Foster

by Claire Keegan

I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.

‘Where there’s a secret,’ she says, ‘there’s shame – and shame is something we can do without.’ ‘Okay.’ I take big breaths so I won’t cry.

‘Ah, the women are nearly always right, all the same,’ he says. ‘Do you know what the women have a gift for?’ ‘What?’ ‘Eventualities. A good woman can look far down the line and smell what’s coming before a man even gets a sniff of it.’

I laugh at the thought of me carrying him, at the impossibility, then realise it was a joke, and that I got it.