Non Pratt - Trouble

Twenty-eight weeks along.

The baby weighs about 875 grams. (Although that doesn’t sound much for how big I look…)

It can open its eyes, suck its thumb and hiccup. (It hiccups a lot.)

It can dream, apparently. Presumably dreaming and waking are pretty much the same thing if all you’ve ever seen is the inside of a womb.

If it was born now it would have a ninety per cent chance of surviving, which sounds pretty good to me. Although don’t come out yet, little one, you hear me? You stay in there and cook until you’re done, yeah?

It hiccupped at me. I will take that as a sign of agreement.

When Dad drops me off at the home I stand at the bottom of the ramp and think about running away — of course I do — but Neville laid his soul at my feet with his confession and now I owe him mine.

May Neville forgive me the way that I can’t.

I sign in and head down to Neville’s room, but when I get there, I’m taken aback by the sight of him, diminished inside his clothes — and he’s wearing slippers, not shoes. Neville has always despised residents who spend their days in slippers and dressing gowns.

“Nice slippers.”

“Sod off.” He glares at his feet. “I might have peed in one of my shoes.”

I smile. “Let me know if you want me to get you a new pair.”

“Trust me, sunshine, your need is greater than mine.”

Laughing, I sit down in the other chair and look at him, noticing the bulge of an inhaler in the top pocket of his shirt. “You all right?”

“I’ll live.” And he coughs. A lot. I hand him the half-filled glass of water from the table, but he goes for the inhaler. “Doctor wants to put me on antibiotics, but I’ve told him where to go.”

“Is that such a good idea?”

“They give me the runs. I’m old, I’m slow. I don’t want to shit in my slippers now, do I? Won’t have anything to keep me feet warm.”

Can’t argue with that.

“What you told me — the other week?” I’m looking at the carpet, studying the pattern between my feet. “Thank you.”

“What for?”

“Trusting me not to let the truth change anything. For knowing I’d still come back and visit you the next week.”

“Only you didn’t…” But he’s only teasing.

Neville looks at me, his chest shaking with each breath, but his gaze steady. “Aaron. Whatever it is you’re going to tell me, I will still expect to see you next week. There’s nothing you can tell me that will change that.”

I close my eyes and take a leap of faith. It’s time to tell Neville how I killed my best friend.

I have just been to my first after-school netball match. No, that’s not an April Fool’s (I wish it was — netball is the most boring sport ever, although still better than an evening watching Aaron and Gideon geek out over retro sci-fi films). There’s loads of our year still hanging about at the bottom of the grounds and there’s a steady trickle of players leaving the changing rooms and heading down there. I won’t be going — me and Anj are going back to mine to make (and “taste”) party food for Lola’s birthday tomorrow — but I’m waiting in too obvious a place outside the changing rooms and Tilly from PSHE comes over to chat.

The chat is a formality. Really she just wants to feel the bump. She puts her bag down and bends over to stare at her hand as she presses it on my school shirt. “Weird!”

I don’t tell her that the baby moving around is way less weird than her touching my tummy.

When Anj “Player of the Season” storms out of the changing room, her joy on the court has turned to fury and she zones in on Tilly. “Why is everyone asking me if Gideon and Aaron are seeing each other?”

Tilly looks petrified, which is fair enough because Angry Anj is scary.

“Maybe-because-Katie-Coleman’s-been-telling-people-that-Aaron-left-his-last-school-after-he-was-bullied-for-coming-out?” It comes out as a continuous stream and Tilly holds her breath waiting for Anj’s response.

“Well, they’re just friends.”

“OK,” Tilly squeaks. “I wasn’t the one asking.”

“I know,” Anj says. “Sorry.”

Tilly makes a quick exit, off to find out where the party is. I feel a bit of a loser seeing her scuttling away to hang out with the cool kids when all I’ve got going on is a six-year-old’s party to plan. I guess that’s going to be my life from now on — may as well get used to it.

“That’s Tilly’s bag, isn’t it?” Anj is looking next to my left foot.

“Yes.”

She sighs. It’s not like anyone else is going to take it to her, so we follow the noise, not talking. I’m just piecing together what I think Katie’s up to. Spreading a believable rumour that Aaron’s gay (because let’s face it, that’s a conclusion I didn’t find it hard to jump to back in the day) kinda brings into question the possibility that he really is the father of my baby. Plus, this place is a bit backwards when it comes to coming out. Why else would Gideon still be looking for his first snog? He’s cute. I would. But no one has.

Katie’s voice is raised as we approach the crowd by the benches. She’s always needed to shout the loudest. She — and Marcy from the sounds of it — are teasing Tyrone, asking him if he’s had an AIDS test. It doesn’t take a genius to work out what she’s on about and I feel Anj tense next to me, her jaw tightening, her hand balling into a fist around the strap on Tilly’s bag.

“Seriously. Katie needs to see my mum for an education…” I murmur, but neither of us are laughing as we catch sight of the two girls.

Neither has seen us — we’re still on the outskirts. Marcy’s laughing so hard that she spills a splash of her drink over Tyrone as she says, “You going to start sweet-talking Gideon? Get him to join the basketball team?”

Anj is powering through the crowd, but man-mountain Mark Grey is in the way and no one’s moving for her and I want to be with her, fighting for my friends…

And then I hear Rex telling Tyrone to stop his girlfriend from talking out of her arse.

The crowd shivers out a delicious “Oooooooh!” and I’m standing on tiptoes, trying to see what’s happening. Tyrone’s looking cross, but it’s Marcy who’s really riled, though I can’t make out what she’s saying, because she’s kind of screeching… Tyrone’s actually holding her back from slapping Rex, I think…

“Rex is just jealous because Aaron’s hot for Tyrone!”

And that’s when the crowd goes silent. Because the person who says that is Katie. Rex’s girlfriend.

I catch a break and dart/barge in to stand next to Anj, peering through the bodies as Katie laughs at her own joke. The others look uncomfortable.

“He warned me.” Even though he’s speaking very quietly, I don’t think there’s a person here who doesn’t catch what Rex is saying — or the way Katie is looking at him.

All of sudden I feel sorry for him. Rex is not a bad guy — he doesn’t deserve a girlfriend who looks at him with such disgust.

“What are you talking about?” She almost spits at him as she says it.

“You screwed your best friend over and now you’re trying to screw Aaron. No one cares who he shags, but you’re wanging on like it’s something that matters.”

It seems Katie doesn’t have a comeback for the truth.

“Aaron was right all along. You can’t be trusted. You’d stab me in the back as soon as suck me off if you thought it’d score you some points.”

Katie opens her mouth, but before she can say anything, Rex has slid off the table and he’s walking away from her.

“Don’t bother following me, Katie. You’re a dirty little shit-stirrer. We’re done,” he calls, as he shoulders his way into the crowd. When he reaches me, he meets my eyes and smiles, a flat, disappointed smile that tells me that he knows. He understands. I glance back at Katie, who is trying to act like she couldn’t care less that she’s just been ditched in the most public way possible. But she does care, because she is scanning the crowd where Rex left and she catches my eye.

The thing about being friends with someone for so long is that you know them. And I know that she is thinking the same thing I am: if Katie is no longer Rex’s girlfriend, will Marcy still let her hang out with them?

Although I want Katie to fall — I want her to feel a fraction of the misery she caused me — I want her to stay safely in Marcy’s good books. If she feels herself slipping out, then there’s no telling what she’ll do to get back in… No telling whose reputation she’ll trash to make herself look good.

Actually, it’s pretty easy to tell. Rex couldn’t have made the target any more obvious if he’d splashed it in red across Aaron’s back.

Ignoring the fact that there was a key family member missing, because he decided to fuck off to Scotland with his uni friends instead, I declare Lola’s sixth birthday party the best yet. Cake? Check. Sandwiches with the crusts off? Check. More sugar than it is sensible for ten kids, four teens and five adults (and one rabbit) to consume? Check. And so many awesome games. I like how my friends don’t pretend to be too cool to enjoy old-school party games — Gideon collapsing with laughter instead of being a statue, Anj causing chaos by whipping away the kids’ chairs even when they were sitting on them; Aaron carrying Lola round on his back when she wanted to pretend to be a cowboy herding all her friends in the garden…