We Are Family by Nicola Gill

Author:Nicola Gill [Ford, M.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008355425
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-07-31T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifty-Three

Then

Laura lay on the hospital gurney with tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘I’m sure your mum will be here soon, love,’ Adam’s mum said, squeezing Laura’s hand. ‘The nurse has gone to try to phone her again now.’

Laura thought back to the moment a few weeks earlier when she’d told her mother she was pregnant. Evie’s disgust had crackled around the room. ‘How?’ Laura had made a face. ‘I mean how could you have been so stupid?’ Evie snapped.

‘We weren’t stupid,’ Laura had said. ‘We used a condom. It’s just—’

‘Spare me the details,’ Evie’d said, her lip curling.

‘There, there, my love,’ Adam’s mum said now, stroking Laura’s hair.

Evie had just assumed that Laura would get an abortion and was horrified when Laura said she was going to keep the baby. ‘You’re nineteen, for goodness’ sake. What about going to university?’

Laura had shrugged and tried to display a confidence she didn’t actually feel. She could go to university once the baby was born, she’d said.

Her mother had looked at her like she was insane. ‘And what about him?’

Him. Adam was Laura’s first proper boyfriend and Laura had been desperate for her mother to like him, or even to dislike him; just something. But, as it was, her mother was far too preoccupied with her own rather complicated love life (a sea of admirers, all of whom seemed to be kept slightly at bay). Whatever scraps of interest in such matters Evie had left got thrown in Jess’ direction. That boy, Ben, Jess had met at uni seemed nice, and weren’t the two of them similar – peas in a pod, they were.

When Laura had started bleeding she was at Adam’s house. He didn’t know what to do and neither did she.

When the bleeding started to be accompanied by cramping, Adam had panicked and gone to get his mum. She had handled the situation as calmly as she had the news of the pregnancy weeks earlier. She had them all at the hospital in less than twenty minutes, held Laura’s hand and told her it was going to be okay.

Everyone at the hospital had been nice too. One of the nurses told Laura that this was a bereavement, and not to let anyone make her feel otherwise, that it didn’t matter that Laura wasn’t that far gone, she had still lost her baby.

Laura looked at Adam’s mum. If any part of her thought it was a good thing her nineteen-year-old son’s girlfriend was miscarrying their unplanned baby, she was much too kind to say so. She seemed to understand that, even if no one – Laura included – thought this baby was a good idea, that didn’t mean that Laura didn’t still want it desperately. She had already bonded with the little bean that was growing inside of her, whispered to it that she was going to love it more than anything else in the world. Love it ferociously and unconditionally.

‘He won’t stay with you, you know,’ Evie had said a few days ago, ‘that Adam.

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