CHAPTER ONE

September 19th

‘What’s wrong with you this time?’

‘I’m just tired, Dad. Need a day off school. OK?’

‘No it is not OK, Mia. How can you be tired? It’s only the second week back! How can you do this to me? I’m late already.’

‘Well, just go then.’

‘I can’t just go and leave you like this –’

‘I’m fifteen, Dad! You don’t have to look after me.’

Mia turned away so he couldn’t see her face. She felt sick again. She pushed past him on the landing into the bathroom and slammed the door. She could sense him still standing there, planning his next move. Her stomach clenched; the gagging feeling was coming again in her throat. She turned on the shower so he wouldn’t hear her retching into the toilet. Even Dad wasn’t that thick. He’d know. She wasn’t ready for anyone to know yet. Not even Becky at school. Or Will. And especially not Dad.

Her guts ached; her mouth tasted sour. This was the third morning it had happened. Maybe she just had a bug or something. But her period was late. Each day she watched and waited, and it still hadn’t started. More than two weeks late now.

Once she’d actually been sick it wasn’t so bad. It left a hollow feeling, like hunger. She felt like that most of the time now, only she knew she mustn’t eat much. She wasn’t going to start getting fat.

Mia turned off the shower and rinsed her mouth at the basin. She cleared a space in the steamed-up mirror and peered at her grey mouth, white face, dark eyes. Her hair straggled, rats’ tails. Becky was right; she should cut it all off.

Then the door banged downstairs. The whole house shook. The car engine revved up. Good. He’d given up.

Mia went slowly downstairs into the kitchen. She stood with her bare feet on the cold kitchen floor for a long time – minutes, hours – she didn’t know. It didn’t matter now – she had the whole day to herself. Through the window she noticed the garden, bright with early-morning sun. She felt a little surge of hope. Maybe things were going to be all right – her period would start today, and everything would be normal again. Outside on the lawn, a female blackbird stretched out its tail feathers like a fan. Mia smoothed her hands over her belly.

So quiet. So still. The house waiting. But there was an echo too, of the raised voices, angry hurting words dropped like cold pebbles. What if she’d told him right then? I’m not going because I’m sick, and I’m sick and tired because I’m pregnant, Dad. She imagined spitting the words out, bouncing them over the hard floor, translucent like marbles, each one with its coloured spiral trapped inside.

Mia took a small blue mug from the dresser and placed it on the table. As she filled the kettle the blackbird flew off in alarm. She opened the back door to let the cat in and then stepped right out on to the wet grass. The cold stung her bare feet, but she liked the feeling: sharp, more alive. She kept on walking. Across the grass, through the gate, into the lane. The kitchen door was open behind her but she didn’t stop, didn’t look back. All the time she concentrated on her feet. Tiny, biting stones. Smooth tarmac, slightly warm. Mud, sticky, oozing up between her toes.

She was startled to hear a car slowing behind her. The woman from the big house up the lane gave Mia a strange look as she manoeuvred past. The whole village would have the news in ten minutes. That girl. Walking along the lane with bare feet at quarter past nine in the morning when she should be in school. But what do you expect with a family like that? A name like Mia!

She pulled a blackberry off the hedgerow, but it was too sour to eat, the bobbles of fruit hard and tight. You shouldn’t eat the berries from the lane anyway, Dad said. They were full of lead. Poison. When Mia and her sisters were small he took them across the fields to pick blackberries. She hated the way you had to stretch your hand through the fur of spiders’ webs, and the way your fingers stained purple. You couldn’t wash it off. It stained your nails like blood.

No blood. The blood still hasn’t come.

Round the corner she saw something lying in the road. A dead seagull, one wing crushed open. The white feathers were smeared with the oily imprint of a car tyre. Just for a second, Mia felt she might cry. Her feet hurt.

The seagull is dead. No blood. Something wrong. My body. Waiting and waiting, and all the time maybe there’s something growing inside me –

Mia stared at the dead bird. She couldn’t leave it here in the middle of the road, to be run over again and again. Even if it was already dead. But she couldn’t touch it with her bare hands. She pulled handfuls of grass and coarse broad leaves from the verge and used them to scoop under the bird’s body, careful to keep her naked feet from treading too near. Close up it smelled. Of fish. Seaweed. Rotting meat. It was surprisingly large and heavy. Its glazed eye stared at her. She didn’t feel sorry for it any longer. It was ugly and disgusting, a fat white body that stank. Only its wing, that fine skein of feathers; Mia did it for the terrible beauty of the crushed wing. She dragged the bird into the grass verge, and then gently folded the wing back over the body.

When she stood up she went dizzy for a second. She was cold, hollow with hunger. She still hadn’t had breakfast. It must be nearly ten. She’d missed Maths. Becky would be wondering where she was, deciding who to be with at break. And Will? He’d be concentrating on not noticing her absence. Sitting about with Matt and Liam and the others. Talking films, in that pseudo-clever way they did together. Pretending not to notice the Year Eleven girls even though they were within spitting distance, sitting on the tables with their feet on the chairs in Room Ten.

She wiped her hands on the long wet grass in the verge. The seeds left dark oily marks along her palms, which wouldn’t come off. She rubbed them on her legs. She could still smell the faint stink of fish, rotting flesh. It made her gag. Instinctively, she took the footpath away from the lane, down towards the beach. It wasn’t a proper beach; just a long strip of stones at high tide with its line of washed-up junk, stretching as far as the village of Whitecross and beyond. At this end, it was usually deserted. She often came here by herself. And these last few weeks, with Will. The field next to the path, just above the beach, was where it had all started, those first few hot days at the beginning of the summer holidays.

She rinsed her hands in the sea and then sat down on the damp shingle. The stones hurt her feet, and a cold wind was blowing in over the water. She shivered, hugged her knees, but it was too cold to stay for long. In any case, there was nothing to do there. Nowhere to hide.