feeling sick all the time... Kris was not entirely sure how she felt about this apart from one thing: uncertainty was what was affecting her most now.
Picking up her sketches, sure that she would not be able to keep her mind from this until she had a more certain idea of herself, she left some money on the table and searched around the neighbourhood with her eyes, hunting out what she needed. The nearest drug store was only a hundred yards or so away and, with renewed determination, she set across the road.
She clutched the bag in her hand as she caught the tram to within a few hundred metres of the hotel, not even looking at it, not tempting fate as she entered. Nodding to the concierge at the reception desk, she kept her eyes straight ahead at all other times, acknowledging nobody else as she took the lift up to the floor where their room was situated and unlocked the door.
“Daniel? Are you there?” She paused for a moment with the door half open: it was actually a relief to her when there was no answer and, entering the suite, she dropped her handbag with her sketchbook on the table nearby and shrugged off her coat, still clinging to the other paper bag with her purchase as she went through to the bathroom.
Still fully clothed, she sat on the toilet with the lid down and, slipping the contents of the bag into her hands read the instructions on the pregnancy testing kit repeatedly. She had to get this right. It promised more than 99 percent accuracy, but Kris was aware that this would only be the first step in proving what she already felt to be true.
Lifting her skirt and dropping her underwear, she flipped up the seat and sat down, pressing her arm between her legs with the plastic strip of the tester dangling beneath her buttocks. For a few seconds, she couldn’t make herself pee and cursed at the sheer inelegance of it all, her cheeks flushing red with annoyance.
At last, her urine began to flow and droplets from the stream splashed over her hand as well as the applicator. Not that this mattered. Instead, she whipped the kit before her eyes, staring at the clear, plastic strip, unable to take her attention off it even though she knew very well that she was incapable of speeding up time.
After an age one of the windows in the strip turned blue. She did not need to read instructions to know what that meant, and let her hand fall away. She sat against the toilet for a while, lost in thought.
Pregnancy did not fill her with any horror, and indeed explained so much about how she had been feeling recently. Indeed, part of her was thrilled about the thought of having Daniel’s baby, but she was also a little confused.
While she had made plenty of mistakes thus far in her life, having an abortion had not been one of them. There was no question of that being the case now—Kris’s Catholicism was so far in the background of her life now that this was not an issue of being especially pro-life, for she had always been of the opinion that the choice would be hers. And in any case she certainly wanted Daniel’s baby—but this had not been planned nor expected at all.
And that was her problem for a moment. She did not particularly worry about Daniel’s reaction in many ways: she knew that one of the losses that had affected him at the time of his first wife’s death was that she had been pregnant when she had been killed in the car crash. But it was also clear that other things were worrying him at the present time, and she felt a little ashamed that she had not discussed the possibility of trying for a child with him. It seemed unfair to spring a child on him without at first letting him know. After all, she thought with a wry smile, things could have been a lot more fun if they had been actively trying .
And yet here she was: pregnant. Her head spun at the thought of it, and she tried to work out how long it could be. Possibly six weeks, even longer perhaps if, as she increasingly suspected, her last period had
Picking up her sketches, sure that she would not be able to keep her mind from this until she had a more certain idea of herself, she left some money on the table and searched around the neighbourhood with her eyes, hunting out what she needed. The nearest drug store was only a hundred yards or so away and, with renewed determination, she set across the road.
She clutched the bag in her hand as she caught the tram to within a few hundred metres of the hotel, not even looking at it, not tempting fate as she entered. Nodding to the concierge at the reception desk, she kept her eyes straight ahead at all other times, acknowledging nobody else as she took the lift up to the floor where their room was situated and unlocked the door.
“Daniel? Are you there?” She paused for a moment with the door half open: it was actually a relief to her when there was no answer and, entering the suite, she dropped her handbag with her sketchbook on the table nearby and shrugged off her coat, still clinging to the other paper bag with her purchase as she went through to the bathroom.
Still fully clothed, she sat on the toilet with the lid down and, slipping the contents of the bag into her hands read the instructions on the pregnancy testing kit repeatedly. She had to get this right. It promised more than 99 percent accuracy, but Kris was aware that this would only be the first step in proving what she already felt to be true.
Lifting her skirt and dropping her underwear, she flipped up the seat and sat down, pressing her arm between her legs with the plastic strip of the tester dangling beneath her buttocks. For a few seconds, she couldn’t make herself pee and cursed at the sheer inelegance of it all, her cheeks flushing red with annoyance.
At last, her urine began to flow and droplets from the stream splashed over her hand as well as the applicator. Not that this mattered. Instead, she whipped the kit before her eyes, staring at the clear, plastic strip, unable to take her attention off it even though she knew very well that she was incapable of speeding up time.
After an age one of the windows in the strip turned blue. She did not need to read instructions to know what that meant, and let her hand fall away. She sat against the toilet for a while, lost in thought.
Pregnancy did not fill her with any horror, and indeed explained so much about how she had been feeling recently. Indeed, part of her was thrilled about the thought of having Daniel’s baby, but she was also a little confused.
While she had made plenty of mistakes thus far in her life, having an abortion had not been one of them. There was no question of that being the case now—Kris’s Catholicism was so far in the background of her life now that this was not an issue of being especially pro-life, for she had always been of the opinion that the choice would be hers. And in any case she certainly wanted Daniel’s baby—but this had not been planned nor expected at all.
And that was her problem for a moment. She did not particularly worry about Daniel’s reaction in many ways: she knew that one of the losses that had affected him at the time of his first wife’s death was that she had been pregnant when she had been killed in the car crash. But it was also clear that other things were worrying him at the present time, and she felt a little ashamed that she had not discussed the possibility of trying for a child with him. It seemed unfair to spring a child on him without at first letting him know. After all, she thought with a wry smile, things could have been a lot more fun if they had been actively trying .
And yet here she was: pregnant. Her head spun at the thought of it, and she tried to work out how long it could be. Possibly six weeks, even longer perhaps if, as she increasingly suspected, her last period had
Similar Books
