“If the baby looks anything like him, I’ll refuse… I’ll give it life and refuse!” Lorna muttered in a hollow voice.
“It’s too late for second thoughts now, love. Youll just have to wait it out,” the doctor concluded flatly. “Unless you want to risk never having children again.”
Lorna stepped out of the office and sank onto the waiting room couch, trying to steady herself. The urge to cry burned in her throatnot just from grief, but from humiliation. She lifted her gaze to the window, where the autumn wind lashed at the branches, stripping them of their last clinging leaves.
It struck her thenshe was just like those branches. Helpless. And this child, once so desperately wanted, now felt like a cruel mistake. How had everything fallen apart so quickly?
She pushed past a radiant couple in the hallwaythe husband gripping his pregnant wifes shoulders, both of them beaming. The sight twisted the knife deeper. Head down, she trudged toward the bus stop.
Back home, she locked herself in her bedroom for nearly an hour. Her mother, Margaret, pleaded through the door for her to eat something, but Lorna stayed silent. Defeated, Margaret retreated to the kitchen, sinking into a chair. The flat was thick with unspoken dread.
Eventually, Lorna emerged and sat across from her mother at the table. The silence stretched like a chasm between them.
“If it looks like him, Ill refuse it. I swear I will,” Lorna repeated, voice lifeless.
Margaret flinched, her daughters words snapping her back to attention.
“Dont you dare say that! Lorraine” (she used her full name only when deadly serious) “a healthy, hardworking girl like you, throwing away her own child? What will people say? Your family? Your colleagues? How will you live with yourself? That babys innocentits not its fault its fathers a bastard.”
“Who cares what people think?” Lorna shot back, raw and trembling. She looked like a cornered animal theneyes wide and frightened, lips quivering, shoulders slumped.
“I care. And Ill help you,” Margaret insisted. “I wont let you abandon my grandchild.”
“Help? You can barely feed yourself with those delayed wageswhat help can you give?”
“Well manage,” Margaret pressed. “People survived worse in the war. This is peacetime1989, for Gods sake.”
Lorna exhaled sharply. Fear gnawed at her already. The future was a black void. She didnt know then that the 90s would bare their teeth. All she knew now was one thing: Darren had left her.
Theyd married six months ago after a year and a half of dating. No signs of troublejust a young, happy couple. But Lorna remembered, minute by minute, the day Darren came home a stranger. Hed tried to act normal, gentle as ever.
But shed seen itthe distance in his eyes, the way his mind was elsewhere. The look of a man whod fallen out of love.
Hed known she was pregnant. That was the worst of it. Otherwise, hed have walked out sooner. For a month, Lorna had begged for answers, and only when he finally left did she learn the truth.
Shed been hysterical when Darrens mother showed up, weeping herself, blindsided by her sons betrayal.
The story went back to their school days. In sixth form, Darren had gone on a youth camping tripkids from all over the country hiking, sleeping in tents. Thats where hed met Victoria. Fell for her instantly. Two weeks, inseparable. Theyd exchanged addresses, but when Darren moved flats, he lost hers. No letters ever came.
Eventually, hed buried the longingor so he thought. Three years later, hed met Lorna. Believed Victoria was in the past. They married, had a baby on the way.
Then Victoria reappeared. Shed lost his address too, but knowing his town, shed placed an ad in the local paper. Darren saw it. He invited her down, even booked her a hotel.
At first, hed just wanted closure. But the moment they met, the old spark flared. The decision wrecked him, but he made it: leave Lorna, pregnant, and start anew with Victoria.
At work, Lornas colleagues rallied around her. A new girl, barely settled in, sighed: “A babys a blessing. My husband and I have been trying five years.”
“Yes*with* a husband,” Lorna snapped. No joy left in expecting her firstborn. Just the sting of abandonment.
At home, Margaret tiptoed around her, desperate to soothe the hurt. Then one day, her mother-in-law, Edith, arrived in tears. Shed wanted Darren and Lorna to stay together.
Victoriathe new wifeshe couldnt stand. Not least because shed “stolen” Darren away to Scotland. (In truth, hed gone willingly.)
Between the two would-be grandmothers, Lorna felt both crushed and oddly comforted. But one fear eclipsed everything: meeting her baby.
What if it had Darrens eyes? His nose, his mouth? A lifetime of looking at her child and seeing betrayal? The thought terrified her.
Leaving the hospital, Lorna hadnt expected a crowd. But there was Margaret, Edith, her best mate with her husband, her older sister with her nieceeven her small team from work.
Everyone clamored to hold the baby. Everyone wished mother and child health. Back home, when they unwrapped the boy, Edith cradled him, smiling through tears. “Spitting image of Darren,” she whispered.
She thought Lorna hadnt heard. But she had. She took her son back and said, “No. Not Darren. His names Ivan.”
Edith and Margaret exhaled in relief. That settled it.
Twenty years passed. By 2010, Ivan was in his third year at uni. At home, his two little sisters adored himhed been their devoted protector since they were born.
Lorraine remarried five years after Ivan. Her husband became a proper father to the boythen to two daughters. She loved the girls, but Ivan was her soul. The memory of her hospital-bed threatto abandon him if he looked like Darrenhaunted her. She couldnt bear to think of it.
Darren and Victoria, that great love of his, divorced after five years. Victoria took their daughter abroad. Darren remarried, seemed content enough. He saw Ivan occasionally.
Lorraine didnt interfere. She felt nothing for her ex now. Just the man whod given her Ivanthe son she couldnt imagine living without.
