Sue turned the key to her apartment door late Sunday afternoon. She had made a big show of enjoying the luxuries of the Torquay or hotel with or without Peter there to share it with her, for the sake of her own pride more than anything else. However, it had been a bitter sweet victory. The memory of their closeness and camaraderie before that crucial interruption poisoned any joy while alone. She ended up leaving just after breakfast preferring to spend the time hanging around train stations trying to get the right connections that would take her home.

Walking into the apartment, she moved straight into her bedroom only pausing to switch on lights and pull curtains as she went. Dumping her bag down in the corner of the room to deal with later, she then threw herself onto the bed and sobbed. All the frustrations of the weekend, all her fears for the future were finally released in the violence of her tears. Now she was finally alone again she could afford to let it out, the mask of independence she usually wore was cast aside in the privacy of her own home.

Eventually, the sobs subsided. She felt calmer and more in control – they’d been long overdue and she found that she was surprised how much better she felt. There was some truth in the old clich? about the healing power of tears after all. She had always been rather sceptical before, assumed they would leave her feeling too vulnerable and exposed. She turned over and stared at the ceiling, identifying shadows from the patterns on the light shade. She knew she had to face facts – she was on her own, she always was really, Peter was never really hers – he was just borrowed for a while. She was going to have to bring up this child by herself. Many other women had done it before her and been successful, it was silly to assume that she would automatically fall short. Wasn’t she just as qualified as anyone else ever was to have a child? It wasn’t as if they came with a manual, every first time parent was just as much in the dark and they all coped didn’t they?

She still had this nagging doubt that other single mothers had a better support network than she did, or at least knew other people with young children. She didn’t have family that could lend a hand or offer advice, had no previous experience of babies, had never really had a good relationship with or even many memories of her own mother who had left when Sue was only four years old. Her father had remarried, but while she had got on well with her stepmother, she was aware from a very early age that their relationship was not the same as her friends had with their mothers – it was more of a close friendship than a mother / daughter thing.

She supposed that she ought to be doing some sort of planning. At the very least she needed to read up about “what happened next” pregnancy-wise. She hadn’t even considered how to proceed, whether she needed to make another appointment with the GP or not. She should probably think about changing doctors, she was not sure she could face returning to speak to her current GP after the last appointment, but what dominated her thoughts most of all was what Diane, her stepmother, would advise about her situation.

She hadn’t seen her for many years. After the break up of her father’s second marriage when Sue was fifteen years old, Diane hadn’t even attempted to contact her, a matter of bitter reflection for Sue. There were many times of crisis in her life where she really missed the steady influence and advice of her friend and was resentful that she had been cut off and discarded as if she were of no importance. Of course, her adult self could appreciate it probably hadn’t been as simple as that, but inside she was still the teenage girl who had waited on tenterhooks for every visit of the postman and whose hopes were needlessly raised every time the telephone rang.

The betrayal had been made worse by living with a controlling, manipulative father who saw that his daughter would have preferred to have stayed with his ex-wife rather than her own blood relation. Paul had been openly jealous of his daughter’s affections, a situation that had precipitated the divorce in the first place. Sue had moved out as soon as she was able and had had a shaky relationship with her father ever since, never repairing the rift before his death a year ago.

Sue forced herself to get off the bed and went around the apartment, pulling all the curtains closed against the darkness. A sudden deep pang of hunger reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since the limp cheese and pickle sandwich she’d bought on the train at lunchtime. She wandered into the kitchen and explored the contents of the fridge freezer and the cupboards in the hope of culinary inspiration. The realisation dawned that she really needed to go shopping at some point, but she did manage to scavenge some pasta shells and a small tin of creamed mushrooms that she could heat up and use as a simple sauce.

She filled the kettle and switched it on, getting out a plate and cutlery while she waited for it to boil. Then, putting the pasta on the stove to cook, she allowed her mind to wander again.

It occurred to her that her father may well have kept some sort of contact information for Diane – at the very least on the divorce papers. She had kept a large box of paperwork after probate had gone through, most of the rest of his personal effects had been sold along with his house as they held no particular good memories for her. She had left the box under her bed since she’d brought it into the apartment, with no real need to inspect it until now. Did she need to look at them now? Did she really want to get in contact again with someone who had no desire to be a part of her life?

Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones or maybe it was the simple precedent of making a decision from the heart rather than the brain that day in the clinic, either way she went for her gut reaction rather than what action logic would dictate. She went back into her bedroom, knelt down, lifted up the bed’s valance and dragged out the dusty file box. Running her hand across briefly to remove the majority of the dirt, she used her fingernail to pick at the edge of the parcel tape sealing it shut. Getting enough loose to get a good grip, she ripped it off and screwed it into a tight ball, tossing it into the corner of the room. She took a deep breath and opened the box.

Inside, the box was packed with files, each containing a healthy wad of paperwork. They’d not been sorted out since Paul’s death, just pushed to one side once the documentation required for probate had been located and replaced randomly. Unfortunately none of them were clearly labelled so this was going to be a long job. Oh well, the only way she was going to find the information she needed was to take out each file in turn and go through each and every page. She took out the first and settled herself comfortably back on the bed to browse through it all.

It was the usual stuff that got filed and forgotten: old bank statements, receipts, utility bills and insurance documents. All shoved in arbitrarily – her father had not been a great organiser. Nothing showed signs of being useful. It wasn’t until the fifth or sixth folder that she found what she was looking for. Legal paperwork.

There were reams of the stuff. Letters to and from both solicitors, copies of correspondence from both sides claiming unacceptable behaviour from the other. She got side tracked reading the claims and counter claims, she had realised that their relationship had got a bit rocky over the last couple of years Diane was with them but hadn’t realised quite how much acrimony there had really been. Had they just exaggerated it for the sake of a quick divorce or had they just been skilled at hiding their worst conflicts from Sue?

After getting engrossed in the correspondence for a considerable length of time she remembered what it was she had been looking for: a contact address. Most of the letters were written directly by the solicitors on behalf of their clients, frustratingly only revealing the addresses of the legal firms involved. However, there was one sheet that was simply a photocopy of a letter that Diane had sent to her solicitor forwarded on, and that had an address. Admittedly, it was an address that was valid fifteen years ago with no guarantees that Diane still lived there, but it was a start. It was more information than Sue owned before the box was opened.

She was distracted by the smell of burning. Shit! She’d forgotten all about the pasta she’d put on to cook during her search. She ran into the kitchen and pulled the pan off the stove. Fortunately, no fire had been caused, but all the water had boiled away leaving the pan and its contents blackened and charred. That was one saucepan that she wasn’t going to be able to use again. She threw it into the sink and ran some cold water into it to cool it down, clouds of steam filling the kitchen as she did so. Time for Plan B – pizza delivery.

Food duly ordered, she returned to the paperwork as a way to kill time until her meal arrived. She glanced at her watch – ten o’clock, a little too late to be telephoning on the off chance Diane still lived there. Disappointed that she would have to wait until tomorrow to continue her search, she decided to give Sarah a call instead. She wouldn’t mind about the time and would probably still be awake finishing off some last minute work anyway, and Sue needed someone to commiserate with over her disastrous weekend. She dialled Sarah’s number and impatiently listened to the answer phone message intending just to ask her to pick up. It took her by surprise when the machine just hung up without sounding the beep – did that mean the machine was full? Confused, Sue dialled Sarah’s mobile instead. She wasn’t too hopeful, Sarah was notorious for never remembering to switch her mobile on, completely defeating the object of owning one. This time seemed to be the exception, the phone was picked up after the third ring.

“Hi Sue, how was your weekend?” Sarah launched straight in having presumably checked the caller identity before answering.

“Absolutely terrible. Where would you like me to start?” Sue said wryly, wishing she’d thought to call her best friend hours ago.

“At the beginning usually helps, I’ve heard.”

“Well, let me see. I went to the abortion clinic on Friday and decided I couldn’t go with it, then travelled four hours for a romantic weekend away only for Peter’s wife to turn up and confront him that evening. He ran after her with his tail between his legs leaving me in Torquay to make my own way home.” Sue missed out that remaining behind had been her own choice, it sounded more dramatic that way.

“Wow. That sounds? eventful. Shit. You okay?” Sarah sounded dumbfounded even over the lousy connection.

“I’ll live. This line is terrible, where are you?” Sue suddenly remembered Sarah’s absence from her flat. “Your answering machine seems to be full, you know. It just hung up on me.”

“I’m at Mum and Dad’s for the time being. It’s a long story?”

“Then give me the short version,” demanded Sue, insightfully realising that she might not be the one with the most urgent need of support after all.

There was a pause on the end of the line, then, “Ben’s back.”