‘PEOPLE ARE GOING to think we’re lesbians if you keep holding my hand like this.’
‘I don’t care if they do, Shauna.’
Lou-Anne has not been able to stop hugging me since I told her the news. Apart from the doctors and Jenny, she’s the only person who knows I’m pregnant. I didn’t tell her about my visit to The Choice Foundation, only that the pregnancy test had been positive. She doesn’t know anything about my little death dance with Dr Goldsmith and I hope she never finds out.
Jenny knows, and she knows I’m still pregnant.
The day after the abortion appointment I tell Miss Pemberton that I need to pull out of the HSC University Pathways. Reverend Ferguson somehow found out and told Jenny before I got the chance, and Jenny figured out why and got seriously pissed off with me. She confronted me in a rage outside our lockers.
‘So all our plans for Paris are shot to hell? Just like that?’ Her voice is flinty with fury.
‘You can still go.’
‘You can still have an abortion, can’t you? Why don’t you?’ Her voice cracks with every inflection.
‘I don’t want one.’
‘Why not?’
‘Jenny!’
‘I’m sorry, Shauna, but if you had an abortion, then life would just go on as usual. We could go to Paris together like we’ve been dreaming about.’
‘I’m not going to kill my baby so we can go to Paris.’
‘A foetus is not a baby. It doesn’t know anything or feel anything. It’s just goo.’
‘I’ve seen it on the ultrasound machine and it’s not just goo. Imagine what I would have felt like afterwards!’
‘My cousin had an abortion and she told me that all she felt was happiness and relief.’
‘Well, good for her. I’m not your cousin.’
‘You’re already giving up so much and it hasn’t even been born. Do you think Mrs Green’s going to let you stay at school with a big, fat pregnant stomach?’
I shrug. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I do.’
Jenny looks at me with gritted teeth, both hands clamped into fists and jammed against her thighs.
‘This is incredibly selfish of you,’ she hisses. ‘Does Lou-Anne know?’
‘Lou-Anne diagnosed me.’
Jenny nods, her lips pursed tightly. I don’t know what right she thinks she has to take it all so badly. I’m the one who’s got to deal with the pregnancy. She can still go to Paris.
‘And what about pulling out of Introduction to Legal Systems and Methods? Now you’ll have a big, fat fail on your university record before you’ve even started!’
‘I . . . I . . .’
I hadn’t really thought about that. A failure on my record?
‘You don’t seriously think you can study at university next year and have a baby, do you, Shauna?’
I mouth and stammer. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’
‘I do.’
‘Jenny, I’m sorry.’
‘You should really think about this over the holidays,’ she says. ‘There’s still time.’
She turns and walks off without saying goodbye or promising to call me.
‘Don’t tell anyone, Jenny!’ I call after her, feeling rotten for having let her down so badly. And for the failure on my uni record.
I’m so worried about the blot on my academic record that I go to see Reverend Ferguson in her office. My hands are glistening with nervous sweat.
‘I’ve just got too much on my plate,’ I say when she asks me to explain my decision.
She nods slowly, sympathetically. ‘I thought that might be the case. Miss Pemberton said you missed the last session at St Augustine’s.’
‘It’s just too much,’ I say feebly.
She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand.
‘I understand.’
But for once, she doesn’t understand at all. She doesn’t have a clue.
‘Will I have a failure on my record, Reverend Ferguson?’
She grimaces. ‘I’m honestly not sure. Let me call the university. See what we can do.’
Just before dinner, Lou-Anne and I go for a walk around the school. The weather’s cooling down and we’re both shivering in our short shirtsleeves. There are only two more days of school left.
‘I can’t wait to see the twins,’ says Lou-Anne, linking her arm through mine and pulling me close to her side. ‘I can’t wait to have them in my arms!’
Lou-Anne’s nieces, Charlotte and Chelsea, are criminally cute. They’ve got bouncing black curls, deep dimples and skin like cocoa butter. They’re crazy about Lou-Anne. She’s the cool auntie who spoils them rotten. When she’s with them, from the time they get up to the time they go to bed, they have her undivided attention. Whenever I stay with Lou-Anne for the holidays, I’m in awe at her patience, and the way she can just play with them for a whole day without a break. She even gets in the bath with them.
When I’m with little kids, I get bored after about fifteen minutes, no matter how cute they are. I guess it’ll be different with my own baby. It’ll have to be.
‘What was it like for your sister?’ I ask her. ‘Being pregnant, I mean.’
‘Oh, it was hell for Beth with the morning sickness, but other than that . . .’
‘Did she get a hard time? Did people stare?’
Lou-Anne shakes her head. ‘The only thing she was embarrassed about was that the boy didn’t stand by her. She was hoping he’d stay in Eumundi to help her raise the girls. He was only sixteen, though. What can you expect from a sixteen-year-old boy?’
‘But Beth was only fifteen and she did the right thing.’
‘Didn’t have a choice, did she?’
‘She could have had an abortion or put them up for adoption.’
‘That’s not what I mean by a choice, Shauna. I mean that they’re our girls and we could never let them go.’
When Lou-Anne talks this way, it’s hard to believe that she’s only sixteen. In spite of her spectacular vocal talents, Lou-Anne doesn’t get good marks, not even in music. But she has this rock-solid emotional intelligence that people at Oakholme don’t appreciate. I appreciate her, though. I know that when she becomes a rich and famous opera singer, she won’t be one of those celebrities who gets photographed stepping out of their limo without underwear. She’s got it together.
We walk arm-in-arm down the side of the grassy oval, where some senior boarders, including Keli Street-Hughes and Annabel Saxon, are kicking a soccer ball around barefoot. They’re still in their long uniforms, with the skirts tucked into their undies. They’re whooping and catcalling. Someone yells, ‘You’re the boss, Ollie!’ and then I see a flash of white-blonde hair as Olivia Pike breaks away from the pack.
‘That kid’s thirsty,’ says Lou-Anne casually.
‘I know exactly what you mean. Just wait until they find out.’
Then I think, just wait until they find out what’s going on inside me, and an icy shiver runs up my spine. I don’t want to think about it.
We do a full loop of the oval and the boarders ignore us as usual. Keli does a pretty impressive job of head-butting the ball and it comes bouncing towards Lou-Anne and me. Lou-Anne kicks it back and everyone in the group just stands there and watches as it rolls back to them. No one says thanks. Except Lou-Anne and me.
‘Say thanks to your dad for me!’ we both call out, just one last time for the term.
I try to imagine what Keli Street-Hughes will do at home in Coleambally these holidays. Ride her horse in the dam? Zoom up and down rows of cotton on a four-wheel motorbike? Maybe the Street-Hugheses will go to Tuscany for a couple of weeks and Keli will get fat on truffle linguine. I have no idea what she’ll really do. Isn’t that incredible? We’ve been living in the same building for over four years and we barely know one another. (Apart from my cyberstalking, that is.) We know we don’t like each other and that’s about it.