‘No she doesn’t,’ Audrey said, wriggling out from under her bed with her guinea pig in her arms. ‘She smells lovely, don’t you, baby?’ She buries her head in Beyoncé’s fur and makes a load of kissy noises.
I pull a face and plonk myself in the desk chair, wheeling it with my feet into the centre of the room. ‘Never mind Beyoncé,’ I say. ‘What the flip is going on, Audrey?’
‘How do you mean?’ Audrey asks as she reaches for a cotton bud from my open makeup bag on our shared desk/dressing table and proceeds to clean the goop from Beyoncé’s permanently gluey right eye.
‘How do you think I mean?’ I ask. ‘Everyone’s going around acting like Grace being up the duff is no big deal. Do you know what Mum and Grace are doing right now? They’re downstairs cooing over pushchairs, Auds. Pushchairs! And Dad just took Sam down the pub and was acting all matey with him. What happened to them being angry?’
‘I don’t know. They must have just got over it.’
‘Got over it? Got over it? Audrey, you don’t just “get over” the fact your teenage daughter has a big fat bun in the oven. That’s not how it works. I mean, Grace has totally ruined her life!’
‘What makes you say that?’ Audrey asks, looking up from Beyoncé’s gammy eye. She looks genuinely interested in my answer.
‘Duh. Of course she’s ruined her life. Babies wreck everything, everybody knows that.’
‘Having Grace at seventeen didn’t ruin Mum’s life,’ Audrey points out.
‘That’s different. Mum was at catering college when she got pregnant. Grace is meant to be going to like the most famous university in the world!’
I wonder what’s going to happen with that. As far as I know, people don’t take babies to uni with them. Which means Grace is going to have to stay here. At least maybe now Mum and Dad will get their fingers out and build that extension. After all, the baby is going to have to go somewhere. Oh God, what if they really can’t afford it and make me and Audrey swap rooms with Grace and the baby? I wouldn’t put it past them. We’ll have to sleep in bunk beds if we share Grace’s old room, and put all our stuff in storage. I shudder and push myself out of the chair into standing position.
‘Where are you going?’ Audrey asks.
‘To get to the bottom of this,’ I reply.
I march downstairs. Mum is in the kitchen, making tea.
‘Want one?’ she asks, waggling the box of tea bags at me.
‘No thanks,’ I reply, sitting down at one of the breakfast-bar stools.
She takes out two mugs, setting them down on the counter. I reach for the biscuit tin.
‘Don’t ruin your appetite,’ she says. ‘We’ve got an early dinner reservation.’
Her voice is calm and bright. It’s like yesterday didn’t even happen.
I take a chocolate bourbon from the tin anyway, prising apart the two pieces of biscuit and biting off the chocolate cream with my teeth.
‘About dinner,’ I say. ‘Since when did an unplanned pregnancy become something you celebrate over spaghetti carbonara and a tiramisu?’
Mum sighs. ‘Not now, Mia.’
‘It’s just that if I came home one day and announced I was pregnant, you’d go mental. You’d probably never let me leave the house again. You certainly wouldn’t be booking a table at Soprano’s.’
‘It would be a totally different situation, Mia. You’re sixteen.’
‘Nearly seventeen. And is it totally different?’ I ask, leaning forward. ‘I mean, is it, Mum? Really?’
Mum folds her arms. ‘I think we both know the answer to that, don’t you?’
‘Whatever,’ I say, prodding at the fruit in the fruit bowl. The bananas have black speckles all over them and feel mushy to the touch.
‘The fact is,’ Mum says, ‘Grace is a nineteen-year-old woman. And no, perhaps it’s not ideal timing, but she and Sam have thought all of this through very carefully, and as loving parents, your dad and I are going to support them one hundred per cent.’
‘Of course you are,’ I mutter. ‘Anything for Amazing Grace.’
Mum pours hot water from the kettle into the assembled mugs. Some of it splashes on her hand, making her swear under her breath.
‘What do you want from me, Mia?’ she asks, running her hand under the cold-water tap. ‘Do you want me to ground Grace? Send her to her room? Take away her pocket money? She’s an adult now, remember. And guess what, you’re not.’
‘Gosh, really?’ I say, with a mock-gasp. ‘Oh my God, I had no idea. I guess that explains why you treat me like a five-year-old half the time.’
Mum turns off the tap and glares at me. In addition to whining, she also hates sarcasm, especially when it’s coming out of my mouth. She appears to hesitate for a moment before falling back on her most common refrain (at least it is where I’m concerned):
‘Grow up, Mia.’
6
I spend the rest of the afternoon at the bottom of the garden sunbathing in my bikini. For a bit, I chat over the fence to our next-door neighbour, Paul, while he waters his lawn.
As Paul makes small talk about the weather and Mum and Dad’s wedding, it’s blatantly obvious he’s trying really hard not to look at my tits, staring into my eyes so intently it’s almost like he’s trying to hypnotize me.
‘You still OK to babysit next month?’ he asks.
‘Sure. The fifteenth, right?’
I don’t normally like kids, but Duncan is nine and super-easy to look after. He lives with his mum most of the time, staying with Paul every other weekend. The moment I arrive to babysit he locks himself in his room with his Xbox and stays there all night. Plus, Paul has a really good Sky TV package (unlike at home where we’re total peasants and only have Freeview) and always lets me help myself to anything I want from the fridge.
Eventually Paul’s landline starts ringing and he has to go inside to answer it. He looks a bit gutted to have to cut our conversation short and I can’t help but smile as he slopes back towards the house, stealing an extra look at me over his shoulder before disappearing inside.
I’m getting comfortable on my towel when I notice Grace heading across the grass towards me.
Great.
I pick up my phone and pretend to be engrossed in a message.
‘Hey,’ Grace says, coming to a stop at my feet. There’s a sheen of sweat on her forehead.
‘Hey,’ I reply flatly, keeping my eyes on the screen.
‘How are you?’
‘Fine.’
‘What were you and Paul chatting about?’
‘None of your business.’
‘I see … How are things going with Jordan?’
‘We broke up.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. He’s a prick. Anyway, it was me that broke up with him. Look, did you want anything in particular? It’s just that you’re kind of blocking my sun.’
She takes a side step to the right. ‘I was just wondering if you fancied a drive out to Waterside,’ she says.
‘What for?’
‘We’re going to have a look at some baby stuff. You know, pushchairs and things. You don’t have to stay with us though, I mean, if you don’t want to. You can go off and do your own thing if you like and meet us later. Audrey’s coming.’
Part of me is tempted. I love going shopping at Waterside. But I know if I accept the invitation, Grace will interpret it as me being excited about this baby, which I am most definitely not.
‘No, thanks,’ I say. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
Her face falls and I’m pleased.
Another pause.
Grace swats at a fly. ‘Mia, have I done something to upset you?’
I sit up and push my sunglasses up onto my head. ‘Yes. You’ve come up smelling of roses yet again.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Like you don’t know.’
‘I don’t!’
‘In that case I’ll spell it out. If I got pregnant,
Mum and Dad would go ballistic and probably lock me up until the kid turns eighteen. You get pregnant and they’re practically leading a round of applause.’
‘No, they’re not. You’re totally exaggerating.’
‘Barely.’
‘I don’t know what you expect me to do, Mia. Force them to be madder with me?’
‘You could at least acknowledge the fact you’ve totally gotten away with this.’
‘Look, you weren’t there yesterday. You have no idea how hard it was to convince Mum and Dad we’re capable of having this baby.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Grace. All I know is that twenty-four hours later, they’re fine and dandy with it.’
She has the nerve to look confused. God, it’s irritating.
‘I just don’t get why it makes any difference to you,’ she says.
‘Because! It’s not fair!’
‘Oh, don’t be such a child, Mia. Why can’t you just be happy for me? For us?’
I roll my eyes.
‘All this added stress isn’t good for the baby,’ Grace adds.
I laugh. ‘Seriously? You’re using your unborn child to try and make me feel guilty now?’
‘I just don’t want to spend my pregnancy arguing about something I have no control over. If you have a problem with Mum and Dad’s reaction, take it up with them, not me.’
‘Fine. Forget I said anything.’ I flop back on my towel and pick up my phone.
‘You know,’ Grace says, tilting her head to one side. ‘I stupidly assumed you might have grown up in my absence.’
I ignore her and roll onto my front, inserting my earbuds and whacking up the volume on my phone to maximum. I wait a couple of beats before peeking over my shoulder. Grace is already halfway back to the house, her back as straight as a ruler, her head held high.
A few minutes later I hear the car reversing out of the driveway.
Good.
I wait a solid ten minutes before heading inside. I find a box of ice lollies jammed at the very back of the freezer. I pick a pineapple-flavour one and peel off the plastic wrapper.
I wander with it through the empty house, opening drawers at random, sifting through the unsorted post on the kitchen table (nothing for me, as per usual), checking my reflection in three different mirrors. My fingers are sticky from the ice lolly. On my way to the bathroom to wash my hands, I stop outside Grace’s room. The door is ajar. I hesitate before going inside.
It already smells of Grace again, her natural scent cancelling out mine. Plus something else. Or more accurately, someone else. Sam. His suitcase, a battered gunmetal grey Samsonite, is standing upright in the corner. It dawns on me he might be staying for longer than a weekend. Which is all I need. Our house is crowded enough as it is without an extra body in it.
The bed has been moved back to its original position. The Coke stain on the carpet is paler than it was yesterday but still visible. My eyes fall on Grace’s bedside table. Next to a glass of stale tap water is a glossy book entitled Pregnancy: Your Week-by-Week Guide. I pick it up and sit down on the bed. The cover is super-cheesy – an airbrushed photograph of a woman gazing lovingly down at her baby bump. I open it up to the page Grace has marked with a train ticket. The chapter heading is ‘Twenty-eight Weeks’.
Twenty-eight weeks. Is that how pregnant she is? I count on my fingers to convert the weeks into months. About six and a bit. That means she must have known she was pregnant before Christmas. I think of all those Skype calls home where she must have carefully hidden her belly from view while she talked to Mum and Dad. Liar, liar, pants on fire.
I start to read.
Congratulations, you’re two-thirds of the way there!
Yep, six months.
Your baby is about the size of a large aubergine.
A large aubergine? Wtf?
The opposite page is taken up by a really bad drawing of a baby in the womb, its head way out of proportion with the rest of its body, like an alien’s. It isn’t even vaguely cute.
Your baby has eyelashes and can blink his eyes …
So far, so creepy.
… and as his eyesight develops, he may even be able to see the light that filters in through your womb.
Really? How does that even work?
Your baby is regularly passing urine into the amniotic fluid.
I have no clue what amniotic fluid is, only that it sounds disgusting.
His heartbeat is getting stronger and can be picked up with a standard doctor’s stethoscope. If they’re lucky, your partner may be able to hear it by pressing their ear against your abdomen!
OK, I guess that’s sort of cool.
I turn the page. The next section is all about indigestion and heartburn and water retention. Gross.
I shut the book with a snap. The sun catches the sticky fingerprints I’ve left all over the cover.
I glance up. A photograph of a smiling Grace at her sixth form Leavers Ball looks down at me. In it she’s wearing an emerald-green one-shoulder dress that makes her skin gleam, her hair (then shoulder-length) piled on top of her head in the intricate up-do she begged me to do for her (if there’s one thing Grace isn’t good at, it’s hair – she can barely manage a ponytail). As I slide the book back onto the bedside table, I can feel her watching me from behind the glass, judging my skimpy bikini and sticky fingers.
I stand up straight, so my face is level with hers and we’re eyeballing each other, and try to pinpoint exactly where it all went wrong between me and my big sister.
7
‘Are you nearly ready?’ Audrey asks, hovering in the doorway of our room.
I’m sitting at the desk/dressing table we share, applying a coat of coral-pink lipstick.
‘Nearly,’ I say, pouting at my reflection in the mirror.
Audrey sits down on her bed, mesmerized as I apply a second layer. I’d forgotten how much she likes watching me doing my makeup.
‘Want some?’ I ask.
Her face lights up. ‘Really?’
‘Sure. Why not.’
I join her on the bed, holding her chin steady with one hand as I apply the lipstick to her plump mouth with the other.
‘Now rub them together like this,’ I say, demonstrating.
She copies me, then stands up and peers cautiously in the mirror. ‘Is it OK?’ she asks. ‘Do I look silly?’
‘Of course you don’t. That colour looks gorgeous on you.’
‘Girls!’ Dad hollers up the stairs. ‘We’re waiting.’
I check my appearance once more and follow Audrey out of the room.
Mum doesn’t like my outfit – I can tell by the way she looks me up and down as I clatter down the stairs, her disapproving eyes taking in the chunky heels, skintight jeans, cropped vest top and hint of leopard-print bra. If we weren’t already running late she’d send me straight back up to change, I bet.
Grace has swapped the stripy dress she was wearing earlier for a raspberry pink one in the same stretchy jersey material. Next to her, Sam is wearing jeans, a blue shirt, grey blazer and navy Converse trainers. He looks like an off-duty MP trying to be trendy and ‘down with the kids’ to attract young voters. Either that or a member of the world’s most boring boy band.
‘About time,’ Dad says as I reach the bottom of the stairs. ‘We were supposed to be out the door ten minutes ago.’
‘Sorry.’
Not sorry.
I’m about to step out the front door when Mum pulls on my arm, forcing me back into the hall.
‘Play nice tonight, OK?’ she says in a low voice.
‘But I’m always nice,’ I reply, tossing my hair over my shoulder and fixing her with a sugary sweet smile.
‘You know what I mean, Mia,’ she says, sighing.
There are too many of us to travel together so Mum goes ahead on her motorbike.
In the car, Grace gets the front seat. In the back, Sam volunteers to sit in the middle, apologizing profusely for accidentally touching my thigh while
putting on his seatbelt. He’s wearing aftershave. It smells clean and expensive.
Even though it’s still relatively early, Soprano’s is teeming with customers. In all the years we’ve been coming here, it hasn’t changed one bit. It’s dark and cosy with exposed brick walls and bunches of dusty plastic grapes hanging from the ceiling, interwoven with twinkling fairy lights. Italian accordion music is piped through massive speakers, the same few songs on loop – ‘That’s Amore’ and ‘Volare’ and ‘Quando, Quando, Quando’.
The owner, Mr Soprano Senior, bats away Dad’s apologies for being late and guides us to a round table in the centre of the restaurant. He congratulates Grace and pulls out a chair for her. Rolling my eyes, I sit down between Audrey and Sam.
Oversized leather-bound menus are distributed and drinks orders placed. Mum asks for a bottle of prosecco. When the waiter attempts to pour some for Grace, she puts her hand over the glass like a shield.
‘Not for me, thank you,’ she says.
‘Oh, go on,’ Mum says. ‘You can have a little one.’
‘Yeah, go on,’ Sam adds, rubbing the small of Grace’s back.
But my sister is resolute. ‘I know the guidelines say the odd glass is OK, but I don’t want to take any chances,’ she says.
I’ve only ever seen Grace drunk once and even then it was legal, on her eighteenth birthday. We had a party at the house and she drank too much white wine and puked in the rose bushes. She begged me not to tell Mum and Dad, desperate not to tarnish her perfect record of behaviour, despite the fact everyone knows it’s obligatory to get wasted on your eighteenth.
As the waiter makes his way round to me, I angle my glass towards him.
‘Just a small one for the two younger girls, please,’ Mum says.
‘But, Mum,’ I moan, ‘we’ve got the whole bottle to get through. It’s not like you and Dad can have any more; you’re both driving.’
‘I suspect that’s plenty for now,’ Mum says, smiling tightly at the waiter.
I lift up my glass to the candlelight. ‘But it’s barely a thimble’s worth,’ I say. ‘Two sips at the most. I’d have to be a Borrower to get pissed on this piddly amount.’