Spawn by Shaun Hutson Page B

him her news.
    She finished cooking his breakfast and while the kettle boiled for coffee she lit a cigarette, went to the bottom of the stairs and called him. She waited until she heard the creak of the bedsprings, signalling that he was up then she padded back into the kitchen and sat down to her own breakfast – a cup of Nescafé and a Marlboro.
    He was down in a matter of moments, chest bare to expose his hard lean body with its tangled growth of light hair on the chest and stomach. He wore a faded pair of jeans, held up by a studded leather belt. Around one wrist was a leather band, similarly dotted with studs. He rubbed his stomach and sat down in front of the plateful of food.
    “Don’t you ever wash in the mornings?” she asked him, smiling. She watched as he started hacking away at the bacon.
    “Well, I didn’t have time this morning,” he told her, chewing furiously. “I felt hungry.”
    She shuddered.
    “I don’t know how the hell you can eat that first thing in the morning.” She took a drag on her cigarette, blowing out a long stream of smoke. She crossed her legs beneath the table, tapping her feet together agitatedly. Should she tell him now? Excuse me Chris but you’re going to be a father? She took a sip of her coffee instead.
    The DJ on the radio was babbling some hip bullshit which neither of them seemed to hear. Chris because he was too engrossed in his breakfast and Lynn because she was too wrapped up in her own thoughts. She watched him as he set about the first egg, slicing it in two, dipping his fried bread in the runny yolk. He looked up at her and smiled that warm, welcoming smile she had come to know so well these past nine months. She wondered if there was room for love in that smile.
    “What’s on your mind?” he said.
    She looked surprised.
    “Not a lot,” she lied. “Why do you ask?”
    “You’re not usually this quiet,” he told her.
    Lynn smiled weakly, taking mock offence.
    “Thanks a lot.”
    He smiled again, pushing half the egg into his mouth. She sucked hard on her cigarette, held the smoke in her mouth for long seconds then blew it out in a long blue stream.
    “Chris, I’m pregnant.”
    The words came out as easily as that but, once she’d said them, it felt as if a hole had opened up inside her. Well, there it was. She’d told him, flat out. She sipped at her coffee and eyed him warily over the rim of the mug.
    He slowed the pace of his chewing, looking down at his plate, not, as she’d expected, at her. He didn’t speak.
    “I said. . .”
    He cut her short.
    “Yeah, I heard you.” There was an edge to his voice, almost imperceptible but nevertheless present. Like a knife blade in the darkness, invisible but razor sharp.
    She ground out the fag in a nearby saucer, the plume of smoke rising mournfully, disappearing above her like a forgotten dream.
    “Haven’t you got anything to say?” she wanted to know.
    “Are you sure?” he asked, still looking at his plate.
    She told him about the visit to the doctors, the missed periods. He nodded.
    They sat in silence for an eternity then he dropped his knife and fork onto the plate where they clattered noisily. Finally, he looked her in the eye.
    “I thought you were on the bloody pill,” he said, exasperatedly.
    “I was,” she told him. “I just didn’t take it for a few weeks.”
    With the deception now revealed, it was she who dropped her gaze, unable to meet the unrelenting stare from his green eyes.
    “Jesus Christ,” he murmured, then his voice gradually grew in volume. “You bloody tricked me didn’t you?”
    “I didn’t,” she countered although the accusation bore weight and she was crumbling beneath that weight.
    “You had me thinking it was safe and all the time you weren’t taking your pill. You made a fucking mug out of me for all that time?” He was struggling to keep his anger in check and he wasn’t making much of a job of it.
    “It was just two months, Chris,” she