The Good Sister(46)

The room is about half full. I notice a pair of teenage girls, seemingly without a guardian; a girl of around eighteen years of age with her mother; and a couple who look to be in their mid-thirties, both weepy-eyed and silent. All of them leaf through magazines, perhaps to distract themselves or to blend in. I don’t reach for a magazine. It’s never seemed wise to touch communal property at a doctor’s office, given the fact that they are little more than conduits for germs. Then again, this doctor’s office is a little different from most, and the patients are no more likely to be carrying germs than anyone in an office building. They, like me, are here for a different reason. It’s funny how awareness of this slides in and out of focus. One minute, I’m fine, and the next, it hits like a sudden, sombre surprise.

As the clock ticks over to 10.01 am, Rose comes bursting through the door, wearing a plum-coloured mohair jumper that makes me itchy just to look at. Though she is carrying an umbrella, her hair is soaking wet. She looks like a different person. ‘Fern! There you are!’

She is surprisingly loud, and everyone in the waiting room looks up from their magazines. The woman behind the desk peers at us over the top of her glasses. ‘Fern Castle?’ she says.

Rose looks at me. ‘You haven’t told them your name yet?’

‘No,’ I say, much quieter. It’s not like Rose to make a spectacle.

Rose kneels on the floor in front of me. Everyone else in the waiting room looks back at their magazines, pretending not to pay attention to us.

‘Good,’ she says. ‘Because . . . I had a thought this morning. It might sound crazy. Okay, it is crazy.’

‘What is crazy?’ I ask. I look at the pieces of hair stuck to her face and wonder if it is Rose herself.

‘It’s just . . . this morning I realised I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t ask . . .’

One of the teenage girls isn’t even pretending to read her magazine anymore. Instead, she outright stares at us. I stare right back at her, and I am rewarded when she finally looks away.

‘Ask me what?’

Rose looks around, as if only now noticing the other people in our immediate proximity. ‘Uh . . . maybe we should talk somewhere more private?’

‘But what about–’ I start to say, but it’s too late. Rose is already on her feet on the way to the reception desk to tell the receptionist that we won’t be requiring our appointment today.


Rose takes me to a café not far away from the clinic and orders two cups of tea and a scone with jam and cream without even consulting me. It’s still raining, the kind of rain that fills up the gutters and makes awnings bulge. It hadn’t been forecast, this rain. Everything about today has been a surprise.

When the scone arrives, Rose pushes it in front of me.

‘So . . . this morning, I had an epiphany.’

I pick up the scone and examine it. There doesn’t seem to be an efficient way to eat it without causing a spillage of jam and cream. In the end, I just lean forward so the spillage will land directly on the plate.

‘I thought to myself, here I am desperate to have a baby . . . while you are pregnant with an unwanted baby. Then it came to me! What if I kept your baby?’

My mouth is full of scone. I contemplate spitting it out but decide there is no graceful way of doing that, so instead I hold a napkin to my mouth and chew quickly.

‘Just think about it, Fern. I know it’s a lot to take in, so please don’t answer me yet. I just thought . . . maybe this is a way your baby could have the loving family it deserves. I spoke to Owen this morning, and–’

I swallow. ‘Owen knows?’

Rose looks guilty. ‘I hope you don’t mind. But when I suggested that he and I might raise the baby, he was over the moon. I shouldn’t have done that without speaking to you first.’

I sit back in my chair. I like Owen a lot. The idea that the baby could be raised by two loving parents, two neurotypical loving parents . . . it’s the start to life that every child would hope for.

‘I know that having two parents isn’t everything,’ Rose says. ‘But . . . I often think about what would have happened to us if we had two parents in the picture. When Mum overdosed, we would have had a backup. I would love to give the baby that.’

‘I’d love that too,’ I say.

Rose looks like she is holding her breath, waiting for me to make a decision. But there isn’t really a decision to make. It is, after all, what I’d intended in the first place.

‘Okay,’ I say.

Rose’s eyes fill up with tears. Then she throws her arms around me in another of those straitjacket hugs, only this time the wet mohair jumper gets up my nose, so I feel like I’m choking.





JOURNAL OF ROSE INGRID CASTLE


Daniel, we found out, was a commercial pilot. He had been married to Billy’s mother, a woman named Trish, for ten years before they divorced, and they were still on friendly terms. I knew this because Fern asked Daniel about it. Fern had an amazing way of being able to ask these kinds of questions without upsetting people. Even Mum didn’t seem to mind when Fern asked why they broke up.

Daniel smiled, like this wasn’t rude – like it was, in fact, a very good question. ‘I travel a lot for work, being a pilot. I think Trish got sick of being alone all the time. And I, well, I wasn’t always the best husband, let’s put it that way. We’re much better as co-parents than we were as husband and wife.’