Lynn Tyler prodded the bacon with a fork, turning it over in the hot fat. She hated fried food and the small kitchen already smelt strongly of it, the odour making her feel queasy. How the hell anyone could ever eat a cooked breakfast she didn’t know but, in about five minutes, Chris would come downstairs and devour his usual four rashes of bacon, two eggs and a couple of slices of fried bread. He was sleeping upstairs at the moment, undisturbed by the sounds coming from the room below him. The radio competed with the frying bacon for supremacy in the cramped area.
Lynn jumped back as the fat spat at her, some of it catching the arm of the sweatshirt which she wore. At least three sizes too big for her and with “Judas Priest” printed across it, the garment came to just below her bottom. She wore nothing else and the lino in the kitchen felt cold beneath her bare feet. She ran a hand through her uncombed black hair and exhaled deeply, looking down at the pan but also at herself. She was almost shapeless beneath the thick folds of the sweat-shirt but even that wasn’t enough to disguise some painfully obvious facts about her body. Her breasts, for so long unfettered by a bra, were beginning to droop – legacy of all those years she had spent enticing men. Ever since she’d reached her fourteenth birthday, just over five years ago, she had flaunted herself in every flimsy blouse and T-shirt she could find. There had been dozens of men in the intervening years, too many for her to count, attracted not just by her sizeable bust but by her easy manner – and easy was the operative word. She knew that some called her a tart, a slag, someone had even called her a whore once, but to Lynn Tyler the moral double-standard which governed the sex lives of men and women was ludicrous. And unfair. If a man slept around he was patted on the back and admired, earning the name of stud with each new conquest. If a woman chose to take different men to bed for her own private pleasure, she was sneered at, insulted and, in Lynn’s case, thrown out of the house. Her parents had kicked her out when she was seventeen after coming home to find her locked in a torrid embrace on the floor of their sitting room with her boyfriend of the time. Since then she had shared a three-bedroomed house near the centre of Exham with her best friend, Jill Wallace. Jill worked in nearby Camford and her job often took her away from the house for days at a time. It was during these respites that Lynn invited Chris to stay. She herself was unemployed and had been for over a year. Chris worked in Exham’s largest engineering firm. They had been together for over nine months. It was something of a record for Lynn and, during that span of time, something had happened to her which she had always consciously avoided before. She had fallen in love. All the countless other men, they had been for her private gratification although more often than not it had not turned out that way. But it was different with Chris. She had never had any intention of falling in love, in fact the emotion had proved so alien to her that at first she hadn’t been sure what she was feeling, but she knew it was ten times stronger than anything she’d felt in her life before. And she knew she wanted Chris on a more permanent basis than meetings three times a week and the odd weekend together. She wanted to marry him.
That was why she had stopped taking her pill. For the last three months she had left it untouched in its green packet. And, finally, she was sure. She was pregnant. She’d missed two periods, and a trip to the doctor last week had confirmed her suspicions. Surely with a baby on the way Chris would marry her? But she had yet to tell him her news.
She finished cooking his breakfast and while the kettle boiled for coffee she lit a cigarette, went to the bottom of the stairs and called him. She waited until she heard the creak of the bedsprings, signalling that he was up then she padded back into the kitchen and sat down to her own breakfast – a cup of Nescafé and a Marlboro.
He was down in a matter of moments, chest bare to expose his hard lean body with its tangled growth of light hair on the chest and stomach. He wore a faded pair of jeans, held up by a studded leather belt. Around one wrist was a leather band, similarly dotted with studs. He rubbed his stomach and sat down in front of the plateful of food.
“Don’t you ever wash in the mornings?” she asked him, smiling. She watched as he started hacking away at the bacon.
“Well, I didn’t have time this morning,” he told her, chewing furiously. “I felt hungry.”
She shuddered.
“I don’t know how the hell you can eat that first thing in the morning.” She took a drag on her cigarette, blowing out a long stream of smoke. She crossed her legs beneath the table, tapping her feet together agitatedly. Should she tell him now? Excuse me Chris but you’re going to be a father? She took a sip of her coffee instead.
The DJ on the radio was babbling some hip bullshit which neither of them seemed to hear. Chris because he was too engrossed in his breakfast and Lynn because she was too wrapped up in her own thoughts. She watched him as he set about the first egg, slicing it in two, dipping his fried bread in the runny yolk. He looked up at her and smiled that warm, welcoming smile she had come to know so well these past nine months. She wondered if there was room for love in that smile.
“What’s on your mind?” he said.
She looked surprised.
“Not a lot,” she lied. “Why do you ask?”
“You’re not usually this quiet,” he told her.
Lynn smiled weakly, taking mock offence.
“Thanks a lot.”
He smiled again, pushing half the egg into his mouth. She sucked hard on her cigarette, held the smoke in her mouth for long seconds then blew it out in a long blue stream.
“Chris, I’m pregnant.”
The words came out as easily as that but, once she’d said them, it felt as if a hole had opened up inside her. Well, there it was. She’d told him, flat out. She sipped at her coffee and eyed him warily over the rim of the mug.
He slowed the pace of his chewing, looking down at his plate, not, as she’d expected, at her. He didn’t speak.
“I said. . .”
He cut her short.
“Yeah, I heard you.” There was an edge to his voice, almost imperceptible but nevertheless present. Like a knife blade in the darkness, invisible but razor sharp.
She ground out the fag in a nearby saucer, the plume of smoke rising mournfully, disappearing above her like a forgotten dream.
“Haven’t you got anything to say?” she wanted to know.
“Are you sure?” he asked, still looking at his plate.
She told him about the visit to the doctors, the missed periods. He nodded.
They sat in silence for an eternity then he dropped his knife and fork onto the plate where they clattered noisily. Finally, he looked her in the eye.
“I thought you were on the bloody pill,” he said, exasperatedly.
“I was,” she told him. “I just didn’t take it for a few weeks.”
With the deception now revealed, it was she who dropped her gaze, unable to meet the unrelenting stare from his green eyes.
“Jesus Christ,” he murmured, then his voice gradually grew in volume. “You bloody tricked me didn’t you?”
“I didn’t,” she countered although the accusation bore weight and she was crumbling beneath that weight.
“You had me thinking it was safe and all the time you weren’t taking your pill. You made a fucking mug out of me for all that time?” He was struggling to keep his anger in check and he wasn’t making much of a job of it.
“It was just two months, Chris,” she said.
“Two months. Two years. What’s the difference? It’s still me who ends up looking the twat, isn’t it?”
She could feel the tears building but she fought them back, angry with herself now. They sat in silence for a long time. A silence finally broken by Chris.
“So what are you going to do?” he demanded.
“What do you mean?”
“About the kid.”
“I’m going to have it.”
He shook his head.
“Well, it’s your business I suppose but I think you’re stupid,” he told her.
Her brow furrowed.
“It’s not just my business,” she said, defiantly. “It’s yours too. You are the father after all.”
“Are you sure?”
The remark was barbed and it cut deeply.
“You bastard,” she growled. “Yes, I’m sure it’s yours. If anyone else had been fucking me in the last nine months I think you might have found out about it.”
“So, what are you going to do about it?” he asked again.
“I’ve told you once. I’m going to have it. I wanted the child. It’s our child.”
The realization gradually swept over him and a bitter smile creased his face.
“You know, Lynn, you’ve got more brains than I gave you credit for,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.
“The baby. Not taking the pill. You planned it all didn’t you?”
She reached for his hand, almost surprised when he didn’t pull away. When she spoke again her tone was low, almost pleading.
“Chris, it was the only way I knew of keeping you,” she said. “I love you. I’ve never loved anyone else in my life before. I didn’t want to lose you.”
“So you thought you’d trick me into becoming a daddy?” His voice was heavy with sarcasm.
She pulled her hand away.
“I hoped you’d marry me when you heard about the kid,” she confessed. “You are its father after all.”
“Only because you didn’t take your fucking pill,” he said. She watched as he got to his feet. “I’m sorry, Lynn but I’m not ready for this.” He swallowed hard, not sure whether to pity her or punch her in the teeth. She too got to her feet.
“I love you, I want your baby. I want you,” she said, the first salty tear sliding down her cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Look, I think a lot of you, you’re a good kid, fun to be with. . .”
She cut him short, her own anger now overriding his.
“And an easy fuck,” she growled.
“I just don’t love you,” he told her, almost reluctantly.
She stood quivering for a moment, trying to hold back the flood of tears which she knew would come any minute. Her voice was cracking.
“So what’s your answer then?” she demanded.
He stepped away from the table.
“I think it’d be simpler if we just didn’t see each other again,” he said.
“As easy as that? Forget the relationship. Nine months down the drain. Is that all it meant to you? Is it?” She was shouting now, the tears flooding down her cheeks. “A good screw when you wanted it? What was I, just a convenient piece of equipment when you got fed up with wanking?”
“I think I’d better go,” he said, quietly.
“Yes, go on. Go. Fuck off.” She started to tug the sweatshirt off, despite his pleas for her to stop. Eventually she pulled it free and threw it at him, standing there naked in that smoke filled kitchen, the odour of fried food heavy in the air.
“I’m sorry, Lynn,” he said.
“Get out,” she screamed at him, hurling the sauce bottle in his direction. It hit the wall close by him and exploded, splattering the sticky red liquid all over the place. Lumps of glass skittered across the lino.
She sat down at the table, sobbing, her head resting on her arms and she heard the front door close behind him as he left.
Naked, she sat alone in the kitchen her tears falling onto the paper table cloth and spreading out like transparent ink on blotting paper.
She remained like that for at least thirty minutes before wiping her face and shuffling upstairs to dress. She pulled on a pair of drain-pipe jeans and hauled a khaki coloured T-shirt over her head. She went back downstairs and cleaned up the mess in the kitchen.
At 10.03 a.m. she phoned her doctor and made an appointment to see about getting an abortion.