Ben (5 page)

Inside wasn’t much better. It was clean enough, although whatever money Shaun earned wasn’t spent on the décor. But then Jane showed us to our room, we closed the door and for a few minutes all my worries faded away.

‘We’ve done it,’ Simon said. ‘We’re on our own.’

It wasn’t how I’d imagined it but he was right. We’d left home, we had our independence and we were together. We were seventeen and eighteen years old. What else did we need?

To my dismay, rather than join Steve, Simon was persuaded by Shaun to work with him selling domestic goods door-to-door. Pegs, dishcloths, washing agents, that sort of thing. Despite initial reservations, we settled into a rhythm. He was pulling in a wage and I was helping Jane with the household chores and looking after
their daughter. Everything was great. But then I’d step outside the front door to go to the shops and I’d know I was kidding myself.

We’d moved in at the weekend, but even midweek there were just as many kids running around, and just as many mums yelling, ‘Get in here, you bleeder!’ from their verandas. I hated it. Hated being there and even began to hate Simon for bringing me there.

On our third night I said to him, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t live here.’

He just smiled. ‘It’s only for a little while. Till I get a proper job and we find a place of our own. Don’t worry, we won’t be staying.’

Then he kissed me and everything was all right. He was such a romantic and so positive and when we were together it rubbed off on me. I believed him. I believed in him. But when I was on my own, the fears would come again.

I didn’t like the flat, but I hated being outside more. Despite this, I found myself a job waiting on tables at a local restaurant called Sharavale. It wasn’t ideal but I had experience, and it got me out of the concrete jungle for a few hours. At the end of every shift, though, I’d have the same sense of dread as I pictured the walk home.

After a month of this, it didn’t matter if Simon was in or not when I arrived home. I didn’t want to be there. After three months I was completely stressed. I was off coffee, tea. I could barely eat anything.

The worst thing was not being able to confide in Jane. I could hardly tell her that her house and her area were making me ill. We were together for so long during the day and I was obviously suffering, so I would have to say something. But what?

In the end, it was actually Jane who approached me. I couldn’t believe what she said.

‘Kerry, I think you’re pregnant.’

The idea of popping into Superdrug for an off-the-shelf pregnancy test kit never occurred to me. I don’t think I even knew they existed. As far as I was concerned, if you wanted to know if you were pregnant you had to go to the doctor’s. So, more for Jane’s sake than mine, I made an appointment. Off I went thinking,
What a waste of time.

I knew I couldn’t be pregnant because I was on the pill. I hadn’t been sick, in the morning or any other time. I hadn’t skipped a period and I certainly didn’t have any sign of a bump.

It took twenty minutes to walk to the surgery – and only half that time to get home, because I skipped all the way. I couldn’t help it: I was on cloud nine. I was seventeen and the doctor had been adamant. The test was positive.

I
was
pregnant.

It was the happiest day of my life and for a couple of hours it was my secret. How would everyone else react? Jane was great, very supportive. But I dreaded telling my parents. I was too young. I was just a child myself. What did I know about being a mum? I knew what they would say before I even picked up the phone.

And then there was Simon. I knew he had dreams of a family life, but not yet. We weren’t ready. We didn’t have our own home. We could barely support ourselves. How on earth would we cope with a baby?

Obviously Simon had to be told first. I worked out exactly how I was going to do it. I would make his dinner, set the table, create the right mood. And pray he didn’t say, ‘Get rid of it.’

By the time I was halfway through chopping carrots I was trembling so much the knife was missing as many pieces as it hit. I’d never been more nervous about anything. I looked at the clock. Half an hour till he arrived home. There was nothing else to do but wait. Wait and wait.

The plan was, let Simon settle down to his meal, ask him about this day, and build up to it. This wasn’t the sort of news he should have to deal with as soon as he stepped through the door.

Part one went to plan. I heard the key in the front door and let Simon get all the way into the kitchen before I said, ‘Simon, I’ve got something to tell you.’ Even before he’d realised I hadn’t simply said, ‘Hello’, I added, ‘I’m pregnant!’

I couldn’t help it. I just blurted the words out. ‘I’m going to have a baby.
We’re
going to have a baby.’

And then I waited. Poor Simon was shell-shocked. He hadn’t even got his boots off yet. He pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and fell into it. I tried reading his face. It was blank. Illegible. I wished he’d respond, one way or other. The suspense was criminal.

I watched as Simon ran his hand through his hair. He sighed, loud and meaningfully, then, at last, he spoke.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I went to the doctor’s.’

‘I thought you were on the pill.’

‘I am.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘I wanted to be sure.’

He sighed again, louder and longer this time, like all the air was being blown out of him. My heart sank. He wasn’t happy. He was going to say I’d conned him by getting pregnant. He was going to say we had to abort it. I realised I was holding my breath.

‘Well,’ he said, finally. ‘I suppose we need to find somewhere to live then.’

For the second time in a day, I was the happiest person in the world.

My smile almost vanished a few days later when my blood test came back from the lab. For a moment I thought the doctor had said I was already four and a half months gone. That was impossible. I would have noticed.

He smiled. ‘There’s no doubt about it, Kerry. You’ll be a mum before Christmas.’

For the first time I had a real sense of panic. We no longer had most of a year to find a decent home for our new baby, like we’d thought. We had a month or two. Could we find anywhere in that time and get it ready for a baby? And then there was my waitressing job. I’d have to think about giving that up sooner rather than later, but I needed the money. We didn’t have a thing for a baby. No home, no cot; not even a bottle.

There were a few stressful days at Jane’s after that. I couldn’t help telling Simon he would have to pull his finger out, even though I knew he was doing his best. I admit I was beginning to get frightened
– we both were, I realised later – and I suppose we took it out on each other. It didn’t help that his work was taking him further and further from Sheffield. Sometimes he’d have to stop over in Birmingham or Wales, and I wouldn’t see him for two or three nights. When we did, our money worries and home problems just caused more rows. And then one day, we just stopped arguing.

It was at the hospital. I’d gone for my scan. Most women have one at twelve weeks but I was way beyond that. Simon came with me and held my hand as the nurse lifted my top back and rubbed the cold gel on my tummy. Then we both looked at each other open-mouthed as she started probing the gel with what looked like a TV remote control and images began to flicker on the screen next to her.

For a few seconds the nurse didn’t say anything. She just stared at the monitor as she jabbed the remote control this way and that on my belly. I couldn’t make out what she was looking at. To me, it looked like television interference. Then she stopped moving her hand and said, ‘Found you!’

That’s when I realised she wasn’t talking to me or Simon. She was talking to our baby.

‘There’s the heart, can you see it?’

I thought she was having me on. I honestly did. I could only see a snowstorm on the screen. I looked at Simon. He was obviously seeing the same swirling mess as I was. I started to get anxious. What was I doing wrong?

And then for some reason my eyes just focused and I saw him. A tiny little shape: little hands, little feet, little head; folded over and bobbing around. And there was the heart. Pulsing and throbbing.

It was my baby.

There were all these questions I wanted to ask but my mouth was just hanging open. I was watching my little baby in my tummy and I already knew I loved him. And I loved Simon too. Watching him, watching our baby, all the arguments of the last few days disappeared. Look what we’d made together! That was the only thing that mattered in the world. He wasn’t even born yet, but our baby had the power to bring us together.

Simon was obviously motivated by the experience because a couple of days later he announced we had a new home. It took me under an hour to pack. Thirty minutes after that, we were standing outside a block of flats.

We were only a short walk from Jane’s place in Pitsmoor so I knew it was never going to be a palace. But when we walked in the front door, I burst into tears. It was disgusting. The carpets felt like they’d been soaked in superglue, sticky with God-knows-what. There were tea or beer stains splashed head-height up the walls and the furniture stank. Of what, I couldn’t bear to imagine.

‘I can’t bring my baby to live here!’

Simon was as horrified as I was. He denied it, but I don’t think he had actually visited before agreeing to move in. Still, it was all we could afford. ‘We can make this work, Kerry,’ he promised. ‘Trust me.’

Still wiping back the tears, I listened to Simon’s plans. He was going to strip the walls, hang wallpaper, paint the doors. There were decorating grants you could get if you were on a low income. ‘And look at the size of the rooms,’ he said. ‘You said you wanted somewhere bigger.’

In the end it wasn’t anything Simon said that persuaded me to
put my bags down; it was the realisation that however bad the flat was, it was our own. It was somewhere we could bring our little baby, close the door and be a family. That was all that mattered.

All mums-to-be get that ‘nesting’ instinct, and that took over. We spent the whole day scrubbing and cleaning and washing the kitchen and bathroom, and then I did it all over again the following day. Then we moved on to the rest of the place. The previous tenants hadn’t cleaned a day in their life. I was on my hands and knees pregnant, with my little bump finally showing.

By the end of the weekend, Simon had even started painting so it really began to feel and smell more like a home. Now I could do something I’d been putting off for weeks – for months, in fact. I could tell my mum and dad.

I don’t know why I hadn’t already. I suppose I didn’t want them to be disappointed in me and I knew they would have been if they’d seen where I lived before. They’d have demanded I return home with them and I would have gone, and that would have been the end of my independence. But now we’d made our little flat okay, I could do it. I could honestly say I was all right. I missed them like crazy but I was standing on my own two feet – just – and I was happy.

I forced myself to go for a walk and I found a phone box. It was the height of summer so just getting out of the house was gruelling. I had a bag of ten-pence pieces and I knew Mum’s number. All I had to do was pick up the phone. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. That phone felt so heavy. I fished a coin from the bag and held it over the slot. Then I dialled the number I knew off by heart, and prayed no one would answer.

‘Hello?’

On those old phones you had a few seconds after making a connection to insert your money. I nearly chickened out. Five minutes later, I realised I’d been worrying over nothing. Once Mum had got over the shock of being told she was going to be a grandparent in a couple of months, she switched into practical mode.

‘Move back in with us. We’ll help you. You can’t be on your own at seventeen and raise a baby.’

I really, really wanted to say yes. Right then, in that phone box on that estate in Pitsmoor, I couldn’t think of anything better. For me, or my baby.

‘Kerry, are you there?’

I realised I was staring at the phone. If I waited long enough the pips would sound and Mum would be cut off. I was tempted to let that happen, I really was. Then I wouldn’t have to decide.

But I owed it to Mum to talk. So I said, ‘I can’t move back with you, Mum. I’m with Simon now. I’ve made my life. I’ll be all right.’

Going back to Chapel St Leonard would have been embarrassing, but there was no problem seeking help from the family already in Sheffield. I began to spend more and more time visiting my grandma. Jane, too, even though she was technically Simon’s family, was always good to see – although at my place, not hers. It was she who gave me the most bits and bobs for the baby. They were all hand-me-downs but beggars can’t be choosers. It was also Jane who asked the question no one else had dared mention:

‘Are you sure you want to keep it?’

My hand flew instantly to my bump. ‘It’s too late for an abortion, Jane. I’m seven months.’