AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MAGGIEHADSPENTthe last few months disproving her theory that you could never get sick of chocolate.
Her long-held belief was wrong.
The taste was too sweet and the very scent of it had started to make her stomach curl.
Flo had been the one who had told her she was pregnant.
Maggie would have happily remained in la-la land for a few more weeks, and had put her vomiting down to a bug she had brought home from her trip.
Except she had been borrowing Flo’s sofa at the time.
And, given that Flo was a practising midwife, her friend’s confident diagnosis had been rather hard to ignore.
Maggie had tried to!
She had found a flat that offered a little more privacy than Maggie was used to. While she would be sharing the bathroom and kitchen with four others, there was a little room with a sofa and bed and there were locks on that door.
After a year of travelling and a lifetime of shared lounge rooms, there was finally a glimmer of privacy and peace.
Flo had helped her move in.
It was tiny and seriously needed a fresh coat of paint, but they had prettied it up with pictures on the walls and thrown a few rugs over the couch.
Next to Maggie’s bed there was a built-in shelf, and she decided that this would be the spot where she placed her favourite things, as she always did when she started again in a new home.
There was a gorgeous photo of herself and her mum taken the Christmas before she had died, which she carefully placed in the centre of the shelf.
Beside that she put an empty bottle of expensive perfume—it had been a present from Paul and Kelly when she had been their bridesmaid and was far too pretty to throw out.
And there was another lovely photo of herself and Flo on Maggie’s twenty-first birthday when Flo had organised a surprise party at the café.
Yes, these were her favourite things but there was a new addition to the shelf—a little glass bottle that Maggie had carefully chosen and had bought just yesterday.
It was filled with the sand she had saved from her time in the desert.
That night, with everything unpacked and put away, Flo had produced a bottle of sparkling wine to toast Maggie in her new home.
‘No, thanks,’ Maggie had said, and had shaken her head.
‘I thought you might say that!’
‘Please leave it.’
‘Maggie, what is that going to achieve? Even if it’s just to put my mind at ease, please take a test.’
Flo had produced from her purse a pregnancy testing kit and, on the first night in her new home, Maggie had had it confirmed that she was pregnant.
Of course, she had already suspected. Deep down, she had known it was true, but she’d had no idea what to do, so she had ignored it as best she could.
‘How?’ Maggie had asked, and there had been rare tears in her eyes as she’d looked around her tiny living space. Flo had understood that she wasn’t asking how it had happened, more how she was going to support a baby on her own.
‘You’ll find a way,’ Flo said with conviction. ‘You always do.’
She wouldmanage, Maggie thought, and closed her eyes, remembering Kumu’s words that day, when she’d told her that when in Ilyas’s world she didn’t have to.
She would barely manage, Maggie knew.
