In Her Mothers' Shoes Read Online Free Page A

because her boyfriend had taken her down to the beach one night, lain next to her on the sand and put his hands ‘there’. But Julia had said hands were not responsible; Julia’s big sister had told her a boy’s penis (they’d laughed so much at the word ‘penis’) had to be produced for pregnancy to occur. 
     
    When Lizzie felt the initial queasiness, she wondered if there might be more to it, especially when the feeling returned day after day, first thing in the morning. She looked it up in the dictionary, the encyclopaedia, even her mother’s crossword thesaurus. She tried the school library in the biology section and learned a lot about the procreation of frogs and mice, but nothing about real people. She borrowed Julia’s You and Your Body , saying she wanted to read it properly, but the detail about what happened when the egg travelled down the fallopian tube was a bit vague. She pinched her mother’s Good Housekeeping magazine, in case there was something in there, but she remained almost as ignorant as when she’d started.
     
    In the end, she blocked it from her mind.
     
    It was at church last Sunday that the queasiness became worse; throughout the interminable sermon she’d felt like being sick and only the total embarrassment of having to rush outside, with all eyes on her, prevented her from leaving.
     
    Lying in bed now, staring at the ceiling and waiting for the nausea to diminish, she realised that she was actually going to be sick and rushed to the toilet, only just making it in time. As she passed the bathroom door, she could hear her father splashing in the basin, shaving. The splashing stopped.
     
    ‘Is that you, Elizabeth? What’s going on?’
     
    She couldn’t reply; another wave of nausea overcame her. Maybe she had a stomach bug. One of the girls in her class had been home nearly all week with an upset tummy. That would make sense. A bug. Or maybe something she had eaten – Mrs Mullen’s curried chicken might have caused a reaction. That could be it.
     
    ‘I’d better get your mother.’
     
    As Lizzie heaved again into the porcelain bowl, she heard the bathroom door open and the pad of her father’s slippered feet along the hall carpet to the bedroom.
     
    A few minutes later came the flip-flop of her mother’s heeled mules and a rap on the toilet door.
     
    ‘What’s the matter, Lizzie? Your father says you’re not well.’
     
    Wiping her mouth with toilet paper, she managed to reply through the bile, ‘I’ve just been sick.’
     
    ‘Oh dear, that’s no good. I’d better get the doctor to call by on his rounds.’
     
    The mules tap-tapped away again.
     
    The doctor. She felt like throwing up again at the thought of him. Dr McQuilkin had a hideous blotchy face with a big bulbous red nose that sprouted long hairs. He always talked bridge hands with her mother and ignored the children if they were around. Once, when she’d had the measles, a drip had come out of his nose and landed on her forehead. She’d washed her face in scalding water afterwards to get rid of the feel of him. Ever since, she’d made a habit of being out of the room when he ‘called by’.
     
    But this time, his visit carried an even greater threat. If she was indeed pregnant, he’d know – and he’d tell her mother.
     
    It didn’t bear thinking about. Her mother would know, and what about school? If she was pregnant, she’d have to miss school.
     
    It was her last year and she’d been working hard on all her subjects, but especially on her art portfolio. The art teacher, Miss de Lambert, had said her work was very good indeed; she’d exhibited her painting of two pears on a plate at the school parents’ day, along with her pencil drawing of Julia.
     
    ‘You have talent, Elizabeth,’ Miss de Lambert had said. ‘You seem a natural.’
     
    Lizzie had glowed; her cousin Freda had won the school art prize four years earlier and she aspired to win it before she finished school at