“If the baby looks like him, Ill give it up I swear I will!” Laurens voice was hollow as she spoke.
“Its too late for second thoughts now, love,” the doctor said flatly. “Youll just have to wait it outunless you want to risk never having children at all.”
Lauren stepped out of the office and sank onto the waiting room sofa, dazed. She wanted to crynot just from grief, but from sheer frustration. Lifting her head, she watched through the window as the autumn wind tossed the last stubborn leaves clinging to the branches.
She felt just like those leaveshelpless, battered, and out of place. And now this baby, once so desperately wanted, felt like a cruel twist of fate. Three months ago, shed been overjoyed. How quickly everything had changed.
Leaving the clinic, she passed a beaming couplethe husband cradling his wife, both radiating happiness. The sight twisted the knife deeper. Lauren trudged to the bus stop.
When she finally got home, she locked herself in her room for nearly an hour. Her mother, Margaret, pleaded with her to eat, but Lauren refused to speak. Defeated, Margaret retreated to the kitchen, sinking into a chair. The flat was thick with silence.
Eventually, Lauren emerged and sat across from her mother at the table. Neither spoke.
“If it looks like him, Ill give it up I swear I will,” Lauren repeated, her voice just as lifeless.
Margaret stiffened, jolted by her daughters words.
“Dont be ridiculous, Lauren! What on earth are you saying?” Margaret only used her full name when dead serious. “A strong, hardworking girl like you giving up her own child? What will people think? Your family? Your colleagues? How will you live with yourself? And the babys innocentits not their fault their fathers a wretch.”
“Who cares what people think? Whod even pity me?” Lauren snapped, her voice trembling. In that moment, she looked like a cornered animaldark eyes wide with fear, lips quivering, shoulders slumped.
“Ill pity you. And Ill help you,” Margaret insisted. “I wont let you abandon your own flesh and blood.”
“You can barely make ends meet yourself! How could you possibly help?”
“Well manage,” Margaret said firmly. “People survived worse in the war. Its 1989were not starving.”
Lauren exhaled sharply. Fear coiled in her chestnot just for now, but for the unknown future. She didnt know yet that the 1990s would bring their own harsh trials. All she knew today was that David had left her.
Theyd married just six months ago after a year and a half of dating. No one had seen it comingthey were the perfect couple.
Lauren remembered the day David came home a different man. Hed tried to act normal, but his distance was obviousthe way he stared right through her, like a man whod fallen out of love.
He already knew she was pregnant. That was the worst partif she hadnt been, hed have left sooner. For a month, she begged him to explain, but it wasnt until he walked out that she learned the truth.
Lauren had been hysterical when Davids mother, Evelyn, arrived, sobbing herself, stunned by her sons betrayal.
The story went back to their school days. During a school trip in his final year, David had met a girl named Victoria at a youth camp. Hed fallen for her instantlyspent two weeks glued to her side. When they parted, they exchanged addresses, but David lost hers when he moved house. No letters ever came from her.
Hed tried to forget her, but years later, he realised she was his one true love. Three years after that, he met Lauren. He convinced himself Victoria was in the past. They married two years later, and when Lauren fell pregnant, they were overjoyed.
Then Victoria reappeared. She hadnt kept his address either, but knowing the town he lived in, she placed an ad in the local paper. David saw it. He booked her a hotel room and invited her over.
At first, he just wanted to see the girl hed never forgotten. But one meeting was all it took. The decision wrecked him, but he made it: hed leave Laurenpregnant with his childand run away with Victoria.
At work, Laurens colleagues rallied around her. A new girl, fresh to the job, sighed enviously, “A babys a blessing. My husband and Ive been trying for five years.”
“Exactlywith a husband,” Lauren muttered bitterly. There was no joy left in this pregnancy, only the sting of abandonment.
At home, Margaret tried everything to soothe her daughters pain. Then one day, EvelynDavids mothervisited. She burst into tears the moment she walked in, heartbroken that her son had thrown everything away.
She had no sympathy for Victoria, the woman whod “stolen” David away, dragging him halfway across the country. (In truth, David had gone willingly.)
Between the two would-be grandmothers, Lauren felt both comforted and smothered. But the real terror was still to comewhat if the baby looked like David? His eyes, his nose, his lips How could she spend a lifetime staring at her child and remembering his betrayal?
When Lauren was discharged from hospital, she didnt expect the crowd waiting for her. Her mother, Evelyn, her best friend with her husband, her older sister with her niece, and her entire small team from work.
Everyone wanted to hold the baby. Everyone wished mother and child well. Back home, as they unwrapped him, Evelyn cradled him first, smiling through tears.
“The spitting image of David,” she whispered.
She thought Lauren hadnt heard. But Lauren had. She took her son back and said, “No. His names William.”
Evelyn and Margaret exhaled in relief. At least that was settled.
Twenty years passed. By 2010, William was in his third year at university. At home, his two younger sisters adored him. When they were tiny, hed been their doting big brotherhelping his mother, playing the part of a second father.
Lauren remarried five years after Williams birth. Her new husband, James, was a devoted stepfather and later a loving father to their daughters.
Lauren adored her girls. But with William? She couldnt bear the thought of that moment in the hospitalwhen shed sworn shed abandon her newborn if he looked like David. The memory haunted her.
David and Victoria, the great love of his life, divorced after five years. Victoria moved abroad with their daughter. David remarried, seemed content enough, and occasionally saw William.
Lauren didnt interfere. She felt nothing for him nowno hatred, no love. Just a man whod once been the biological father of her beloved William
