by Jo Watson
When I find her, she’s pulling a cardboard packet off its metal display hanger. “Here.” She thrusts the pack at me. “There’s two in that. Fifty pence per test. You can’t argue with that.”
“You can if it’s not accurate,” I say, reading the packaging.
A curly-haired woman standing on the other side of the aisle looks over at us. “That’s the one I used, love. Definitely works.” She turns and pats her rounded belly.
Scarlett stares at the woman’s baby bump. “Am I going to get that fat?” she whispers.
“You have to take the test first,” I remind her, holding out the twin-pack.
She shakes her head and takes a couple of steps backward. “I can’t. Will you please take them to the till for me?”
My heart is thumping against my ribcage just at the thought of having to buy a pregnancy test. And I’m not even the one who needs to use it.
This scenario hadn’t even entered my head when I offered—or forced—Scarlett to come on this little shopping venture. I had just assumed she would have no problems placing her purchase on the counter at the checkout desk, politely handing over a pound coin before making a swift exit so that nobody she knew would recognise her.
Isn’t that the most confident thing to do in this situation?
But here she is asking me, the least confident of the two of us, to do it for her.
What would Olivia Bright do?
“Okay.” My shaking hands clutch the cardboard.
Scarlett waits outside while I join the small queue of people waiting to pay.
For a second I think that the skinny flame-haired check out girls from my year at school. And of course she has no idea that Scarlett is the potential mummy-to-be, and I’m just the kind friend.
“Just a moment,” says the girl. “It won’t scan.”
Why the hell do they need to scan it? Isn’t everything in here the same price?
She fiddles about with it for a moment before saying something to the older woman working the till to her left. The second woman examines the packaging and starts to read out its product number, squinting over the top of her rounded glasses.
“Do I press this button?” the redhead asks her colleague.
The other woman leans over her and taps on the till.
Oh, my God. Now everybody still waiting to be served is staring at me. They’ve all seen what I’m buying and every single one of them is judging me. Not just for holding them up by picking the one test with the damaged packaging, but for buying a pregnancy test in the first place.
I know it’s not for me, but nobody else in here does. Each person in that line looks at me with a judgemental stare. I mean, I’m obviously not married, am I? I’m obviously going to be a single mum. And they probably think that my baby wasn’t even planned.
My stomach flips when I spot a familiar face in the queue. It’s much worse than somebody from school. It’s Jack.
I watch him tap his foot impatiently while the girl next to him leans against his shoulder and cranes her neck to see what the holdup is. His glamorous blonde fiancée is way prettier in person than she looks in her Facebook photos.
Okay. Breathe. He hasn’t seen me yet. And she probably doesn’t know who I am or what I look like.
I could run. They’d never even notice me. But the assistant is still faffing around with the test. And Scarlett’s counting on me.
I turn back towards the counter to wait, but I can’t resist peeking one more time to see Jack’s fiancée whispering something to him.
He looks up, and there’s this moment of horror when our eyes meet.
“Sorry about that. That’s one pound please,” says the redhead.
I unclench my clammy hand and drop the single coin onto the counter, rushing towards the exit without getting a receipt.
Just as I reach the door, the packet slides out of my hands and clatters to the floor.
I’m so tempted to keep moving and forget about it, but I can see Scarlett waiting on the other side of the window.
Surely nobody’s paying attention to me now.
I bend to retrieve it and come face-to-face with my past.
“Did you drop this?” Jack holds the pregnancy tests out to me.
Is it too late to make a run for it? I’ll even buy Scarlett the expensive digital test if it means I can avoid speaking to him.
“Should I be congratulating you?” he prompts when I don’t say anything.
“No.” My cheeks burn bright red. “No, it’s for a friend.” I try to make eye contact with Scarlett but she’s not looking. “I should get back to her.”
“It’s for a friend?” he repeats, eyebrows raised.
He thinks I’m pregnant. God, I wish I was. With a ring on my finger and a smug round belly to show him I’ve moved on.
“I’m not pregnant,” I blurt out. “I haven’t even got a boyfriend.”
“Oh.” His eyes are wide as he stares down at the tests still in his hand.
Christ, that’s worse. Now he thinks I’m up the duff without a boyfriend.
“No! I’m not…I don’t even remember the last time—” I stop abruptly, seeing Jack’s fiancée gliding towards us, clutching a bag of gummy sweets.
“Hi.” She smiles. “You must be Megan.”
So much for her not knowing who I am.
She turns to Jack, looping her arm through his. “We should get going. The bridal boutique is expecting us.”
“We’re in town shopping for Danielle’s wedding dress,” Jack explains. “I…erm…it was nice seeing you.” He holds out the pack like it’s on fire.
The only thing I can do is take it from him and hurry out of there without looking back.
“That was the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever had to do.” I throw the cardboard pack at Scarlett.
“I’m sorry.” She hugs it close to her chest. “I just couldn’t stand all those people staring at me.”
“Yes. Well. Everyone in there thinks I’m the one who’s stupid enough to get knocked up after a one-night stand, now.”
Scarlett lifts her head to look at me, and I gasp at my own words.
I can’t believe I’m being this bitter. And I know that it’s because I have a theory about why she isn’t telling me who the maybe-daddy is. Because I know that her Mr. One-Night Stand could well be my Bublé-Face.
“I…I’m sorry,” I stammer. “Scarlett, I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes, you did. But there’s only one way to find out how much of a mess I’ve really made of this.” She takes my hand and I follow her to the shopping centre’s toilets.
“Do you want me to come in with you?”
“Into the cubicle? No! Of course not. Just wait here.” She pushes me back against the sink counter.
After ten minutes, the women coming in and out of the toilets are starting to think I’m trying to sell them perfume or something.
How long does it take to pee on a stick?
I bend down, trying to see underneath the cubicle doors, but this just gains me even weirder looks.
“Scarlett?” I call, tapping on one of the doors. “Is that you?”
“No,” comes her muffled reply.
“Scarlett,” I repeat. “Open the door.”
The door creaks open, and there’s Scarlett, sitting on the loo with her long hair clinging to her damp face.
“Oh, Scar.” I crouch down beside her, catching a glimpse of the white plastic stick she’s holding.
“They’re both positive.” She lifts the other test to show me. “Both of them! I thought maybe if one was negative, there’d still be a hope that I wasn’t really up the duff.”
“You’re pregnant,” I confirm.
She dabs at her face with a wad of tissue. “Are you sure? Just because that woman in the pound shop said they worked for her doesn’t mean they worked for me, does it? She probably bloody works there or something.”
“I think we need to make you an appointment with your doctor.”
“But I’ve had the same doctor for years! She knows my parents!”
“I hardly think that’s your biggest concern right now.” I stand, rubbing my hands down my leggings. “Come on. We need to get you home.”
* * *
By the time I’ve made sure Scarlett is safely back at her flat and caught my bus home, it’s getting late.
I know Zara is home because the living room light is glowing through the dark curtains pulled across the front window.
“Where have you been?” she demands before I’ve even got the door open.
“Out with Scarlett,” I answer. “What about you? You’re the one who’s hardly been here.”
“Well, I haven’t got some secret boyfriend if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“That’s not what I was thinking,” I lie.
“Yes, it is. I got your weird voicemail about Gary from upstairs.”
I’d forgotten about Gary, the possible axe murderer. But, in my defence, he does keep unusual hours. And he’s got a beard.
“I was just worried about you.”
She tilts her head to one side. “So why didn’t you call if you were out with Scarlett?”
I shrug. The honest answer is that it never occurred to me that she would be concerned about my whereabouts, especially since she’s hardly been in herself recently. “Scarlett had personal stuff to sort out.”
“You’re not even going to tell me what you were doing?”
I think about Scarlett’s secret and the humiliation of seeing Jack. There’s no point going over that again.
“I can’t.”
Zara looks away quickly. “I baked you some cupcakes to say sorry that I’ve been working so much lately.”
“Thanks.” I offer her kind smile. “You want to eat the lot and watch repeats of crime dramas on Channel 5?”
It’s so easy to forget about everything when you’re stuffing your face with Zara’s homemade lemon cupcakes and watching the CSI team save the day again.
Chapter Fourteen
Helen is the only other person who knows Scarlett’s secret. She made us both promise we wouldn’t tell anybody else.
This caused something of an office debate when Helen wanted to know if it was okay to tell Melanie from her gym, who’s got a three-week-old son and apparently knows a great workout to shed the baby weight.
Scarlett said that it wasn’t. That we cannot reveal this to anyone, under any circumstances.
Which means that I can’t tell Zara. And I haven’t yet been able to come up with anything more specific than telling her that Scarlett had “personal problems.”
The mum-to-be is at a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, which she lied to Nora about by saying it was to check on her family history of high blood pressure.
“So, do you know anything?” Helen eyes Nora before looking over her shoulder at me.
I put the lid back on my pen and look up at her. “About what?”
“The baby!” she hisses. “Has Scarlett told you who the father is?”
I shake my head. “She won’t say.”
“Wouldn’t tell me, either. Do you know who my money’s on, though?”
Glancing at our boss who’s on the phone, I give Helen a clueless shrug.
“I reckon it’s Liam.”
My shoulders tense up. I suddenly feel like I’m going to be sick and start looking for the wastepaper basket underneath my desk.
“Makes sense when you think about it,” Helen continues. “They went out once, didn’t they? And then just friends.”
“What does that prove?” I try desperately to disguise the panicked edge to my voice.
Helen stares at me, blinking in quick succession. “Obviously they slept together.”
Breaking her gaze, I pick up my pen again and twiddle it between my fingers. “Don’t you think she would have said something if that were the case? And why would she try setting me up with him?”
“Why wouldn’t she?” Helen replies breezily. “I’m not saying she likes him. Maybe she doesn’t like him at all. That could be why she was trying to get him to go out with you instead.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” I grip the wastepaper basket between my feet.
“Haven’t you ever had a one-night stand before?” Helen queries, though I’m sure she already knows the answer to that. “The ones who follow you around after are the worst.” She shudders. “Or maybe he was really bad in bed.”
“But if they did…and if he is…” I trail off, unable to form a cohesive utterance.
What if Helen’s right and Scarlett did have an ulterior motive? She was the one who invented this “crush” in the first place. I didn’t even know Liam’s name before.
Not that I’m bothered about it, because it’s not like I was ever interested in him, anyway.
And I have much more important things to think about, like the sale on festive party dresses ASOS.com just emailed me about.
Or what I’m going to cook for dinner tonight.
Thursday is takeaway night. This was decided when Zara and I first moved into the flat.
We’re on first-name-terms with the staff at our local Chinese, Indian and pizza places.
This wouldn’t be such a bad thing. If I could actually cook for myself.
I guess I’ve always had this idea that I would be married before I was twenty-five and a mum before I hit thirty. And I’d wake up one day as somebody’s wife suddenly knowing how to make puff pastry.
Now there are only two months left before my deadline age. I don’t think it’s possible to plan a wedding in that time frame, never mind find a groom.
So I’m going to have to learn how to cook on my own. It’s something I should have done ages ago, even before I read it in the article. Only now I’ve got the incentive.
I haven’t told Zara that I plan to cook for her instead of ordering our usual takeaway tonight. I know she’ll only try to talk me out of it.
Realistically, this is probably the only point on the whole list that she’d support. I’m sure she hates doing all the cooking. Why wouldn’t she want me to learn?
But she’s so against the article itself that letting her think takeaway night is still on is clearly my best option.
It’s perfect. She’s going to be out anyway, so if it goes completely wrong, I can phone the takeaway order in like normal, leaving Zara clueless that I ever went near the kitchen.
After I’ve caught up on the work I missed yesterday looking up holidays all day with Helen, I catch the bus back to Rothwell and get off by the little shopping street.
I load up the recipe on my phone and have a mad dash round Morrisons finding all the ingredients it says I’ll need to make a chicken bhuna.
I’m exhausted by the time I’ve got my shopping safely back to the flat.
Do people seriously do stuff like this every day? Thank God Zara and I discovered doing the food shop online.
I line everything up on the kitchen counter and squint at the recipe on my phone’s screen.
Shit. I didn’t buy a lemon.
Pulling open the fridge door, I see we’ve still got a slightly shrivelled lime from when we were thinking of having a cocktail party a couple of weeks ago.
Surely lime juice is similar. It probably won’t make any difference. I toss the fruit onto the worktop with everything else and read through the listed ingredients again.
Okay, I also forgot to get cardamom pods and fennel seed.
Well, I didn’t forget exactly.
I sort of ignored them on the shopping list because I couldn’t find them in Morrisons, and I don’t actually have a clue what either item is.
But everything else is here. I’m sure it won’t make much of a difference.
A quick Google search tells me cardamom comes from the same family as ginger, and there’s already ginger going in it. Not the fresh stuff like the recipe asks for, but Zara already has a jar of the powder stuff that she uses for baking or someth
ing, so why not use that instead?
I start my preparation, which doesn’t take long since I cheated a bit and bought a packet of pre-chopped onion and a jar of garlic powder.
Having never been that good with a paring knife (or any kitchen utensil), cheating seems the safest option if I still want to have fingers afterwards.
I start adding spices to my frying onions. Two teaspoons each of cumin and coriander, ginger and garlic. I hold the spoon over the pan and shake out liberal amounts of the powders. Easy.
Until one of the lids comes loose and drops into the pan, along with pretty much the entire contents of the jar.
That smells like…
Oh fuck. I stare at the label.
In my defence, cinnamon and cumin do look really similar, don’t they?
And now I’ve got a curry that smells like Christmas.
I grab a wooden spoon and try to scoop some of it out but it only mixes it in even more.
Okay. Don’t panic.
What would Zara do?
Oh, that’s a stupid question. She wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.
I start a fresh Google search on my phone and type in “cinnamon curries” and, of course, Nigella bloody Lawson appears with a cinnamon chicken recipe.
There’s a marinade to make, but I don’t have time for that. Scanning the ingredients, I notice it’s pretty similar to my concoction, except there’s milk and cream in it.
Right. I can salvage this curry.
* * *
“Megan?” Zara comes through the door and peers at the meal I’ve cooked for her. “What’s this?”
“I decided to cook.”
“You should have told me,” Zara says. “I could have helped you.”
That wouldn’t be a bad idea if cooking it hadn’t been such a disaster.
“What is it?” She stares at the slop on the plate.
“Cinnamon chicken,” I reply. “I was going to make a curry but then I saw this great recipe on Nigella Lawson’s website.”
It’s all going to be fine. I’m going to get away with this. Maybe I’ll even be good at something for once.
“Why don’t you sit down? I’ll go get mine.”
Back in the kitchen, I will myself to calm down with a glass of rosé. I did, sort of, follow Nigella’s recipe. How bad can it be?