I’m woken up by Audrey’s 5.15 a.m. alarm call.
‘Sorry,’ she whispers, switching it off and climbing out of bed.
In the dim light I watch as she scoops up her kit bag and slips out of the room, closing the door softly behind her. The floorboards creak as she crosses the landing and ducks into the bathroom, where she’ll change into her swimming costume, dinosaur onesie over the top, before heading downstairs to eat a bowl of porridge while Mum whizzes her up a rank-looking smoothie in the blender to drink in the car on the way to the pool. By 6 a.m. she’s in the water. She does this four mornings per week, plus sessions after school and at the weekends. On Wednesdays she rests. Providing she doesn’t have a competition or meet, she used to rest on Saturdays too, but over the past few months Steph has been calling her in for extra one-to-one work in the run-up to the British Junior Championships.
I don’t know how she does it. If I had to get up at 5.15 a.m., I’d be a permanent zombie. Not to mention how bloody boring it must be spending all that time with your head under water, the same thoughts swirling round your brain. I’d go mad, I swear. Sometimes, though, I wonder how it must feel to love something that much. Mum keeps saying I’ll get my ‘calling’ one day, but I’m not so sure. If I had a calling, wouldn’t I know what it was by now?
Unable to get back to sleep, I roll onto my back. I’m aware of Grace and Sam on the other side of the wall, sleeping literally inches away from me. I picture them spooning in Grace’s single bed, Sam’s body wrapped around hers, his chin nestling on her shoulder, his hands cupping her swollen belly, the two of them smiling in their sleep, not quite believing their luck.
Last night, as Audrey and I got ready for bed, their giggles floated out of Grace’s open window and in through ours. It made my annoyance flare up all over again; the fact they were being congratulated for something I’d be punished for. Audrey didn’t seem to get why I was so fed up, which irritated me even more.
‘Would you rather lots of yelling and fighting?’ she asked as she peeled back her duvet and climbed into bed.
‘At least it would be appropriate to the situation,’ I grumbled.
Audrey just smiled this sad sort of smile and turned out the light. She hates conflict, regardless of who started it in the first place, which is weird because when she’s swimming she’s so insanely fierce. Yep, if Grace and I are two warring nations, then Audrey is most definitely Switzerland.
‘I can’t believe she got a cake with a sparkler in it,’ Stella says later that morning as we walk arm-in-arm to English. ‘That is just so effing weird.’
‘Thank you!’ I cry. ‘Finally! Someone who gets it!’
I should have known I could rely on my best friend to back me up on this one.
‘What happened to your parents being really mad?’ she asks.
‘God knows. It’s like they’ve been brainwashed. All I know is, if it was me who’d gone out and got herself pregnant, it would be like Armageddon in our house right now. Instead they’re treating Grace like she’s made from spun sugar or something.’
‘I still can’t believe she’s having a baby. It’s like the Virgin Mary, but in real life.’
‘Well, not exactly,’ I say. ‘Since Grace isn’t a virgin.’
Grace lost her virginity to Dougie on her seventeenth birthday, and by all accounts it was romantic and perfect – rose petals on the duvet and Ed Sheeran on the iPod.
‘You know what I mean,’ Stella says. ‘She’s just so not the sort of person who gets caught out like that. I mean, how did she get pregnant in the first place? Wasn’t she on the pill?’
I shake my head. ‘The pill makes her insane. She took it for a bit when she was with Dougie and it turned her into a total crazy bitch. No, she reckons the condom broke and she and Sam didn’t realize. Dad’s already drafted his letter of complaint to Durex.’
Stella snorts.
The classroom is hot and stuffy. When we arrive Mrs Poots is opening all the windows with a long metal pole with a hook on the end. As she stretches, her slip shows beneath the hem of her tweed skirt.
‘Ah, Mia,’ she says, noticing me as I sit down. ‘I saw the most wonderful documentary on Ancient Greece last night and it reminded me to ask if you’ve heard from Grace recently.’
Mrs Poots is one of Grace’s biggest fans. She cried actual tears when Grace opened her envelope on A-level results day last year.
‘She’s already home actually,’ I say.
Mrs Poots’s eyes light up. ‘Really? How lovely. And how is she? Is she well?’
‘Oh, you know,’ I say, keeping my voice purposefully casual. ‘Six months pregnant.’
‘Pregnant?’ Mrs Poots repeats uncertainly.
‘Yeah,’ I say, unloading my folder and books onto the desk. ‘You know, up the duff, got a bun in the oven, knocked up, with child …’
Mrs Poots gapes at me.
‘It’s true,’ Stella confirms. ‘With some guy she met in Greece. Broken condom apparently.’
Biting my lip hard to stop myself from laughing, I poke her in the ribs. She pokes me back.
‘And Cambridge?’ Mrs Poots says, her voice trembling with fear.
Grace is Queen Mary’s first Oxbridge-bound student in over five years.
‘Oh, don’t worry, she’s still going,’ I say. ‘She’s going to take the baby to lectures in a papoose.’
Mrs Poots’ cheeks are very red, her eyes drooping with disappointment. She looks devastated. She looks how my parents should look.
‘I’ll tell her you say congratulations, shall I?’ I suggest brightly.
‘Yes,’ Mrs Poots stammers. ‘Yes, please do, Mia.’
Next to me Stella shakes with silent giggles.
Mrs Poots is distracted throughout the entire lesson, stumbling over a Yeats poem and giving out the wrong homework, and I leave the classroom with the feeling that by lunchtime the entire staffroom will know that Amazing Grace is perhaps not quite so amazing after all.
After school I’m not in the mood to go straight home so I persuade Stella to walk into town with me instead. We try on nail varnishes in Boots, painting each nail a different colour, then sit in Starbucks, trying to make our frappuccinos last as long as possible until all we have left at the bottom are a couple of centimetres of milky water.
As usual we’re on the Right Move app, looking at flats for rent.
‘Check this one out,’ I say, thrusting my phone under Stella’s nose. ‘It’s got a Jacuzzi bath!’
She squints at the screen. ‘The second bedroom is tiny though,’ she points out.
I don’t tell her I’ve already earmarked that one as hers.
After we finish our A levels next year, Stella and I are going to get jobs and move into a flat together, like Rachel and Monica in Friends. We’ve already registered our details with half the estate agents in Rushton, and folded down the corner of dozens of pages of the Ikea catalogue.
‘How about this one then?’ I suggest, clicking the next link. ‘It’s even got a little garden, look. We could have barbecues.’
A sun-drenched picture of Stella and I holding an epic barbecue pops into my head. In it everyone is laughing and drinking and having a good time, marvelling over what brilliant hosts we are.
‘Do you even know how to light a barbecue?’ Stella asks.
‘No,’ I admit. ‘We can learn though. Or get a load of those disposable ones.’
‘Do you reckon we’ll really be able to afford somewhere like that?’
‘Course we will. We’ll have jobs, won’t we?’
‘I suppose,’ Stella says, prising the plastic domed lid off her drink and tipping a couple of ice cubes into her mouth.
My phone vibrates in my hand. It’s a text message from Mum asking if I’ll be home for dinner. I haven’t seen her since she said a sharp ‘goodnight’ on our return from the restaurant last night. By the time I dragged myself out of bed and down to breakfast this morning, she’d been gone for over two hours, down at the pool with Audrey.
‘Stells,’ I say, putting my phone away.
‘What’s my thing?’
‘Your thing?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You know. Like Audrey’s thing is her swimming, and Grace’s is being really clever, and Kimmie’s is her jewellery …’
Kimmie makes her own jewellery and sells it on Etsy.
‘Oh, OK,’ Stella says, nodding. ‘I get it.’
‘So?’ I ask. ‘What’s mine?’
Stella chews on her straw as she thinks. ‘You’re really good at hair,’ she offers eventually.
I slump back on my seat. ‘Is that it? Being able to use a pair of GHDs? Wow, thanks.’
‘Hey, don’t knock it! People are always going to want to have their hair look nice.’
‘It’s not very impressive though, is it? It’s not going to make me famous or anything.’
‘I suppose not,’ she admits. ‘Unless you become one of those celebrity hair stylists with their own shampoo brand, like, I dunno, John Frieda or Trevor Sorbie or something … Why are you even bothered anyway?’
‘It’s just something stupid Sam said last night. He was asking me what my thing was and I didn’t know.’
‘Well, maybe you don’t have one. Maybe some people just don’t.’
‘Maybe,’ I mutter.
There’s a pause.
‘Do you think you have one?’ I ask.
‘What? A thing?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Of course I do. I’ve got my photography, haven’t I?’
Stella’s hobby is relatively new. The last time she saw her dad he gave her a really fancy camera and she’s been learning how to take photos with it via YouTube tutorials. She uses me as her subject sometimes, lying on her belly and barking out instructions like she’s David Bailey, stopping every few shots to fiddle with the settings. I didn’t realize she was serious about it, though.
‘Are you OK?’ she asks, tilting her head to one side. ‘You look annoyed.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Yeah, you do.’
‘Only because you’re looking at me like that.’
‘Fine,’ Stella says, rolling her eyes and pulling her phone out of her bag. ‘Then I’ll stop.’
‘Good,’ I say, taking mine out too.