“You… you have no idea!” she snapped, furrowing her brow. “I’m not just a dumb little kid; I’m sixteen- a woman.”
Ross, who was sitting beside his sister, gently touched her forearm. Roughly, she shrugged him off. “I love Ronnie. I will always love him. He shouldn’t be the one in trouble; it should be me…” tears began to sting her eyes and blur her vision. “It should be me on the run… I just… I miss him so much…” a loud, ugly, animal-like sob escaped her lips, and she bowed her head.
Her brother stood up and took her in his arms without saying a word. This time, she nestled into him and started to weep, her slender frame rocking and quivering with her pain.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Henry sighed. “What a mess. Look…” he trailed off and looked to Julie, who nodded quietly. Henry swallowed, cleared his throat, and looked solemnly at his daughter,
“Darling, Mum and I have been talking. We think that… perhaps it’d be for the best if you talked to someone. You know, a professional. Doctor Greer recommended a really good…”
“SHUT UP!” exploded Minnie, pushing Ross away. “JUST SHUT UP! I DON’T NEED TO SEE A THERAPIST, DAD.”
“Now, Minerva!” Henry stood up and tried to look firm. “You need to calm down.”
Minnie sniffed and laughed, shaking her head. “I can’t calm down, Dad,” she said, wiping her tear-stained cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’m pregnant. Ronnie is the father.”
Everybody froze.
Painful, chilling silence fell upon the dining table and seemed to spread rapidly throughout the house. The seconds crawled past so slowly that it felt like they were rooted there for an eternity.
Both Julie and Henry sat with their mouths agape, eyeballs bulging from their sockets. Even Ross didn’t know what to say.
Minnie sighed, finally breaking the spell.
“You… you stupid girl…” whispered Julie, unblinking. Suddenly, her normally soft voice and gentle features had hardened so that they were sharp and intimidating. “How could you do this? Do you… do you even realise what you’ve done? Your entire future is ruined!” Every word she said was like glasses being hurled against a brick wall, shattering into pieces, the jagged blades plunging deeply into flesh.
“No, it is not ruined,” barked Henry. His face had flooded with red, fury highlighting his pudgy cheeks, his piggish eyes glittering with anger. “I will not allow it.” He turned to his daughter; his eyebrows furrowed as he fixed her with his pupils. Gone was the loving face of her father and, in its place, an upper-class man staring in disgust at a filthy crack-addicted whore on the streets. Just his gaze of repulsion alone made her ache with shame, so much so that she envisioned tearing all of her skin off.
“First thing tomorrow, you are going to the clinic to get this seen to. You understand?” Henry said sharply.
“Dad…” Ross interjected, looking worriedly from his sister to his father.
“Stay out of this, son,” Henry growled without looking at him.
Minnie shook her head and folded her arms across her chest. She matched her father’s hardened stare with her own. “No. You can’t make me get rid of it.”
“Oh yes, I bloody well can!” snarled Henry, “and I will. I won’t have your life ruined by some scum bag degenerate, Minerva.”
“He is NOT!” she shouted back.
Julie’s eyes were watery as she looked pleadingly at Minnie. Minnie couldn’t stand to look back at her, revolted by the disappointment she could see reflected in the woman’s irises.
“Min, sweetheart, what kind of father will Ronnie make?” she asked softly, “he isn’t even here. He’s on the run.”
The young girl sat down in her head and buried her head in her hands.
“…and what about money? You aren’t qualified yet. How are you going to support a baby?” she listened to her mother continue.
She didn’t reply and instead let her family soften and gather around her, each one offering kind words of support and understanding. Despite her silence, a plan was put in motion to call the hospital the following day and arrange for her to undergo the procedure. Then she would start a course of CBT with the therapist that Doctor Greer had recommended. She would spend the remainder of the summer recovering from the trauma of Ronnie, the incident in the woods, and the abortion.
Minnie decided it was easier to keep quiet and pretend like she was passively agreeing to all of these decisions that were being made on her behalf. She let her mother take her up to bed, and she took the sleeping pills she was given.
Whilst her family thought she was resting, sleeping off the painful turmoil, amplified by a million due to teenage hormones, Minnie was, in fact, plotting.
She removed the sleeping pills from underneath her tongue and tossed them into the bin in the corner of her bedroom.
Chapter Twenty-four
2019
Only a week had passed before the dead couple was found in Lonely Loch. It was Lloyd who first noticed it because he was eating cereal at the dining table, whilst everyone else was either still in bed, showering, taking a shit, or in Flo’s case, colouring in.
“Oh shit,” he called out, as a panning shot of the marshes came up on the screen, as well as a photo of the YouTubers on the side. “Look, we made TV!” he fed himself another spoon full of cereal and chewed with interest as he gazed at the flat screen.
“Jared and Sienna Rostas, budding YouTubers known for filming their travels in their motor home, were found deceased in a stolen van in the middle of one of Scotland’s most desolate marshes,” the announcer was saying. “This comes just seven days after the couple posted an odd video announcing that
