‘Of course I do. Anybody would,’ Callie said, knowing that this wasn’t the time to talk about her own desperate longing for a child.
‘Not everybody,’ she snapped bitterly, then suddenly seemed to remember that they were surrounded on all sides and lowered her voice so that her words would be masked by the sound of the other voices around them and the rumble of the coach itself. ‘My stepfather gave me money for an abortion even though he knows it’s too far along. He said if you pay enough money any doctor would do it.’
‘Most doctors wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole even if you offered them the moon on a silver platter,’ Callie said quietly. In her days on Obs and Gyn she’d seen botched abortions go horribly wrong. ‘And why would you want to abort the baby when there are so many people desperate to adopt?’
‘I don’t want to give it away,’ she said fiercely, a protective hand curving over her noticeably swollen belly even as she lost her battle with the tears. ‘But I’ve got no way of keeping it, have I? Not at my age. I’m still at school and a Saturday job won’t pay enough to find somewhere to live.’
‘What about your mum? Won’t she help you?’
‘Not her!’ she said, bitterness and devastation combining corrosively in those two words. ‘She kicked me out when she found out. She would have killed me if she knew it was his…my stepfather’s.’
Callie thought it would have been more to the point if the mother had killed the stepfather who’d been having sex with her underage daughter, but now wasn’t the time to voice those sentiments. She fished a packet of paper hankies out of her pocket and offered them to her companion.
‘Listen, we’re going to be sitting together for at least an hour. Shall we introduce ourselves? I’m Callie,’ she said, holding out her hand.
‘Steph…Stephanie,’ she said, and blew her nose furiously. ‘I didn’t want to cry, not over them.’
‘Hey, don’t knock crying. Sometimes it’s good to let some of the emotions out.’
‘It doesn’t solve anything, though—like, what am I going to do when the coach arrives at the depot? I’ve got nowhere to go and no one to ask.’
‘That makes two of us,’ Callie said, surprising herself.
‘You…what?’ Steph blinked. ‘You’re kidding! You’re a grown-up and grown-ups always know where they’re going and what they’re going to do.’
‘Newsflash, Steph. Grown-ups are just as mixed up as anybody else. They’ve just had a bit more practice at hiding it.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘SO, WHERE do we go?’ Steph said when the two of them had been reunited with their luggage.
Callie almost smiled when she realised that they had both opted for almost identical rucksacks in which to carry their worldly belongings.
‘First, we need to find somewhere to stay the night,’ Callie said, looking out at the rapidly darkening sky beyond the enormous doorway to the coach terminus. They’d managed to outrun the threatened bad weather so far, but it didn’t look as if it would be long before they’d get soaked if they hadn’t found somewhere. ‘That might be a good place to start,’ she suggested, pointing to the internet café on the other side of the road.
‘Uh, I don’t think the café will stay open all night,’ Steph said uneasily. ‘I’ve got a bit of money to find a cheap hotel or something. I told you my stepfather gave it to me for the abortion but I reckon it was a bribe, too, so I wouldn’t tell Mum it’s his.’
Callie chuckled. ‘I’m far too old to want to spend the night sitting in a café,’ she said. ‘I was actually going to go on the internet and see what I can find around here without having to march up and down in the dark.’
‘You can do that?’ Steph marvelled with all the arrogance of the very young for those they consider too ‘past it’ to cope with modern technology, and Callie suddenly felt as old as Methuselah’s grandmother.
‘Let’s find out,’ she suggested, and they set off into the chilly evening.
They reached the other said of the road and Callie was just stretching out a hand to open the door when there was the sound of running feet approaching. Before she could even shout a warning their malodorous fellow passenger had barged into Steph, sending her slamming into the pavement as he made off with her rucksack.
‘Steph! Are you all right?’ Callie demanded, as she dropped to her knees beside the dazed youngster.
‘Callie…?’ she quavered, clearly shocked. ‘What…? My bag!’ she gasped, and started to struggle against Callie’s hold. ‘It’s got all my money in it.’
‘Steph, stay still!’ she warned. ‘You hit your head pretty hard when you went down. Let me check you over before—’
‘But he’s stolen my bag,’ she insisted. ‘He’s getting away.’
‘Sweetheart, he’s gone. We’ll never find him,’ Callie said gently, while she held both of Steph’s shoulders to try to stop her from moving. ‘Now, please, let me check your head to see if there’s any damage.’
Perhaps it was the calm insistence in her voice that finally got through the young girl’s distress, but with tears already leaking out of the corner of her eyes and running into the too-black hair she stared up at Callie with a beaten expression in her eyes.
‘Oh, Callie…What am I going to do now?’ she whispered.
Behind them Callie heard the shop door open and looked back over her shoulder to see a gangling young man looking down at them.
‘I saw what happened and phoned for an ambulance. The police are on their way, too,’ he said. ‘Should I make her a cup of tea? That’s supposed to be good for shock, isn’t it?’
‘Thanks for making the call to the emergency services, but it’s better not to give her anything to eat or drink until she’s been checked out, just in case anything’s broken,’ Callie explained, as she performed a swift primary survey.
It was light enough, there on the pavement where the lights from the shop shone brightly, to see that Steph’s pupils were equal and reactive to light and she didn’t seem to have broken anything. There was a painful place where the back of her head had met the ground and the start of a goose egg, but she didn’t even seem to have broken the skin, let alone be losing any untoward fluids.
‘Can you remember what happened to you?’ she asked gently, and Steph threw her an old-fashioned look.
‘Callie, I haven’t got concussion or amnesia. I’ve been mugged and had all my stuff nicked and I’m all alone in a city I’ve never visited before with nowhere to stay for the night. Oh, and I can remember the date and who’s the prime minister.’
Callie chuckled when she saw the face Steph pulled. ‘Not your type?’ she teased. ‘Well, I don’t think you’ve done yourself any major damage, but for the baby’s sake I think you ought to be checked over in the hospital.’
‘Hospital!’ she wailed over the sound of an approaching ambulance. ‘I don’t need to go there, do I? You said you couldn’t find anything wrong.’
‘Hey, Steph, look on the bright side. In the hospital it’ll be warm and dry and they’ll give you a bed to lie on.’
‘Hey, classic!’ she scoffed wearily. ‘I get mugged and lose all my money so I can’t afford even a cheap hotel but, gee, guess what? The mugger injures me so I get a bed for the night.’
Callie hoped her smile was reassuring but when she went to step aside to allow the paramedic