Fullepub 
Fern
FERN
“It happened when I was twelve.”
Wally is still smiling, but it’s fading. His eyes are showing the first hints of confusion. “What happened?”
“We were camping. Billy and I were playing a game—”
“Wait.” Wally holds up a hand. “Who is Billy?”
“Mum had a couple of boyfriends while we were growing up. She had one named Gary, but he didn’t last long, which was good because I didn’t like him. Then she had one named Daniel. Billy was Daniel’s son. We all went on a camping trip together. It was supposed to be a time for us to get to know each other better and bond.”
Wally sits forward, his elbows resting on his knees.
“We did bond, on that trip. It was fun having another person to play with. Billy was really competitive. He spent most of that camping trip trying to hold his breath under water longer than me. I’d read a book about free diving, so I knew how to fill up my lungs completely, how not to panic under water. Billy couldn’t get close to holding his breath for as long as I could.”
“What happened, Fern?”
I wrap my arms around myself and start to rock. “On the night he died, he was so frustrated. He wanted to stay under the longest, but he just couldn’t do it. Every attempt was worse than the last.” I looked up at Wally. “And so … I helped him.”
“Helped him … what?”
My voice is the barest whisper. “Helped him stay under the longest. I held him down.”
Wally’s face remains still. Too still. “No,” he says. “No, you didn’t.”
I feel the first tears hit my cheeks. “I thought … I thought he would pop up and grin at me and say how happy he was that he’d beaten my time! But he didn’t. When I let him go, it was too late.”
Wally is staring at me in horror. “But … you must have known that if you held someone under the water for long enough, they would drown?”
“I did know that!” I wring my hands and then press my eyes into them. “I did know that. An adult can drown in sixty seconds, that’s what all the literature says. I held him under for forty. It was timed! I don’t know how it happened. I would never, never…”
“What happened when you realized what you’d done?” he asks.
“Rose … told me I couldn’t … tell anyone. She was worried I’d go to jail. She said we had to say that Billy got tangled in the reeds and drowned, or I’d get into big trouble.”
“This is why you’re always worried about what you might do?” Wally takes a deep breath, then drops his head into his hands. “It’s … awful,” he says. “Unimaginably awful.”
I nod. My face is wet with tears. “I told you I can’t be trusted, Wally. I’m dangerous.”
He looks up, shakes his head. “It was a terrible accident. But … it was clearly an accident, Fern. You would never intentionally hurt anyone.” Wally slides closer to me and pulls me against his chest. “You’d never hurt anyone,” he repeats, and for some reason, maybe because it comes from Wally, I almost believe it.
To my great surprise, Wally doesn’t cut me out of his life. I wait for it to happen, either immediately or perhaps in a phasing-out-type arrangement, but day after day, week after week, he shows up—at the library or my doorstep, with suggestions of dinner or an evening walk. It is unfathomable. It’s the kind of loyalty you might expect of a lifelong friend or family member. It doesn’t make sense that Wally has elevated me to such a rank when we’ve only known each other a few weeks. And yet, he has.
And so, over the next month or so, I amend my routine to create space for Wally. Early evenings are spent together, apart from the evenings I spend at Rose’s place. At the end of the night, Wally returns to his van and I go to sleep alone. We both prefer it this way, as it keeps our morning routines intact. And I make up for the late nights by taking naps in the secret cupboard at work every time I get the chance.
For a few weeks, I am lucky enough to sometimes get to see Wally during the day, too, when he pops into the library here and there. Unfortunately, it’s not long before he moves into a coworking space in the city and can no longer visit me at work. I miss him when he’s gone. It’s a curious feeling, missing someone. I feel it in my chest—a blend of butterflies and indigestion.
I start to loathe dinners with Rose. And it’s not just my recent preference for Wally’s company. Since returning from London, she’s become unbearably interested in every mundane facet of my life—from what I had for lunch, to who I sat with, to what I dreamed about. So when Rose phones and cancels dinner one night—terrible food poisoning, apparently—I feel only minimal guilt at my elation.
Wally is in my doorway when Rose calls, and he appears equally delighted. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day. And I’ve had a pretty good day.”
“Why have you had a good day?”
“The video I made for FollowUp has gone viral.”
He leans against the doorjamb. Wally and I spend a lot of time in my doorway. There’s something about the no-man’s-land of it that I like—if he doesn’t cross the threshold, it doesn’t count as a “visit” and as such isn’t a disruption to my routine.
“Gone viral…,” I repeat.
“‘Viral’ means lots of people have seen it,” Wally explains. “The connotation is that it has spread, like a virus would.”
“Clever.” It’s so rare that newfangled slang makes sense to me, but this is the kind of slang I could easily get on board with. Having decoded this part of the conversation, I take another moment to process it in reference to his previous comment. “And … the fact that Rose has canceled is better than that?”
He smiles, but it is almost as though there is a frown behind it. I have recently learned that this face means I have failed to understand something that he finds perfectly obvious (I know this because I asked him what the face meant, and he confirmed my interpretation). “Seeing you is always the best part of my day, Fern.”
I smile.
“Let’s skip dinner,” Wally says, crossing the threshold. And just like always, we are entirely on the same wavelength.
In the morning, Wally is gone but the side of the bed that he sleeps on has been disturbed in that way that says he’s been there recently. Watching his side of the bed for a few moments before I start my day has become a part of my routine too. Then I move on to the usual routine: breakfast, coffee, yoga. I have just settled myself in lotus position when I notice the date on the calendar on my wall and a thought comes to me, so clear and fast it is as though it’s been tucked just out of sight, just waiting to be retrieved.
My period is two days late.
According to Google, a period that is up to five days late is normal and a typical part of a healthy cycle. What’s more, cycles can be influenced by a great many things—changes to routine, excessive exercise, and travel. This information is a great comfort to me. While I haven’t traveled in recent weeks, I’ve certainly had my fair share of exercise (yoga, karate, sex) and changes to my routine (Wally), so those things combined would explain my late period. And so, I spend the next few days carrying out my daily routine with almost painful precision, hoping this will rectify things.
Before I know it, my period is six days late.
“Fern? Come and look at this,” Rose says. Rose is in the corner of IKEA, hovering by a white BILLY bookcase, inspecting it with what feels like an inordinate level of scrutiny. “This will work, don’t you think?”
Rose continues to say something, but I can’t hear very well, because I have my earplugs in. I still am not quite sure how Rose managed to convince me to come to IKEA. She knows I don’t like shopping—and IKEA, let’s face it, is the mother of all shops. I do almost all of my own shopping online and, frankly, I don’t understand why anyone would do anything else. Virtually everything, including IKEA, is available online and pretty much all of the larger department stores offer free delivery and returns. And if there is an item I desperately want but can only get in a big shopping center, I ask Rose to get it for me.
Ironically, it is exactly this logic that Rose used when convincing me to come.
“I don’t like shopping!” I had whined when she asked me.
“Fern.” She put her hands on her hips. “You know when sometimes you ask me to go to the store to get you something?”
“Yes.”
“Do I go?”
I roll my eyes.
“Do I go?” Rose repeats.
“Yes.”
“I’m not asking you to understand why this is important to me. I’m only asking if you can do it.”
And, so, here I am, at IKEA. It smells like cinnamon rolls and meatballs, an eye-wateringly disgusting combination, and it’s as bright as a summer’s day. I’d wanted to wear my swimming goggles, but that would have meant a detour to my flat, so I’d settled for sunglasses.
“What do you think?” Rose asks, gesturing to the generic-looking bookcase, as I lip-read.
I thinkI’d like to get out of here before I get a migraine. But I give the bookcase a cursory glance. “It’s not very big,” I say.
Rose frowns. “I’m sure they sell bigger ones—”
I curse silently. If I’d only said “I love it,” we could be writing the number down and heading to the warehouse area (the one area of IKEA that I, if not enjoy, appreciate for its resourceful organization). Instead, Rose is wandering distractedly to another section of the store, looking for someone to point her in the direction of bigger bookcases.
“Fern?” she calls. “Come and look at this!”
The store is uncomfortably full, and I have to push past several people to follow Rose. Everyone is saying excuse me and sorry and smiling at each other, but my head is starting to spin. How can so many people be buying bookshelves?
“Let’s just choose one and go home,” I call after her. She says something in reply, and I have to remove my earplugs to hear her. “What did you say?”
“I want to make sure I find the right one,” she says. “I don’t want to rush into it.”
We emerge from the crowd of people and I make a beeline for a little wedge of space I spot next to a toddler bed and wrap my arms around myself. Even with my sunglasses on, the lights are making me woozy.
“I was thinking white, but what do you think of this natural timber?” Rose says, gesturing at the wooden frame of another set of shelves. “And look, it comes with a matching lamp!” She lifts the timber lamp and it flashes directly into my eyes. If I didn’t know better, I’d think my sister was deliberately trying to set off a sensory attack.
“Rose,” I say. “I have to go outside.”
“Just one more minute! I want to look at the bedside tables. Then we’ll go.”
She takes my hand and pulls me back through the crowd. We pass several young couples, arguing. A pair of twin toddlers bounce on a bed in frenzied joy as their heavily pregnant mother screams at her husband to control them. Rose continues to pull me but when we come to a clear space, I plant my feet.
Rose looks back over her shoulder. “Fern? What are you doing?”
Nausea overwhelms me. I sink into an armchair and drop my head into my hands. Rose’s nude ballet flats appear in my small field of vision.
“Fern!” I hear her exclaim. “For goodness’ sake. I just want to show you one more—”
I vomit on her shoes.
“Here,” Rose says, holding out a plastic cup of water. “Drink this.”
We are in the parents’ room, on a chair designated for nursing mothers, which strikes me as ironic, all things considered. Rose is rubbing my back in rhythmic circles, saying “Shhh” and “Everything is going to be all right.” From the moment I vomited, she’d taken care of everything, collecting a roll of paper towels from a sales assistant, cleaning everything up, waving away offers of help. She’d found me water, and told everyone it was fine, her sister just wasn’t feeling well. She seemed so serene, so in control. It reminds me why I need her so much.
“Are you feeling better?” she asks, after I have finished my water.
I nod. “A little.”
“What happened in there?” she asks. “Did it all get to be a little too much? Or was it something you ate? Maybe—”
“My period is six days late, Rose.”
Rose stops rubbing my back. After several beats, she says, “What?”
I repeat myself. Rose takes a couple of steps away from me, then lowers herself into another chair.
“Have you and Rocco been having sex?”
I wonder why else she would think I’d be worried about my period. “Yes.”
“And you think you might be—”
“Yes,” I say. “I think I’m pregnant.”
Back home, Rose and I cram into my little bathroom. The pregnancy test sits flat on the bathroom vanity before us. One line is clearly visible, and a second fainter line is starting to appear beside it.
“Well,” Rose says, holding her temples. “You’re definitely pregnant.” She takes a deep breath and sits on the toilet.
I remain standing, leaning against the wall.
“I wonder what Wally will say,” I say.
Rose looks up. “You’re going to tell him?”
“Of course.”
Rose looks startled, which is puzzling. I have a rudimentary understanding of common courtesy, after all, and the only times I have heard of people not telling the father of their baby that they are pregnant are in daytime television shows when the pregnancy is the result of an affair or a one-night stand. When the two parties are exclusively seeing each other, the custom appears to be some kind of excited announcement.
“Surely that is the expected thing to do under the circumstances?” I say. “Inform the father of the baby that he is going to be a dad?”
“Yes,” Rose says slowly. “If you’re going to keep it.” She is quiet for a long time. “Is that what you are suggesting?”
I’m not sure what I’m suggesting. The fact that I’d originally decided to have the baby for Rose feels like a million years ago. Back then, there was no Wally. The baby was nameless, faceless. Now, the baby is inside me. It is ours. And everything feels, all at once, completely different.
“What if I were suggesting that?” I ask.
Rose closes her eyes for a short moment. “Do you really want to know what I think?” She opens her eyes.
I nod.
“All right. Honestly, the idea worries me. We both know you’ve had your … difficulties in the past.” She doesn’t say it explicitly. She doesn’t have to. “What if something happened when you were with the baby? Babies are vulnerable, Fern. Bad things can happen, even by accident.…” Rose sighs. She looks like she might cry. “The only possible way this could work is if you had a stable, levelheaded partner. And … Rocco isn’t, is he?”
I regret telling Rose about Wally’s nervous breakdown. I’m not entirely sure how it happened. One minute we were eating chicken satay for dinner and talking about how the library was abolishing fines for overdue books, and the next, Rose knew everything. Her gift for getting information out of people is truly astonishing. Owen used to say she’d make a great interrogator.
“Think about it, Fern. Rocco couldn’t cope with some basic business pressure. He found it so stressful that he had to leave his country, abandon his whole life and start a rudderless existence, living out of his van! What would happen if he were presented with real difficulty like disease or death? Or a baby that just wouldn’t stop crying?”
I open my mouth to answer the question, then realize I have no idea. She’s right, of course. I couldn’t be trusted with a baby. Neither could Wally. How foolish to even consider it.
Rose stands and takes both my hands in her own. “I wish it were different, Fern. I really do.”
I nod.
“I’m here for you,” she says, wrapping her arms around me. “Now, don’t worry. We’re going to figure this whole thing out. I promise.”
I hold still, waiting for the hug to end. But Rose just continues to hold me, pinning my arms to my sides. I feel like I’m imprisoned, stuck. Wearing a straitjacket.
