expense had been spared. Beautiful topiary in the shapes of birds and animals surrounded the whitewashed building; velvet curtains visible through the French windows. Elderly residents played bowls on the lush green
grass, or sat out under huge parasols, chatting amongst themselves. The occasional white-clad orderly was visible amongst them, talking softly or playing cards. An old people’s home. A very expensive one at that.