Maggie’s face warmed as anger built inside her. “You’re putting the Ministry before me? You’re telling me what I can and can’t do with my life? Daddy, you can’t do this to me.” Her hands balled into fists. She wouldn’t be bullied by him. “Why can’t I keep the baby? Why can’t I move away? Have it in secret?”
“Because they’ll find you. It has to be clean. There can’t be any evidence.”
What did he know? If she wanted to do it, she could. “I’ll disappear. I’ll go and never come back. No one will ever know.”
“I can’t risk that.” He leaned back against the chair and stared out of the window behind Maggie’s head. His mouth was set. “This is too important. We’re changing the world, and I can’t let the selfishness of one immature woman get in the way.”
“I’m selfish? You think I’m selfish?” she half stood to lean over him, and her fingernails dug into her skin. “You’re the one asking me to throw away my future as a mother, so you can run your precious company.”
“I am not asking you to do that. I’m asking you to get rid of this one. Then, when you’re older and married, you can acquire a child through the GEM like everyone else.”
“I don’t want that child. I want this one,” Maggie screamed. “I like the way it feels. I like this, I like being pregnant and close to the baby. I want to give birth. I want to experience it, and I want everyone else to as well.” Her body shook with fury. What gave him the right to run her life? If she wanted to have the baby she would.
“Don’t be so ridiculous, no one wants to experience hours of pain. It’s the crazy pregnancy hormones talking.” He stood up to leave, shaking out his jacket. “I’ll have an appointment booked for you. I’ll send you the details by email. I expect you to attend.”
“Or what?” Maggie said. “What will you do?”
Her father’s left eye twitched. “I don’t know, Margaret. I really don’t know.” He paused on the way to her door. Without turning around he said, “Whatever happens, Margaret, I want you to know something – you brought this all on yourself.”
As soon as he left, Maggie phoned Derek. When he arrived she relayed the conversation between sobs as he held her in his arms.
“I should have warned you about Ethan,” he said. “I knew about his p-past, his mother’s influence and his w-womanising. But I kept out of it. L-like I always do.”
Maggie wiped her eyes. “Your stutter. It’s getting better.”
Derek smiled. “I think it’s you. Y-you h-help me.” He laughed. “But it’s a slow process.”
Maggie sighed. “Isn’t everything? Oh, I don’t know what to do, Derek. I guess I’ll just have to go along with what Dad said. I would really like to keep this baby, but maybe he’s right. Maybe keeping it would be the biggest mistake of my life. I’d be a single mother on the run from the Ministry. I wouldn’t have any family to rely on or any way of making money. He’s right; it is selfish to keep the child.”
“Why d-do you say that?” Derek asked.
“Well, I can’t just think about me. If I had the baby I’d be responsible for another human being. Taking a child on the run – what kind of life would it be for them? I would be being selfish because I’d be making my child suffer for the sake of my own wants. Maybe that child would be better off never being born.”
“But what if y-you c-could give the child a good life?”
Maggie thought for a moment. “How would I know that? The chance that everything could turn out okay is infinitesimal. The odds are stacked against me and this little guy before he or she has even been born. Maybe a termination would be the bravest thing to do.”
Derek was quiet. After a pause, he said. “What if you have help? Wh-what if y-you had a d-dad for the baby?”
“That would make everything different. If there was a way to disappear and be able to provide a life and a future for this baby, then yes – I would take it. I’d have the baby, I mean. I’d become a mum.” She smiled for the first time in hours. “And I’d get to show Dad how wrong he was.”
“W-well, I c-could be that p-person,” Derek said.
Maggie turned to him. “What do you mean?”
“I-I’m saying I c-could, I w-would be the dad.” He took a deep breath. “I-I l-lo-lo… I love you, Maggie. I-I w-w-want to m-marry you.” He took another deep breath. “Will you… ma… rry me?”
Chapter Seven
“Are you serious?” Maggie whispered. She stood up, wiped her eyes, and walked around the tiny flat, full of an energy she didn’t know what to do with.
Derek looked up at her, meeting her eyes for a second then flickering them away. “Y-yes.”
Maggie ran her hands over her face and through her hair. “But the baby is Ethan’s. It’s nothing to do with you. We’ve not even kissed. I’ve never even thought of you like that.”
“I won’t p-pressure you,” he said. “I-if you feel l-like that in time… If y-you never love me––”
“What? I can just leave? Marriage is meant to be for life, Derek.” She shook her head. “I don’t know about any of this. How do you know? How do you know that you love me? We’ve known each other just a few months and we’ve not really had a conversation, I mean, we talk about work and the weather but… I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know what you do when you get home. I don’t know where you live. You could be a serial killer in your spare time for all I know.”
“Do y-you really think that?”
“No, of course not.” She sat down by the table and stroked her belly. Whatever she thought of Derek she knew deep down in her gut that he was a good person.
“I have m-money to take care of you and th-the baby. I can g-get another job, in one of the Areas. If you were my w-wife I could protect you. I-I’d be your next of kin, not y-your father. It would p-put some distance between you a-and the Ministry.”
Maggie sighed. “You’ll be giving everything up for me. It isn’t right. This can’t happen – I’m sorry.”
Derek moved over to Maggie and dropped to his knees. He took Maggie’s hands in his. “I would be g-gaining everything. Y-you light up my life.”
She couldn’t reply. What could she say?
“I know you d-don’t feel the same way. I d-don’t expect you to. B-but please let me t-take care of you. Let me love you.” He took a breath. “I loved you from the moment you w-walked into the office. Y-your smile and even the way you w-walk… I c-could just see your heart, right then and there. I knew I w-wanted to love you f-forever.”
There was a part of Maggie that felt she would be a terrible person to say yes to Derek, because there was a part of her that didn’t think she could ever love him. Perhaps it was the desire to keep her baby, the strange maternal bond she never thought she would want or have, but there was a strong need to be with him. He had opened himself to her and knelt by her, displaying his vulnerability. She knew that he meant every word. She had faith in him as a man. She just wasn’t sure she had faith in herself to love him.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, I’ll marry you.”
*
The ceremony occurred a week later in a tiny registry office in Camden that didn’t ask too many questions. They pulled two people from the street to be witnesses. On the morning of the wedding Derek bought Maggie a small bouquet of flowers and a floating, knee-length white dress. They visited the jewellers on the way to the registry office to buy the rings.
On the way there Maggie felt tears forming in her eyes. It hit her that this was going to be her wedding; a shushed affair in a dirty room with strangers. Her parents wouldn’t get to see it. Her dad wouldn’t give her away. She was marrying a man she had never even kissed, and she was pregnant with a baby the world didn’t want her to keep. A sob escaped her lips, and Derek held her until it past. This would be her life now, being comforted by him. She was at his mercy, a woman who could not look after herself. She decided to pull herself together. The least she could do was be brave.
The ceremony
was short and pleasant. Derek had practiced his lines so much that he managed to say “I do” without stuttering. The two witnesses found the entire thing romantic. Maggie wasn’t showing yet, so she didn’t have to fear someone guessing her secret.
Afterwards they went to a restaurant for their wedding banquet, a quiet Italian down a side-street with plastic chairs and dirty tablecloths. They didn’t talk much, except about practicalities – where were they going to go? Derek had begun to put some feelers out into the Areas, found out what kind of jobs he could do. He’d also discovered a hospital in the North running ultrasounds with trained midwives. Maggie nodded along and poked at her food with a fork. All the time she fumbled with the ring on her finger, the metal unfamiliar against her skin. Sometimes she thought the band was tightening around her finger. But it was just her imagination.
“I’ll buy you a d-diamond soon,” Derek said. “Wh-when we get out of London.”
“You don’t have to do that. You’ve done so much for me already. Besides, my fingers will swell up.” She laughed but it didn’t feel genuine.
“After the b-baby is born then.” He smiled, more like beamed. Derek walked on sunshine all day; his chin up high and a spring in his step. It was part of the reason why Maggie felt so sad. “Area 14 has a p-position in security. I know someone who w-works with the Commissioner. Plus it’s near to that h-hospital I was telling you about.”
“Sounds great,” Maggie said. “Is that North? I might have to get some winter jumpers before we go.”
“It’s not t-too much colder,” Derek said. “The house prices are r-reasonable and th-there is a school called St. Jude’s––”
“The patron saint of lost causes,” Maggie quipped. “How poetic.”
Derek reached forward and took her hand. “Hey, we’re not l-lost causes. W-we’re a family now.” His hand moved tentatively to her stomach and rested there for a moment. Maggie stiffened and he withdrew.
“You know, I never knew your last name was Murgatroyd,” Maggie said. “Now I’ll be Margaret Murgatroyd. She sounds like a scary woman.”
“It’s a s-strong name. It suits you, M-Maggie. Or at least I think so.”
“Maybe. I’ll have to stop by the town hall and change my name.”
“At least it w-will be harder for anyone to find you.”
Maggie sighed. “I think it might be obvious that we both leave together. What if they guess when you hand in your resignation? We have to leave soon because I’m supposed to meet my dad at the clinic in just a few days. What am I going to do?”
“Shhh,” Derek soothed. “Don’t get worked up, it’s bad for the baby. Wh-what you’re going to do is n-not turn up to the clinic and then not contact your dad.”
“How am I supposed to do that? He knows where I live.”
“Y-you can hold him off for a few weeks. He knows that y-you have weeks to terminate the baby safely. He w-won’t be in a rush.”
“I guess so. But he’s my dad. He has ways to get around me. I think he might even have a key to my apartment.”
“Change the l-locks.”
Maggie nodded. “Okay, I will.”
“You n-need to still be here so he knows you’ve not sk-skipped town. We’ll leave when I’ve bought the new house.” He paused. “You w-won’t be able to leave the flat for a while. I’ll take you shopping for food this afternoon. I w-won’t be able to see you either.”
Maggie’s shoulders relaxed. It was good not to have the constant worry of what Derek would expect from her as his wife and how soon. If she didn’t have to see him for a few weeks that wouldn’t be a problem – for now.
“I’ll make sure you have supplies to last. I’m sorry it’ll be like this. It isn’t how I w-wanted to start our life together.”
“It’s okay; I know it’s the most sensible thing to do. If no one sees us together they won’t expect us to run away together.”
Derek nodded. “And they w-won’t get suspicious when I resign. I’ll just say I g-got a better job in the Areas, that I’m sick of genetics. It’ll b-be mostly true anyway.” He took Maggie’s hand. “Everything’s g-going to be okay. We’re going to make it work.”
She squeezed his hand. Derek was her future now. She never thought she’d ever say that. Maybe they would be happy. Maybe when the baby came everything would fit into place, like the missing part of a jigsaw puzzle.
Chapter Eight
“Let me in, Mags. Come on, it’s your dad.” He rattled the handle as Maggie watched in horror.
“I don’t want to see you,” she said. “Please go.”
“Maggie, you can’t just ignore this and hope it’s going to go away. Soon you’ll be showing. Come on, Maggie, please let me in, I just want to talk.”
“No, Dad. I know everything that you’re going to say and none of it will change my mind, so please leave me alone. I’ll be gone soon and you’ll never find me. I’ll be out of your life for good. You can get on with the Ministry in peace.”
“Don’t be like that, Maggie. You know how much I care about. I’m worried about you, sweetheart. You can’t look after a child on your own. Have you any idea how hard that is? You’ll have no money, Maggie, you’ll be living with the Blemished. You’ll be changing nappies and breastfeeding and living in squalor – not in the way you’re used to living. You’ll have a screaming baby who won’t shut up––”
“I know! I know all this.” Maggie interrupted, she couldn’t bear thinking about it because it made her realise just how much she was relying on Derek. “I’ve thought it through and I know what I’m doing.”
“You don’t,” came her father’s voice through the door. “You don’t have the tiniest clue about how hard it will be, because you’re a twenty-one year old girl. You’re a girl. A kid. You’ll just be a kid looking after a kid, and I’ve seen kids looking after kids, it doesn’t end well. I was a kid looking after a kid and I’ve made a lot of mistakes––”
“You regret me?”
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t. But I would have, if it hadn’t been for your mother. If I’d had to do this alone I would have hated and regretted every minute of it.”
“Well I’m not you, Daddy.”
He sighed. “No, you aren’t. No, you definitely aren’t, because I want to make a difference in this world, and apparently you don’t. You just want to become another girl bringing a life into this world for no reason except your own cowardice.”
“Cowardice?” Maggie repeated, in shock.
“Yes, cowardice. The brave thing to do would be to get rid of it and come back to the lab where life-changing work is going on, not to disappear into the land of changing nappies. Listen to me, Maggie, the GEM want to change things. We want to stop teenage pregnancies and create a world where only people who are ready get to have a child. A world where child rearing is controlled; to stop this cycle of child-abuse by parents who never really wanted their kids but were too stupid or too scared to stop themselves.”
“That’s eugenics, Dad. Don’t you know who you sound like?”
He banged on the door. “Don’t you dare say that to me! Eugenics have been used for the wrong reasons. They’ve been used out of prejudice and hatred – that’s not what this is. This is built on a foundation of optimism. This is the future.”
“There’s nothing more I can say,” Maggie replied. “I’m sorry, Dad. I don’t agree and I never will. This is over. I’m not your daughter anymore.”
“Maggie,” he whispered through the door. “My little Maggie May.”
The room went quiet. Maggie never heard the sound of her father’s voice again.
*
A long week passed as Maggie waited for Derek to tell her he was ready. They communicated through brand new mobile phones in case Maggie’s father had bugged her apartment. Derek worried that Maggie’s work email account could too easily be hacked by her dad, and although she couldn’t use it, she still opened work Emails just to browse.
In the midst of wa
iting for Derek to buy a house and arrange everything, Maggie’s mother turned up at the flat, and it was something Maggie hadn’t been prepared for. Her dad she could deal with, she could turn him away, even hate him, but she could never feel like that about her mother.
“Let me in, Maggie. I don’t want to talk you out of it or shout at you. I’m not going to do anything that your father has already done. He doesn’t even know that I’m here. I just want to see you, one last time.” Her voice broke.
Maggie walked over to the door and stared through the peephole, checking her mum was alone. “Okay. I’ll let you in, but not for long.”
She clicked back the top lock and turned the key. She pulled the chain back and opened the door. Her mother, Harriet, stood alone – a small figure in a large corridor – with her hands placed one on top of the other. She wore a pristine skirt suit, with a handbag hanging glamorously from her arm. When she saw her daughter she stepped forward and pulled her into an embrace.
“Don’t cry, sweetheart,” said Harriet. “Come on. Where is your kettle?”
The small woman bustled into the apartment and shed her coat and gloves. She cast an observational, yet un-judgemental, eye around the space, which was littered with take-away containers, smelled ripe from the overflowing bins, and was covered in piles of dirty laundry. Maggie looked down at her clothing, a pink fluffy dressing gown, stained nightie and slippers. She felt her hair, weighed down by grease, and touched under her eyes, knowing there were large bags from her restless sleep. Seeing her mother in the room, and seeing her eyes trail around the mess, made Maggie feel ashamed.
“So, the kitchen is this way then, hmm?” Harriet stepped through to the tiny room, her heels thudding softly against the carpet. Maggie suspected that she didn’t want to dirty her stockings on her carpet.
“What are you doing here, Mum, if you don’t want to talk me out of... you know?” Maggie wrung her hands as she watched her mother busy herself by filling the kettle with water.
The Fractured: Maggie (Fractured #2) (Blemished Series) Page 4
