I gently rubbed my stomach. It was hard to fathom that behind the wall of expanding flesh beat the heart of my little girl. She was more than an accidental pregnancy. She was keeping me alive.
If only I had listened to Dympna when she warned me that I was making a mistake. Tears welled in my eyes as I thought of my friend, so many miles away. How different my life would have been if I had taken her advice. Guilt sucked me in like quicksand, dragging me down until I could barely breathe. Was it the lure of New York that first drew me in? Or the empty promises that were made? I wiped away my tears with the back of my hand. How could I have predicted how this was going to turn out?
‘It’s OK,’ I whispered to my unborn child. ‘I’ll keep you safe.’
I reined in my thoughts in case my baby sensed my fear. There was movement as she pressed against my ribcage. The thought of her entry into the world was making me sick with nerves. It was not the prospect of giving birth that worried me; it was what would happen the second she was born. I pressed my hand against my mouth to stem the scream building in my throat. Keep it together. My self-preservation depended on me being calm, focused and ready.
A door slammed on the floor above and a muffled argument ensued. I knew it was about me. My accommodation was luxurious, but not soundproof, and I had learned a lot about the people up there. Slowly, I crept around the apartment and fetched a chair. As I dragged it to the air vent, its legs scraped the wooden floor. I bent my knees as I stepped up on to it, trying to hold it still. It was risky, but this was the best place to hear what was going on above. Holding my breath, I listened for key words. They thought I couldn’t hear them, but I knew what they were capable of. I snuffled through my congestion. The air was too dry, too cold, and goose bumps rose on my skin. The argument descended into soft murmurs. A decision had been made.
I climbed down from my chair, every nerve-ending tingling as adrenalin coursed through my veins. It was now or never. Footsteps crossed the floor above my head. My hand trembled as I reached for the knife carefully hidden beneath the folds of my maternity dress. It was small but sharp enough to pierce skin. What choice did I have? My heart reverberated against the wall of my chest and my breath came in short, quick gasps. They were coming.
There wasn’t a second to waste. I tiptoed to the side of my wardrobe, my fingers clasped tightly around the knife. The lift whirred as it escorted its passengers to my floor. A ding signalled that they were here. I held my breath as the lift doors slid open.
It was time.
CHAPTER ONE
ROZ
OCTOBER 2018
‘How far apart do your legs have to be for a thigh gap?’
Wearing her tightest skinny jeans and vest top, Dympna surveyed herself in the full-length mirror in my room. I lay stretched out on my bed, my head too full of my own worries to pay much attention.
‘It’s gone. It’s definitely gone,’ she moaned, mourning the loss of that all-important space between her thighs. ‘I mean, look at me, I’m a whale!’
She was not a whale. Red-haired and feisty, she was beautifully rounded, and I envied her curves. We had been friends ever since she shared her sandwich with me in school at the age of four. People said we made a striking pairing – her with her red hair, me with my white-blonde locks tumbling past my shoulders. Rhubarb and Custard, they called us, after the sweets. We were never apart. We moved on to secondary school, sat through mass for an hour in church every Sunday and both got housekeeping jobs in the same Jurys hotel. It was a natural progression for us to share a flat; but the rent in Dublin was astronomical compared to my hometown in Ferbane, and I didn’t have the heart to tell my best friend that I had just lost my job. If only that’s all it was. There was far worse on the horizon for me. My stomach rolled over as the implications punched me like a fist to the gut.