“If the baby looks like himI’ll refuse… I’ll give it life and refuse!” Lorna murmured, her voice drained of colour.
“It’s too late for regrets now, love. All you can do is wait it out,” the doctor concluded. “Otherwise, you might end up childless altogether.”
Lorna stepped out of the office and sank onto the bench in the waiting room, trying to steady herself. The urge to cry from sheer frustration clawed at her throat. She raised her head and watched through the window as the autumn wind mercilessly tore the last leaves from the branches.
She felt like one of those brancheshelpless, battered. And now, this child felt like a mistake. Three months ago, she had wanted nothing more. How quickly everything had changed.
Leaving the clinic, she passed a happy couplethe husband cradling his wife, both smiling. The sight twisted like a knife in her chest. Lorna dragged herself to the bus stop.
At home, she locked herself in her room for nearly an hour. Her mother, Margaret, pleaded with her to eat, but Lorna didnt utter a word. Defeated, Margaret retreated to the kitchen, lost in thought. The flat was thick with silence.
Eventually, Lorna emerged and sat at the table across from her mother. They remained like that, wordless, for what felt like forever.
“If it looks like himIll refuse… Ill give it life and refuse,” Lorna repeated, her voice hollow.
Margaret stiffened, her daughters words snapping her back to reality.
“Dont you dare talk like that, Lorna! Think about what youre saying!” Margaret only used her full name when she meant business.
“A healthy, hardworking girl giving up her own child? What will the family say? Your colleagues? How will you live with yourself? And that childits innocent! Its not your babys fault its fathers a coward!”
“Who cares what they think?” Lorna shot back, trembling like a cornered animal. Her wide brown eyes were frantic, lips quivering, shoulders slumped.
“I care. And Ill help you,” Margaret said firmly. “I wont let you abandon my grandchild.”
“You can barely make ends meet as it iswhat help could you possibly give?”
“Well manage,” Margaret insisted. “People survived worse in wartime. This is 1989not the dark ages.”
Lorna exhaled sharply. Fear gripped her, thick and suffocating. The future was an abyss. She didnt know then that the ’90s would bring their own cruelty. All she knew was this: David had left her.
They had married six months ago after a year and a half of dating. Back then, nothing had hinted at the storm to comejust a young, happy couple in love.
Lorna remembered every second of the day David came home a different man. He had tried to act normal, gentlelike always. But she had noticed the distance in his eyes, the quiet resignation. The look of a man who had fallen out of love.
He had known she was pregnant. That was the worst of it. Otherwise, he would have left sooner. For a month, she had begged for answers. Only when he finally walked out did she learn the truth.
Lorna had collapsed into hysterics when Davids mother, Ruth, arrived. Even she had wept, stunned by her sons betrayal.
The story went back to their school days. In his final year, David had gone on a summer hiking trip with students from all over the country. Campfires, tents, endless trailsand thats where he met Vicky. He fell for her instantly.
For two weeks, they were inseparable. When they parted, they exchanged addresses. But David lost hers when he moved flats. No letters ever came.
Eventually, he convinced himself to forget her. But years later, he realised she had been the one. Then he met Lorna, thought Vicky was in the past, and married her. They started planning for a baby.
Then Vicky reappeared. She hadnt kept his address either, but knowing which town he lived in, she placed an ad in the local paper. David saw it. He invited her up, booked her a hotel room.
At first, he just wanted to see the girl hed never forgotten. But one meeting was all it took. The decision wrecked himbut he chose to leave Lorna, pregnant, and run away with Vicky.
At work, everyone rallied around Lorna. A new colleague, barely settled in, sighed:
“A babys a blessing. My husband and I have been trying for five years.”
“With a husband,” Lorna snapped. The joy of expecting had soured into bitterness. Shed been discarded.
At home, Margaret tried everything to ease her daughters grief. Then Ruth visited. She wept, begging for David and Lorna to reconcile. She despised Vickynot just for stealing her son, but for taking him hundreds of miles away. (Though in truth, David had left willingly.)
Between the two would-be grandmothers, Lorna wavered between despair and fragile relief. But the real terror was this: What if the baby looked like David?
His eyes, his nose, his lipswhat then? Spend a lifetime staring at her child and reliving his betrayal? The thought paralysed her.
When Lorna left the hospital, she hadnt expected a crowd. But there was Margaret, Ruth, her best friend with her husband, her older sister with a niece in towand her entire small team from work.
Everyone wanted to hold the baby. Everyone wished mother and child health. At home, when they unwrapped the boy, Ruth cradled him, smiling through tears.
“Spitting image of David,” she whispered.
Lorna heard. She took her son back and said firmly,
“No. His names Jack.”
Ruth and Margaret exhaled in unisonrelief. At least this was settled.
Twenty years passed. By 2010, Jack was in his third year at university. At home, he doted on his two younger sisters, helping Lorna care for them when they were tiny.
Lorna had remarried five years after Jacks birth. Her new husband became a loving stepfather and later fathered her two daughters.
She adored her girlsbut with Jack, shed never fully let go of that fear. The moment shed sworn to abandon him if he resembled David haunted her. Even now, the memory made her shudder.
David and Vickythe great love of his lifedivorced after five years. Vicky moved abroad with their daughter. David remarried, seemed content enough, and occasionally saw Jack.
Lorna never interfered. She felt nothing for her ex-husband now. Just the man whod fathered her precious son.
Nothing more.
Thank you, dear readers, for your kind words and support. Enjoy the story.
