Felicity doesn’t speak for a full two minutes after I break the happy news. I know – I count.
Finally, she rearranges her face, takes a deep breath and says, ‘Well. That must have been a shock for you.’
‘You think?’
‘And how far …?’
‘About twenty weeks, I think. More or less,’ I say. ‘I’m not all that up on how you count pregnancy.’ My face twists round the last word.
Felicity pauses. She’s trying so hard not to look shocked, I nearly laugh. But even I know this isn’t funny.
‘Twenty weeks? So it was after … ?’ Felicity says.
And I know we’re both thinking about what happened to Molly a little over twenty weeks ago and that I’m not going to talk about it. I’m not going to tell her how the day they buried Molly hollowed me out inside. I’ve been hungry a lot in my life, but I’ve never felt as empty as that. I guess Felicity knew anyway, but I wasn’t about to say that stuff out loud. It’s one of our many unspoken Rules of Engagement. Along with No Tissues and No Jumping In With ‘Insightful’ Questions. I hate those.
My face feels tight and rigid, chunks of the inside of my mouth clamped between my teeth. We stare at each other. The clock ticks our session down: forty-five minutes to go, twenty-five, fifteen … Felicity tries to get me to talk, banging on about Options and College and My Future, which she manages to say like she actually thinks I might have one, but I’m not having it. Not today.
With five minutes left, I say, ‘Well, I guess I need to get myself to the doctor’s. Get an appointment to … you know …’
Felicity leans forward in her seat. ‘No?’
‘Oh, for fu–’ I catch myself.
She knows perfectly well; she’s just trying to get A Reaction. To get me to Feel Emotions and talk about Behaviours and Actions and Consequences.
‘To get rid of it,’ I say. But my voice does a weird circus trick on me, and instead of coming out couldn’t care less, it wobbles with so much care I shock myself. To make up for it, I slam the door on the way out and take the extra long way back to the Yewlings, counting each step in my head as I go.
I wait nearly a week before I get up the nerve to call the doctor’s surgery, which is a mistake because it turns out you can’t just show up and book yourself in for an abortion the same day. The doctor, a plumpish woman with the definite beginnings of a beard, types notes for a seriously long time, two-finger style, as I explain I just need to get it all sorted. Preferably today.
‘When was your last period?’
I stare at the ceiling, trying to remember if I had one at the unit before I left, then realise how stupid this is – it’s not like there’s more than one date of conception to choose from.
‘I think I’m about twenty weeks,’ I say.
The two-finger typing stops.
Eventually, she begins tapping again and then prints off a slip of paper and speaks in a brisk voice. ‘You need to have a scan urgently.’
‘What for?’
She gets this look then, half exasperated but also pitying, and speaks more slowly. ‘We need to be sure how many weeks you are before we can think about next steps.’
I wonder who this ‘we’ is she’s talking about, but she’s picking up the phone and talking to someone on the other end, saying it’s urgent. Then she hangs up and hands me the piece of paper.
‘Take this up to the hospital,’ she says. ‘There’s a cancellation at four so they can squeeze you in.’
I take it with a shaking hand.
Outside, I read the letter, but all it does is expand that panicky feeling in my chest until my throat is closing over and my heart is doing quadruple time. I have to hang on to a lamp post until it slows. Hospitals aren’t my one hundred per cent favourite places to be. A & E, children’s wards – the nurses there just love anorexics. Adolescent units are … more complicated.
Nia sits at the top of the lamp post.
Stupid cow, she hisses.
Also: Look what you’ve done.
And: That Thing inside you is going to make you fat. Disgusting.
It’s too much. I push myself off and start to walk as fast as I can, pulling my phone out as I go. I consider calling Mum for a nanosecond, Laurel for slightly longer. And realise something with a jolt that makes me stop walking.
I want Molly.
She would’ve known what to do. Her face flashes before me, but I shut it down. I’m not going there.
I haven’t got a clue what I’m going to do until four. That’s years away.
I walk even faster, on up the hill along yet another spoke away from the shops, the Yewlings, Dewhurst House and towards college. Which means things must be desperate.
If I’m lucky, I’ll make it in time for maths.
Edward, my A level maths teacher, looks over his glasses as I slink to the back of the room. ‘Nice of you to join us today,’ he says.
There’s a small rustle of titters and people turning to stare at me, but he’s already talking again, putting up equations on the smart board.
I look about for a pen and realise I’ve forgotten my bag. The boy next to me – no idea what his name is – rips some paper from his pad and shoves it at me along with a leaky biro.
‘Thanks,’ I mutter, and avert my eyes when I realise he looks like he wants to chat.
I get on with the work instead and feel things settle and calm a little inside. Maths is one of the few things I’ve always kept up with, even when I haven’t been in school. I guess numbers are my thing, for better or worse. But I’ve missed enough classes that A level isn’t exactly understandable. Still, today it gives me something to do that isn’t listening to Nia, or thinking about the Thing.
At the end of the class, I shoot out before Edward or leaky biro owner can stop me. I briefly consider going to physics, but first I need a cigarette to calm me down. I scoot over to the unofficial smoking shelter across the road from the main gates. We’re not technically allowed to smoke at college, but loads of people do. Right now, getting caught smoking wouldn’t exactly be the biggest of my worries.
I stand away from the small huddle of other students, my back turned, and roll a cigarette. The wind cuts into my bare hands, making them clumsy and numb, the tips of my fingers already turning completely white. I know from experience I won’t be able to feel them for a good ten minutes when I get back inside.
I keep my head down, still fumbling with the paper and the pouch of baccy.
I hear someone say, ‘You coming out later?’
‘No. My mum’s on a mission, wants me home in time for dinner.’
A flash of jealousy, like my lighter flaring, then going out. No one’s insisting I get home in time, though this does have the added bonus of no dinner, unless I manage to haul my sorry butt to the shops first. I hit the lighter’s flint again, the metal rasping, but it sputters and dies.
‘Here.’ A flame flickers in front of my face. Behind it is a girl I didn’t even recognise the first few times I saw her in college, on account of her complete ugly duckling style transformation into someone impossibly cool.
It’s Sal.
I take a long, awkward drag, then say, ‘Thanks’ on the out breath, pushing smoke into the air.
Sal is the last person I want to see, particularly today. And I definitely don’t want to see that familiar concerned look echoing back at me from Year Six, when I wouldn’t eat any cake at her party.
I know exactly what’s coming next.
‘So … how’s … stuff?’ she says.
‘Oh yeah, doing good, thanks. It’s nice to see you. I’ve been meaning to say hi.’
Sal does a small half-shrug and lights her cigarette.
Sure I have.
We both think it. We both know there are too many years between that birthday cake and now. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been keeping my head down at college once I realised it was her.
I take another drag and this wave of sickness crashes through me from nowhere. I can see in Sal’s eyes that I’ve gone pale. That look of worry mixed with the tiniest amount of irritation, like she’s remembering all those times she sat next to me at lunch, trying to make me laugh, waving Hula Hoops rings I wouldn’t eat on each finger. She got it down pretty quick. But I still remember the Sal from before. The one I used to argue with about who’d be the red Power Ranger (the red one controlled the Megazord and was therefore the best, never mind it was always a he and not a she).
If things had gone differently, maybe Sal would’ve been a person I’d have asked to come with me for this scan. I bite down on the inside of my cheek, then make myself smile. ‘I need to go. But it was great to see you,’ I say.
I get the distinct impression she’s shaking her head as I leg it.
The hospital is full of echoes. I take the stairs to the fifth floor and hand the letter from the doctor’s to the receptionist. She squints at it and then gestures to the rows of chairs. I take a seat as far away as possible from the sea of bumps accompanied by men with ridiculous expressions of pride and worry on their faces. I try not to make eye contact with anyone, focus on counting the seconds in my head. I’m past two thousand by the time my name is called.
I follow the woman into a little room with a bed and what I assume is the scanner attached to a screen next to it.
‘Not waiting for anyone?’ she says in a way that I think is meant to be kind.
‘No.’
‘Right then. If you could lift up your top.’
I turn my head to look at the wall as she puts tissue round the top of my jeans, squirts gel all over my stomach and presses a wand thing into it quite hard, considering.
After a second, she says, ‘Ah, here we are.’
I whip my head towards her, but her eyes are focused on the screen.
I want to say, ‘Are you sure? There’s really something in there?’ But she’s already talking about measurements.
Suddenly she smiles and turns the screen towards me. ‘There’s the heartbeat, see?’
‘I don’t want to see it!’ My voice comes out way louder than I meant it to. I shift my eyes back to the edge of the room.
The sonographer goes kind of still for a minute, then clatters away at a keyboard underneath her screen. I think she says some more stuff – I catch the words ‘twenty-three weeks’ – but the second she gets the scanner off me, I’m up and pulling my top down over my jeans, not bothering to let her rub the gel off.
I don’t take the pictures she tries to hand me.