‘You can’t,’ Ruth said as the colour left Vicky’s face and she started retching uncontrollably over the hedge, shaking with the force of it.
‘Vick?’ Ruth, worried, pulled back as much of Vicky’s hair as she could while Vicky held onto the street sign for Ypres Drive, panting and waiting for the shaking to subside. This part of Burwood had been developed in the sixties and seventies, built on land once farmed by tenant farmers who lost their lives in the First World War. Without the men to labour on it, the land became untenable. By the time there was the labour force the world had changed and the men had changed with it.
‘Tissue,’ she said, through her nose, trying not to swallow in case it triggered another gag reflex.
‘It’s got Olbas oil on it,’ Ruth said, trying to shake the pencil shavings off. ‘Mum got a box of them when I had flu that time.’
‘I don’t care what it’s got on it, I’m puking my guts up here, Ruth.’
Vicky blew her nose, wiped her mouth then spat into the tissue before pushing it into the hedge.
‘D’you think you should go in today?’
‘I’m fine. Apart from the fact that my mouth tastes disgusting.’ She took a bottle of water from her bag, swilling a couple of mouthfuls and spitting them into the hedge as well.
‘You just puked in a hedge, Vick.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re taking too much Valium.’
They started to move away then stopped suddenly as the front door opened and Mr Sutton appeared, carrying his bicycle over the threshold.
Ducking again, they watched him try to put on his helmet, struggling with the catch until, frustrated, he finally managed to get it done up. Then he switched on his lights and cycled off into the fog, the red light on the rear of the bicycle blinking at them.
‘They’re never going to last,’ Ruth said again as the red light disappeared.
Vicky didn’t say anything. She took a couple more sips of water and held onto her stomach. Her throat hurt and she could taste nothing but vomit.
They started walking in the direction of school again—Ruth waiting for Vicky to comment on the row they’d just witnessed.
‘What if I’m pregnant?’
Ruth stopped. ‘Pregnant?’
‘The puke—that’s the second time this morning—and I’m late.’
‘How late?’
‘About four days.’
‘Is that normal?’
‘No.’
Vicky carried on walking and Ruth had to break into a run to catch up. ‘Wait—Vick!’ She was about to grab hold of Vicky’s arm when her phone started to ring.
‘Are you getting that?’
‘Like—no. I mean—’
‘What?’
‘Could you be—pregnant?’
The phone stopped ringing.
Vicky nodded.
Ruth rounded on her. ‘You and Matt? You never said anything.’
‘You know—when I went up to town for that party in Pentonville with those weird Welsh guys.’
Ruth took this in. ‘So—have you said anything to Matt?’
‘What—about being four days late? I’m not filling his head with all this shit just because I’m late.’
‘You’re the one who said you thought you were pregnant.’ Ruth paused. ‘You did take precautions, right?’
‘Like, no—of course.’
‘So how could you be pregnant?’
‘It’s only like ninety-eight percent protection. Maybe I’m the two percent that got away.’
‘Ninety-eight percent?’
‘You never read the back of the packet?’ Vicky broke off. ‘We talked about babies and stuff—that weekend.’
‘You only just started sleeping with him.’
Vicky shrugged.
They passed the school coaches that brought girls from outlying villages, parked on Richmond Road, and the pavements became suddenly dense with girls from the lower and middle schools, in uniform.
They turned in at the school gates, making their way in the same direction as the rest of the morning traffic between borders full of pruned rosebushes towards the main building. The younger girls walked in clusters, fast, socks falling down, bags slipping off shoulders and hair coming loose from clips and bands they were only just learning how to put in themselves.
A teacher, semi concealed by the wall of uniformed bodies, called out, ‘Come along, girls.’
‘You should take a test, Vick.’
‘I’ll give it a few more days.’
‘There’s a chemist up on Grace’s estate—it’s where everyone goes.’
‘Who’s everyone?’
‘Come on—you know what I mean,’ Ruth lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘That’s where Tina Branston went.’
‘So that’s like—what—one other person?’
Ruth didn’t say anything.
‘Move along girls,’ the same teacher called out again.
Vicky had a sudden memory of walking through reception at the end of the summer term and seeing Tina Branston there, so heavily pregnant she could barely walk. Flanked by a teacher, she was en route to the isolation room opposite the Head’s office where she sat all her GCSE exams so as not to be a distraction—or pollutant—to the other girls. Vicky remembered catching Tina’s eye—and being the first to look away.
‘You make it sound like people are heading in their droves up to the chemist on Meadowfield Estate when you’re talking about one other person. Tina fucking Branston.’
‘Sorry,’ Ruth mumbled. ‘Anyway this is totally different to Tina Branston. I mean, as of January you’ll be able to vote, have a credit card, get married—you’re practically adult. Tina was like only sixteen or something. Plus she didn’t even know who the father was. Plus you don’t even know if you’re pregnant.’
‘Tina Branston had a boy,’ Vicky said. ‘She posted a picture of him on her Facebook.’
‘How come Tina’s got computer access? I thought she was meant to be like completely poverty-stricken?’
‘You can pick up a computer for like a couple of hundred quid, Ruth, or maybe she stole it—I don’t know, but the point is she posted it there for everyone to see and it was like, fuck you all, I did it, I’m happy. Now what are you going to do about it?’
‘Yeah—’ Ruth said, unconvinced.
‘And people said some real shit about her.’
‘Vick—we said some real shit about her. In fact, we said some real shit to her.’
‘Don’t you sometimes wonder?’ Vicky carried on, no longer interested in Tina Branston.
‘About what?’
‘About the point of all this?’
Ruth took in the parked bicycles in the shed and lines of girls moving towards the group of Victorian buildings whose roofs were barely visible in the fog. This