An Afterlife for Rosemary Lamb by Louise Wolhuter

Author:Louise Wolhuter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ultimo Press
Published: 2022-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

‘W

hat made you change your mind?’ Lily asked me, and I told her I didn’t know but that wasn’t really true.

There was a nurse at the clinic, the one who let us in, the same one who took me through to change out of my clothes. There was a robe on a chair and it was one of those one-size-fits-all things that you put on like a hairdresser’s cape, but it had arms that looked like neck holes, and long ties that went through slits in the seams and wrapped around you, and I put it on all wrong and got in a tangle, and the nurse had to help me get out of it and then back in again, and I was so flustered and frustrated that I began to cry.

‘Slow down,’ she told me. ‘Take a breath and start again.’

She had cold hands, but the hug she gave me was as warm as chocolate.

‘You’re going to be okay,’ she said. ‘It’s your right, your choice.’

I told her it wasn’t the right time, and she said, ‘It never is,’ and that was it: that’s what changed my mind.

Back in the waiting room I thought about what she’d said: that it was never a good time—for all of us there in the gowns. I could see it was too soon for the teenagers, but I wasn’t a teenager anymore. What if this was it for me? What if there was never going to be a better time? What if this was my one chance and there never was another? Looking back, would this time actually have been right? And the other things the nurse said: that it was my right, my choice. It was up to me. I’d felt that getting pregnant was a dead end, that I’d be stuck in Maggie Beach forever, but I felt a door swing ajar beside me and I saw a whole other way that I was free to go.

I could keep this baby, let it grow inside me, if I wanted.

Slow down. Take a breath and start again.

I could still leave. I would just take this little jellybean away with me, before it grew so big that people realised two of us were leaving. I could raise this child all by myself, far away from Maggie Beach, far away from Eddie, who’d never need to know he was the father.

Would that be so terrible? Would it be any worse than what I had been about to do?

He’d be hurt, but he’d move on, meet someone else and marry again. He would have other chances, I was sure.

‘Are you going to leave him?’ Lily asked.

Meg was focused on the road ahead, nibbling the inside of her bottom lip, the way she did when she worried. I told her not to. ‘It’ll all work out, you know.’

‘Not by itself it won’t,’ Lily said. She was right of course.

I was glad that Meg was driving and Lily had taken the front seat. I needed time to grow my thoughts.

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