Aimee ran down the main street, wishing her family away.
Not forever, obviously. But just for the day, the next few hours even, so she didn’t have to face them like this. Embarrassed. Filthy. Thoughts bouncing painfully up and down like her under-supported double-Ds in the bra she’d outgrown years before.
She ran past the newsagents, the butchers, the hardware store, all thankfully closed for the town concert. Ignored the curious stares of parents hustling tearful children into SUVs, the hesitant half-waves from people she sat on committees with.
‘Just getting a bit of exercise,’ she huffed to old Marjory, sitting outside the post office in the sun. Sharna, praise the Lord, was nowhere to be seen. Still out spreading the news of Aimee’s humiliation, no doubt.
Aimee ran faster.
Over Hunters Creek bridge, past the bowling club, the town swimming pool. Up the hill that led to the servo. The teenage attendant on the forecourt gaped at her.
‘I’m in training,’ Aimee snapped, aware of the skirt riding up her knees, her pointy leather flats biting into her feet as she lumbered along. The picture she must be painting: a middle-aged fat woman, puffing along in her Going Out clothes, all failed deodorant and sweat patches.
A crazy woman.
‘I’m not crazy,’ she told herself, as she turned onto the wide grass verges of Old School Road. ‘I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy.’ Heading out of town now, the space between houses growing. Miles from their own property, but Nick had taken the car and it wasn’t as though she could’ve asked Melinda for a lift. Aimee yanked off her shoes and continued barefoot. ‘I’m not crazy,’ she repeated, the mantra giving her focus and rhythm as she ran. The exercise she was supposed to be doing anyway, to keep her head from turning on her.
Forget her head turning on her. Look at her friends.
The houses disappeared, giving way to fields, the occasional vineyard. Long dirt driveways. Aimee slowed to a walk now the danger of people wanting to talk to her had passed. And it wasn’t as though she was in any hurry to get home. She had nothing to say to Nick or her children, no explanation except the truth. Aimee felt a little sick again. Please let him have taken them out to lunch like Melinda ordered. Please let me have a bit of space, to sort myself out in private. Except Aimee knew her husband, and knew he’d be at home, waiting for her. Worrying about her.
Thinking it was happening again.
It wasn’t happening again.
It couldn’t happen again.
Aimee hitched up her skirt and began to run.
‘Before you overreact, remember, this is not a definitive diagnosis. It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s something wrong.’
Lou eyeballed the doctor. ‘Overreact?!’ The bloody nerve. ‘You message me to say we need to come in asap, tell us there might be some kind of problem with the baby, and you’re telling me not to overreact?’
The doctor — cool, calm, expensive — looked at Lou with exaggerated patience. ‘Mrs Henderson, you’re not helping.’
‘I’m not married.’ But Lou took her point. In the armchair next to her, Tansy looked as though she’d been shocked with a cattle prod. Lou put an arm around her rigid daughter and forced her voice to remain even. ‘All right then. What does it mean?’
The doctor put her pen down on the pile of test papers. She walked around the desk and pulled a third chair in towards Lou and Tansy, so close her bare knees were almost touching theirs. ‘The important thing to remember is this is only a first-trimester screening,’ she said. ‘It can give an abnormal result, even when there’s nothing wrong. On the other hand, it could be the first sign there’s an issue.’
Under Lou’s arm, Tansy flinched.
‘So what do the results suggest?’ asked Lou.
‘There’s an indication that the baby might — might — have a chromosomal condition called trisomy 13,’ the doctor said.
‘Is that bad?’ asked Tansy.
‘It’s serious, yes.’ The doctor spoke gently. ‘Babies with this condition have quite severe abnormalities. Parts of the baby, like its eyes or its spine or its heart, might not develop properly. There would almost certainly be intellectual disability. A lot of babies with this condition don’t live very long after they’re born. And those that do, struggle to have what you and I would call a normal life. They need a lot of extra care.’
‘But you said you didn’t know,’ said Tansy.
‘I don’t know, you’re absolutely right.’
‘So why even tell us?’ Tansy demanded. ‘Why would you say something like that, if you weren’t sure?’
The doctor flicked her eyes towards Lou. ‘Because you’re very young, and you’re also very early in your pregnancy. Eight weeks now, am I right?’
Lou nodded. ‘We think so.’
‘We know so,’ said Tansy. ‘I’ve only slept with one person. I’m not a slut.’
The doctor winced slightly. ‘Anyway. You need to be aware that this is a possibility. Because it might alter the decisions you make, going forward.’
Tansy whipped her head around. ‘Is she talking about abortion?’
‘Tansy.’ Lou tightened her hold on her daughter to keep her in the chair.
‘Because I’m not having an abortion. I’ve already decided. No matter what.’
The doctor nodded. ‘And I wouldn’t try to influence you. I’m just giving you all the information. That’s my job.’
‘We don’t need any more information.’ Tansy wriggled out of Lou’s grip. ‘I don’t want to know any more.’
‘I would recommend further testing.’ The doctor moved back behind her desk, pulled the little keyboard towards her. ‘Even just so you can prepare.’
‘I don’t want to walk around for the next seven months thinking there might be something wrong with my baby.’
‘Which is why we’re going to find out one way or the other.’ Lou turned her attention back to the doctor. ‘What kind of tests?’
The doctor clicked at the keys. ‘I’m going to arrange for chorionic villus sampling,’ she said. ‘Because it’s still a little early for amniocentesis. We take a tiny bit of the placenta —’
‘No!’
‘And the cells are tested for any chromosomal or genetic disorders. It will tell us whether the syndrome is present, although not how severe it might be.’
‘Is it risky?’ asked Lou.
‘It does carry a slightly higher risk of miscarriage, yes.’
Tansy had tucked herself into a small ball, shoes leaving scuff marks on the pale leather seat.
‘Is it painful?’ Lou nudged her daughter’s feet off the chair.
‘Not particularly. More uncomfortable. I’ll do another ultrasound now though, look for any excess fluid behind the baby’s neck. That will give us further indication of whether CVS is necessary.’
Lou eyed the sleek silver Mac. ‘How much?’ she asked. ‘For the tests.’
‘You’ll have to speak to reception, but I think the CVS is around six, seven hundred dollars. Plus the ultrasound and consultation, of course.’
Of course. ‘Only we were thinking of transferring to St Margaret’s. It’s closer to where we live.’
‘That’s entirely your choice. I’m happy to send your notes over there, if that’s what you want. It might delay things a bit, that’s the only thing I’d say. I don’t think they do CVS. It’s quite specialist. You might have to go down to Melbourne.’
They’d already spent four hundred on the blood tests, two hundred and fifty on the last consultation. Lou quickly tried to do the sums.
‘Mum?’
‘Sweetheart?’
‘I don’t want to talk to any more doctors. I don’t want anyone else to know.’
‘They’re not going to tell anyone, love. They’re not allowed.’ But Lou turned back to the sleek blonde bob in front of them, the empathetic yet unlined face. ‘How soon would you be able to do it? How soon can we have the test?’
As Aimee ran, she remembered.
It had started with a simple — but colossal — mistake. A heartwarming article she’d written about a terminally ill toddler, a town rallying around a struggling family, funds raised to bring grandparents over from England for one last visit.
Except there was a question mark over whether the little girl was actually dying.
‘Did the doctor confirm the prognosis with you?’ the news editor had asked as Aimee hyperventilated in his office, the whole newsroom craning to see what was going on.
‘He said that survival rates were negligible,’ Aimee said miserably. ‘He said children with this kind of cancer generally didn’t make it.’
‘But did he actually say she was going to die?’ The news editor looked wearily at his cadet reporter. ‘Look, technically, you’re probably right. But technically isn’t going to cut it with this one, I’m afraid.’ There was talk of a lawsuit. The paper’s legal team was summoned. A retraction would only make things worse, they decided; the paper ended up making a big donation to the hospital in the child’s name, and Aimee was sent home for a week.
‘Go clear your head,’ the news editor said kindly. ‘Get some rest. Come back raring to go.’
But Aimee hadn’t come back raring to go, she’d come back nervous. She began double-checking, reading interviewees back their quotes. Offering to let them see the story before it went to print.
‘Absolutely not,’ the news editor said, when one of the other cadets dobbed her in. ‘We don’t give anyone copy approval.’
So Aimee began making her inquiries in secret: mobile phone conversations in hallways, emails she deleted immediately. Another journalist got a big budget story wrong and Aimee began worrying about numbers, asking other reporters to check her copy. Another quiet word to her boss, and Aimee was moved off the news desk and onto entertainment.
Which should have made things easier, but somehow they got worse. Within six months, Aimee had gone from promising young cadet, the first hand up for assignments, to hiding at the back of the morning meeting. She began obsessing about punctuation. Had she put the right accents over crème brûlée? And what if she accidentally libelled one of the restaurants she was reviewing? She started going back at lunch and ordering exactly the same meal she’d eaten the night before, to make sure the pavlova really was chewy. Taking photos of the menu, the prices on the specials board, so she could look at them over and over again.
Aimee became tired, and paranoid, and broke.
Unsurprisingly, her writing began to suffer. Anything controversial, anything negative, she left out. If an interviewee said something newsworthy, Aimee wouldn’t include it. Wouldn’t even pass the tip on to another journalist to follow up, just in case she’d got it wrong. The entertainment editor began to sigh when Aimee filed her copy. She got moved again, to proofreading the crosswords.
The first one took her half a day.
‘So what are my chances?’ Melinda leaned towards the silent woman who seemed to hold so much power, even though she didn’t work for the government, didn’t have any official involvement in the adoption process whatsoever, was merely there to advise and maybe — maybe — increase the odds through tips about clever interview techniques or smarter form-filling. Yet there was something deeply authoritative about Claudia Lang, with her crisp white cotton shirt, her surprisingly old-fashioned briefcase, set carefully on one of Melinda’s perspex chairs. This must be how couples waiting to hear if they were candidates for IVF felt, or older women desperate to know if their eggs were viable. Older women like Melinda. She smiled, even though the adoption consultant wasn’t the one she’d have to impress. ‘What do you think?’
Claudia Lang shuffled through her papers on the other side of the table. ‘They’re not as bad as I would have thought,’ she said finally, surveying Melinda’s living room. ‘You obviously have the means to do this.’
You wouldn’t have come all the way out here otherwise, thought Melinda, or at such short notice. Her PA had found the consultant just twenty-four hours before, and here she was making a house call. Out in Woop Woop. Who said money didn’t talk?
‘Your timing is very good as well.’ Claudia Lang nodded at her laptop. ‘There’s been a recommendation that the law in Victoria be changed, which could give single people the same adoption rights as couples. You could end up being a pioneer.’
A pioneer. Clint would like that. Melinda pictured herself in the papers, fighting for the rights of single women like herself, a special line of jewellery even, where a dollar from each piece would go to a foundation to help people access their very own Claudia Lang.
‘It might be easier in other states. But I don’t suppose you want to move.’
‘No,’ said Melinda. And then quickly, ‘although I would, of course. If it was the only way.’
‘Of course.’
Melinda scanned her notes, the directives to put proper locks on the balcony doors, to remove sharp-edged sculptures and heavy glass paperweights before interviews, to lay down sheepskin rugs. ‘We want an illusion of softness,’ Claudia Lang had murmured, eyeing Melinda and suggesting she invest in some leggings, maybe a sweatshirt. ‘You have a partner?’ she asked, spotting the tie that Clint had left behind and Melinda had deliberately slung over an armchair.
‘I can do,’ Melinda had answered, looking Claudia Lang firmly in the eye. ‘Would it help?’
Not particularly, it turned out, unless they could prove long-term live-in stability. It wasn’t just the local laws she had to worry about; Australia’s partner countries had their own eligibility rules. Melinda looked down at the surprisingly short list in front of her. South Korea wouldn’t consider unmarried people as adoptive parents, neither would Sri Lanka. ‘What if the law doesn’t change?’ she asked.
Claudia Lang folded her hands neatly beside her laptop. ‘There are other avenues —’ she began.
‘No,’ said Melinda. ‘Everything has to be above board.’
‘Well then. Single women are allowed to adopt here, in special circumstances.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Generally, taking a child with additional needs.’
Melinda took a quick breath. ‘No,’ she said, faster than she meant to. And then felt her face catch fire. Because it was so embarrassingly shallow and narrow-minded. Women had children with disabilities every day and loved them fiercely. Said they wouldn’t swap them for the world. But Melinda, who wasn’t even sure how to parent a child with average, everyday needs? ‘No,’ she said again, embarrassed at her herself, and then angry at this stranger in her living room for making her feel ashamed. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t.’
‘It will make it harder. And the wait much longer.’
‘I don’t care.’ Melinda knew she sounded bad, but this woman didn’t make the decisions, did she? Although Claudia Lang had connections, would hold influence. She needed her on side. ‘Can we somehow say that I don’t want to, without actually saying that? Without making me sound . . . nasty?’ Melinda tried to regroup. ‘It’s just the time, the dedication it would involve — not that raising a child doesn’t take time and dedication, but —’
‘I understand,’ said Claudia Lang.
Don’t look at me like that, thought Melinda. Don’t judge me against those parents who would gratefully take any child as long as it meant a baby of their own. I’m paying you, remember. ‘That can’t be made public,’ she said, feeling horrible as she did so. ‘I know that sounds hypocritical, but it would look really bad.’
Claudia Lang nodded.
‘But a foreign baby is fine. I mean, I’m not worried where it comes from, what colour it is. I don’t have any prejudices. Obviously.’
‘Obviously.’
In the silence, Melinda’s phone began to vibrate. She forced herself not to turn it over.
‘Do you need to take that?’
‘Well, I —’ Melinda snuck a look at the screen. Clint.
‘Just answer it.’
There was too much information: investor concerns about the new incentives, their impact on profits. Clint’s voice came streaming down the line, a river of recommendations to raise, lower, tighten. Really, she needed to sit down, go through this with him, but . . . ‘Do whatever you think is right,’ Melinda said smoothly, a woman who didn’t take work home with her. Who would prioritise a child. ‘I trust you.’
Claudia Lang made a few notes on her yellow pad, like a lawyer.
‘Seriously, it’s fine, Clint. You should probably be making these kinds of decisions anyway.’ Melinda smiled at Claudia Lang. Balance. Boundaries. ‘Just make sure you cc me.’ She put her hand over the phone. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed.
But the woman was already eyeing her watch; Melinda’s ninety minutes were up.
‘Is there anything else I can do?’ she asked, as the adoption consultant began tucking her laptop into her briefcase.
‘Just wait,’ said Claudia Lang, as she pushed her feet into a pair of highly polished heels. ‘Make the changes to your apartment. I’ll be in touch with a list of our best options.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘And stay out of trouble.’
Melinda laughed as she guided Claudia Lang into the hallway. ‘I’m coming up to forty,’ she said. ‘My days of getting into trouble are well over.’
‘I’m serious. There’s often controversy in these cases, when children are taken overseas. You’re a high-profile person. That will help, but it also means there can’t be any suggestion you’re jumping the queue or taking a baby you might not be eligible for. You need’ — a quick glance at Melinda’s business awards, lined up along the windowsill — ‘people to be talking about you for the right reasons. There can be no scandal attached to you at all.’
Aimee trudged up the driveway like an old horse heading for the knackers. She had serious sunburn and plenty of blisters, but still no reasonable explanation for what had happened — and worse, why she’d shut her poor husband out. There’d been nothing in her head for the last hour except replayed conversations and accusations.
You had a mental breakdown.
But maybe Nick wouldn’t want to talk about it straightaway. Maybe he’d wait until the kids were asleep.
You’re not ill.
At the very least, he’d give her time to clean up, have a cup of tea.
You’re crazy.
It wasn’t like he was going to interrogate her.
You imagine things.
Aimee took a brave breath and pushed the door open. ‘Hey,’ she called. ‘I’m home.’
You make things up.
Silence.
Aimee hobbled down the hallway, noting the lack of shoes. Into the empty kitchen, the quiet living room. Checked the kids’ bedrooms, the den, but the whole house was deserted except for a sleeping Lucinda, happily shedding all over the clean laundry.
You’ve done this before.
There was a note on the kitchen table: Nick had taken the kids to the skate park. Give you some space. Oh. Well, good. Aimee grabbed a fresh towel out of the hot-water cupboard, stripped her clothes off where she stood and shoved them in the washing machine. She turned the dial up as hot as it would go. Too late, she remembered the skirt was dry clean only, but it didn’t matter; Aimee couldn’t imagine herself wearing it again. Wasn’t sure she’d ever leave the house, actually.
Aimee walked naked through the kitchen, no Byron to embarrass or Shelley to horrify. Only Oscar stared at her disapprovingly as she limped past him in the hall. ‘Bugger off,’ she muttered. She left the door to the bathroom open, turned Nick’s waterproof radio on so it wasn’t quite so silent. Space was nice, but — wasn’t it a bit strange that they’d left her all alone, knowing how upset she was? That Nick hadn’t even called or messaged to see how she was doing? A note was a little . . . cold. Aimee stepped into the shower, emotions tumbling like her underwear in the old Fisher & Paykel. She didn’t want people around, but she didn’t want them to abandon her either. Leave her to cry alone in the shower. Aimee turned her face up to the flowing water, eyes stinging. She wanted love and reassurance and herbal tea. A husband who would completely understand, but ask no questions. And friends who didn’t throw her weaknesses in her face.
You use people like a pacifier.
Aimee scrubbed furiously. The whole point of having friends, of being married, was that you had people to lean on. Who you could turn to when you needed help or reassurance. Not too much reassurance, she understood that. There were boundaries. She’d spent hours in group therapy sessions learning all about boundaries. Which is probably why she was the only one of her friends capable of having a meaningful relationship. Of raising good, honest children who actually spoke to her. Melinda didn’t even have a bloody pet.
You were in a mental hospital.
Yes, and it was wonderful. Aimee raked the razor up her shins, small dots of blood blooming in the foam. Apart from a frustrating ban on harmful objects — blades, belts, her favourite fountain pen — it had been like staying at a health spa. Not a posh one; there was far too much vinyl for Aimee’s liking. But there’d been a gym and a lap-pool and a masseuse who came once a week. People who listened to her. Taught her meditation and other head-calming techniques. If it was run by the Ritz-Carlton, people would be queuing to go.
You don’t want my advice.
And one of the main things she’d been taught at the clinic was to listen to her own intuition. To trust herself. And what her intuition was telling her was that she needed to do something.
You only think about yourself.
Well that was just unfair. Because Aimee wasn’t thinking about herself at all. Aimee was willing to sacrifice herself so another human being would have answers. The very opposite of selfish, thank you very much.
You’ve done this before.
But this wasn’t like the other times. There was a real accident here, with a real dead body, and a very real chance that Aimee had caused it. Aimee and her so-called friends.
You’re not credible.
No one will believe you.
They’ll believe me.
And if her friends weren’t going to help, if they weren’t going to take her seriously — if they were threatening to discredit her — then Aimee was clearly going to have to sort this mess out by herself.
Lou sat in the hallway, listening to her daughter throw up on the other side of the bathroom door.
‘Tansy,’ she said when the retching finally stopped. ‘Let me in.’ No answer, just the gurgle of water as the cistern emptied and refilled.
‘Sweetheart?’ She picked at the flaking wallpaper. ‘Tans? Talk to me.’
Silence. Which at least wasn’t screaming or swearing or accusations. The drive back from Fenton had been twenty-five minutes of hell. Tansy had left the clinic hiccupping with misery, tears rolling down her face. Lou had tried to reassure her as they drove out of town, convince her everything would be okay, no matter what. ‘And who knows,’ she’d stupidly said while negotiating a tricky roundabout, ‘it might all be for the best.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
For God’s sake, it was her right of way. ‘Well, maybe it’s nature’s way of taking care of things.’
She might as well have thrown a match into the petrol tank.
Lou leaned her head back against what was left of the wallpaper. Tansy had become hysterical. Yelling, crying, claiming Lou wanted to kill her baby, was plotting with the doctor to make her have an abortion, that the tests would make her miscarry, ‘which is what you want anyway, isn’t it, go on, admit it.’ She’d worked herself into such a state that she’d started hyperventilating, and Lou had nearly driven into a truck trying to calm her down.
‘Tansy?’ Lou rapped her knuckles gently against the bathroom door.
Nothing.
We’re back here again, Lou had thought desperately, as the truck driver screamed at her, Tansy screamed at her, and Lou pulled frantically at the wheel. I knew it was too good to be true. And worse, they were back there with a baby, and not just any baby, but a baby that might have something terribly wrong with it, and Tansy was behaving like a child herself, which was fair enough, because that’s what she bloody well was. Lou had wanted to pull over onto the side of the road and howl along with her daughter. Instead she’d put her foot on the accelerator and wound down the window so Tansy’s screaming would at least be drowned out by the rushing air. The moment I get in the door, she’d promised herself, I’m having a bourbon and Coke, a bloody big one.
But Lou had never got her drink, because Tansy had started dry heaving as they pulled into the driveway. She’d run into the house, Lou hot behind her, and slammed the bathroom door so hard a large lump of plaster from the ceiling had come crashing to the ground. Lou stared blankly now at the clumps of white sprinkled up the hallway. No one else, she thought. No one else is going to pick this up but me. Lou crawled across the carpet, gathering the pieces in her hand. She’d cleaned up vomit this morning, and she’d be the one bleaching the loo this afternoon. This was her life for the foreseeable future: bodily fluids and breakages. And she was too old for this. She didn’t have the energy to make sure the cleaning products were locked away, or the patience to answer endless questions about why the kitten couldn’t come home with them and where farts came from. Although it was unlikely this child would ever ask bright, inquisitive questions. Lou heard a sob from the other side of the wall and swallowed down one of her own.
And the worst thing was, Tansy was right. It would be easier for everyone now if she lost the baby, if she woke up in the middle of the night all cramps and blood. Lou clambered awkwardly to her feet, knees cracking. Had her own mother wished the same thing, standing outside this very bathroom door? Almost definitely. But this is different, Lou thought, as she dumped the plaster flakes in the bin. Totally different. This baby’s not going to have a proper life. And neither are we.