‘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. AAB.’
‘Oh, clever clogs. Two degrees in one.’
‘I wouldn’t say—’
She cut me off. ‘That means you are literally twice as clever as I am.’ If she believed this to be true, it didn’t seem to bother her; she took a sip from her wine glass, winced at it.
‘Or half as focused,’ I said. I thought a self-deprecating quip was obligatory. Where I came from, no one liked a show-off. Being too big for your boots was frowned upon; getting above yourself was a hanging offence. Abi pulled a funny face that said she didn’t believe me for a moment; more, that she was a bit irritated that I’d tried to be overly modest.
‘OK, that’s the bullshit out of the way,’ she said with a jaded sigh. She didn’t even bother to introduce herself to the geology students. I glanced at them apologetically as she scoured the bar. ‘Who do you fancy?’ she demanded.
‘Him,’ I replied with a grin, pointing to a hot, hip-looking guy.
‘Come on then, let’s go and talk to him.’
‘Just like that?’ I know my face showed my astonishment.
‘Yes. I promise you, he’ll be more than grateful.’
She made me laugh. All the time. Her direct, irreverent tone never faltered, never flattened, not that evening or for the rest of the year. We did talk to the hot, hip guy; nothing came of it, I didn’t really want or expect it to, but it was fun. We spoke to him and maybe ten other people. It quickly became apparent that Abigail oozed cool self-belief; she thought the world was hers for the taking, and it was a fair assessment. She was charming and challenging, full of bonhomie and the sort of confidence that is doled out in private-school assemblies. The best bit was, she seemed happy for me to hitch along for the ride.
It was Abi who persuaded me to join the debating society and she was the one who insisted we went to the clubs in town, rather than just limit ourselves to the parties that bloomed in the university common rooms. She did all the student things like three-legged pub crawls and endless themed parties but she also insisted we did surprising stuff, like visit the city’s museums and art galleries. Some people whispered that she was pretentious; they resented the fact that she only enjoyed listening to music on vinyl and was fussy about the strength of coffee beans; she refused to drink beer, sticking exclusively to French red wine; she rarely ate. She was, by far, the most interesting person I’d ever met.
We became close. She wasn’t my only friend or even my best friend but she was my favourite. I sometimes found it a bit exhausting to keep up with her and while she signed up for the university’s dramatic society, I was content to sit in the audience and watch her play a shudderingly shocking Lady Macbeth. I joined her on the coach to London and protested outside Parliament