Trouble (10 page)

Decision made, I feel almost calm, although God knows I shouldn’t be. So much of this baby’s life has already been decided, like whether it’s a boy or a girl. If it’ll have curly hair or straight. Right- or left-handed. Good at Maths or sucky at Science. Sporty or lazy. A life mapped out before it’s even started living.

It’s only my role that’s left up to chance.

I feel a familiar rising panic and tap my tummy to distract myself.

“You OK in there?” I say. This is the first time I’ve spoken to it and it sounds like I’m a loony. Surprisingly enough the foetus has nothing to say back. I’ll have to look up when they start kicking and stuff – not for a long while yet, I know, but I figure if I’m not sure what to look out for I might miss it.

A car pulls into our road. A red hatchback with a missing hub cap on the front wheel. Jay’s car.

AARON

I close my book. I’m bored.

This is an epiphany. I haven’t been bored in my own company for months.

I don’t really know what to do with this information though. Who do I think I’d rather be hanging out with? There’s only so much of Neville’s company I can take and it’s not as if I have many other options. I think about Hannah, but she gave me her number under very different pretences. Besides, it’s not like she’d welcome a call whilst the anointed Jay is there.

I go and get a different book instead.

HANNAH

I don’t like her. At. All.

She’s too skinny. Too posh. Too blonde. Too loud. Too snooty. WAY too patronizing.

I don’t like the way she says Lola’s name. “LO-la” – really stressing the “o”, as if it’s a sweet she can’t quite fit in her too-perfect mouth. And she’s one of those people who’s all “don’t mind me” when you can’t help but mind her because she is UNBELIEVABLY ANNOYING.

I tear a strip off my naan with a vengeance.

Lola begged for Chinese, but this one says she can’t eat Chinese, something about MSG. Then she said how much she loves Indian food. Lola’s five years old – what’s she going to find to eat at a curry house? But no, we’ve got to do what Jay wants and he’d rather make this angel-faced bitch happy than the little sister he hasn’t seen for two months.

I helped Lola find something she could eat, but poppadums are no replacement for prawn crackers and she’s sulking. She’s knackered too – you can tell because she keeps rubbing her eyes every other forkful. Only no one seems to be paying attention to her because they’re all too busy listening to Bitchbag tell us how amazing the curry in India is. She spent her gap year there, teaching blind/deaf/disabled children how to open up to love or some such shit. That’s where she got her nose pierced and where she bought the thousand and one bangles that she’s wearing round her wrist. It’s like sitting at the table with Santa’s reindeer trotting round you.

She tried to tell me what curry to order because Jay said I liked spicy food.

“You don’t want a korma, Han.” “Han” is not an acceptable thing for her to call me. That is the name that only my family and close friends use. She will never be either. “Order a rogan josh. Or a biryani – ooh, look, they’ve got prawns. Do you like prawns? I love them.”

“No. I don’t like prawns.”

“Oh, Hannah, of course you like prawns.” Mum patted my hand as if I was no older than Lola. “She likes prawns, Imogen.”

It doesn’t matter whether I like prawns or not. I’m not meant to eat them and I was having a hard enough time trying to work out whether anything too spicy would give me the shits.

In the end I settled for a tikka and a naan – should be safe with the same thing as Lolly, surely?

Jay’s looking at me funny across the table. When no one’s looking he mouths,
“Are you OK?”
at me. I just look at him, then look at
her
and back at him.

Why hadn’t he said he was bringing home his new girlfriend?

AARON

I finish my book and look at the clock beside my bed. It’s late – nearly midnight. All of a sudden I feel entirely exhausted. Not because I’ve been awake too long, or exerted myself too much by reading
Catch-22
in one afternoon, although that’s no mean feat.

It is living that exhausts me. Sometimes it’s all I can do to get through a day and today has been especially hard.

Perhaps because for the first time in six months I didn’t want to spend it alone.

HANNAH

So much for my plan. Jay went straight to his room with Imogen when we got back – he didn’t even come down to say goodnight to Lolly properly.

But when I come out of the bathroom he’s there, waiting.

“What’s up?” he says.

I just look at him. “It’s the first time you come home and you bring your girlfriend with you. Could you not tear yourself away from her for one night to spend some time with your family?”

Jay folds his arms across his chest, hiding the familiar faded lettering of his ancient
Family Guy
T-shirt. “Harsh, much?”

“Is it?” I say and I walk past him to my room angry with him, with his girlfriend, with myself. That’s the only chance I’ll have to tell him face-to-face and I bottled it.

MONDAY 23
^RD
NOVEMBER

AARON

Today I’m sitting the first of my mocks. In one hand I have a clear zip-lock pencil case containing a pencil loaded with new lead, three black fine-liner pens, a short ruler and enough geometry gadgets to shake a perfectly perpendicular stick at. In my other hand I’m holding a calculator that has more functions than a Smartphone and a “lucky” coin – a quarter stamped flat in front of my eyes in Disneyland when I was ten years old. I’ve taken it to every exam since and my results have been pretty good. I doubt this has anything to do with the coin, but it’s small, it’s something to play with between questions and, what the hell, it might be lucky.

It’s Prendergast, whose lesson we’re missing, who opens the doors, not bothering to
shush
us properly when we file in and murmur to one another as we work out where to sit. It takes me a while to find my seat but when I do, I see I’m sitting across the aisle from Hannah.

Sheppard. Tyler. Makes sense.

She smiles at me as she pulls her chair out. She’s got a litre bottle of water with her.

“Thirsty?” I ask, looking at the bottle.

“Uh-huh,” she says and takes a sip straightaway.

“Pace yourself. You might run out.”

“Ha, ha,” Hannah says. “You’re just jealous.”

I smile. Then I realize everyone else has settled in and is watching the clock at the front of the hall.

“Good luck!” I give Hannah a cheesy thumbs up and she rolls her eyes.

“
You too
,” she mouths around another swig from her bottle. Then Prendergast is walking past, handing out spare paper and I start to get a little bit nervous, a little bit excited and my throat dries up.

I wish I’d brought a bottle of water.

HANNAH

It’s a bad sign when you don’t understand the first question. Even worse if you don’t understand the first fucking page.

I close my eyes and wonder if this is just another exam-based nightmare. Then I try turning the page.

AARON

Hannah’s on to the next page already? I know the first lot of questions are pretty straightforward but…

Hang on. She’s turning the next page. And the next.

My heart goes out to her. If she can’t answer the first question then she’s screwed.

Whatever’s going on with Hannah mustn’t distract me. One of the concerns about moving was that my grades might slide. I’ve got to get at least a
B
in Maths or Dad will kill me – Mum will hand him the knife.

I finish the first page and move on to the next. Harder questions and I get quite involved in one of them, so much so that I don’t realize it’s taken me fifteen minutes to get an answer and I’m not entirely convinced it’s the right one. I’ll check it later.

I glance over to Hannah, wondering how she’s doing, hoping she’s found something to answer. It’s all about getting started. Once she answers one question she’ll get in the zone, get calmer and the things that floored her at first won’t seem so daunting.

She’s not looking at the paper, which is pushed to one corner of her desk and threatening to slide off the edge. She’s simply staring straight ahead.

As I look, I see a tear trickle down her cheek. She sniffs, really quietly and presses the sleeve of her shirt to her nose. She can probably feel me looking, so I turn away, back to my paper. It’s not as if there’s anything I can do to help her.

FRIDAY 11
^TH
DECEMBER

HANNAH

It is 11 a.m. I have an appointment for my first scan in fifteen minutes’ time.

My life is such a mess. The only person on this planet who knows I’m pregnant, apart from the doctor and the midwives who’re always sucking the blood out of me and then checking the pressure to see if I’ve actually got any left, is my gran. My eighty-three-year-old gran, who lives in a semi-residential home and has to book trips out two days in advance, who is on so much medication I’m surprised that hugs from her aren’t on the list of banned substances for pregnant people.

The thought of telling Mum proper terrifies me now that I’ve left it so long – it’s like a rock at the bottom of my stomach. Last week I heard her talking to Robert whilst they watched the news. I was sitting in the dining room trying to jam something useful about Citizenship into my head, but the door was open and Mum talks loudly when she’s off on one.

“These politicians should come down to the clinic – see what it’s like on the frontline. Kids get no sex education any more – no wonder they’re all at it like rampant rabbits without a thought about the consequences. They need educating, by the system, by their parents. So what if the teen pregnancy rate is falling? It’s still the highest in Europe.”

“At least it’s going in the right direction.”

But Mum carried on like Robert hadn’t even said anything. “Do you know that some of them treat abortion as back-up birth control?”

“Rather that than there be no choice.”

“
Of course
.” I could almost hear the shudder in her voice. “If everyone who got themselves in a fix went through with the pregnancy…”

My ears started ringing, the blood rushing to my head in horror. But Robert was saying something and Mum’s rant changed direction.

“… no thought about what happens next. All they know is what they see on the Internet. Porn directors have taken on the role of parents, who just dodge the issue completely.”

Robert laughed and I only caught the last part of what he said. “… so hard trying to tell Jay.”

“Same with Hannah. Thank God those two have their heads screwed on.”

I cried myself to sleep that night.

Of course, there is also the issue of the Father. But whilst we’re on the subject of dads, there’s always mine lurking in the background to add a little turd to the icing on my fucked-up cake of awfulness. I got an email from him part-way through the exams.

Dear Hannah, here’s wishing you the best of luck in your exams. I know you’ll nail them. Luv, Dad
.

And there was an e-card with a four-leaf clover where the leaves peeled away to reveal a leprechaun dancing a jig with “All the luck o’ the Irish” in a speech bubble over his head.

Seriously. WTF?

“I know you’ll nail them” – really? Have you spoken to Mum recently? Have you seen my reports? Nail them in the sense of literally taking in a hammer and pounding the sheets to the desk with a nail?

“Luv” is a word used by boys when they’re too chicken to come out with the real thing on a Valentine’s card. It is not OK to use it to express fatherly affection at the end of an email.

The card. There are no words.

From where I’m sitting I can see the seconds ticking away and watch as the minute hand jerks forwards towards fifteen-minutes past the hour. I stare at the hand as it edges round until it’s nearly reached twenty past.

That’s when I look down from the far end of the hall to the English paper on my desk, a half-started sentence about
Macbeth
scrawled on the top of my sheet of paper. I have failed these exams and now I’ve failed my baby.

SECOND

FRIDAY 18
^TH
DECEMBER
LAST DAY OF TERM

AARON

“So are you coming out tonight or what?” Tyrone clamps a hand on my shoulder so hard that I have to suppress a wince. He has been uncomfortably nice to me since Rex’s party. I mean this in the most literal sense. I’ve endured nearly two months of regularly having his arm thrown round my shoulders, my back slapped, arm punched… Tyrone’s love hurts – and it’s earning me envious looks from the people who wish they had it. If only I could tell them that he’s doing this because he
doesn’t
like me, then the basketball lot could stop giving me death stares and go back to ignoring me… And then what would I do? Read books in my lunch hour and hang out with Neville until he falls asleep on his cards?

I don’t know. That sounds like a slippery slope to me. Better to have fake school friends than none at all.

It seems the way that everyone celebrates the end of term around here is much the same as they celebrate the end of a week. By going to the park. Joy. I pitch up late, having helped Neville seal and stamp his Christmas cards. There were more than I expected and I asked who they were for.

“Family,” was the gruff response, but after a little coaxing – and some of the Jack Daniel’s I’d planned on taking to the park – he warmed up and told me more.

“This one’s my brother. Greville.” I bit my lip and he nodded. “I know. Long story – and a boring one. You don’t need to worry about these two.” Both a “Mrs”, both in Scottish cities. “This one’s for my niece, Bea and her husband. Nice couple. This one’s for her ex-husband. Not a good husband, but a great nephew-in-law. He married the woman he was banging the day his kid was born.”