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The child named Rowan - very short!
This is the beginning of a short story. I'm rather fond of the idea but i'm trying to acheive something with the style and i don't know if i'm getting it. Does it sound too flat to you, too bare?
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It was agreed in advance that they would get to name the child. A name to her from them and in exchange, no further contact. Ever. They had agreed, thankful for even that, and signed the proffered contracts with the lawyer's delicate gold pen. The naming would have meant a great deal to their parents and they felt guilty keeping it from them but they had gone to such lengths to hide the pregnancy that their hands were tied. They agreed in the end to wait and see what the baby thought. They would give her name that suited her.
When, after a brief and, according to the midwife, textbook two hours of labour a baby girl was born scarlet and silent and the doctor greeted her with the words, “hello, little red one” , they exchanged a smile and spoke 'Rowan'.
The child didn't cry until an old-school nurse slapped her bare new behind and woke her voice. Twenty minutes the new family had together before the lady from the agency came and kindly but firmly removed the child. They would receive their money from the new parents in just a couple of days. The child's mother cried. The father tried not to. The nurse cried for the three of them when she got home.
They were young, not yet out of school. Her pregnancy had been a mistake. In their hearts, they admitted to each other, they wanted to keep the child but the school nurse had referred them to the agency woman. The agency woman told of wealthy, kind-hearted people who would raise their child for them in the best possible way. They did everything she had asked and now they could go back to school to be like normal kids. Just like she had promised.
They say a newborn knows it's mother by instinct. This child gazed silently at everyone with the same drunken stare and grasped her new parents thumbs in bony red fingers just the way that they had always dreamt their baby would. Her new mother cried tears of joy. Her new father tried not to. The agency woman dabbed at dry eyes with her handkerchief and reminded them tactfully that they would be expecting final payment within forty-eight hours.
The child named Rowan was taken home by the people who had paid twenty-thousand pounds for her, just five thousand of which would reach the young couple still sitting tearfully inside. The new parents had been putting out for months, the word that she was pregnant. All but the very closest of their friends would believe that the child was theirs.
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Last edited by riversource : 05-17-2007 at 11:57 AM.
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