When the scone arrives, Rose pushes it in front of me.
‘So . . . this morning, I had an epiphany.’
I pick up the scone and examine it. There doesn’t seem to be an efficient way to eat it without causing a spillage of jam and cream. In the end, I just lean forward so the spillage will land directly on the plate.
‘I thought to myself, here I am desperate to have a baby . . . while you are pregnant with an unwanted baby. Then it came to me! What if I kept your baby?’
My mouth is full of scone. I contemplate spitting it out but decide there is no graceful way of doing that, so instead I hold a napkin to my mouth and chew quickly.
‘Just think about it, Fern. I know it’s a lot to take in, so please don’t answer me yet. I just thought . . . maybe this is a way your baby could have the loving family it deserves. I spoke to Owen this morning, and–’
I swallow. ‘Owen knows?’
Rose looks guilty. ‘I hope you don’t mind. But when I suggested that he and I might raise the baby, he was over the moon. I shouldn’t have done that without speaking to you first.’
I sit back in my chair. I like Owen a lot. The idea that the baby could be raised by two loving parents, two neurotypical loving parents . . . it’s the start to life that every child would hope for.
‘I know that having two parents isn’t everything,’ Rose says. ‘But . . . I often think about what would have happened to us if we had two parents in the picture. When Mum overdosed, we would have had a backup. I would love to give the baby that.’
‘I’d love that too,’ I say.
Rose looks like she is holding her breath, waiting for me to make a decision. But there isn’t really a decision to make. It is, after all, what I’d intended in the first place.
‘Okay,’ I say.
Rose’s eyes fill up with tears. Then she throws her arms around me in another of those straitjacket hugs, only this time the wet mohair jumper gets up my nose, so I feel like I’m choking.
JOURNAL OF ROSE INGRID CASTLE
Daniel, we found out, was a commercial pilot. He had been married to Billy’s mother, a woman named Trish, for ten years before they divorced, and they were still on friendly terms. I knew this because Fern asked Daniel about it. Fern had an amazing way of being able to ask these kinds of questions without upsetting people. Even Mum didn’t seem to mind when Fern asked why they broke up.
Daniel smiled, like this wasn’t rude – like it was, in fact, a very good question. ‘I travel a lot for work, being a pilot. I think Trish got sick of being alone all the time. And I, well, I wasn’t always the best husband, let’s put it that way. We’re much better as co-parents than we were as husband and wife.’
It was funny the way he spoke about Trish. With fondness! He never used the kinds of words Mum used to talk about our dad. Deadbeat. Loser. Dickhead. I wondered how Mum felt about Daniel talking about Trish fondly. Outwardly, she didn’t seem bothered by it at all, but I knew Mum better than that. It would be driving her crazy. But she was on her best behaviour around Daniel. She was her same old self when he wasn’t around, though, and as strange as it sounds, I preferred it this way. The new, uber-nice Mum was unsettling, sure, but the constant back and forth from nice to horrible gave me whiplash.
I was on guard around Daniel at first, naturally. Reassuringly, he was much less interested in Fern and me than Gary had been. He was polite enough: asking about our day at school and appearing genuinely interested in the answer, but he seemed to be far more interested in conversation with Mum than he was with us. He never tickled us or massaged us, or even touched us at all, beyond the offer of a high five every now and again. He did, however, talk a lot about Billy. Billy, Daniel’s son, was fourteen, and it was clear how much Daniel adored him. Fern and I wanted to meet Billy, and Daniel kept saying we would ‘soon’. I got the feeling he was waiting for something – but I never knew what.
It took six months before the meeting finally happened. By that time, we were planning a camping trip, at Daniel’s suggestion. ‘Three or four days together,’ he said, ‘so the kids can bond.’ Mum seemed overjoyed about this, though she’d never showed any interest in camping previously. Fern also seemed happy and immediately started reading a book about camping. I was the only one who seemed to be bracing for something bad. Why was it that I was always the only one bracing?
The fact that we didn’t have any camping gear didn’t seem to matter; Daniel simply suggested we go to the shops. I’ll admit, I was excited about that. Mum never had money to buy much other than food at the shops, and when we needed something else essential, like clothes or crockery, we got it second hand at an op shop. But even more exciting than buying something new was the fact that Billy was coming with us to buy the tent. Daniel had told us a lot about him by then, and Billy had built up an almost mythical status in my mind. Not to mention the fact that I was twelve at the time and boys were fast becoming something that interested me.
When
