“A baby?” I said. “But we took precautions!”
“The pill’s only ninety-eight percent reliable.”
I didn’t believe it. Said so.
“See for yourself.”
The thin blue line was unwavering. So was I.
I didn’t want a baby.
There were options, of course, but I was made to feel like a monster for even suggesting them.
“How could you?”
“It’s a collection of cells.”
“It’s a baby. Our baby.”
Our parents were delighted. They met each other over an awkward afternoon tea and discovered they got on famously. It was time we settled down—they’d been respectively worried about our “wild ways,” suspicious of our London lifestyles. How wonderful we’d found each other; what a miracle this baby was!
It had all been taken out of my hands.
A shotgun wedding. A new house (“Much more family-friendly than that dreadful flat”), a new job (“So much less cutthroat than the City”), a move to the fucking sea (“The air’s so much cleaner!”) . . .
I’d never felt so trapped in my life.
Yet it was impossible not to love Anna when she arrived. She was bright and beautiful and filled with curiosity. But it was impossible, too, not to resent her. There was a whole life out there, waiting for me, and instead of running at it with both hands I was standing still with a baby in my arms. I fantasized about leaving. Told myself an absent parent was better than one who didn’t want to be there. But I didn’t leave. I did what I’d always done when life was hard.
I drank.