yearned for the sanctuary its walls would provide. ‘He … he never gets home before five.’ Though it had been closer to nine, she remembered with a touch of bitterness, before he’d walked out on her completely, claiming he was working overtime while all the time he’d been out with the new office assistant. How naive she’d been!
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, wondering at the tension around her eyes and mouth and the bright spots of colour in an otherwise pale face, worried she might be about to faint on him again.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, at odds with her increasingly edgy body language as she shifted nervously on the spot and tucked wayward tendrils of hair behind her ears. She was smiling, if you could call it that, her lips drawn tight, her eyes so falsely bright that he wondered again if she wasn’t hiding something. ‘Thanks again for the lift. I won’t hold you up any longer.’
‘I’ll be in touch tomorrow,’ he said, moving aside to let her pass, and within seconds she’d scooped the mail from her letterbox and was halfway across the dust-bowl of her front yard, the wave from one hand her only response.
He waited there while she let herself into the house, saw her look over her shoulder one last time beforedisappearing inside. Maybe she was just embarrassed. Looking at the house, he could understand why.
The building was low and squat, perched meanly over what had once been a lawn before soaring summer temperatures and water restrictions had killed it off. He knew exactly what the house would look like on the inside because there were street upon street of them, all with slightly different frontages, half with the driveway on the left, half on the right, but all based on the same two or three basic floor plans. He could still see it now. Just inside the front door would be a lounge room along with a rudimentary kitchen and bathroom. There would be three bedrooms, one slightly larger passing for the master bedroom, one half the size of that and just big enough for a single bed and chest of drawers. The third would be half that size again, no more than a storeroom really.
Even now, thirty years on, he remembered the feel of those walls pressing in around the dreams he’d dreamed in his small fold-out bed.
Even driving through the suburb made him feel claustrophobic—the very sameness of it all, the dreariness of design, the street after street of untended gardens and poorly maintained paintwork—almost as if whatever dream the occupants had once had, had died a slow and painful death.
He’d done well to escape it.
He’d worked damned hard to escape it.
Which made it all the more ironic that this was the first place his child would live. Thank God that, unlike him, it was never a place his child would experience first-hand.
But it didn’t stop him feeling sick to the stomach atthe thought of leaving his child behind now. The birth could not come soon enough.
How many months to go?
How many months when she would be living in a suburb he’d sworn he would never set foot in again? He didn’t even want to think about the danger of everyday life out here. Break-ins, school arson and street violence, the suburb made an art form of urban unrest. What kind of environment was that for his baby to develop in?
No kind at all. And it rankled that he should be given this gift of an unborn child, only to have to worry about whether mother and baby survived long enough for him to take the child.
Incubator and baby, he corrected himself as he turned the key in the ignition, the Mercedes purring into life. He couldn’t actually bear to think of this woman as its mother.
It was wrong.
She might be pregnant with his child, but this woman was simply a caretaker for the next however months. She would never be his child’s mother.
Never in a million years!
CHAPTER FIVE
A NGIE slumped against the closed front door, tension draining from her body as she sighed with relief. After what felt
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, wondering at the tension around her eyes and mouth and the bright spots of colour in an otherwise pale face, worried she might be about to faint on him again.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, at odds with her increasingly edgy body language as she shifted nervously on the spot and tucked wayward tendrils of hair behind her ears. She was smiling, if you could call it that, her lips drawn tight, her eyes so falsely bright that he wondered again if she wasn’t hiding something. ‘Thanks again for the lift. I won’t hold you up any longer.’
‘I’ll be in touch tomorrow,’ he said, moving aside to let her pass, and within seconds she’d scooped the mail from her letterbox and was halfway across the dust-bowl of her front yard, the wave from one hand her only response.
He waited there while she let herself into the house, saw her look over her shoulder one last time beforedisappearing inside. Maybe she was just embarrassed. Looking at the house, he could understand why.
The building was low and squat, perched meanly over what had once been a lawn before soaring summer temperatures and water restrictions had killed it off. He knew exactly what the house would look like on the inside because there were street upon street of them, all with slightly different frontages, half with the driveway on the left, half on the right, but all based on the same two or three basic floor plans. He could still see it now. Just inside the front door would be a lounge room along with a rudimentary kitchen and bathroom. There would be three bedrooms, one slightly larger passing for the master bedroom, one half the size of that and just big enough for a single bed and chest of drawers. The third would be half that size again, no more than a storeroom really.
Even now, thirty years on, he remembered the feel of those walls pressing in around the dreams he’d dreamed in his small fold-out bed.
Even driving through the suburb made him feel claustrophobic—the very sameness of it all, the dreariness of design, the street after street of untended gardens and poorly maintained paintwork—almost as if whatever dream the occupants had once had, had died a slow and painful death.
He’d done well to escape it.
He’d worked damned hard to escape it.
Which made it all the more ironic that this was the first place his child would live. Thank God that, unlike him, it was never a place his child would experience first-hand.
But it didn’t stop him feeling sick to the stomach atthe thought of leaving his child behind now. The birth could not come soon enough.
How many months to go?
How many months when she would be living in a suburb he’d sworn he would never set foot in again? He didn’t even want to think about the danger of everyday life out here. Break-ins, school arson and street violence, the suburb made an art form of urban unrest. What kind of environment was that for his baby to develop in?
No kind at all. And it rankled that he should be given this gift of an unborn child, only to have to worry about whether mother and baby survived long enough for him to take the child.
Incubator and baby, he corrected himself as he turned the key in the ignition, the Mercedes purring into life. He couldn’t actually bear to think of this woman as its mother.
It was wrong.
She might be pregnant with his child, but this woman was simply a caretaker for the next however months. She would never be his child’s mother.
Never in a million years!
CHAPTER FIVE
A NGIE slumped against the closed front door, tension draining from her body as she sighed with relief. After what felt
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