CHAPTER 18
“Cate?” Sinead grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the upstairs bathroom. They were at Jake’s house; his parents had gone away for the weekend and he was having a party to celebrate the end of their A Levels. “Please tell me you’ve got some tampons with you?”
Cate shook her head. “I don’t think so; I’m not due for…” She tried to remember when her last period was?
“You’re due this week, like me,” Sinead said, the cramps were making her impatient. “I can’t believe it came early. Ugh, I hate periods.”
She grabbed Cate’s bag and emptied the contents on to the sink. “Shit,” Sinead frowned, when she realised Cate was telling the truth; she didn’t have any tampons. “Will you go to the chemists for me? It’s just a couple of streets away.”
Cate agreed; she wasn’t enjoying the party anyway. As she slipped out of the house and walked through the deserted back streets to the main road, she felt a kernel of something in her stomach. Her heart started beating a little more quickly and even though it was a cool night, she felt hot and clammy. She couldn’t be, could she? It was just one time?
She got to the late-night pharmacy and found the items Sinead had asked her to buy. Then as she was walking to the counter, she saw the home pregnancy tests. Before she could even think about it, she’d picked up two and put them in her basket. When she got to the counter, the salesgirl raised an eyebrow at her purchases – tampons and home pregnancy tests.
Cate hid the pregnancy tests in the bottom of her bag and took the tampons back to Sinead, who was still waiting in the bathroom.
Afterwards, they went back downstairs to the party. Sinead grabbed a bottle of beer from the sink and tried to pop the cap using the edge of the kitchen counter. “Crap.”
“You’re doing it all wrong,” Jake leered, coming up behind her. He was already drunk and when he passed Sinead the bottle of beer, he accidentally turned it sideways, splashing beer all over Cate.
“Hey,” Cate jumped back.
Jake started laughing, “I totally lost that bet with Mikey.”
“What bet?” Cate grabbed a tea-towel and dried her face and neck.
“I thought your tits were so small, you didn’t need to wear a bra. Guess, I was wrong.”
Cate quickly looked down; her wet t-shirt was almost see-through. She held the tea-towel across her front.
“Such a douchebag,” Cate grumbled, heading out of the back door. Jake’s friend, Mikey was in the back garden, smoking weed. “Hey Mikey,” Jake said, following her outside. Everybody turned around. “I owe you 20 quid, Cate does wear a bra.”
His annoying voice echoed through the night air, getting louder and louder.
Cate was done with this party, all she wanted to do was go home and take a long, hot shower. She picked her way down the alleyway at the side of Jake’s house and up the driveway to the street. Suddenly, she thought about the pregnancy tests lurking at the bottom of her handbag. Her stomach felt like it was trying to push up through her mouth. Her t-shirt was soaked through with beer and her hair smelled like weed. Cate sat down on the kerb and put her head in her hands.
She texted Liv and asked if she’d come and pick her up. It was a couple of miles from Jake’s house home.
While she waited for Liv, she pleaded with her stomach to settle down. If I’m not sick, I’m not pregnant.
She heard a car pull up on the other side of the road. When she looked up, Ryan was there. “Where’s Liv?”
She stood up, quickly realising that wasn’t such a good idea. Her stomach made a final push for freedom. There was a grid a couple of feet away, Cate stumbled towards it and threw up.
“You done?” Ryan asked, wincing.
“I think so,” Cate nodded, she felt like she’d been hollowed out. She wiped her mouth with the tea-towel.
“You want to talk about it?” Ryan asked, as he got in the car. Cate shook her head.
“Wow,” Liv said when Cate walked through the front door. “I’d give you a hug but you smell like shit.”
“Love you too,” Cate mumbled, still clutching the tea-towel to her chest. “Thanks for picking me up, Ryan.”
“Wait a second,” Liv called. “Is that weed I can smell?”
“Not mine,” Cate said. “Some jerks at the party were smoking it. Can I go and have a shower now?”
“You OK, hun?” Liv asked, leaning on the banister. Ryan had disappeared into the kitchen. “This isn’t like you at all.”
“It was just a dumb party.”
Cate had spent the weeks since that night avoiding everybody. She woke up most mornings before dawn, with sore eyes and a damp pillow from having cried herself to sleep again. She was tired and her limbs ached but she forced herself to get out of bed. She washed and dressed quickly, grabbing the 1st clean clothes she could find; she didn’t care what she looked like anymore. By the time Irene and Liv woke up, Cate would be sat in the McDonald’s car park, sipping a black coffee and waiting for the much needed caffeine to infuse her veins.
Every day, she was outside the college library before it opened and was one of the last students to leave at night, as the strip lights flickered off above her head. She studied so hard her eyes streamed and she had an almost constant headache. She’d tried to force as much knowledge as she could inside her head so there was no room left for Kian and what had happened between them that night.
The following morning, Cate didn’t want to do the test at home, so she drove to the local McDonalds. She was about to order her usual black coffee and then realised that in her situation it might not be the best idea so she settled for a bottle of water. She forced herself to sit in the restaurant and finish the water, watching the sun come up, before she went to the ladies’ toilets. The tests felt like they were burning a hole in her handbag.
She went to the stall at the far end and locked the door. Her heart was beating so fast. She took one of the tests out of her bag but her hands were shaking so much that she dropped the packet on the floor. Her legs felt like they were filled with jelly so she sat down on the closed toilet seat and tried to focus on the instructions.
After an excruciating wait, Cate checked the 1st of the tests. It was positive; she was pregnant. She checked the 2nd test and that said the same thing; she was pregnant.
Cate put the tests in a plastic bag and shoved them in her handbag to dispose of later. As she got up from the toilet seat, the room suddenly got much brighter and hot all of a sudden.
Cate sank to her knees and barely had enough time to pull her hair back before she heaved and the contents of her stomach filled up the toilet bowl. She pressed a hand against her forehead, it was cold and clammy.
As she rested her head on her folded arms, she heard the door open. She heard a little girl’s voice, “Mummy, I need a wee.”
A week later, Cate was lying on her bed pretending to read when Liv came upstairs. “You can’t lock yourself up here all night. You’ve finished your A-Levels now, aren’t there any more crazy parties you can go to?”
“Yeah ‘cause that worked out so well last time,” Cate scoffed.
“Come on, Cate,” Liv perched on the corner of her bed. “We haven’t hung out much lately. Ryan’s away at a conference in Wolverhampton. Do you want to watch a movie or something?”
“I guess,” Cate sighed. It would be kind of nice to spend some time with her sister. She’d been toying with the idea of telling her that she was pregnant. It had been a week since she’d found out, the shock was starting to wear off. She needed to tell somebody. Liv was the least judgmental person she knew.
The trouble was that she felt like such a cliché, getting pregnant the first time she’d had sex. It was the kind of thing that happened to naïve, home-schooled girls in small-town America. Not to girls like Cate. She’d had the sex talk first from Remy and then again at High School, she’d giggled with Sinead as they’d tried to roll condoms down bananas. There were condom machines in the women’s toilets at her college. When her Mum and sisters thought she was having sex with Zeke (thanks Sinead!) they’d asked if she was using protection and she’d said yes like it was a given, like what kind of idiot has sex and doesn’t use protection?
But it didn’t happen like it was supposed to – she’d always thought when she gave up her v-card that it would be with her boyfriend and they would talk about it beforehand. She’d get a prescription for the pill and he’d buy condoms. His parents would be away for the weekend so they’d have the house to themselves. They’d do it in his bedroom; he’d have changed the sheets on his single bed so the room would smell clean and fresh like washing powder. They’d quickly strip off their clothes and jump under the duvet, neither wanting their naked bodies to be judged in the harsh daylight. He’d keep asking if she was OK and she’d kiss the small, red patch on the bridge of his nose where his glasses usually were. It would be fumbling and awkward and sweet.
But her 1st time wasn’t like that. Kian definitely wasn’t her boyfriend. They hadn’t talked about anything beforehand; they’d just drank their bottles of beer in silence staring out of the porch at the endless blackness behind his house. He didn’t ask Cate if she was on the pill. They’d lain down on his bed but the sheets weren’t fresh; they were still rumpled and sweaty from the night before. He’d opened a window and the room smelled like rain. They’d kissed for a little bit; he’d tasted of beer and sadness. “Danny Boy” played over and over inside her head. She’d felt him push inside of her and she’d just assumed he was wearing a condom.
Even afterwards, when she was standing in Ben and Erin’s guest bathroom wiping his… ugh, his stuff off her legs, she’d never even thought that she could be pregnant. How could she have been so stupid?
Cate thought about all the girls she’d read about; his ex-girlfriends and one night stands, there were so many. She knew from the two positive pregnancy tests that he hadn’t worn a condom when he’d had sex with her that night. If he hadn’t worn protection with Cate, what about all the other times he’d had sex?
Late at night, when she couldn’t sleep she’d grab her laptop and hide in her wardrobe, reading and re-reading his kiss-and-tells like a detective hunting for clues. She wanted, needed the lurid details she’d shied away from before.
She’d felt like a human petri dish, no matter how much she scrubbed at her skin, she would never be truly clean again. She’d tried to reassure herself – it wasn’t like she’d had sex with some random stranger, it was Kian. She’d known him her whole life. But he was also a professional footballer with a reputation for having been intimate with a conveyor belt of women. Cate had suddenly thought about all those intermingled bodily fluids; saliva, sweat, arousal. She’d thrown down her laptop and quickly rushed to the bathroom, dry-retching. But if he’d caught something, wouldn’t it have been picked up by Rovers’ medical team? If Kian knew he had something, he wouldn’t have knowingly passed it on to Cate? Her thoughts ping-ponged back and forth; it’s fine, it’s not fine, it’s fine, it’s not fine.
She’d made an appointment with her GP to get tested for STDs. It was the 2nd most humiliating thing she’d ever been through. Fortunately, it wasn’t her usual GP, she was on her honeymoon in the Maldives – it was a locum and she looked really, really young. When Cate had explained that she wanted to get tested because she’d had two positive home pregnancy tests and she thought she’d had unprotected sex with a guy who wasn’t her boyfriend, the locum had looked like a frightened, little kitten, her huge, blue eyes pooling with concern.
The locum had asked her lots of questions, prefacing them all with “I know it’s difficult but…” Yes, Cate had winced, it was consensual. She hadn’t been drunk; she’d only had a few sips of the foul-tasting beer that night to keep him company. She hadn’t taken any drugs. She had a full, clear memory of what happened that night; there were no gaps or fuzzy edges. She’d almost wanted to answer yes to some of the questions; to paint a different picture of herself; to pretend that she’d partied too hard one night and blacked out, woken up naked in a strange room with a strange guy.
But she wasn’t Home-School Girl or Party Girl; instead she was just Stupid Girl. She had nobody to blame but herself.
The tests had all come back negative for STDs and the locum had recommended that she make an appointment at the Family Planning Clinic.
“Great,” Liv’s face brightened, dragging her back to now. “I think there’s some popcorn in the kitchen, you get that and I’ll pick a movie.”
Cate had just torn open the bag of popcorn and was pouring it into a bowl when the phone rang. “Cate, can you get that?” Liv called upstairs from the basement.
“Hey stranger-danger,” Sinead said brightly. Cate wanted to put the phone down on her.
“Hey,” Cate replied, trying to keep her voice light hearted. “What’s up?”
“Can I come over? Kian’s doing my head in.”
Cate felt her chest tighten at the sound of his name. She was awash with memories: the feel of him deep inside her, the smell of rain, “Danny Boy”, the way he’d looked at her afterwards. It felt too hot all of a sudden, the wall in front of her seemed to ripple and sway, she leaned hard on the dark, wooden table.
“Cate?” Sinead said impatiently. “Are you still there?”
“Yes,” Cate managed. “Yes, I’m still here. Why, what’s going on?”
“He’s been like this since Dad… you know. He’s just always around, every time I go out he wants to know what I’m doing, where I’m going, who else is going to be there? I just really need a break from it so can I come over to yours?”
“Yeah,” Cate said. “I mean, Liv and I were just going to watch a movie so…”
“Ooh, what movie?”
“I don’t know,” Cate shrugged. “Liv’s choosing something.”
“Oh God,” Sinead groaned. “It’s going to be in black and white, isn’t it? Probably with subtitles?”
Cate couldn’t help but smile, “probably.”
“Hang on a sec,” Sinead said and Cate heard voices in the background. “I’m going out.”
“Not that it’s any of your business but I’m going to Cate’s. Hang on a sec.”
“Cate?”
“Yeah?”
“Ben’s not over at yours, is he?”
“No, I think he’s working tonight. Why?”
“No, he’s not there. Cate said he’s working tonight,” Sinead snapped. She turned her attention back to Cate. “I told you, he’s completely doing my head in.”
“I’ll see you in a bit,” Cate said as she hung up the phone.
“Who was that?” Liv said, coming up the stairs.
“Sinead’s coming over,” Cate replied. “Her brother’s doing her head in apparently.”
“We’re still watching a movie though?”
“Yeah,” Cate said softly, she slumped down the wall until she was sat on the bottom step. She felt so tired.
“Hey,” Liv sat down next to her and put her hand on Cate’s forehead. “Are you okay? You look a little flushed.”
“Me? No, I’m fine,” Cate said, bumping shoulders with Liv. I’m just pregnant.
A little while later, the doorbell rang and when Cate went to answer it, Kian was stood there. “Hey,” he said, awkwardly.
“Hey,” Cate mumbled.
He had his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his leather jacket. Cate ached with how much she wanted to press her body up against his, to bury her face in his chest and feel his strong arms wrap around her. She wanted to tell him that she was pregnant and really, really scared. In her dreams, he tangled his fingers up in her hair, tilting her head back. He parted her lips, swirling his tongue inside her mouth, until everything else just drained away. “It’s going to be OK,” he said softly, “it’s all going to be OK. I love you.”
But he could just as easily reject her, like her Dad had rejected the very idea of her. Cate felt that same weightlessness she always felt when she thought about her Dad and his family. Like she was nothing, meant nothing. Usually, she could lock her feelings about him away in a small, metal box with a big, chunky padlock but ever since she’d found out she was pregnant, the feelings kept coming back. She felt more, like she was feeling for two. Parents are supposed to love their kids, it’s so basic. But her Dad hadn’t loved Cate at all. He didn’t even know her name.
“We need to talk,” Kian said quietly. “Can I call you?”
“I guess,” Cate shrugged and looked down at the carpet. She was afraid that if he looked in her eyes, he would see what she was hiding. He had this way of looking at her that made her feel naked and exposed.
She wasn’t ready to tell him. If she was going to open herself up to rejection again, she needed to feel stronger, less raw.
They both waited for Sinead to get her overnight bag and pillow out of the boot of Kian’s car.
“Seriously,” Sinead said when she eventually got to the front door. “Thanks for the lift and everything but I’m here now, you can go.”
“Yeah,” Kian said. Cate could tell he was looking at her by the way her skin burned. “I’ll, uh, see you later then.”
“Go,” Sinead shut the front door on him.
“Sinead,” Cate said, following her downstairs to the basement. “That was a bit mean.”
“I know,” Sinead said, “but you don’t understand what he’s been like. He’s trying to act like my Dad and he’s not, you know? You’re so lucky Ben’s not like that.”
“I’d like to see him try,” Liv smiled.
“Yeah,” Cate smiled at the thought. “It’s nice that he cares though.”
“Maybe,” Sinead said. “Anyway, enough about Kian, what movie did you pick Liv?”
Later that night, Cate couldn’t sleep. Sinead was asleep in her sleeping bag at the side of the bed. That’s your Auntie Sinead, Cate murmured as she slid a hand up her vest top and pressed the palm of her hand against her stomach. She’d started talking to her baby straight away. When it all got too much for her, it was comforting to know that she wasn’t alone. She liked to press her hand against the warmth of her stomach and imagine the tiny little thing inside of her.
Kian stopped at the door to the master bedroom. It was closed and had been since the night of his Dad’s funeral. He pressed his forehead against the smooth wood. When he closed his eyes, all he could see were the bloodstains on his sheets. He could hear her crying on the other side of Ben’s front door.
She’d looked different tonight; a little broken. It had almost killed Kian; standing so close and not being able to touch her. Fuck, she couldn’t even look him in the eye. He didn’t blame her. He hated himself for what had happened that night, what he’d done.
He dragged himself down the hall to the guest bedroom but even that reminded him of Cate. He kept the curtains closed over the stained glass windows she’d loved so much. He stripped down to his boxer shorts and dropped to the bed; the sheets were still rumpled and sweaty from the night before. In the darkness, he groped for his phone on the bedside table and started to dial Cate’s number.
He dialled the 1st 3 digits and then stopped. He threw his phone across the bed and sank back on the pillows.
Maybe… Kian sat up and searched frantically for his phone. This time, he dialled the 1st 5 digits before stopping. In the darkness, all he could see were those bloodstains on his sheets.
“Fuck,” he groaned, burying his face in the pillows. He pounded the mattress with his fists until he was exhausted and his body was dripping with sweat.