think myself lucky that the pills had worked. The pills didn’t always work, Dr Birdseye said, but these ones had. So it was all over. Over and done with. All rather painful and unnecessary, of course. But next time you’ll know better, hmm? Or at least start using contraception.
‘Yes,’ I’d replied. Yes, it was painful, I could have added. The pain, in fact, had been intense. And the amount of blood had frightened me, flowing and flowing for days, like a rebuke. I’d thought of Lady Macbeth. I’d thought maybe I would die. ‘Thank you,’ I said to Dr Birdseye. And I’d risen from my chair, headed past the yucca plant to the door and gone back out into the Reception bay. Things seemed to wobble slightly, in and out of focus, as I walked through it.Beneath a small table there was a box of wooden building blocks and a plastic, flip-up farm-animal game and a dog-eared book entitled Ted Goes to London . On the wall above the desk there was a child’s drawing of two mad-looking people with huge, purple smiles and outstretched sticks for arms.
I was miles away from our side of town. I didn’t really know where I was at all. It was as if that clinic had just appeared out of nowhere, and would go back to nowhere after I’d left. Everything was just white and cold and strange and I walked away from it as fast as I could. I remember that I did stop off at a chemist’s before I reached the bus stop, to buy another huge packet of Kotex towels. I didn’t know when the bleeding would ever stop. ‘Will you want a bag for that, Love?’ the chemist asked. Well, who wouldn’t? I thought. Who wouldn’t want a bag for that? There was a picture on the bag of a cheerful-looking cartoon woman encirling her children with her arms. ‘Caring for your Family’, it said beneath the picture. There is no way I am ever going to tell my mother about this ,I thought, putting it in my schoolbag.And walking to the bus stop I cried and cried. But apart from that – apart from the crying and the pitch-dark bus journeys and the pain and my mother’s ignorance and the huge packet of Kotex that I hid in my clothes drawer – I suppose I blanked most of it out. Stella was the only person I ever confided in, one freezing cold day in March as we were standing on a netball court in our green nylon tabards; and she hadn’t even seemed particularly surprised.
‘Oh Lulu, ’ she’d soothed. ‘Never mind: worse things happen at sea.’ Which was this odd phrase she’d used sometimes, and which never seemed to have anything to do with anything. I think she’d just picked it up from her father, who’d been a ship’s steward, she’d told me once; in the 1950s. My dad says that sometimes , she’d said, and he should know . And it was around this time that everything I’d been sure of began to alter, anyway; that things began to disintegrate. I remember that a few weeks later that term all the pupils in my year had to go and see a visiting careers advisor, to discuss our futures. We’d all been given a leaflet and a questionnaire to fill in entitled ‘Your Career: Your Future in Your Hands’ ,and I remember it was then that I began to wonder if I had a future. Stella had one. And Ed had one. All the sensible people had futures. But mine seemed to have gone a peculiar shape – scattered, unfocused; to contain things that no longer had anything to do with me. My future ,I thought, is not in my hands. And sure enough, when my exam results came back later that summer, I was discovered to have achieved three Ds and an E. In art I had a B, based on coursework. But where was a lone B in art going to get me?
‘What happened , Luisa?’ my headmaster Mr Deane asked, pop-eyed, at an ‘emergency debriefing’ session the school laid on every year, for all its failed students.
‘Well: oh dear,’ my father confirmed, standing there in his slippers in our cool hallway when I returned home that day. A lot of people had said things like
‘Yes,’ I’d replied. Yes, it was painful, I could have added. The pain, in fact, had been intense. And the amount of blood had frightened me, flowing and flowing for days, like a rebuke. I’d thought of Lady Macbeth. I’d thought maybe I would die. ‘Thank you,’ I said to Dr Birdseye. And I’d risen from my chair, headed past the yucca plant to the door and gone back out into the Reception bay. Things seemed to wobble slightly, in and out of focus, as I walked through it.Beneath a small table there was a box of wooden building blocks and a plastic, flip-up farm-animal game and a dog-eared book entitled Ted Goes to London . On the wall above the desk there was a child’s drawing of two mad-looking people with huge, purple smiles and outstretched sticks for arms.
I was miles away from our side of town. I didn’t really know where I was at all. It was as if that clinic had just appeared out of nowhere, and would go back to nowhere after I’d left. Everything was just white and cold and strange and I walked away from it as fast as I could. I remember that I did stop off at a chemist’s before I reached the bus stop, to buy another huge packet of Kotex towels. I didn’t know when the bleeding would ever stop. ‘Will you want a bag for that, Love?’ the chemist asked. Well, who wouldn’t? I thought. Who wouldn’t want a bag for that? There was a picture on the bag of a cheerful-looking cartoon woman encirling her children with her arms. ‘Caring for your Family’, it said beneath the picture. There is no way I am ever going to tell my mother about this ,I thought, putting it in my schoolbag.And walking to the bus stop I cried and cried. But apart from that – apart from the crying and the pitch-dark bus journeys and the pain and my mother’s ignorance and the huge packet of Kotex that I hid in my clothes drawer – I suppose I blanked most of it out. Stella was the only person I ever confided in, one freezing cold day in March as we were standing on a netball court in our green nylon tabards; and she hadn’t even seemed particularly surprised.
‘Oh Lulu, ’ she’d soothed. ‘Never mind: worse things happen at sea.’ Which was this odd phrase she’d used sometimes, and which never seemed to have anything to do with anything. I think she’d just picked it up from her father, who’d been a ship’s steward, she’d told me once; in the 1950s. My dad says that sometimes , she’d said, and he should know . And it was around this time that everything I’d been sure of began to alter, anyway; that things began to disintegrate. I remember that a few weeks later that term all the pupils in my year had to go and see a visiting careers advisor, to discuss our futures. We’d all been given a leaflet and a questionnaire to fill in entitled ‘Your Career: Your Future in Your Hands’ ,and I remember it was then that I began to wonder if I had a future. Stella had one. And Ed had one. All the sensible people had futures. But mine seemed to have gone a peculiar shape – scattered, unfocused; to contain things that no longer had anything to do with me. My future ,I thought, is not in my hands. And sure enough, when my exam results came back later that summer, I was discovered to have achieved three Ds and an E. In art I had a B, based on coursework. But where was a lone B in art going to get me?
‘What happened , Luisa?’ my headmaster Mr Deane asked, pop-eyed, at an ‘emergency debriefing’ session the school laid on every year, for all its failed students.
‘Well: oh dear,’ my father confirmed, standing there in his slippers in our cool hallway when I returned home that day. A lot of people had said things like
Similar Books
