Until that moment, Courtney had known there was a choice to make—to keep the baby or not keep the baby. Both choices terrified her. She hadn’t wanted to end up pregnant in the first place, and wondering what to do now that shewaspregnant filled her with white hot fear.
But listening to Oliver telling her what to do,instructingher on what to do, caused something to shift inside her.
“What if I don’t want toget rid of it?” she said, hating those words in her mouth, hating how ‘get rid of it’ sounded like she was taking out the trash.
Oliver shrugged and shook his head. “This isn’t my problem. It’syourproblem. We were just supposed to be having a bit of fun. I didn’t sign up for anything else.”
The miserable conversation, such as it was, continued for a few more minutes as the rain poured down outside the car.Oliver’s position was clear; if she chose to have the baby, he wanted nothing to do with it. When he dropped her off back at her house fifteen minutes later, Courtney knew it would be the last time she’d see him.
That night, she told her mother about the pregnancy and about Oliver’s reaction. Just as she knew she would, Sharon reacted with shock and surprise—how could she not?—and then quickly gathered her daughter into her arms and comforted her.
“We’ll figure it out,” Sharon soothed. “Whatever you want to do, whatever decision you want to make, we’ll figure it out.”
Her mother’s support and kindness meant the world to her. She hadn’t expected Oliver to get down on bended knee when she told him she was pregnant, but she hadn’t expected him to just walk away.
Courtney thought about her options. Thought about the choice she had to make. The words Oliver had spat at her when he’d told her to ‘get rid of it’ gnawed inside her head.
She tried to weigh the decision logically, tried to think about the choice of terminating the pregnancy compared to the choice of having the baby and becoming a mother.
A single mother, like her own mother had been, with all the challenges that came with it.
It was only after several more days had passed and she’d booked an appointment with her GP and begun rehearsing what she planned to say when the appointment arrived that Courtney realised she’d already made the decision.
She would keep the baby. Shewantedto keep the baby. Her child had already found its way inside her heart.
“Everything will be fine,” Sharon said with a gentle smile when Courtney told her what she’d decided. “We’ll make it work and everything will be fine.”
With the choice made, Courtney began to prepare. Becoming a first-time mother aged just twenty-three years-old had neverbeen part of her plan, but she wasn’t a child, nor was she some clueless teenager. She had a smart head on her shoulders and wasn’t afraid of hard work, and if she put her time and energy to good use, she could make sure she was ready for her baby arriving.
She asked for extra shifts at the office where she worked as an administrative assistant in a local home furnishing business, helping to deal with sales paperwork and organising delivery schedules. Already working full time during the week, she begged for—and convinced the manager to give her—additional hours on the weekends working on the shop floor, serving customers and taking their orders and covering for staff illness and holidays.
The extra money in her monthly salary went straight into a savings account to pay for all the things she’d have to buy before her baby arrived. With thrifty purchases and careful budgeting, along with some rummaging in the charity shop to plug the gaps, Courtney reckoned that by the time her baby was born she’d have most of the things she needed and hopefully a little cash safety net to see her through maternity leave.
There was still plenty to think about further down the line, such as how she would afford child care in order to go back to work, and whether between herself and her mother they could juggle their jobs and their lives to keep the paid child care hours to a minimum. But that problem still lay far in the future and Courtney reckoned that, unless she wanted to descend into a panic-induced frenzy of worry, she should focus on dealing with what was already immediately in front of her instead of still many months away.
She’d work extra shifts, stash the extra cash, scrimp and save and do everything in her power to be ready for her baby arriving. With her mother’s support, they’d make it work and their little family of two would become a little family of three.
Planning and focus turned Courtney’s worries and fears into excitement and joy at the prospect of becoming a mother.
And then one day, disaster struck.
On a bitter January morning, Sharon collapsed at work while stripping beds in the hotel where she was on the early cleaning crew. Understaffed and battling to meet their finishing times for turning around the rooms, the other cleaners didn’t realise anything was wrong until they went searching for her when she failed to start work on the next floor of the hotel.
They found her cleaning cart in the doorway of the room she’d been turning and found Sharon on the floor, out of view behind the bed. The alarm was raised and an ambulance was called, but by then the massive stroke Sharon suffered had already done its deadly damage.
Two days later, Sharon died in the intensive care unit at the hospital. Courtney was at her bedside, holding her hand and praying for a miracle that never came. Shock and grief and heartbreak left her reeling and barely able to process what had happened.
Those terrible days morphed one into another as Courtney dealt with the grim bureaucracy of death. There was paperwork to be sorted, the funeral to be organised, people to be informed.
As a quiet woman who lived for her daughter and her work, Sharon had few close contacts, just a handful of friends and some acquaintances from her jobs, which meant that letting people know what had happened was surprisingly quick. Sharon’s parents had died many years before, and she had no siblings or other close family. Some friends of Courtney’s attended the funeral and offered their condolences, insisting she ask if she needed help of any kind.
But the funeral mostly passed in a blur of freezing winter rain and leaden skies as Courtney’s heart ached and tears streamed down her cheeks. When she returned home afterwards, theemptiness of the house and the realisation that her mother would never again walk through the door pierced Courtney’s heart all over again.
People were kind to her. Neighbours brought casseroles, friends called up to check on her, her colleagues and manager at work sent flowers. Courtney was grateful, but none of those thoughtful gestures helped ease her pain.
Nor stopped her from feeling utterly alone in the world.
Accidentally pregnant, about to become a single parent, and having just buried her mother, Courtney thought she’d hit rock bottom.
