Free The Decision: Lizzie's Story by Lucy Hay Page B

no humour attached to it whatsoever. If sharks were able to smile, they would look just like her.
    “You’re a bully, Michael.” My mother declared.
    The colour drained from Mike’s face as I felt mine flush red. I was handling this! She couldn’t interfere, not again. But though I opened my mouth to speak, nosound came out. Mike just stood there, awkward, his face puzzled: he literally had no idea what my mother was talking about.
    “Look, I don’t know what you thought you saw…?” Mike said.
    “Silly boy,” My mother interrupted. “I had your number the first time I met you. You’re worse than a spoilt five year old.”
    “Mum…” I began. But a look from her silenced me and rage burned inside me. Mike was my boyfriend. I didn’t need her protection.
I’m a big girl now!
    My father appeared from the kitchen, ignorant as usual to the atmosphere. My mother turned to him, whilst keeping her iron gaze on Mike. “Dan, do us a favour and take Michael home to his father’s, will you? Keys are on the hook.” She said.
    “I thought Mike was staying until…” Dad started, then stopped as he clocked Mum’s dark expression. He was finally catching up. “… Of course.”
    I watched Mike slam his stuff into bags, barely able to look at me, not saying a word, despite my garbled protestations that we should go downstairs and try and talk it through with my parents. I felt a kind of guilt, yet wasn’t sure why. Mike had manhandled me, I hadn’t asked for it. But I hadn’t asked for Mum to step in either! I was pulled both ways: on one side, a matriarch too sure of herself to ever ask what I wanted or needed. On the other, an immature teenage boy who believed a test of love was whether I defied that matriarch for him. Yet this didn’t have to be about sides. Why couldn’t everyone just meet me in the middle?!
    So Mike stalked off with my father to the car, my mother insisting I stay back with her. “I know you don’t understand now,” she said, “But I would be a bad mother if I let him do that.”
    “And you thought I would just let him?” I wanted to retort, though my voice betrayed me once again, drying up in my mouth. What would I have said or done, hadmy mother not put her foot down? I knew what Mike had done was wrong. I wasn’t a small child who needed to be told how men should treat women. He had hurt me for daring to oppose him! But instead of trusting me to make that call, my mother had rushed in as the self-appointed cavalry, just like she always did. She had taken my power away from me when I needed to make a stand. Perhaps I would have sent Mike back to his father’s myself, even? Now we would never know.
    A couple more weeks passed and Mike’s texts and phone calls dwindled away to nothing under the weight of my mother’s disapproval. She told my sisters what had happened and it was taken as read I would never see Mike again. If I did, Sal and Amanda advised me, I was weak and pathetic, even if I just heard out his apology. Never mind the fact Sal had never been kissed and the sum total of Amanda’s experience involved a few drunken bunk-ups behind the youth centre in town with Billy Thompson, an apprentice car mechanic from my year at college. Though I had little sympathy for Mike himself, I wondered how much my baby’s future was being shaped against my will. I deserved to be able to make my own decisions for my own life and my own child, without the pressure of my family, however well meaning.
    About a week after the baby’s due date, I woke in the middle of the night to red hot pain and a large damp patch on the sheets. It lasted just a few moments, but took my breath away. I couldn’t even cry out. I knew immediately it was labour. I had been frightened before that moment, but now a dreadful sense of inevitability set in: there was no turning back now. I had to go through this. Despite the sense of trepidation, a part of me felt excitement. I would meet my baby at last! It was