Twenty Something by Iain Hollingshead Page B

bonds — ‘investing in your child’s future’. A glance at the TV guide tells me that there is a documentary in the evening on unwanted pregnancies. I turn on the TV in the morning and there is a nappies advert. I try to escape the flat and the first thing I see on the Underground is a three-metre poster for pregnancy-test kits. I go into Boots to buy some painkillers for my pounding headache and the girl in front of me is crying and asking for the morning-after pill.
    My own subconscious is stalking me and there’s nothing I can do about it. Why the fuck did she ring and hang up like that? I try to phone her back, but her phone diverts straight to answering machine.
    I don’t even know what I want her to say. I think I’ll make a great father one day, but not now.
Now
it would ruin my life. My parents would kill me. I’d probably end up marrying Lucy out of a perverse sense of guilt. My mum’s delight that the two of us were back together would be outweighed by her anguish at having a semi-bastard grandchild.
    But could I face Rick having a baby with my ex-girlfriend of three years? I’m not sure I could. Especially if it’s ginger
Monday 2nd May
    Blur sang about bank holidays. It was a happy song about barbecues and six-packs of beer. It didn’t mention anything about discussing pregnancies with your ex-girlfriend.
    We met up in the same bar in Covent Garden where Lucy had made up the news about pulling Rick back in January. I think the barman recognised me as the madman who’d stormed out crying.
    â€˜So?’ I said.
    Poor Lucy, she looked tired and withdrawn.
    â€˜So. Here we are.’
    â€˜Yes, here we are.’
    â€˜Did you know that today is our anniversary?’ she asked, somewhat surprisingly.
    Of course I didn’t know. I’ve never quite understood anniversaries. Do you start counting from when you first meet? Or when you first pull? Or when you first introduce them as your girlfriend to someone?
    â€˜Oh yes,’ I mumbled, correctly guessing that now wasn’t the time to share these thoughts.
    â€˜Jack,’ she said, cutting to the chase, ‘I am a hundred and ten per cent sure that I am pregnant.’
    I winced at the maths. You don’t have to be a banker to understand that that’s pretty certain.
    â€˜I wasn’t sure at first,’ she went on. ‘I took the pill for over three years while going out with you, and I stopped it recently to give my body a rest. As you know, the pill regulates your periods.’
    Lucy Poett, BSc Biology
.
    â€˜So when I missed my first period at the end of February I didn’t worry too much. Then I missed my second period and then my third. I did my own pregnancy test and it was positive. I went to the doctor on Saturday and she confirmed it.’
    â€˜And are you going to keep it?’
    â€˜Well, at first I didn’t want to. But I’m now eleven weeks pregnant.’
    Eleven weeks? It’s exactly eleven weeks since Rick slept with her on Valentine’s Day. Ten weeks and four days since I bent her over the kitchen table.
    â€˜You can use an abortion pill up to nine weeks, but after that they have to do a vacuum aspiration. I just can’t face hoovering up our baby.’
    â€˜Our baby?’ I was trying to be gentle with her, but I must have shouted the words. People started looking at me weirdly.
    â€˜Yes, baby. Our baby,’ she said in a soothing voice. ‘Who else’s is it going to be?’
    â€˜Well, you slept with Rick three days before me, didn’t you? Isn’t it just conceivable (bad choice of word) that his sperm had a head start on mine? They can’t swim that slowly.’
    â€˜I’m sure his sperm are Olympian athletes. But they couldn’t get very far inside a condom, could they?’
    â€˜Rick used a condom?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜And you slept with me without a condom after you’d stopped