Page 100 of Forever, Maybe
“Yes.” Her voice wavered, and she faltered. “Be… because I couldn’t be sure wh-who the father was, I… I booked in for an ab-abortion.” The words scraped out of her like shards of glass, her voice breaking on the final syllable. “The consultant was vile. I deserved it. His judgment, his disgust. But in the end…” She drew a trembling breath, tears spilling over. “In the end, I didn’t need the abortion. I miscarried.”
She buried her face in her hands.
“So, it coulda been mine?” His voice cut through her anguish like a blade, laced with bitterness. “No wonder you were so keen to sleep wi’ me when you came back from staying wi’ Stephanie. You fucking bitch.”
The casual cruelty of his words made her wail all over again, the sound raw and guttural. She tried to smother it, biting down on her hand, but it was no use. She could feel him watching her, his gaze sharp and pitiless.
The silence stretched until it was broken by movement—the scrape of his shoes on the floor, the suitcase bumping heavily down the stairs. She heard the front door swing open, then slam shut with a force that seemed to reverberate through her chest.
Alone now, in the hollow silence of the house, she collapsed onto her front. This time, there was no need to suppress her grief. Her cries came unrestrained, tearing through her with astonishing ferocity, the years of pent-up pain and shame finally clawing their way free.
Chapter forty-two
August2016
Joe and Nicky had moved to Springburn in Glasgow’s north-east several years ago, drawn by necessity rather than choice.
Like Daniel, Joe hadn’t had much time for house-hunting, but he’d shared the details of each place with him. Daniel had reckoned Springburn was their best bet.
It was the only area where they could find a house big enough for their ever-expanding family. The sandstone terrace villa on Broomfield Road wasn’t grand, but it had space, and it backed onto a small park—a rare patch of green in the concrete sprawl.
It wasn’t Pollokshields, but it wasn’t the estate Joe had grown up on either, with its boarded-up windows, graffitied walls, flat-roofed blocks streaked grey with grime and litter-strewn streets.
Parking a hundred metres from the house—the best he could manage—Daniel spotted one of Joe’s kids on the swings. Cameron, nine years old and sharp as a tack, was his favourite of the lot. Too far away to notice him, but Daniel waved anyway, the gesture half-hearted, tinged with something bittersweet.
Joe opened the door, grinning wide, his usual cheerful self. He wore his off-duty uniform: a Celtic away strip from the 2006–07 season—the year they’d made it to the UEFA Champions League knock-out stages—paired with baggy grey trackie bottoms and bare, bony feet.
“C’mon in!” Joe said, clapping Daniel on the back.
If they’d been women, or men of a different age or nationality, maybe they would have hugged. The thought struck Daniel with a pang of wistfulness. Four weeks of wifelessness had left him acutely aware of how much he missed simple human contact.
From the kitchen came the unmistakable sounds of Nicky in full flight, her voice sharp and cutting, locked in a row with the couple’s oldest child.
“I dinnae care if everybody else has yin! You’re no’ gettin’ yin! Have ye any idea how expensive they things are?”
“You’re such a bitch!” Kylie shouted back. “When ah need counselling in the future, ah’ll tell the counsellor everything that’s wrang wi’ me is your fault!”
The kitchen door slammed, and a lanky figure emerged. Kylie, almost as tall as her father now, paused at the bottom of the stairs. Her bobbed sandy-brown hair—the exact shade Joe’s had been before he started losing it—framed a face that screamed trouble.
Kylie spotted him with her dad and the belligerent expression turned wary.
“Go back in there and apologise to your mum,” Joe said evenly.
Daniel had never heard him raise his voice to the kids. Joe and Nicky’s parenting styles were polar opposites—Nicky, all fire and heat, Joe, steady as a cold loch on a still day—and somehow, they balanced each other.
“But Daaaaaad!” Kylie’s whine was pitch-perfect, the hallmark of a beleaguered almost-thirteen-year-old who believed she had drawn the short straw in the universal lottery of parents.
“Now.”
Her sigh was theatrical, a full-body performance that seemed to rise from the soles of her feet and escape in a huff of martyrdom. With a dramatic about-turn, she stomped back into the kitchen.
From the hallway, they caught her voice drifting out, telling her mother she regretted calling her a bitch—but it was stillsounfair that everyone in her class had a mobile phone, while her parents were too stingy to buy her one.
“Everyone?” Daniel murmured, raising an eyebrow at Joe.
Joe snorted. “Aye, bit o’ poetic license there. Becca, her best pal, got yin for her birthday a fortnight back, and we’ve no’ heard the end of it since. Reckon we’re no’ the only parents cursing Becca’s folks.”
Message grudgingly delivered, Kylie emerged from the kitchen with her best air of dignified martyrdom. “Hi, Uncle Daniel. Nice to see you.”
