‘I had no choice.’
‘Of course you had a choice.’ He snaps, spinning round to look down at me. ‘You could have kept the baby. You could have still been its mother. You were living with your sister, for God’s sake. You could easily have worked something out.’
I jump to my feet. Skip sits up, his ears pricked, looking at us. ‘We did sort something out,’ I say.
‘Something that didn’t involve you giving away your child.’
‘It was the best thing for the baby. I had nothing to give her.’
‘Yes you did,’ says Kerry. ‘You had something special and unique to give that child. Love. You had a mother’s love.’
‘Fuck off, Kerry,’ I shout. ‘What would you know?’
‘I know what it’s like to be rejected. I know that feeling. How do you think your daughter is going to feel when she finds out?’
‘She’s not going to find out.’
‘For an intelligent woman, you’re fucking stupid at times. She has a right to know who her parents are. A legal right and one day she might come looking for you. What are you going to do then? And what about the Marshalls? Have you not thought of them?’
‘They didn’t want her.’
‘But she might want them. She might come and find them. They might feel differently now. She has a right to be loved by her paternal grandparents.’
‘They gave up that right when they told me I should have a termination. Diana Marshall didn’t care then, she certainly won’t care now.’ I can hear the venom in my own words.
‘This is wrong,’ says Kerry. He shoves the half-rolled cigarette back into the pouch. ‘I was wrong about you. How could you do that to your own child? Your own flesh and blood?’
I go to retort, but Kerry isn’t waiting for an answer. As I open my mouth to speak he shakes his head, his eyes tell me what he thinks. He despises me. Never have I been surer about him. I close my mouth. There’s no point trying to reason with him.
With as much dignity as I can muster, I rise from the sofa and, for the second time that day, I leave his flat under a cloud. One that I’m not sure I can come back from this time.
Chapter 23
I wake the next morning and for a moment am unsure where I am. The sun streams in through a slit in the curtains. Curtains I don’t immediately recognise.
I can hear the sound of movement in another part of the house, the voices of children and adults.
Of course, I’m at Fiona’s. I had felt so miserable last night that I couldn’t bear going back to the flat and staying there on my own. I had rocked up at Fiona’s, no doubt looking a complete mess, hair all over the place, make-up streaked down my face and struggling with the onset of an early hangover.
I roll over and groan at the effort.
The second groan I make is when I remember what happened last night.
As recollections of the previous evening’s events make themselves known in a coherent order, my mouth dries and my stomach churns. I sit bolt upright. Oh, God. I told Kerry about the baby.
Panic is the next emotion to kick in. Frantically, I try to remember how much I had told him.
A knock at the door and the sound of Fiona calling my name interrupts my thoughts. The door opens and Fiona appears with a mug of tea in her hand.
‘Morning,’ she looks at me, the smile falls from her face. ‘You okay? You look mortified. My cup of tea isn’t that bad, is it?’
‘Erin!’ Molly bursts into the room and throws herself on the bed, bundling me back down into the pillows.
I laugh despite my sore head. ‘Morning, my lovely. You okay? Where’s that sister of yours?’
‘Still in bed, not very well,’ says Fiona, placing the cup on the bedside table and then drawing back the curtains. ‘Come on, Molly. Leave Aunty Erin alone, she’s just woken up.’
I blink at the sunlight and manage to sit up with Molly still in situ. I stroke her hair, planting a kiss on top of the golden waves. A great feeling of love fills my heart.
‘Why don’t you go downstairs and find Daddy?’ says Fiona. With slow but firm actions, she extracts her daughter from my embrace and, jumping Molly down from the bed, escorts her to the stairs. ‘Off you go! I’ll be down in a minute. Sean! Molly’s on her way down.’ Fiona comes back into the bedroom.
I go to speak, but don’t know what to say. Fiona comes and sits on the edge of the bed.
‘What is it? I can tell something’s wrong,’ she says.
I’ve dreaded this moment, but I know I can’t avoid it any longer.
‘Roisin knows. I don’t know how much, but she knows about the pregnancy and she says she knows I had the baby.’ The tears well up in my eyes and my throat feels lumpy as I continue. ‘Kerry knows as well. I told him.’ The tears spill over and a sob escapes my throat. ‘I’m sorry.’