‘No.’ Nicky screeched to a stop in the middle of the road. ‘She can’t stay in my house. No. That’s not our problem. She didn’t think twice about whether we’d need any help while she was off finding herself.’
‘What if she’s ill?’ I asked, my voice barely a whisper, because that was the only other reason I could come up with.
Nicky swiped at a furious tear. ‘What if we’d been ill, Libby? Or were having a baby, or the anguish of not being able to have babies, or a hideous divorce from a dropout. Never mind job stresses or social and emotional stagnation.’
‘Social and emotional what?’ I asked, somewhat affronted because I knew she wasn’t referring to herself.
‘I didn’t know what else to call it.’ She was openly sobbing now. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen my sister cry since Mum left, and two of those were happy tears when Finn and Isla were born. ‘Dammit, Libby. I don’t think I can do this. I shouldn’t blummin’ wellhaveto do this!’ She dropped her head onto the steering wheel, so I reached over and pulled her up against my shoulder instead.
‘At the risk of sounding like a misogynistic oaf, did you get your period?’
She nodded, pressing her face into my neck like Isla always did when upset. ‘I know there was no chance of being pregnant, but it still hurts so much. We saw the private consultant last week about that trial treatment, and they rejected me. Apparently, I’m too “inadequately equipped for pregnancy” to even try. Inadequate!’
I squeezed her tighter. ‘It sounds as though he’s too inadequately equipped for practising medicine.’
‘It was a woman,’ Nicky cried. ‘She has a giant photo of her five children on the wall behind her desk.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
Nicky took a shuddering breath. ‘I assessed a fifteen-year-old for pre-eclampsia yesterday.’
While my sister would never breach patient confidentiality, I suspected it might be Petra, from the Green House. I’d mentioned to Maria, when she’d picked her up after Thursday evening’s class, that Petra’s hands and feet looked a bit puffy and it might be worth getting them checked out.
‘She asked if the baby could die, and for a second I swear she half hoped I’d say yes.’
There was nothing I could do but rub her back and gesture to the annoyed driver stuck behind us to go around.
‘I wanted to shake her. Then pin her down with my Pinard stethoscope until she signed that baby over to me. Instead, I had to smile reassuringly, listen to the heartbeat of the new life she never wanted and send her off to hospital.’
‘You’ve never mentioned adoption before,’ I said, once she’d dried her eyes, blown her nose and restarted driving.
‘I never dare consider it, normally. How can I, when I spend two days a week with young women, some of whom are genuinely weighing up their options, and others who will have that choice taken away from them?’ She shook her head. ‘It’s only in my most utterly wretched moments that the thoughts squirm in uninvited.’
‘Why not invite those thoughts in?’ I asked. I’d always wondered why this wasn’t an obvious option for Nicky and Theo, given our childhood. ‘Share them with Theo and see what he thinks.’
‘I don’t know how I’d do it,’ she said, one final rogue tear trickling down her cheek. ‘How I could look our Bloomers in the face, knowing some of them are going to have their babies taken into care, if I’ve got one of them at home. We know adoption is rarely a straightforward happy ending.’
‘We also know first-hand how desperately those children need a safe, forever family.’
She clenched her jaw. ‘Yes. But not with me. Now, can we please talk more about when you’re going to start dating Bronah?’
31
Despite the tearful start, we had a fabulous day. Nicky was well used to the exhilaration of scaling peaks to admire the glorious vistas, the air so clean it was like breathing in mountain mouthwash, the sky so vast it couldn’t help but put my petty problems in their place.
We talked more about our parents, work, Theo’s huge family and my ex-husband’s expanding one. Toby and Hazel, and how my house was on its way to becoming a functional home. Jonah, who Nicky declared she always knew was a decent guy underneath the hoodie, and had now proved it by working for Charis House, a school where we’d seen plenty of young women find a safe place to flourish.
I asked if she needed to skip Bloomers this week, but she was adamant.
‘Libby, if I missed work every time I faced another non-baby knock-back, you’d need to boot me off the board because I’d hardly ever be there.’
‘How did I not know this was still such a struggle for you?’ I asked, somewhat breathlessly as we were tramping up a steepsection of hillside, hurrying past a herd of cows staring at us menacingly.
‘Because I do a good job of hiding it,’ she said, slowing her pace so that I could keep up.
‘I thought that, with Mum gone, we were always there for each other.’
‘Oh, Libby.’ She slung a slender arm over my shoulders. ‘You haven’t even been there for yourself.’
