**Diary Entry 15th October, 1989**
“If this baby looks anything like him, I’ll refuse… I’ll give it life and walk away,” I muttered, my voice hollow.
“It’s too late for that now, love. Youll have to wait it out,” the doctor said bluntly. “Unless you want to risk never having children at all.”
I left his office and sank onto the clinics worn-out sofa, trying to steady myself. The urge to cry clawed at meout of hurt, out of betrayal. I lifted my head and watched through the window as the autumn wind mercilessly shook the last clinging leaves from the branches.
I felt just like those brancheshelpless. This child, once so desperately wanted, now felt like a cruel mistake. Three months ago, my heart had been full of hope. How quickly everything had changed.
Outside, I passed a beaming couplethe husband cradling his wife, both grinning like fools. The sight twisted something inside me. I trudged to the bus stop, numb.
At home, I locked myself in my room for nearly an hour. Mum begged me to eat, but I couldnt bring myself to speak. She retreated to the kitchen, and the flat filled with heavy silence. Eventually, I joined her at the table, neither of us saying a word.
“If it looks like him, I wont keep it,” I repeated, barely audible.
Mum jolted. “Valerie Anne, for heavens sake, think before you speak!” She only used my full name when she was deadly serious.
“A hardworking, decent girl like you, abandoning her own child? What will the family say? Your colleagues? How will you live with yourself? The poor babys done nothing wrongits fathers the villain.”
“Who cares what people think? Wholl even pity me?” I snapped, feeling like a cornered animaleyes wide, lips trembling, shoulders slumped.
“Ill pity you. Ill help you,” Mum insisted. “And I wont let you abandon my grandchild.”
“You can barely make ends meet yourself! What help can you possibly give?”
“Well manage. People survived worse in wartimethis is peacetime, for goodness sake.”
I sighed. Fear gnawed at mefear of the unknown ahead. I didnt know then that the nineties would show their teeth. All I knew was that Edward had left me.
Wed married six months ago, after a year and a half together. No warning, no signsjust a happy couple, or so Id thought.
I remember the day he came home a stranger. He tried to act normal, but I could see the distance in his eyesthe look of a man whod fallen out of love.
He already knew I was pregnant. It tormented him. Otherwise, hed have walked out sooner. For weeks, I begged for answers, and only when he finally left did I learn the truth.
I was hysterical when Edwards mother came over, weeping herself. She hadnt expected such cruelty from her son.
The story went back years. During a school camping trip, Edward had met Emily. Two weeks of teenage infatuation, exchanged addresses, then nothing. Hed lost hers when they moved flats; she never wrote. Eventually, hed buried the memoryuntil he realised she was his one true love.
Then he met me. Emily faded into the pastor so he believed. We married, started a family. Then, out of nowhere, she reappeared.
Shed placed an ad in the local paper. Edward saw it. He booked her a hotel room, just to see her again. One meeting was all it took.
Leaving mepregnantwasnt easy for him. But he did it.
At work, everyone rallied around. A new colleague sighed, “A babys a blessing. My husband and I have been trying for five years.”
“With a husband,” I muttered bitterly. There was no joy in this pregnancyjust the sting of abandonment.
At home, Mum tiptoed around my grief. Then Edwards mother visited, weeping, wishing theyd stayed together. She despised Emilyfor “stealing” her son. But Edward had chosen this.
Their sympathy was suffocating. What terrified me most? Seeing Edward in my childs face. His eyes, his nosewould I spend my life staring at betrayal?
Leaving the hospital, I hadnt expected a crowdMum, Edwards mother, my best friend and her husband, my sister with my niece, even my entire team. Everyone wanted to hold the baby.
When we unwrapped him at home, Edwards mother cradled him, smiling through tears. “Spitting image of Edward,” she whispered.
I heard. I took my son back. “No. His names John.”
Both mothers exhaled. A good sign.
Twenty years later, in 2010, John was at university. His two little sisters adored him. Hed been a doting brotherhelping me when they were tiny, a proper little nanny.
I remarried five years after John was born. My husband was a good stepfather, a loving dad to our daughters.
I adore my girls. But John? My heart aches with love for him. That moment in the hospitalthe threat to leave him if he looked like EdwardI cant bear to remember.
Edward and Emily divorced after five years. She took their daughter abroad. He remarried, seems content. He sees John now and then. I dont stop him. I feel nothing for him anymore. Just the biological father of my son.
Johnmy greatest joy, my deepest regret.
