Page 86 of In This Together

‘Yes. You’re stronger than you think, believe me. If the father chooses not to be around, or isn’t around, for whatever reason, you can do this. The real question is, do you want to be a mom?’

A mom.She thought of her own mother. Her sweet face, how she would play the guitar and sing, sitting on Andrea’s bed until she fell asleep.

But she had left. She’d left Andrea and Sofia and Jimmy. And it had hurt every day since.

‘I’m not sure. How am I supposed to know that?’

‘Take some time out. Maybe get away for a few days and clear your head, if you can. There’s no right or wrong decision here, remember that.’

‘What if I decide that I don’t want to keep it?’ Andrea asked, already wondering whether she could go through with a termination.

‘It’s still early days so the procedure is quite straightforward.’

‘What if I only want to keep it if… When could I find out who the father is?’

‘The earliest time we can check is around eight to nine weeks.’

Andrea took a slow, steadying breath and nodded. ‘Okay.’ She had no idea what she meant by that –okay, I’ll keep it; okay, I don’t want to go through with it; okay, I’ll keep it if Tommy is the father and not if it’s Hunter’s.

What in hell was she supposed to do?

‘The last thing I would say is, if you everdowant Daddy to play a part in Baby’s life, you should think about telling him sooner rather than later.’

Andrea shook Maria’s hand and for the first time in as long as she could remember, she didn’t run from one appointment to another. She hung her purse over her arm, covered her clouded eyes with her sunglasses, and slowly walked along the riverbank, turning every question she had asked herself in Doctor Maria’s office through her mind.

The stark reality was, Andrea was not fit to be a mother, and she couldn’t do it alone. Alone was exactly what she was. No Hannah. No Rosalie. And once Sofia found out about all of this, she would be so ashamed.

For years, she had been so angry with her mom for leaving her. For choosing Sofia over her. Now, she had never wanted to be able to speak to her mom so much in her life.

She squeezed her eyes shut but this time, she couldn’t stop her tears from falling, wetting her cheeks as they dripped to the ground.

‘What should I do, Mom?’ she asked, desperately needing an answer.

Andrea had rarely spoken to her mother in the years since her death. She had spent a night crying herself to sleep after they’d said goodbye to Grace. Then her sorrow had turned quickly to anger – anger because her mother left; anger because her father turned to the bottom of a bottle, rather than looking after her; and anger because she was just a young girl, left without a mother, with a baby sister to look after and shield from the endless hours that Jimmy had spent inebriated.

‘Please speak to me, Mom. I know you can hear me. What would you do?’

But even as she asked the question, she knew what Grace would have done. Grace would have sacrificed everything. She had given her own life to deliver Sofia.

As she pressed a hand to her stomach, for the first time, Andrea saw things as they had been in Grace’s mind. She hadn’t chosen to leave Andrea; she’d fought to save her unborn child. Grace had been faced with an impossible situation and Andrea realised now, in her mom’s mind, she had no choice but to try to save both her daughters.

A sound stole Andrea’s attention, drawing her eyes to a park bench, where a woman bounced a young girl – maybe eight months, at best guess – on her lap. The girl wore dungarees with a pink long-sleeved top underneath. She had crazy hair – blonde and messily curled, as if it had never been cut. And the sound of her laughter brought Andrea to a stop. She smiled when the girl’s mother caught her looking, but she couldn’t take her eyes away from the joy on the girl’s face or close her ears to the sound of the childish giggle.

She watched a man approach the woman and child from behind the bench, pressing his lips to the woman’s hair before handing her an ice-cream in a cone.

He came to sit next to her, taking the baby so that Mom could eat her ice-cream.

Andrea’s heart ached. Her stomach ached.

She knew what she wanted and who she would want to sit on a bench with one day as she bounced her child and ate ice-cream.

Her knowledge came with a million reservations and doubts, but the only thing she knew, for certain, was that she couldn’t give up on her baby, no matter who the father was.

21

ROSALIE

‘I don’t even want to buy these shoes,’ Rosalie sobbed as she sat on a beige leather seat in Gucci on Fifth Avenue, turning her feet right and left, considering the classic pump in Gucci’s signature shamrock colour.

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