Mum was sitting at the top of the stairs, waiting for fresh confirmation of her clairvoyant abilities. ‘OK,’ she said, not even needing to ask me the result. ‘So come and sit next to me for a bit.’
‘I might be better off throwing myself down there,’ I said, as I squeezed in next to her.
I looked at the sunlight coming through the front door and realised I’d never once sat on the top step before. Our hallway looked strange and unfamiliar but I wasn’t quite sure if it was the vantage point that was new, or whether it was because my life had changed so fundamentally in the last few minutes that everything simply looked different.
‘So what now?’ I asked.
Mum shrugged and put one arm round my shoulders. ‘What do you want to do?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, again, fighting back tears. ‘I can’t even…’
‘Well, the options aren’t that complicated, sweetheart. You can have it on your own, or you can tell Billy and try to have it with him. Or you can… you know… get rid of it. You’re nice and early on, so…’
‘Billy,’ I said.
‘I’m assuming… I mean… It’s his, yeah?’
I couldn’t bring myself to reply. Tears dribbled from the corners of my eyes, then ran down my cheeks.
‘Oh,’ Mum said. She gave my shoulder a squeeze, and I started to cry properly again.
‘Is it Rob’s?’ Mum asked. ‘Is that it? Or is it someone else’s? Maybe there are others? I mean, what do I know?’
‘Mum!’ I spluttered. ‘No, there aren’t any others! But I don’t know. I can’t be sure.’
‘You had unsafe sex wiv ’em both?’
‘It was only once or twice,’ I whispered. ‘With Billy, I mean. It was just, you know, when we were drunk, or one time we were almost asleep and… Sometimes it just slipped in.’
Mum fanned herself with her fingers. ‘Lordy,’ she said. ‘OK.’
‘And Rob, well, it was just that one time.’
‘And no condom then, either?’
‘I was going to tell him to pull out. I was going to tell him to stop. It’s just…’
‘Hey, I’m not telling you off,’ Mum said. ‘I’m just asking what happened.’
‘With Rob, it just happened really fast,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t expecting him to… you know… come that fast. I don’t think he was either.’
‘Right,’ Mum said. ‘Well, that’s a bit messy, really, isn’t it.’
I would have laughed at Mum’s accidental double entendre. Becausemessywas exactly what it had been. But I felt too ashamed to laugh. I could feel my skin burning up.
Mum gave my shoulder another squeeze and then released me.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘Listen. These things happen. If anyone knows that, I do.’
Because I loved her so much in that moment, I dropped my head onto her shoulder. I’d seen this scene hundreds of times, on TV and in films. I’d seen silly girls tell their parents they were pregnant over and over, but I’d never seen a parent say, ‘These things happen.’ In that moment, I thought my mother was amazing.
‘Was Gran this cool when you got pregnant with me?’ I asked. I wasn’t sure quite where the question had come from. We never talked much about Mum’s own single-parent childhood. Perhaps I was trying to work out why she’d reacted so well.
Mum laughed at that. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, your grandmother wasn’t coolat all. She threw me out of the house.’
‘God, really?’ I said. ‘That’s outrageous.’
‘Itwasoutrageous. Especially seeing as she wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue herself, as you know.’
