Chocolate Cake for Breakfast (21 page)

In the end I was the last to leave work, after a forty-minute phone conversation with John Somerville about limping ducks. When, finally, I made it out to the ute, I rested my head on the hot steering wheel and cried. All that prevarication and micro-sipping of beer and wringing my hands about anyone finding out I was pregnant, and it was out. Just like that. And although they’d promised not to say a word, of course everyone would – they would tell just a handful of people apiece, in the very strictest of confidence, which meant three-quarters of Broadview would know by tomorrow lunchtime.

From there it would be but a short step to the national news. Mark’s ingrown toenail had made the papers a couple of years ago, so presumably his unborn child would be at least equally newsworthy. I might well wake up tomorrow morning to find the lawn covered in reporters and cameramen. (Besides nausea and exhaustion, pregnancy appeared to have granted me a new and special flair for exaggeration.)

I spent a few minutes brooding on all the awful misfortunes that would, if there was any justice in the world, befall Fat Sharon. Then I sat up, wiped my eyes on the hem of my shirt and opened my phone to call Mark.

His phone didn’t ring, which meant that either he’d turned it off or the battery had gone flat. ‘
Hi
,’ said his voice. ‘
Leave me
a message and I’ll get back to you
.’

‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘Everyone at work knows. A horrible pregnant woman I met at the midwife’s came in and told them. I – I just thought you might want to tell your parents before they hear it on Radio Sport or something. I’m sorry.’

I shut my phone and dropped it on the seat beside me. And then, just to set the seal on an already bad day, I went to tell Dad and Em.

I was never the type of kid who got into trouble. I was a plump and anxious teenager, and I expect Dad was more worried that I might never leave home at all than that I was going to fall in with the wrong crowd and spend my weekends experimenting with sex and alcohol. Admittedly I did once crash his car, but he watched me do it. I had no experience with serious parental confessions.

Caitlin met me at the door, wearing pink Barbie swimming togs and pink water wings. ‘Can you swim with me?’ she asked.

‘Not today,’ I said, and she slumped.

‘
Please?
’

‘I’m not feeling very well. Sorry, munchkin.’

‘Do you want some Pamol?’ she asked.

‘No, thanks,’ I said.

‘It’s strawberry flavour,’ she coaxed, ushering me tenderly up the hall. ‘Mum, Helen’s sick.’

The rest of the family were in the kitchen. Bel was seated on the bench while Dad adjusted her swimming goggles, and Em turned from the open fridge with a bottle of wine in one hand.

‘Sick of what?’ she asked. ‘Would wine help?’

I shook my head.

‘Must be serious, then,’ said Dad.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Hi, Bel.’

‘Will you come swimming?’ she asked.

‘She
can’t
,’ said Caitlin. ‘She’s
sick
.’

‘So am I,’ said Bel hopefully. Annabel adores Pamol, both because it’s sweet and because taking medicine makes her feel important.

‘You are not.’

‘Are too!’

‘Into the pool with you both,’ ordered Dad.

‘But someone has to watch us,’ said Caitlin. ‘We can’t just swim by
ourselves
. We might
drown
.’

‘Yes, and you wouldn’t want that,’ said Bel, glaring through her goggles at each adult in turn to ensure we were suitably sobered by this hideous thought.

‘We would not,’ her mother agreed. ‘It would be terrible. We’ll watch you from the deck.’ She opened a cupboard, swept up a handful of wineglasses and followed the girls out through the French doors.

‘Everything alright?’ Dad asked me.

‘No,’ I said, dissolving once more into tears.

He looked a little taken aback, but he put his arms around me and patted me on the back. ‘Come on, now,’ he said kindly. ‘Come and sit down and tell us what’s wrong.’

Caitlin and Bel had launched themselves into the pool, and Em was pouring the wine at the big outdoor table on the deck above them. ‘Tim, here’s yours . . . Bel! Less splashing, please! Helen, you’ll have one, won’t you?’ She turned and saw my face. ‘What’s wrong, love?’

‘I’m pregnant,’ I said.

Em dropped the wine bottle back onto the table with a thud. ‘Oh, sweetie.’

Dad said nothing at all. He took off his glasses and began absently to polish the lenses on the hem of his nasty Hawaiian shirt, his invariable custom when at a loss. In the first year after Mum died, when he was trying to work and look after me and keep us both clean and fed and clothed, he nearly polished them away to nothing.

‘Nine weeks,’ I added. ‘I had a scan yesterday.’

My stepmother came around the table and enfolded me in a warm, coconut-oil-scented hug. ‘Oh,
sweetie
,’ she said, and I laid my head on her shoulder and wept.

For quite some time I cried while Em stroked my hair, and then something wet and cold pressed itself against my legs. On inspection it proved to be Bel, complete with goggles and Dora the Explorer flotation ring, and howling like a car alarm.

‘Annabel,’ said Dad. ‘Stop that, please.’

‘Is Helen going to die?’ she wailed.

‘Of course not!’ Em said.

‘Well, not imminently, as far as we know,’ corrected Dad. ‘But everyone dies eventually.’

The wails increased in both volume and frequency. ‘I – don’t – want – to – die!’

‘Oh, well
done
, Tim,’ said his wife.

‘Bel, you womble,’ I said, crouching down level with her small crimson face. ‘I’m not going to die; I was just a bit sad. But I’m better now, see?’ I pulled a tattered ball of tissue from the pocket of my shorts and wiped my eyes.

‘Why were you sad?’ asked Caitlin, approaching across the deck.

‘I’m just not feeling very well. I’ve got a sore tummy.’

‘I don’t like it when you cry,’ said Bel, snivelling gently. ‘You’re a big girl. You’re not supposed to cry.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m not crying anymore.’

‘You need to have some Pamol,’ Caitlin said firmly, and trotted inside to get it, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind her.

I sat down in an outdoor chair and Bel began to climb into my lap. ‘Hey,’ I protested, fending her off, ‘you’re all wet and cold.’

‘I just want to give you a cuddle,’ she said plaintively, putting on her starving-orphan-all-alone-in-the-world face. I was moved less to remorse than to admiration – pulling off that expression with dimples and a round rosy face like a Renaissance cherub was impressive.

‘I’ll cuddle you when you’re dry,’ I told her.

‘If you don’t want to swim, Annabel, you’d better have a bath and get into your pyjamas,’ said Dad.

Faced with this dire threat, Bel scampered back across the deck and into the pool, where she lay crocodile-style at the shallow end by the steps, submerged up to her nose.

‘Here you go, Helen,’ said Caitlin, coming back out of the house armed with a medicine bottle and a tablespoon.

‘No, thank you,’ I said.

‘It won’t hurt you,’ Em said. ‘Paracetamol’s completely safe.’

‘It’s good for you,’ said Caitlin sternly, putting her spoon down on the table to wrestle with the child-proof cap of the bottle.

‘Caitlin, I swear if you make me drink that revolting stuff I’ll throw up.’

‘But then how are you going to get better?’ she asked, in the sort of voice used for reasoning with the very young or the very dim.

‘I think I’ll be better soon if I just sit here quietly,’ I said.

‘Go and get back in the pool, sweetie,’ said Em. ‘It was kind of you to think of it.’

Caitlin sighed and went, leaving behind a dense uncomfortable silence. When I couldn’t bear it any longer I said, ‘Your glasses are probably pretty clean by now, Dad.’

‘What? Oh, yes.’ He stopped polishing and settled them back on his nose. ‘So they are.’

‘Are you going to say anything else?’ I asked, flippant with shame and unhappiness. ‘Or is that it?’

Dad looked at me gravely across the table. ‘Just what do you expect me to say, Helen?’

‘I don’t know. I sort of hoped you knew how this conversation was supposed to go.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘’Fraid not.’ And the silence seeped back to surround us again.

Em took a sip from her wineglass and set it carefully back down. ‘Have you told Mark?’ she asked.

‘Yes. I told him last week, when he got back from England.’

‘How did he take it?’

‘He was lovely,’ I said to my hands. ‘He’s being so nice. Far nicer than I deserve.’

‘It does take two,’ said Dad drily.

‘But it’s my fault. I stuffed up the pill.’

Em smiled at me very kindly. ‘These things happen.’

‘I didn’t think they’d happen to me!’ Smart career women aren’t supposed to get themselves knocked up – it’s the sort of thing that happens to silly teenage girls who fear that telling their silly teenage boyfriends to wear a condom will brand them as losers. I mopped my eyes again with the wad of tissue and said miserably, ‘People will think I did it on purpose – that I thought I’d get my fifteen minutes of fame by having Mark Tipene’s baby.’

‘Of course they won’t!’ Em said.

‘I think you’ve got enough actual problems without inventing extra things to worry about,’ said Dad.

This was no doubt true, but not even slightly comforting.

‘So, when is this baby due?’

‘The tenth of July,’ I said.

‘A winter baby,’ said Em. ‘That’s nice.’

‘Nice,’ I repeated scathingly. ‘
Really?
’ She was only trying to be kind, but I was tired and sick and teetering on the brink of hysteria, and it seemed a stunningly inane comment.

Em and Dad exchanged a long look but said nothing, and I shoved back my chair and stood up.

‘Helen,’ said Dad gently. ‘Sit down.’

I shook my head. I was going to cry again, and when Caitlin tried to dose me with Pamol I would almost certainly shout at her, and then I’d have that to feel bad about on top of all the rest. I rushed into the house, tripped over Bel’s toy stroller and banged my hip hard against the edge of the table.

‘Hey,’ said Dad behind me. ‘Come on, love. Hang on a minute.’

I shook my head again, crying too hard to speak, and he gathered me up against him and hugged me.

‘Shh,’ he said. ‘It’ll be alright.’ There was a short pause while he searched for some uplifting comment, and then he said tentatively, ‘I’m sure it will be a very nice baby.’

‘I d-don’t
want
a baby!’

‘Well,’ he said levelly, ‘you don’t have to have one.’

I straightened with a jerk. ‘I can’t do that!’

‘Why not?’

I pushed myself away from him, failed to locate my tissue and had to wipe my nose on the back of my hand instead. ‘What – what if I had another baby one day? A wanted, planned-for one. Every time I looked at it I would think about the one I killed because it wasn’t convenient.’

My dad has almost no time for self-pity, and in response to this speech I more than half expected him to suggest that, if I felt like that about it, I might like to stop throwing tantrums and start acting like an adult. But he didn’t; he smiled a small crooked half-smile and reached out to ruffle my hair. ‘You are so like your mother at times,’ he said, and I cried harder than ever.

20

‘
HOW WAS YOUR DOWN COW
?’
KERI ASKED, LOOKING UP
from the paper as I came into the lunch room early the next afternoon.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘I gave her two bags of calcium, and she got up and chased Doug through a fence.’

‘Did she get him?’

I took a glass from the cupboard above the sink and filled it with water. ‘Not quite.’

‘Pity,’ said Keri.

‘He did tear his overalls,’ I said, sitting down at the table. Doug Harcourt was a self-important little man, and I had enjoyed watching him try and fail to clear a seven-wire fence. ‘What have you been doing?’

‘Lame cows at Hohepa’s,’ she said. ‘Are you going to Mark’s this weekend?’

I nodded.

‘Cool.’

‘Mm,’ I said.

‘He seems like a really lovely guy,’ she said tentatively.

I nodded again.

‘How are you doing?’ she asked.

I picked at the side of a fingernail. ‘I keep hoping I’ll wake up.’

‘Oh, Helen,’ she said, reaching across the table for my hand.

‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Sorry . . .’ And getting up I turned and went blindly out of the room.

It could have been so much worse. I wasn’t going to be sent to some grim workhouse for unmarried mothers, ostracised by society, forced to eke out a precarious living on the streets until killed by consumption and/or syphilis, or any of the awful fates that used to await unmarried pregnant girls. In fact still
did
await unmarried pregnant girls who weren’t lucky enough to get themselves knocked up in parts of the world where sex before marriage was socially acceptable. Mark hadn’t greeted the news with happy cries, but neither had he turned and run screaming for the hills. I had a loving, supportive family and a good job.

And none of those things made me feel the slightest bit better.