– If the baby looks like my ex, I’ll refuse … I’ll give it life and refuse! – Laura said in a hollow voice

“If the baby looks like him… I’ll refuse it. I’ll give it life and refuse it!” Lacey murmured in a hollow voice, her words barely more than a whisper.

“It’s too late for regrets now, love. Youll have to wait it out,” the doctor concluded flatly. “Unless you want to risk never having children at all.”

Lacey stumbled out of the office and sank onto the waiting room couch, her head spinning. The urge to cry burned in her throat, but no tears came. She lifted her gaze to the window, where an autumn wind tore at the last stubborn leaves clinging to the branches.

She felt like one of those brittle twigshelpless, battered by forces beyond her control. This child, once so desperately wanted, now felt like a cruel mistake. Everything had changed in just three months.

Leaving the clinic, she passed a beaming couplehusband cradling his pregnant wife, both glowing with joy. The sight cut deeper than any knife. Lacey trudged to the bus stop, each step heavier than the last.

At home, she locked herself in her bedroom and didnt emerge for nearly an hour. Her mother, Margaret, pleaded with her to eat, but Lacey stayed silent. Defeated, Margaret retreated to the kitchen, sinking into a chair as the flat filled with suffocating quiet.

Eventually, Lacey appeared, sitting wordlessly across from her mother at the table. The silence stretched between them like a chasm.

“If it looks like him… Ill refuse it,” Lacey repeated, her voice dead.

Margaret stiffened, her daughters words snapping her out of her thoughts. “Dont be ridiculous, Lacey! Think about what youre saying!” When serious, she always used her full name.

“A hardworking, healthy girl like you, abandoning her own child? What will people say? Your colleagues? Your family? How will you live with yourself? The babys innocentits not their fault their fathers a wretch!”

“Who cares what people think?” Lacey snapped, her voice raw. She looked like a cornered animal thenwide, frightened brown eyes, lips trembling, shoulders hunched.

“I care. And Ill help you,” Margaret said firmly. “I wont let you abandon my grandchild.”

“You can barely scrape by yourself! What help can you possibly give?”

“Well manage,” Margaret insisted. “People survived worse in wartime. This is peaceits 1989, for heavens sake.”

Lacey exhaled heavily. Fear clawed at her alreadywhat lay ahead was a yawning unknown. She didnt know then that the ’90s would bare their teeth in ways she couldnt imagine. All she knew now was this: Darren had left her.

Theyd married six months ago, after a year and a half together. No warning signs, no shadows over their bright, young love.

She remembered the day Darren came home a different man. Hed tried to act normal, gentle as always, but his distance was unmistakablethe quiet, the faraway look of a man whod fallen out of love.

Hed known she was pregnant. That was the worst of it. Otherwise, hed have walked out sooner. For a month, Lacey begged for answers, only learning the truth after he finally left.

Shed collapsed into hysterics when Darrens mother, Evelyn, arrived, weeping just as hard, never expecting such betrayal from her son.

The story went back to their school days. In his final year, Darren had gone on a youth camping tripteenagers from all over the country, hiking, sleeping under canvas. There, hed met Vicky. Fell for her instantly.

Two weeks glued to her side. When they parted, they exchanged addresses. But Darren lost hers when he moved flats. No letters ever came from her either.

Eventually, hed accepted it, tried to forget her. Then he realizedshe was the only one hed ever loved. Three years later, he met Lacey, convinced Vicky was in the past. They married within two years, started trying for a baby.

Then Vicky reappeared. She hadnt kept his address either, but knowing his town, she placed an ad in the local paper. Darren saw it. Invited her down, booked her a hotel room.

At first, he just wanted to see the girl hed never forgotten. But the moment they met, it reignited. The decision tore at him, but he made it: leave Lacey, pregnant with his child, and run away with Vicky.

At work, everyone rallied around Lacey. A new colleague, barely settled in, sighed, “A babys a blessing. My husband and I have been trying five years with no luck.”

“Thats just itwith a husband,” Lacey muttered bitterly. There was no joy left in expecting her firstborn, only the gnawing humiliation of being discarded.

At home, Margaret tiptoed around her, trying to soothe the hurt. Then Evelyn turned up, weeping at the doorstep. Shed wanted Darren and Lacey to stay together. She couldnt stand Vickynot least because shed taken Darren a thousand miles away. (Though really, hed gone willingly.)

The kindness of both would-be grandmothers weighed on Laceyboth a burden and a comfort. But what terrified her most was meeting her baby.

What if he had Darrens eyes, his nose, his mouth? A lifetime staring at her child, reminded of his betrayal? That was her nightmare.

Leaving the hospital, Lacey hadnt expected a crowd. But there was Margaret, Evelyn, her best friend with her husband, her older sister with her niece, even her small team from work.

Everyone wanted to hold the baby, everyone wished mother and son well. At home, when they unwrapped him, Evelyn cradled him, smiling through tears before whispering, “The spitting image of Darren.”

She thought Lacey hadnt heard. But she had. Taking her son back, Lacey said firmly, “No. Hes not Darren. Hes Jack.”

Evelyn and Margaret exhaled in relief. So, all was well.

Twenty years passed. By 2010, Jack was in his third year at university. At home, he doted on his two little sisters, helping his mother with them when they were tinya proper little nursemaid.

Lacey remarried five years after Jacks birth. Her new husband was a good stepfather, nearly a real father to Jack, and later a dad to two daughters of their own.

Lacey adored her girls. But Jack? She couldnt bear to remember the moment in her rage when shed sworn to leave him at the hospital if he resembled Darren. The thought haunted her.

Darren and Vicky, that great love of his, divorced within five years. Vicky took their daughter abroad. Darren remarried, seemed content enough, saw Jack occasionally.

Lacey didnt interfere. She felt nothing for her ex-husband nowjust the biological father of her beloved son, Jack.

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