Read Online Emma Donoghue Two-Book Bundle by Emma Donoghue - Free Book Online

begin with, even if her conception had been a bloody awful blunder, never meant to happen. But then, how could he say that Ang had never been meant to happen? – since he loved her, himself, with a guilty fervour of ownership that was unaffected by any of her shifting moods, unaffected by all the nasty things she’d said to him over the years, from her first howl of ‘You’re poo’ to their latest spat, when she’d called him a ‘sad old suburban queen’.
    The summer she left school, she emerged from adolescence, shakily, like a convalescent. One day James looked at her across the table of a noodle bar and realized that she was an utterly charming young woman, sitting here, telling this middle-aged man her plans to work her way across Australia, her eyes shining at him as if he mattered to her, as if he always would. How did this happen?
    At Ang’s goodbye party, James gave her a discreetly wrapped bumper pack of extra-strength condoms; she blushed, but said yes, of course, she promised she’d be careful.
    Four martinis later, James sat heavily on the arm of Neasa’s chair and murmured in her ear, ‘I know you never wanted to have her, but isn’t she fabulous?’
    Neasa stared at him.
    ‘Sorry, what I meant was—,’ he backtracked. And then he couldn’t help himself: the eighteen-year-old story was spilling out in a passionate hiss – the little plastic machine, the terrible blue light.
    Neasa was smiling strangely. ‘You daft egg,’ she said at last, ‘you poor eeji! It was for ovulation, not contraception.’
    He could feel his eyes cross.
    ‘We wanted a baby. We’d been trying for a year and a half.’ She laughed a little hoarsely.
    ‘So what you’re telling me,’ he said blankly, ‘is that I made no difference.’
    ‘None at all!’ She grinned at him And James, who should have felt relieved, went home early from the party with a stitch between his ribs as if there was something he’d lost.

Through the Night
    What sent Una over the edge was people asking ‘Does she sleep through the night?’ For some reason it was often the first thing strangers said after ‘What a lovely baby.’ Una was all right with the lovely baby line, she could smile and nod, her eyes only slightly shiny, and she could even cope with remarks like ‘It must be so much fun!’ If she just kept nodding and smiling, she found, people assumed that having a two-month-old baby was just like in the diaper ads, or the way they dimly and fondly remembered it. ‘Treasure every moment,’ the bank manager commanded her, rubbing his beard. All this Una could take. But when someone approached her in the supermarket or queuing at an ATM and tickled whatever bit of Moya was sticking out of the sling and said the fatal words, ‘Is she sleeping through the night yet?’ …
    Before the birth, before Moya – BM, as Silas called it – Una had not been a crier. In fact, she’d been known for her ability to sit dry-cheeked through
Titanic
or
It’s a Wonderful Life,
while Silas was gulping by her side. Before her periods she’d turn slightly snappish, and when her father died, back in Ireland, she’d gone very quiet for a month or so. But crying wasn’t something she did. Even pregnant, she’d maintained her steadiness.
    These days – AM, After Moya – Una didn’t recognize herself. It was as if there’d been some transformation at the cellular level: a weakening of all the walls. She cried sitting on the toilet – ‘Just coming, Moya, just a minute; I promise, Mum needs just a minute more’ – she cried when she couldn’t get her snowboots laced up one-handed and had to shout for Silas; she cried when he was at the office and it took her four hours to make and eat a peanut butter sandwich. She always let herself cry in the shower because her face was wet anyway so it didn’t count. She dissolved every time she had to answer the phone, if not with the first hello then as soon as Moya’s name came up; she cried so