Chapter Thirty Nine

 July 2003

We go to Taupo and walk round the edge of a giant lake. The water is blue-green and endless. Beneath its calm surface lies a volcano, just as something explosive lies beneath my calm surface.

   No. 

   It doesn't. I'm not pregnant. There's no baby. Nothing to shatter my life into little pieces.

   We go to Huka Falls. Turquoise water crashes down, spraying like a cloud in the gorge. It's so loud it fills my head, drowning out my thoughts. I feel a sort of wordless peace there, by the thundering water. I don't want to leave.

   Nearby I see two kiwi birds strutting on rocks. Their legs look too thin to hold their round bodies. 

   I sign up to do a 17km walk in Tongariro National Park but it's cancelled due to the bad weather. I am almost relieved. I feel so weak and ill. I think I might be going down with the flu.

   I'm lying in bed in my dorm when I hear someone come in. I lift my head out from under the cover.

   'Oh, hello,' says a girl in surprise. We introduce ourselves.

   'There's not much of you, is there?' she says. 'I didn't realise there was anyone in there till your head popped up.'

   I don't know what to say to that. I shrug.

   See, I tell myself, I'm not pregnant, if I was no one would be saying how thin I am. 

   But my stomach feels hard and round. It used to be soft and flat. Maybe it's all in my imagination.

I email Steve and say I need him here to keep me warm.

   He replies and says he got really drunk, passed out and woke up in bed in vomit-soaked sheets. He says he was lucky he didn't choke on his own sick.

   I didn't need to worry about who he might be sleeping with. No one else would want him.

   I tell him I hope he's washed his sheets.

   I worry that maybe he's telling me that to disgust me, to make me break up with him because he has found someone else.

   No, that's stupid. If he had found someone else, he would tell me. He wouldn't keep me hanging on. That would just be crazy.

We go to River Valley. It's cold and peaceful here. Too peaceful for me. My thoughts crowd my head as I walk by the river.

   What if I told Steve I thought I might be pregnant?

   I can't.

   It would ruin his holiday with the shock, the worry, and maybe for nothing, because there will be no baby. It's impossible for there to be a baby. Things like this don't happen to me. This is not how my life goes.

   

In Wellington we go to the earthquake simulator in Te Papa Museum. We sit in an ordinary looking room as the ground jolts and shakes.

   This is not how my life goes.

Chapter Forty