Abigail Curtiz owns one such moment.
When I told Abi that I was pregnant she was, obviously, all wide eyes and concerned. Shocked. Yes, I admit she was bubbling a bit, with the drama of it all. That was not her fault – we were only nineteen and I didn’t know how to react appropriately, so how could I expect her to know? We were both a little giddy.
‘How far on are you?’ she asked.
‘I think about two months.’ I later discovered at that point I was officially ten weeks pregnant, because of the whole “calculate from the day you started your last period” thing, but that catch-all calculation never really washed with me because I knew the exact date I’d conceived. Wednesday, the first week of the first term, my second year at university. Stupidly, I’d had unprotected sex right slap-bang in the middle of my cycle. That – combined with my youth – meant that one transgression was enough. And even now, a lifetime on, I feel the need to say it wasn’t like I made a habit out of doing that sort of thing. In all my days, I’ve had irresponsible, unprotected sex precisely once.
‘Then there’s still time. You could abort,’ Abigail had said simply. She did not shy away from the word. We were young. The power, vulnerability and complexity of our sexuality was embryonic, but our feminist rights were forefront of our minds. My body, my choice, my right. A young, independent woman, I didn’t have to be saddled with the lifetime consequences of one night’s mistake. There had been a girl on my course who’d had a scare in the first year. I’d been verbose about her right to choose and I’d been clear that I thought she should terminate the pregnancy, rather than her education. The girl in question had agreed; so had Abi and pretty much everyone who knew of the matter. She hadn’t been pregnant, though. So. Well, you know, talk is cheap, isn’t it? She’s the chief financial officer of one of the biggest international Fast-Moving Consumer Goods corporations now. I saw her pop up on Facebook a couple of years ago. CFO of an FMCG. I Googled the acronyms. She accepted my friend request, which was nice of her, but she rarely posts. Too busy, I suppose. Anyway, I digress.
I remember looking Abi in the eye and saying, ‘No. No, I can’t abort.’
‘You’re going ahead with it?’ Her eyes were big and unblinking.
‘Yes.’ It was the only thing I was certain of. I already loved the baby. It had taken me by surprise but it was a fact.
‘And will you put it up for adoption or keep it?’
‘I’m keeping my baby.’ We both sort of had to suppress a shocked snigger at that, because it was impossible not to think of Madonna. That song came out when I was about five years old but it was iconic enough to be something that was sung in innocence throughout our childhoods. The tune hung, incongruously, in the air. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that the irony hit me: an anthem of my youth basically heralded the end to exactly that.
‘OK then,’ she said, ‘you’re keeping your baby.’
Abigail instantly accepted my decision to have my baby and that was a kindness. An unimaginably important and utterly unforgettable kindness.
She didn’t argue that there were easier ways, that I had choices, the way many of my other friends subsequently did. Nor did she suggest that I might be lucky and lose it, the way a guy in my tutorial later darkly muttered. I know he behaved like an arsehole because before I’d got pregnant, he’d once clumsily come on to me one night in the student bar. I was having none of it. I guess he had mixed feelings about me being knocked up, torn between, ‘Ha, serves the bitch, right’ and ‘So, she does put out. Why not with me?’ I tell you, there’s a lot of press about the wrath of a woman scorned, but men can be pretty vengeful, too. Anyway, back to Abi: she did not fume that I was being romantic and short-sighted, the way my very frustrated tutor did when I finally fessed up to her, and nor did she cry for a month, the way my mother did. Which was, you know, awful.
She made us both a cup of tea, even went back to her room to dig out a packet of Hobnobs, kept for special occasions only. I was on my third Hobnob (already eating for two) before she asked, ‘So who is the dad?’ Which was awkward.
‘I’d rather not say,’ I mumbled.
‘That ugly, is he?’ she commented with a smile. Again, I wanted to chortle; I knew it was inappropriate. I mean, I was pregnant! But at the same time, I was nineteen and Abi was funny. ‘I didn’t even know that you were having sex with anyone,’ she added.
‘I didn’t feel the need to put out a public announcement.’
Abigail then burst into peels of girlish, hysterical giggling. ‘The thing is, you’ve done exactly that.’
‘I suppose I have.’ I gave in to a full-on cackle. It was probably the hormones.
‘It’s like, soon you are going to be carrying a great big placard saying, I’m sexually active.’
‘And careless,’ I added. We couldn’t get our breath now, we were laughing so hard.
‘Plus, a bit of a slag, cos you’re not sure who the daddy is.’
I playfully punched her in the arm. ‘I do know.’
‘Of course you do, but if you don’t tell people who he is, that’s what they’re going to say.’ She didn’t say it meanly, it was just an observation.
‘Even if I tell them who the father is, they’ll call me a slag anyway.’ Suddenly, it was like this was the funniest thing ever. We were bent double laughing. Which was odd, since I’d spent most of my teens carefully walking the misogynistic tightrope, avoiding being labelled a slag or frigid, and I’d actually been doing quite a good job of balancing. Until then. It really wasn’t very funny. The laughter was down to panic, probably.
The bedrooms in our student flat were tiny. When chatting, we habitually sat on the skinny single beds because the only alternative was a hard-backed chair that was closely associated with late-night cramming at the desk. The room that was supposed to be a sitting room had been converted into another bedroom so that we could split the rent between six, rather than five. We collapsed back onto the bed. Lying flat now to stretch out our stomachs that were cramped with hilarity and full of biscuits – and in my case, baby. I looked at my best friend and felt pure love. We were in our second year at uni; it felt like we’d known one another a lifetime. Uni friendships are more intense than any other. You live, study and party together, without the omniscient, omnipresent parental influence. Uni friends are sort of friends and family rolled into one.
Abi and I met in the student union bar the very first night at Birmingham University. Although I would not describe myself as the life and soul of the party I wasn’t a particularly shy type either; I’d already managed to strike up a conversation with a couple of geology students and while it wasn’t the most riveting dialogue ever, I was getting by. Then, Abigail walked up to me. Out of nowhere. Tall, very slim, the sort of attractive that girls and Guardian-reading boys appreciate. She had dark, chin-length, sleek, bobbed hair with a heavy, confident fringe. She was all angles, like a desk lamp, and it seemed remarkable that she was poised to shine her spotlight on me. She shot out her hand in an assured and unfamiliar way. Waited for me to take it and shake it. In my experience, no one shook hands, except maybe men in business suits on the TV. My dad was a teacher; he sometimes wore a suit, but mostly he preferred chinos and a corduroy jacket. I suppose he must have occasionally shaken the hands of his pupils’ parents, but I’d never seen anyone my age shake anyone else’s hand. Her gesture exuded a huge level of jaunty individuality and somehow flagged a quirky no-nonsense approach to being alive. Her eyes were almost black. Unusual and striking.
‘Hi. I’m Abigail Curtiz, with a Z. Business management, three Bs. You?’
I appreciated her directness. It was a fact that most of the conversations I’d had up until that point hadn’t stumbled far past the obligatory exchange of this precise information.
‘Melanie Field. Economics and business management combined.