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 was how things were and they didn’t bother Ruth, but she kept this to herself.
‘Matt was talking about dropping out,’ Vicky carried on. ‘He says the course is shit and that all the lecturers are on ego trips and can’t be bothered to teach undergraduates. As a student you’re just revenue to the university and loan bait to the banks. He was talking about this commune his friend lives on down in Sussex—they make cheese and stuff and sell it. He was talking about going to live down there for a while; getting his head straight.’ Vicky paused. ‘He was talking about me maybe going with him.’
‘Vicky, you can’t—’
‘Why not?’
‘Girls!’
It was Ms Hadley—popularly referred to as Bride of Quasimodo—a disabled teacher who’d been hired, impressively, well before the era of equal opportunities. She taught English, had goggle eyes and crutches, the rubber stoppers on the bottom of them sounding strange as she made her way through the fog towards them. In Year 7, Ruth had locked her in the book cupboard and hidden her crutches. She’d scared herself—it stood out as the singular large-scale act of cruelty in her life so far, and she still didn’t know what came over her that day.
‘Are you seriously thinking about not going to university?’ Ruth whispered.
‘I’m seriously thinking about not even finishing my A Levels.’
‘Vick—’
‘I just want to be with Matt.’
‘But what would you do on this commune?’
‘I don’t know—make cheese?’
