‘Fern? What are you doing?’
Lately it feels like Rose has an insatiable interest in what I’m doing. It doesn’t matter if she’s rushing out to a meeting or in the middle of watching a gripping television program, her interest in my goings-on is as relentless as it is complete.
I sigh. ‘I’m reading and doing some paperwork.’
She comes up behind me, peering down at the page, which is terrifically irritating. I’ve completed most of it. The only boxes that remain empty are under the ‘Emergency Contacts’ heading.
‘Put me down as your emergency,’ she says immediately. After a short pause, she adds: ‘Unless there’s someone else you want to list?’
I might be imagining it, but I hear the faintest hint of a laugh in her voice. I wonder what is so funny.
‘There’s no-one else,’ I say, filling in four little boxes with the letters of her name. Because Rose, once again, is my person. Other people may come and go, but she will always be here. I know I’m lucky for that. It’s just that today it makes me feel sad.
When I am four months pregnant, Rose says she wants to talk to me about something important. More and more, it feels like everything is important to Rose. What I eat. How much I sleep. Not sleeping flat on my back. But today her expression is more sombre than usual. It piques my interest.
We sit at the kitchen table and she sets a stack of documents on the table before me.
‘What is this?’ I ask.
‘This is an adoption order, which legally transfers all parental rights and responsibilities from you to me.’
I frown at the documentation, pages long and full of legalese. The words ‘relinquish parental rights’ jump out at me.
‘It’s just a formality,’ Rose says. ‘We don’t need to make anything official until after the baby is born. But I did want to talk to you . . . about Rocco.’
I look at her. ‘What about him?’
Rose frowns and chews her bottom lip gently. ‘I’ve been doing some reading about the adoption process, and when the baby is born, I think it would be better if you didn’t name him on the birth certificate.’
‘Why?’
‘Well,’ Rose says carefully, ‘if you do name him, he will be required to consent to the adoption, which will be a little bit awkward as he doesn’t know the baby exists.’
She makes a good point. One I hadn’t thought of. ‘So . . . who would I name as the father? Just make someone up?’
‘Well, no, because then you’d be required to have him consent to the adoption.’
‘Oh.’
‘Therefore, I think it would be easiest to simply say you don’t know who the father is.’
I laugh. ‘I don’t know? That’s ridiculous. How could a person not know who the father of their baby is?’
Rose doesn’t laugh. ‘It’s not as ridiculous as you think. If you had more than one sexual partner at the time of conception, or if you had a one-night stand with someone you never saw again, it’s possible that you wouldn’t know who the father is.’
I stop laughing. ‘And that’s what you want me to say? That I had multiple sexual partners at once, or a one-night stand with a stranger?’
‘I know you wouldn’t do that, Fern, of course you wouldn’t. But it doesn’t matter. It’s just about doing what’s right for the baby.’
I stare at the table in front of me. I suspect she’s right. Still, it bothers me. I understand that the baby will be better off with Rose and Owen. But erasing Wally from the document? It’s almost like he never existed. Some days, that’s how it feels, actually. Like he was a character in a book I read, rather than an actual person in my life. If it wasn’t for the baby I was carrying, I’d suspect that was exactly what he was.
‘Okay?’ Rose asks, and I nod, because my throat chooses that moment to swell up and I can’t reply.
It gets hotter, and I become more pregnant. I’d always found the heat irritating, but pregnancy adds another suffocating layer. The library, at least, is air conditioned, but each day the walk home becomes harder to enjoy. By the end of the fourth month, my elastic-waist skirts are tight even around my hips, digging in and cutting me in half and driving me crazy. The moment I get home I tear them off and wear one of Rose’s loose nighties instead.
Rose has also added another suffocating layer to my life. She’s around constantly, and not just in the morning and evening – some days she even pops into the library, just to say ‘hi’, wanting to feel the baby kick. The timing of these visits is invariably poor – when I’ve just finished a break or when I’m about to head into a staff meeting – and, perhaps it’s the pregnancy, but I find myself getting annoyed with her.
As she arrives today – third unannounced visit this week – I think of what Wally said to me. It’s like she doesn’t know where she ends and you begin. It’s like she thinks . . . you belong to her or something.
‘What are you doing here again, Rose?’ I ask.
She looks surprised, and a little wounded, by the question. ‘Visiting you, of course.’
‘Don’t you have to work?’ I ask.
‘I was in the area,’ Rose says, and I wonder what interior design business would have brought her to this area. She takes my arm and leads me over to the couches in the children’s area. It reminds me of what Wally
