Page 66 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
Kylie snagged the wine bottle and took a glug from it. ‘Start at the beginning. Omit nothing.’
Hannah sighed. ‘Okay, well—you know my New Year’s resolution? Go out more, spread my wings, take up yoga, compete with Skipjack …’
‘Uh-huh, yes, on board with all that.’
‘I had a secret resolution, too.’
‘A freaking baby.’
‘You keep saying that. I want anicebaby. A little one, all soft and dimpled and cute.’
‘Okay. I mean, it’s not okay, I cannot even begin to process what you’re saying because you seem to have totally skipped the find a bloke, fall in love, date for a year and shag each other senseless part, but okay. Where I’m getting stuck in all this is—how is Tom involved?’
‘He’s not. He wasn’t. He isn’t interested at all, he’s told me that, and I guess he’s shown me that too, now, because he sure didn’t turn up this evening even when I sent him a very nice text.’
Kylie took another sip of wine and a little rolled down her chin. ‘I understand nothing. Keep talking.’
‘I didn’t want to get involved or anything, I just wanted some love in my life … and what better than a baby? And I was totally planning on visiting some fertility clinics to talk it all over, but then that Dalgety episode derailed me.’
‘You wanted love in your life, and for some crazy reason you think a squalling kid in a nappy is the answer, not a man. I’m still not getting the Tom connection. How does he fit into this scheme, if you didn’t want to get “involved”?’
Hannah turned her face into a cushion. ‘He was Plan B.’
‘I’m getting a bad feeling about this. In what way?’
‘Well, to be precise, his sperm was my Plan B. I asked him if he’d be a donor.’
‘And to think I was filling my evening with martial arts movie drama when I had all this waiting for me here. Hannah!’ Kylie seemed to feel the occasion called for more wine, but she snagged Hannah’s glass this time and poured some into it.
‘Hey, don’t hog it.’
‘You’re on rations until we’ve talked this through. Tell me, how did Tom feel about being used like this?’
Thank god for the cushion. It made it easier to wallow a bit before admitting the awful truth. ‘I didn’t think to ask him.’ She was a juvenile, self-absorbed nutcase. She didn’t deserve friends. She didn’t even deserve ice-cream. She looked at Kylie. ‘I messed up.’
‘Maybe. But it looks to me like you’ve gone to a lot of trouble over dinner, Han. Would you do that for just any old sperm donor? Would you do that for someone whose feelings you didn’t care about? Or would you just do that for Tom?’
‘Yeah. Well, that’s the funny thing.’
‘You’re losing me.’
‘You remember that kiss? That bloodykiss? Back when I truly thought I was impervious to the whole two-hearts-beating-as-one mushy stuff?’
‘Remind me how it went again? The sweaty horse, the callused hands, the—’
Hannah sat up and pushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter, Kylie. The point is, I think it changed me.’
‘Like—now you’re a vampire between dusk and dawn?’
‘No, you idiot. I think it woke up my hormones.’
‘I don’t want to argue with the girl who won the science prize at Hanrahan High, but I don’t think hormones sleep.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Yes, I think I do know what you mean. It’s just, you don’t often talk about it. You mean it made you wonder what life would have been like if you hadn’t closed yourself off to romance all these years?’
Yeah. Kylie had it a hundred per cent right. Shewaswondering. She was wondering alot.She’d spent the last month wondering why she’d been so focused on the baby idea, as though it was a PhD thesis. She’d obsessed about the ova being onboarded by spermatozoa bit, she’d drawn graphs, she’d stood in the grocery aisle at the local super market and considered milk for calcium and bananas for potassium.
