Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

     Alice walked home from school to her sixteenth birthday and she was full of dread. As she walked nearer to her parents’ home her legs grew stiff and heavy, unwilling to go close to the respectable semi-detached house in which she had lived since her birth. Now it was a place to fear.

     Only Tracy knew so far and that was because it had been necessary, it had been Tracy’s kit that had confirmed her worst fears. She was pregnant and all she now wanted to do was to hide, to have to answer no questions, not to make any plans for the future and she knew that at home that would be impossible. She hoped her mother would understand, at least, if not, to be her usual sensible, caring mother. What she dreaded most was to see the look of disgust that her father would have in his eyes when he looked at her and how he would avoid being alone with her, and recoil at her touch as he had with Daphne, her sister, his eldest daughter.

     She had overheard her parents talking about Daphne and her father had expressed such revulsion, such disgust, that she had felt more pity for Daphne at that time than she had for her when she had miscarried a month later. Now she would have to face that condemnation, if not today, sooner or later within the next few weeks.

     It was all so pointless, it had been her first and only time and then she had asked him to use a condom but he had not brought one and it had all gone too far for her to have refused. even had she wanted to by then. It had mainly been peer pressure that had made her accept his invitation to get into his car, she had known what would happen. She had been surprised, she had expected it would be as it is in the cinema or on television, it wasn’t, it was so disappointing that they must have been doing it wrong but it had achieved what nature had designed so effectively. What was the old saying, five minutes’ pleasure and a lifetime’s pain?

     She had plans for her future, or she had until now. ‘A’ levels, university and professional training. She had it all cut and dried but now all that was shattered.

     As she neared her home it seemed that she was under a grey dome of despair, the colours had faded for her now and as far as she could see, into her future. She knew what her parents would first ask, who was the father, she would not tell them, she could not tell them, because she did not know him. His friends had called him Charlie and his car had been a Ford of some sort, as she now knew to her cost. It was an old car and stank of stale cigarette smoke. She had returned to the club twice since she first had her suspicions but he had not been there. Then she thought about it and realised that even if he had been she wanted nothing more to do with him. He was not someone she would want to know in the everyday light, it was all so different in the night world of clubs. She had accepted that she was wholly responsible for her condition but that did not help her now, or return her to the state of intacto.

     She opened the garden gate, everything was so familiar but now it seemed alien. She had played here with her doll, her Matilde, since she was a little girl. The thought of the real doll that she would have soon enough now came into her mind and she felt nauseous.

     She reached the front door and hesitated, her key in her hand. What if they rejected her, let her fend for herself in a world she did not know or understand? She wanted to be a little girl again, her mother holding her tight and her father sitting at his desk on a quiet winter evening with the curtains drawn and Toby hogging the fire.

     She put the key in the lock and turned it, the door swung open and Toby rushed along the corridor to her, knocking her over. She hit something as she fell, she never knew what, and the world slipped away.

     She awoke in bed in a strange cell-like room and she knew it was a hospital. Her head hurt, her hand felt the bandage. Her stomach was sore and she felt that she might have a slight temperature. Then the dreadful memory returned, she was pregnant.

     Ten minutes later the door opened and a Sister cane bustling in, she was middle-aged, grey-haired and looked very capable, she carried a kidney bowl in which lay a hypodermic syringe. She came to the bedside and saw Alice was awake.

     “Well, well, Alice, you are back from wonderland.” She placed the kidney bowl on the bedside table. ‘I have to take a little blood.” She took Alice’s arm, found the vein and pushed the needle in. When it was done she pressed a pad of cotton-wool on the puncture, then a small band-aid.

     “Now I’ll get you something to eat.” She sat on the edge of the bed. “We have to have a little chat. I’m afraid that you are not pregnant anymore. There was nothing we could do,” she reached out to take Alice’s hand, “I don’t know how you feel about that, we can get you some counselling.” She stood up, “First, some lunch.”