4

I can’t believe I’m being thrown out of my own house.

Mum denies this of course. She says I’m being ‘melodramatic’. At least Audrey is being shipped off too, to her friend Lara’s place, which at least hints at some effort to be fair. We’re both practically shooed down the path as we’re given strict instructions to stay away until further notice.

My laughter probably didn’t help our cause. Not that I could have stopped even if I’d wanted to. It was like that time I got the giggles during the two-minute silence for Remembrance Day back in Year 9, only about ten times worse. Anyway, Mum and Dad weren’t terribly impressed, which is totally unfair because Grace is the one they should be angry with, not me.

At Stella’s, Stu answers the door. He’s wearing a ratty dressing gown and holding a massive bowl of Coco Pops and a soup spoon.

‘Didn’t you just leave?’ he asks.

‘Change of plan.’

‘How’s Grace?’

Stu and Grace were in the same year at Queen Mary’s. I reckon he has a bit of a thing for her because he’s always asking how she is.

‘Pregnant,’ I say.

Stu’s eyes almost pop out of his head. ‘What?’

‘Exactly.’

I push past him and bound upstairs to Stella’s room, throwing open her door. The three of them are sitting on Stella’s bed, surrounded by pizza boxes and watching Orange Is the New Black on her laptop.

‘What are you doing back?’ Stella asks, pressing pause and scooting over to make space for me on the mattress. ‘I thought you had family shit to do.’

I climb on the bed and start opening the pizza boxes, searching for leftovers. I score on the final box, folding the last slice of Hawaiian in half and taking a massive bite.

‘You’re never going to guess in a trillion years,’ I say once I’ve swallowed it, licking grease off my fingers.

‘In that case, you may as well just hurry up and tell us,’ Stella says.

I leave a suitably dramatic pause.

‘Grace is pregnant.’

They gasp in satisfying unison.

‘But how? Grace has always been so good,’ Kimmie cries.

‘Not any more,’ I singsong, tracing my finger along the seam of Stella’s duvet cover.

Because Grace the great and powerful has finally messed up. Not only that, she’s messed up in the most spectacular way imaginable.

‘Is she keeping it?’ Stella asks.

‘She must be. She’s massive.’

‘Who’s the father?’

‘This bloke she met in Greece.’

‘Is he Greek?’ Kimmie asks, her eyes wide.

‘I don’t think so, he’s ginger.’

‘What’s his name again?’

‘Sam. He’s in our kitchen right this second.’

‘What’s he look like?’ Mikey asks. ‘Is he fit?’

I try and fail to get a picture of Sam in my mind. I seem to remember him being tall and having reddish hair but that’s about it.

‘He’s OK,’ I say. ‘Like I said, gingery.’

‘OMG, ginger babies!’ Stella shrieks.

‘Hang on, Ed Sheeran ginger or Eddie Redmayne ginger?’ Mikey demands. ‘You need to be way more specific with the hue, Mia.’

‘I dunno. I was too busy gaping at Grace’s massive pregnant belly to pay all that much attention.’

‘Prince Harry ginger?’ Kimmie suggests, her eyes shining hopefully (Kimmie is obsessed with the royal family).

‘Are they gonna get married?’ Stella asks.

‘God, I don’t know.’

‘I bet he asks her,’ Kimmie pipes up.

‘Yeah, shotgun wedding,’ Stella chimes in. ‘Old school.’

If that happens before the year is out, Grace will be nineteen and married with a baby. An actual baby.

I don’t like them one bit. Babies, I mean. I once helped look after my cousin Poppy while Auntie Ali had her hair done. It was only for an hour, but it was enough. Pops screamed literally the entire time, and for the few minutes she wasn’t screaming she kept trying to use my fingers as a teething ring, which was beyond disgusting. God, is Grace going to expect me to babysit? I bet she is. And probably for free too.

‘How far gone is she, do you reckon?’ Stella asks.

‘Far,’ I say. ‘Like out here.’

I hold my hands out about ten centimetres in front of me, cupping them around an imaginary baby bump.

‘Wow,’ Stella says. ‘That’s far then. How many months, do you know?’

I shake my head. Just thinking about it creeps me out. I mean, my sister is growing a baby inside her – an actual human being, with fingers and toes and stuff.

‘I bet she looks well nice pregnant,’ Kimmie says. ‘I bet her bump is really cute.’

God, Kimmie is soppy sometimes. I roll my eyes at the others.

‘Yeah, not like my mum’s,’ Mikey says, his voice dripping with disgust. ‘When she was preggers with The Accident, she was massive. Even her fingers got fat.’

The Accident is Connor, Mikey’s five-year-old brother.

‘Are your parents totally flipping out?’ he asks.

‘God, mine would be,’ Stella says.

‘Mine too,’ Kimmie agrees, nodding solemnly. ‘They’d probably lock me up until I was twenty-seven or something.’

I picture Mum and Dad’s faces when I barged into the kitchen earlier. ‘They looked so upset they could hardly speak,’ I say.

‘Poor Grace,’ Kimmie murmurs. ‘Your mum and dad can be proper scary when they want to be, especially your mum.’

Mum doesn’t lose it often, but when she does it’s terrifying. I’ve never seen her lose it with Grace though.

‘They’ve told me not to come home until they say so, so she must be getting a proper bollocking,’ I say.

‘Shit, do you think your dad might beat him up?’ Kimmie asks, her eyes bulging. ‘Her boyfriend, I mean.’

‘I don’t think so.’

Dad is a big guy but a complete softie. His nickname down at the ambulance station is the ‘Gentle Giant’. No, he wouldn’t hurt a fly.

Would he?

A vision of Sam pinned up against the kitchen wall, Dad’s hands around his throat, pops into my head.

‘Hang on a second, are you smiling?’ Stella asks.

‘No.’

She gasps. ‘Oh my God, you totally are! Look, guys, she’s smiling!’

‘No, I’m not!’ I say, desperately trying to stop my lips from curling upwards. It’s impossible though, my grin is inevitable.

‘You shady bitch!’ Mikey says, laughing.

‘Oh, give me a break,’ I reply, swatting him away. ‘It’s about time Grace got in some trouble for once.’

Because it is. It so, so is.