THERE’S no easy way for me to say this. You’re gonna go mental, so I’m just gonna give it to you straight. I’m pregnant.’
June Dawson felt bile rise from her stomach and reach the back of her throat. Dropping the dishcloth she’d been washing up with, she clung on to the worktop for physical support.
For a moment, she thought she was going to pass out. Breathing in deeply and blowing out slowly, she somehow managed to steady herself. As she turned around to face her daughter, she felt every hope and dream she’d ever nurtured for her fly straight out of the window.
Trying to speak, June found that her voice sounded anything but normal. She usually spoke loudly, but her words came out in no more than a whisper.
‘Is Billy the father?’
Debbie stood, hands on hips, staring defiantly into her mother’s eyes.
‘Of course he is. I love him, Mum.’
June fished around in the kitchen cupboards and found the bottle of brandy she kept there for cooking and medicinal purposes. She and her husband only ever drank socially.
June poured herself a large glass and downed it in one, then immediately knocked back another. She was in that much shock, she could quite easily have swallowed the whole bloody bottle. With the drink going straight to her head, her voice suddenly came back and she decided to say her piece.
‘You’re gonna have to get rid of it, Debbie. You’re eighteen years old, with your whole life ahead of you. Don’t sell yourself short and end up with a no-good arsehole like Billy McDaid. He’s a wrong ’un love, everybody says so, and far too old for you. He’ll run a mile once he knows you’re pregnant. You mark my words, he’ll be off like a shot. Blokes like him are all the same.’
Blinded by love and obstinate by nature, Debbie glared defiantly at her mother.
‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong, Mum. Billy already knows about the baby and he’s over the moon. He’s dying for it to be born and can’t wait to become a father. I love him so much and I’m keeping the baby whatever you say. You’re just gonna have to accept it, or you’ll end up losing me and your unborn grandchild. As for calling Billy a wrong ’un … you’d know all about that, Mother, wouldn’t you?’
June looked at her daughter with a mixture of pity and disgust. She needed to talk to her Peter. He would know how to handle the situation.
‘Get out of my sight, Debbie. You wait till Peter gets home from work. I’m gonna tell him what you said to me and he won’t be very happy.’
‘As if I bloody well care! He’s hardly me father now, is he?’ Debbie screamed, and slammed the kitchen door.
June sat down at the table, put her head in her hands and sobbed. Both her children had now fucked their lives up, and she wondered where she’d gone so bloody wrong.
She’d disowned Mickey, her son, a while back, when he’d got caught hijacking a lorry load of cigarettes with a gang of well-known villains he’d been knocking about with.
Her Peter had gone totally apeshit and demanded she wash her hands of the lad. It hadn’t helped that the story was front-page news in the local paper. She and Peter had had to endure the shame, stares and gossip for weeks.
Unbeknown to her husband, though, June still discreetly enquired after Mickey. She’d heard through the grapevine that he was due out of prison in the next few weeks. He’d served his sentence in Wormwood Scrubs and had written to her from here a couple of times, pleading with her to visit him. June had tearfully read the letters that her first-born had sent and felt nothing but love and compassion for the son she still adored. But, after careful consideration, she’d torn them up and severed all contact with him.
It had been the hardest decision she’d ever had to make, but in her eyes it was the only one left to her. She’d had to choose her husband over her son.
Now the same thing was going to happen with Debbie, Peter was gonna go mad when he heard she was pregnant. Unless Debs agreed to get rid of the baby, June knew that he would make her daughter move out of the house.
Peter wasn’t an ogre, just a strict, highly regimented man of integrity, with a high opinion of himself and his family. He was also preparing to stand as a Tory councillor in the forthcoming local election and certainly wouldn’t welcome any bad press.
June poured herself another brandy, dreading what was to come. Without Peter she was nothing, a nobody. In many ways he’d been the making of her. He’d turned her from a rough East End girl into a respectable member of the community. He’d moved her from a shit-hole house in Poplar to a nice little cul-de-sac in Rainham. He’d taken on her kids as his own and given her a purpose in life, a chance to better herself, and she’d grasped that opportunity with both hands. She couldn’t throw it all back in his face by siding with Debbie, she just couldn’t. Not when her daughter was making the biggest mistake of her life.
Debbie lay on her bed. She felt like crying with frustration. She bit her trembling lip as hard as she could and drew blood. The pain stopped the tears from coming. She knew there was going to be a showdown when Perfect Peter walked through the door.
Well, he wasn’t her dad and she was sick of jumping to his bloody tune. This baby was hers, and she wasn’t taking shit off no one. He’d been good to her, had Peter, but his attitude really wound her up. Both he and her mother were shoved so far up their own arses, it was as though reality didn’t exist for them. In their world, dinner parties, Masonic events, local politics and golf club meetings were much more important than what was going on in the real world.
Debbie had never had the pleasure of meeting her real father. She’d been only eighteen months old when he’d kicked the living daylights out of her mum and brother and left the house for the last time. Her brother Mickey, who was seven years older than she was, remembered him well and said he’d been an out and out cunt, a total scumbag.
Johnny Fuller was his name and part of Debbie wished she’d had the chance to meet him. Just the once would have done the trick. It would have satisfied her burning curiosity to know exactly where she came from.
She had no chance of that now, though. Six months ago her father had been found dead outside a betting shop in Whitechapel. He’d died of a single stab wound, a homeless alcoholic.
As Debbie heard the front door bang downstairs, she forgot about her real dad. Pulling the quilt over her head, she prepared herself for one of her stepfather’s lectures.
Twenty minutes later, there was a tap-tap on her bedroom door, and a surprisingly calm Peter entered her room. Perching himself on the end of her bed, he came straight to the point.
‘If you decide to have an abortion, Debbie, your mother and I will give you our one hundred per cent support. I’ll pay, send you to the best private clinic available, and your mum and I will accompany you, so you won’t have to go through this alone. However, if you are adamant about keeping the baby, then I’m afraid you’ll be on your own. Your mum and I will have no option other than to wash our hands of you.’
Debbie took a deep breath as she pulled down the quilt and prepared to stand her ground.
‘Look, Peter, I know I’m only young, and I appreciate your concern and Mum’s, but I want this baby. I love Billy and he loves me. What can be so wrong about two people in love having a baby together?’
