Blue Moon

by Julia Green

  I wanted to go beyond thinking of teenage pregnancy as a problem. I was interested in exploring the complex feelings that surround any pregnancy, whether you are a teenager or not – the ambivalence you can experience even if you have made an active decision to have a baby. And I also wanted to explore motherhood itself – what it means to be a mother and the many different forms it can take in this most ‘unmotherly’ of societies in which we live.

  There are thousands of young women who become pregnant in this country each year. Being a teenage mum is often a real struggle. But it isn’t always a tragedy, because babies themselves are such a miracle: life-affirming, hopeful, with the potential to transform lives.

  Julia Green lives in Bath with her partner and two children. She lectures part-time in English and creative writing, leads writing workshops for adults and young people, and works as a home-tutor for children who are not attending school. Blue moon is her first novel for young adults.

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  First published 2003

  8

  Copyright © Julia Green, 2003

  An excerpt of the poem ‘Libretti and Juvenilia’ by W. H. Auden, published by Faber and Faber Ltd, has been reproduced by kind permission of the publisher.

  The excerpts on pages 36, 76, 80, 108, 151, 165, 182 and 221 are taken from Pregnancy and Childbirth by Sheila Kitzinger, published by Penguin Books in 1986. Reproduced here by kind permission of the publisher.

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-192676-6

  For Jesse and Jack

  There was nothing to do in Whitecross; nothing there except a stone market cross and a straggle of houses, a petrol station and an off-licence, one grocery shop. The primary school had closed two years ago. Fields at the top of the lane near the church had been sold off for new houses, but none had been built. The fields stayed as they’d always been, only no one played there any more. The main road that went straight through the village was lined with tall lime trees that dripped sweet sticky stuff on to the pavement where Mia and her friends waited for the bus to the secondary school in Ashton. In the spring, they’d find the splatted pink mess of baby birds fallen out of nests in the lime trees. In the summer, the trees were smothered in pale yellow flowers and the sweet-scented air hummed with insects.

  From Mia’s house in Church Lane you could walk to the sea – not the sort of sea where people come for holidays, just a long strip of pebbles and, at low tide, a stretch of gravelly sand. The sea was too shallow to swim, and clotted with stinking seaweed. The tide left its trail of bottles and plastic, frayed rope and old shoes along the top of the pebble strip; just occasionally it left a clutch of shells or the fragile skull of a seabird, scoured clean by the waves.

  Above it all stretched the sky, a wide dome of pale blue or grey or milk white, filled with the thin cries of sea birds. In high summer, swifts darted and swooped with their sickle wings, and the air was filled with their high shrieks and screams until it was dark.

  CHAPTER ONE

  September 19th

  ‘What’s wrong with you this time?’

  ‘I’m just tired, Dad. Need a day off school. OK?’

  ‘No it is not OK, Mia. How can you be tired? It’s only the second week back! How can you do this to me? I’m late already.’

  ‘Well, just go then.’

  ‘I can’t just go and leave you like this –’

  ‘I’m fifteen, Dad! You don’t have to look after me.’

  Mia turned away so he couldn’t see her face. She felt sick again. She pushed past him on the landing into the bathroom and slammed the door. She could sense him still standing there, planning his next move. Her stomach clenched; the gagging feeling was coming again in her throat. She turned on the shower so he wouldn’t hear her retching into the toilet. Even Dad wasn’t that thick. He’d know. She wasn’t ready for anyone to know yet. Not even Becky at school. Or Will. And especially not Dad.

  Her guts ached; her mouth tasted sour. This was the third morning it had happened. Maybe she just had a bug or something. But her period was late. Each day she watched and waited, and it still hadn’t started. More than two weeks late now.

  Once she’d actually been sick it wasn’t so bad. It left a hollow feeling, like hunger. She felt like that most of the time now, only she knew she mustn’t eat much. She wasn’t going to start getting fat.

  Mia turned off the shower and rinsed her mouth at the basin. She cleared a space in the steamed-up mirror and peered at her grey mouth, white face, dark eyes. Her hair straggled, rats’ tails. Becky was right; she should cut it all off.

  Then the door banged downstairs. The whole house shook. The car engine revved up. Good. He’d given up.

  Mia went slowly downstairs into the kitchen. She stood with her bare feet on the cold kitchen floor for a long time – minutes, hours – she didn’t know. It didn’t matter now – she had the whole day to herself. Through the window she noticed the garden, bright with early-morning sun. She felt a little surge of hope. Maybe things were going to be all right – her period would start today, and everything would be normal again. Outside on the lawn, a female blackbird stretched out its tail feathers like a fan. Mia smoothed her hands over her belly.

  So quiet. So still. The house waiting. But there was an echo too, of the raised voices, angry hurting words dropped like cold pebbles. What if she’d told him right then? I’m not going because I’m sick, and I’m sick and tired because I’m pregnant, Dad. She imagined spitting the words out, bouncing them over the hard floor, translucent like marbles, each one with its coloured spiral trapped inside.

  Mia took a small blue mug from the dresser and placed it on the table. As she filled the kettle the blackbird flew off in alarm. She opened the back door to let the cat in and then stepped right out on to the wet grass. The cold stung her bare feet, but she liked the feeling: sharp, more alive. She kept on walking. Across the grass, through the gate, into the lane. The kitchen door was open behind her but she didn’t stop, didn’t look back. All the time she concentrated on her feet. Tiny, biting stones. Smooth tarmac, slightly warm. Mud, sticky, oozing up between her toes.

  She was startled to hear a car slowing behind her. The woman from the big house up the lane gave Mia a strange look as she manoeuvred past. The whole village would have the news in ten minutes. That girl. Walking along the lane with bare feet at quarter past nine in the morning when
she should be in school. But what do you expect with a family like that? A name like Mia!

  She pulled a blackberry off the hedgerow, but it was too sour to eat, the bobbles of fruit hard and tight. You shouldn’t eat the berries from the lane anyway, Dad said. They were full of lead. Poison. When Mia and her sisters were small he took them across the fields to pick blackberries. She hated the way you had to stretch your hand through the fur of spiders’ webs, and the way your fingers stained purple. You couldn’t wash it off. It stained your nails like blood.

  No blood. The blood still hasn’t come.

  Round the corner she saw something lying in the road. A dead seagull, one wing crushed open. The white feathers were smeared with the oily imprint of a car tyre. Just for a second, Mia felt she might cry. Her feet hurt.

  The seagull is dead. No blood. Something wrong. My body. Waiting and waiting, and all the time maybe there’s something growing inside me –

  Mia stared at the dead bird. She couldn’t leave it here in the middle of the road, to be run over again and again. Even if it was already dead. But she couldn’t touch it with her bare hands. She pulled handfuls of grass and coarse broad leaves from the verge and used them to scoop under the bird’s body, careful to keep her naked feet from treading too near. Close up it smelled. Of fish. Seaweed. Rotting meat. It was surprisingly large and heavy. Its glazed eye stared at her. She didn’t feel sorry for it any longer. It was ugly and disgusting, a fat white body that stank. Only its wing, that fine skein of feathers; Mia did it for the terrible beauty of the crushed wing. She dragged the bird into the grass verge, and then gently folded the wing back over the body.

  When she stood up she went dizzy for a second. She was cold, hollow with hunger. She still hadn’t had breakfast. It must be nearly ten. She’d missed Maths. Becky would be wondering where she was, deciding who to be with at break. And Will? He’d be concentrating on not noticing her absence. Sitting about with Matt and Liam and the others. Talking films, in that pseudo-clever way they did together. Pretending not to notice the Year Eleven girls even though they were within spitting distance, sitting on the tables with their feet on the chairs in Room Ten.

  She wiped her hands on the long wet grass in the verge. The seeds left dark oily marks along her palms, which wouldn’t come off. She rubbed them on her legs. She could still smell the faint stink of fish, rotting flesh. It made her gag. Instinctively, she took the footpath away from the lane, down towards the beach. It wasn’t a proper beach; just a long strip of stones at high tide with its line of washed-up junk, stretching as far as the village of Whitecross and beyond. At this end, it was usually deserted. She often came here by herself. And these last few weeks, with Will. The field next to the path, just above the beach, was where it had all started, those first few hot days at the beginning of the summer holidays.

  She rinsed her hands in the sea and then sat down on the damp shingle. The stones hurt her feet, and a cold wind was blowing in over the water. She shivered, hugged her knees, but it was too cold to stay for long. In any case, there was nothing to do there. Nowhere to hide.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The wet lawn was already beginning to dry. The kitchen door stood ajar, just as she’d left it. Mia rummaged through the bread bin and cut herself a slice of white bread for toast, spread it with marmite. The phone rang. It would be school, checking up on her. She should’ve phoned in sick as soon as Dad left. She ate her marmite toast slowly, letting the telephone ring. When it finally stopped silence washed back, like water filling the empty rooms. It’s too quiet, Mia thought. She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. There was a pile of unopened post propped up against the butter dish. Two letters for her older sister, Laura. She’d be coming home the day after tomorrow, before starting university. There was a postcard for the three of them from Kate, the middle sister, with a picture of lavender and sunflowers. Mia turned it over. ‘Going further south, grape picking. Following the sun. See you!’ Kate’s neat handwriting.

  The phone rang again. Perhaps it hadn’t been school after all, but something urgent. Dad? Will? She picked it up.

  ‘Hello?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Hello?’

  Silence, then a click. The empty line purred. Mia shrugged. Wrong number, probably. But her heart thudded. She snatched the phone up again and dialled one-four-seven-one. ‘You were called today at ten fifty-three hours. The caller withheld their number.’

  A wasp banged against the kitchen window. Buzzed and bumped along the smeary glass searching for the way out. Stupid thing. Buzzing and angry, hitting uncomprehendingly against the transparent panes.

  Mia dialled school.

  ‘You should have phoned earlier.’ The secretary’s voice was sharp. ‘Before nine thirty is the rule.’

  Mia stuck her tongue out at the phone.

  ‘And you’ll need a note from your parents when you come back with reasons for your absence.’

  Blah blah blah. Mia banged the phone back down.

  There was shadow over the garden now. The day had lost its shine, its early morning promise. She closed the back door and locked it and went upstairs to run a bath.

  She let it fill almost to the top, so that she could lie almost completely under the water. Her sore feet tingled. Gradually her body relaxed. She smoothed her hands down her arms, her breasts. Her skin looked translucent; there were faint blue veins she’d never noticed before. Her hands hovered over her stomach. It dipped, concave, between her hip bones. Too thin, Dad said about her. ‘You girls – obsessed with it, aren’t you? Bodies, diets.’ But she’d seen how he looked at them, her friends, Laura and Kate’s friends when they stayed at the house; the way a sort of gleam came in his eyes when he found them lounging on the sofa in front of the telly. They flirted with him, trying out their new powers, and he couldn’t help loving it, the attention from them. She knew. She saw it all. Especially Ali. It made her pink with shame.

  Her mind floated as well as her body.

  Will. His face. The way he looked at her. His soft mouth on hers.

  If he were here now. Her hands were his, moving over her body, cherishing the detail. The pink coil of a nipple, the way her belly button curved in, the tiny white scar on her thigh where she had fallen out of the apple tree when she was ten.

  Lying in their field above the sea, watching the sun go down and the darkness creep over the field so that they were wrapped together in shadow. Will propped himself on one elbow beside her, his finger curling strands of her dark hair until it was bound so tight it pulled her scalp and she cried out, and then he bent over her, kissed her, so, so tenderly, and she thought she would die with happiness. That was where they had made love, the very first time.

  Mia remembered it like a sequence in a film. She played it back, over and over. Sometimes she added bits or skipped the beginning. Maybe she was making it sound a bit more magical than it really was. Will, too much of the perfect, golden boy. She didn’t care; it had felt like that, it really had.

  August 4th

  They’d started off with the others at the bus shelter, as usual, throwing stones at cans lined up in the main road. Mia sat on the kerb, her legs stretched out into the road. Heat shimmered off the tarmac even at nine in the evening. Occasional cars whizzed too fast along the main road, not slowing for the thirty-mile sign just before the village, and swerving out just in time to avoid the line of cans.

  ‘Ciggie?’ Liam offered his packet to Mia. She shook her head.

  ‘Nah. You know I don’t.’

  Will didn’t either. She was sitting next to him, his arm touching hers. They’d started going out together after half-term. She still couldn’t quite believe it. Couldn’t quite understand why he liked her.

  Becky thought it was because she was so different. ‘You know. You’re a bit wild, and dangerous!’ Becky laughed. ‘And, of course, you look really good together – you so dark and him so fair.’ Will’s hair had bleached even more golden in the sunshine.

>   ‘Let’s hitch a ride to Ashton,’ Matt suggested. ‘Get some cans and stuff.’

  They’d been banned from the off-licence in Whitecross after Mia had tried to buy cider with her school lunch money. She’d said she was eighteen, even though it was obvious she wasn’t. She barely looked fifteen. The woman behind the till had recognized her and telephoned Dad. More trouble.

  ‘Do you want to go?’ Will asked Mia.

  She shook her head. ‘No money. Think I’ll just walk back home.’

  ‘I’ll go with you. We could go back along the beach?’ Will suggested.

  Becky and Ali smirked at Mia. She ignored them.

  ‘All right.’

  They crossed over the road together. Behind them, Liam and Matt laughed. Will’s neck flushed. Neither spoke till they got out of sight of the others.

  The moon was up already, even though it wasn’t dark. The pebbles on the beach gleamed pearl-white. A man threw sticks for a black Labrador at the Whitecross end of the beach; each time, the dog splashed and then swam out, tail still wagging, found the stick, turned, just its head visible, like the sleek shape of a seal, then plodded back out with the stick, dropped it, shook. Water drops flew off its fur in a perfect circle of fine spray.

  They walked further along the strip of beach. The tide was high. No one on the beach now. Will held her hand. Every so often he stopped, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her. Mia felt a sort of fizzling inside. They didn’t say much. It was usually like this. She couldn’t think what to say. Will didn’t seem to mind.

  Will stopped to pick up a handful of stones. He selected a flat one, aimed and skimmed it over the water.

  Mia counted. Five jumps. ‘Show off!’

  ‘You do it then!’

  Mia chose her stone. It skipped the surface: five skips. ‘There! You didn’t think I’d do it, did you? Confess!’ She jumped on him, wrestled him down, laughing. He held her really tight and they walked like that all along the shingle, as far as the footpath sign.