Prologue
It was a cold February day when I found out I was pregnant. I was seventeen years old. In that moment, my life was changed forever. I’m not the girl you’d expect to get pregnant. I led a sheltered life, a happy life. I wasn’t naïve, I knew what I was doing and I knew the risk, I just never thought I’d be in the 3%. Like all of us do every single day, I simply thought, things like that don’t happen, to people like me.
Chapter 1
February
It’s crazy that the first thing you think about after peeing onto that stick is your parents. It’s not yourself or your own future or all the plans and dreams you had. It’s your mum’s reaction and your dad’s face when the realisation hits him. I couldn’t do that to them, was my first thought, yet I had was my second. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep it from them for long. The guilt was already growing enormous inside of me. I stood up in the public toilet cubicle. I was in a Starbucks. How bad does that sound. I was in a Starbucks when I found out I was pregnant. Tell that story to your grandkids. I threw the test box and stick into the bin, looked in the dirty mirror, rubbed my tired eyes and walked back out.
“Amy! Hey what took you so long; the guys are waiting at the park for us,” cried Lily. I was in a daze. I honestly don’t know how I was functioning. I don’t think I fully understood what was happening, or about to happen.
“Oh Lily,” I froze at the table where her and my other best friend Tara sat sipping Caramel Frappuccinos.
They both stared up at me. “You look kind of pale Amy,” said Tara, ever the blunt one bless her.
“I think I’m coming down with the flu,” I lied. “I feel awful I might just head home.”
“But, Amy wait; this was going to be our last girls night out! You know we won’t be out half as much soon, with exams and everything? Are you sure?” Lily argued.
“Thanks Lily, but I’m sure. I need to rest, I’m sorry! I’ll see you guys tomorrow, have fun! Love you.”
I walked out the door into the cold air of London’s February breeze. Mum would be home from work and Dad would be on his way. I had to tell them, they deserved that at least.
The Story of Mum and Dad
My parents were in college when they meet. Dad was doing medicine and Mum was studying to become a nurse. Dad says mum fell for his leather jacket and messy hair, Mum says she’s always wanted a doctor for a boyfriend but not a husband but hey that’s what happens right. When they started dating in third year of college, everyone called it puppy love. Black and white pictures showed them all over each other at concerts, lectures, college balls, road-trips, everything. They were as thick as thieves, my nanny Rose would say, referring to the many times my dad would somehow be there for breakfast but never there the night beforehand, claiming he had just popped over after his morning run. Neither of them had a relationship before each other. Mum, however, graduated three years before Dad was due to finish. There were loads of jobs for her in Australia and she wanted to travel. I’ve found her diaries from the time and I almost cry when I read them.
“I can’t believe I broke up with Jacob today. It’s stupid and soppy but I feel like I’m leaving behind a piece of me. I know Dad doesn’t approve of his attitude, or the way he is at times but I love him. I really do, even if I’m leaving him. I’ll leave him behind, but he’ll never leave me.”
Then a couple of weeks later the entries talk of parties and Australian boys; barbecues on the beach and everyone falling asleep around the campfire after work. Mum didn’t forget to live, she moved on I think. She even got involved in a short fling with a girl whose eyes she swore held the universe inside them. Meanwhile, Dad was still studying, his friends that he still has from college all say he mopped around, drank too much and failed a couple of exams for a few months before shaking it off and getting into a serious relationship with a girl called Lisa four years younger than him. She was studying tourism and I think he was attracted to her youth and sparkle, something he failed to find in people his age other than my mum. So it had appeared that he had moved on too.
But then exactly one year after Mum moved away; Dad’s name popped back up in her diary.
“I decided last night, after too many tequilas, that I needed to move. I’m falling too much here, but not into anything good. Eliza was fun but I don’t actually love girls. Josh was great but I mean, he’s never going to love something more than his board and that’s okay. I think I’m going to move to Melbourne. They say it’s colder there and I wouldn’t mind buying a few jumpers. A photo I thought I’d lost fell out of an old book I had today. It was of me and Jacob. A part of me still aches when I hear someone say that name, or I think I hear his voice from time to time. It’s funny because I thought or think I’ve moved on but I’ll never forget our love. I guess some loves just fade away as time passes, and others, well I guess other loves fade into us as time passes.”
Two weeks later Mum moved to Melbourne. She found a job, an apartment and a cat, named Blue because she found it behind her blue bin out the front.
A month later Dad’s college offered three students the opportunity to study abroad for a year in a partnering university. Dad won the scholarship and by chance was sent to the University Hospital in Melbourne. He moved there three weeks later.
Two days after Dad arrived in Melbourne, he was rushing on his way to one of his first lectures. He had bought new shoes that kept untying so he was looking down at them.
At the same time, Mum was tying a scarf around her neck with a coffee in her other hand, late for an appointment with the dentist. She wanted braces and had been saving for months.
Neither of them saw each other until Dad leaned down to tie his shoelaces and Mum’s scarf flew away from her in the wind and landed at his feet. They looked at each other and that was that.
How do I do it, was all I could think walking home. What if Mike’s home already? I pulled my key out of my back pocket to open my front door. We lived in one of those typical London houses, five storeys high and narrow with a tiny back garden. Mum had it showered in Dahlias and Daffodils and she even owned another two plots down at the local gardens. Our house always smelled good, and today as I walked in, the fresh scent of poppies hit me straight away. I shrugged off my jacket
“Hello,” I called out, no response. I bounded up the stairs only to hear the shower running in my mum’s bathroom.
“Yo, Amy.”
I spun around, I hadn’t seen Mike behind me, he was talking in all this weird slang these days but for a fifteen-year-old-boy, he wasn’t too bad.
“Mike, hey,” I said taking the next flight of stairs to where my bedroom was.
“Wait, Amy I want to show you my new pictures,” he raced up the stairs after me, his laptop underneath his arm.
I sighed, but only mockingly. Really I loved looking at Mike’s latest pictures, it was like watching little clues into his life, where he’d been, how he’d captured it.
“Sit down and show me, what old building did we break into this weekend?” I joked, referring to how Mike and his friends were always finding old dilapidated houses and schools to crawl into and wander around, taking actually really good pictures of what they discovered.