I’m pregnant. It’s yours.
Hours passed and I drifted in and out of sleep before my phone beeped his reply.
Are you sure? On both counts?
Yes. Completely and entirely. I’m pregnant. It’s yours.
Have you seen a doctor?
No.
Make an appointment. Let me know when it is. I’ll come with you. Don’t worry. It will all be OK, sweetheart.
I put the phone back on the table and lay down. The relief was like nothing I’d ever known before. Ace was going to make everything alright. Annie wouldn’t like it at first, but she’d come round. She loved me and I loved her, and that was all that mattered in the end.
59
Annie
‘You’ll feel better once the funeral’s over,’ Helen tells me, as if all I need to help me move on is to see Hope’s coffin and know they are going to set it on fire.
‘Why don’t you help me pick the music?’ she continues. ‘Hope’s mum said we should choose, because she hadn’t seen her for a while and she doesn’t know what Hope was into…’
I tune her out. Talk of Hope’s mother makes me angry. I want her to pay. I want her to pay for what she did to my girl, for giving her a life and then making it so unbearable she only ever wanted to cut it short.
I hear her voice in my ear again. Music, she says. Don’t let them pick anything awful.
I’m not sure what music you even liked. You never seemed into music.
None of that classical shit. Nothing with God in it. And no poetry. Don’t let them read poetry.
OK. Got it. You still angry with me?
Yes. But I also still adore you.
Can you stop fucking haunting me? It scares the bejesus out of me.
Don’t you want me by your side?
By my side, yes. But not mad.
You’re the mad one.
Fuck off. Oh, before you go: What do you want at your funeral?
But she was gone.
60
Hope
I made an appointment with the doctor in Windermere and told Ace to meet me there. I had to escape from the home via my bedroom window. I didn’t even tell Annie where I was going, but left her a note so she wouldn’t worry: Gone out. Back soon. Love you. H.
I booked a taxi to pick me up from the pub in the village. It didn’t matter how much it cost. I knew Ace would be there, waiting with money. He was. As soon as the cab pulled into the surgery car park, I saw him leaning against the wall, smartly dressed and smoking his e-cigarette. My heart lurched at the sight of him. Ace. I still loved him, even now, despite everything.
What was wrong with me?
He came over and paid the taxi driver, then took me in his arms and embraced me. I felt him kiss the top of my head, tenderly, and say, ‘It’s alright, Hope.’ Then he released me and said, ‘You’d better go in. I’ll meet you out here afterwards.’
I looked at him. ‘Aren’t you coming with me?’
‘Darling, I can’t possibly. I’d be arrested.’
He had a point. ‘Alright,’ I said.
He kissed me again. ‘Be brave. Find out what it is you have to do, and if it’s too late to get it done on the NHS, then don’t worry. I’ll pay for all of it.’
I was silent while his words sunk in and realised he was talking about abortion. ‘Ace, I…’
He waved me away. ‘You don’t want to be late,’ he said.
The doctor was a woman, which helped. She made me do another test, which was still positive, as I’d known it would be, although Annie had said once that she thought the baby must have died inside me because my stomach was still so flat. I didn’t speak to her for days after that.
The doctor said, ‘How old are you, Hope?’
‘Fifteen.’
‘And are you in a relationship with the baby’s father?’
‘Yes,’ I said. It was more or less true.
‘Have you discussed what you’re going to do?’
‘Yes. We’re going to keep it,’ I said.
And then, with no warning at all, I started crying.
Outside, I met Ace again, and he drove us to a car park on the other side of the lake, where the tourists didn’t go. They all thronged the eastern shores, the busy towns of Windermere and Bowness, but over here there was no one.
We stepped out of the car. ‘Let’s walk,’ Ace said, and we headed towards a path at the edge of the lake, overhung with empty beech trees. It was early November now and the year was dying. Fallen leaves decayed at our feet, the sky hung low over the lake, and the glow of the sun was distant and faint.
Ace took my hand. We could hear the gentle heave of water against rocks. He said, ‘You know we can’t keep this baby, Hope.’
I shrugged.
‘You need to live, sweetheart. You need to make a good life for yourself. Haven’t you always said that? You don’t want your mother’s life. You didn’t want Jade to have your life. You want better for yourself and you can have better. But not if you have a baby now, when you’re fifteen. It will destroy you. You’ll have no money, no one to help you. I’ve never had my own kids, but I saw your mother struggle to bring you up. It isn’t easy.’
I stayed silent. I couldn’t explain my plan to him: that I would live with Annie, she’d go off and become a doctor like she’d always planned, and I’d stay at home with the baby and Ace would give me money. Annie, the baby and I would be a family. We’d be a beautiful, loving family, and Ace would pay for us because he was the baby’s father and because … well, because he had to.
‘What did the doctor say?’ he asked.
‘She said she’d book me a scan as soon as possible, and she’d refer me to a teenage pregnancy unit and they’d be in touch. She asked a lot of questions about the baby’s father. You know, if I was with him, how old he was, that sort of thing…’
Ace spoke abruptly. ‘And what did you say?’
‘I said he was fifteen and he was my boyfriend and we’d been together two years.’
‘Good.’ He paused for a moment, then said, ‘No one must ever know, Hope. You get that, don’t you?’
And there was darkness in his voice I’d never heard before, and it frightened me.
61
Annie
For days, Hope had hardly spoken to me. She moped around the house, or just took herself to bed and slept for hours. It reminded me of when she’d first come here, and the words she’d spoken: Just lie on your bed and count to fifty and then sleep comes and takes you away from this shit for a while. That’s how it would be to die, I reckon. Peaceful. Like being in the deepest, warmest sleep forever.
I knew she was worried about the baby. It would destroy her to lose it. I wanted to help her, but there was nothing now that I could do. We were meant to be together, she and I. We’d talked about marriage, and I’d meant it. I didn’t care that in the eyes of the world we were too young and barely even knew what love was. If this wasn’t love, then nothing was.
But she’d betrayed me. She’d gone back to Ace and conceived his child.
So how could it be love? I made excuses for her. He was a powerful man with too much influence over her; she was beside herself, not having heard from her mother, which is the only reason she went back to him … But however hard I tried, I couldn’t get the images of the two of them together out of my mind. And I was angry. And I didn’t want to bring up his baby.
Helen said, ‘We’ve found you a new placement, Annie. It’s in a town near Edinburgh. You’ll love Edinburgh.’ And I thought perhaps it would be a good thing – to have some time away from Hope while she decided what to do about the baby, and then perhaps to see her again when we were sixteen and could make our own decisions. Maybe then we could start again.
But she hated me for suggesting that.
Murderess, I hear her saying again. Murderess, murderess, murderess.
62
Hope
It was Lara that I spoke to first. Something weird had happened between us. I’d
started out wanting to help her by becoming her friend, but gradually things had shifted and she’d become the person I confided in. I suppose it was like keeping a diary, but without the risk of anyone ever finding it. I just opened my mouth and let the whole content of my head come out, and Lara sat there listening, silent and dependable as a rock. I knew she would never betray me.
It never occurred to me to think about the impact my words might be having on her.
‘I saw the baby’s father today,’ I told her. ‘He wants me to get rid of it. To have an abortion. Do you know what that is, Lara? It’s where they give you a pill or something that kills the baby, and then you bleed and bleed and lose it.’
She closed her eyes.
‘I don’t want to do that. He says he won’t help me, though. He says he won’t pay for the baby. He says no one can ever find out that it’s his. He’s old, you see. Forty or something. He could be in real trouble if the police found out. It would wreck his life.’
She went on sitting at the window with her eyes closed.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said. ‘Do you ever think you’d like to die, Lara?’
She opened her eyes and turned her head to face me. Then she nodded.
‘Problem is, there’s no way I can anymore,’ I said.
63
Annie
Eventually, she spoke to me. She came into my room and said, ‘I’ve told Ace.’
I looked up. ‘What did he say?’
‘He thinks I should get rid of it.’
‘I should think he does,’ I remarked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Of course he wants you to get rid of it, Hope. You’re fifteen. He’s forty-odd. He’s a brothel owner and you worked for him. He can’t have you having his baby. It’d ruin him.’
‘I’ve got my first scan tomorrow. I’ll be seeing it on the screen.’
I put my head in my hands. She wouldn’t let go of this idea that she could keep the baby.
‘What?’ she said. ‘Why are you being like that?’
I took my hands away from my face and looked at her. ‘I can’t help you, Hope. I wish I could, but I can’t. If I thought there was a way for you to have this child and look after it, I would do it. But there isn’t.’
‘Fuck you,’ she said, and as she spoke, she replaced herself again. There she was, standing in my room, angular and fierce, and I knew what was coming.
‘You want me to kill my baby because you’re a bitch. You pretend to be all nice and normal. You’ve got everyone fooled, haven’t you? Telling Helen you want to go to this new place and you plan to go back to school and become some high-flying fucker. Does she know you’re a murderer, Annie? Does she? Does she know what you did to your mother? Because I know. I know exactly what you did. You’re a murderer. It’s in your blood. You killed your mother. I know you did.’
I was stunned into silence. I opened my mouth but I couldn’t speak a word. I just stared at her, my face betraying my guilt.
‘There it is. You can’t even deny it. And now you want to kill me. Well, I’m not going to let you, Annie. I’m not.’
And she turned and left the room.
We were falling apart.
64
Hope
I’d done it again. I’d kicked off and made her cry. I was always making her cry.
The drama was so intense, Gillian came upstairs and separated us. ‘You need to go to your own room, Hope, and calm down.’
‘It’s none of your business,’ I said.
‘It is my business. We cannot have fighting like this. It’s my job to keep you safe.’
The old refrain. They were always saying that. Always.
I went to my room, obediently. It was dark in there. I’d shut out all the light with a black shawl I’d hung at the window. It was better that way. It suited me. I didn’t want any of that wishy-washy pastel-pink stuff other girls liked.
I lit a couple of candles, sat on the floor and read my cards. They didn’t have anything good to say. There wasn’t a chance for me and Annie, or me and the baby.
It was getting harder and harder to keep this a secret. I wasn’t meant to leave the home on my own, but scans and doctors’ appointments took ages, and I had to sneak out without being seen. On the morning of my scan, I put a sign on my door saying, Please leave me alone. I’m knackered. Then I barricaded it shut with my chest of drawers so no one could get in. My plan was that they’d all just think I was in there, sleeping or miserable, and leave me to it. I climbed out through the window. It wasn’t a long drop. The home was built into the side of a hill and even the upstairs windows were close to the ground.
I thought that if Ace could see the photos, he’d want to keep the baby. He said he wasn’t coming to any appointments with me. If I had this baby, I was on my own. That’s what he said, that day we walked by the lake. Then he said, ‘I won’t let you have it, Hope. Believe me, I will do whatever I have to do to stop this baby being born.’
I said, ‘Are you threatening me?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not a threat. I am telling you not to have this baby. If you go against me, you’ll have to take the consequences.’
I knew, of course, that he could be a nasty piece of work. Everyone knew that about Ace Clarke. He had a violent side that he unleashed when he was angry, or if someone hurt the girls at 5 Crescent Avenue. It was just that I’d never seen it myself. Never. The Ace I knew was loving, and looked after me.
He’d given me some money that day. ‘There’s no more until you tell me the baby’s gone,’ he said.
I used some of it now to get to the hospital for the scan. When I got there, the waiting room was full of happy, nervous women with their husbands and boyfriends. I sat on my own and felt as though everyone was watching me, as if they could see I was just a teenage sex worker in a terrible mess.
‘Hope Lacey?’ a voice called.
I stood up and followed a midwife into the room where she was doing the scan. I remembered all this from when my mother was pregnant with Jade: the gel on the stomach, the movement of the photographic equipment, the anxious silence as the midwife watched the screen for a while before turning it to me.
‘There’s your baby, Hope,’ she said, and I saw it: the huge head, the rounded abdomen and the tiny, spindly limbs.
She turned up the volume and the sound of the heartbeat filled the room.
‘There,’ she said. ‘I’ll take some measurements and…’
I wished Annie was here.
I lay there, looking at the images of my baby on the screen, and knew I could never keep this child.
I caught a taxi to the village and then walked slowly back to the home. I’d been gone for hours. They’d have noticed by now and I’d be in trouble but I didn’t have it in me to care. Everything in my brain had shut down. There was no way out of this, and all I could think of was dying. It was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do – to die and leave all the memories of my past, and this present that was falling apart, far behind me.
I didn’t want to see anyone. I climbed back in through my bedroom window. I found a belt on the floor of my wardrobe and started making a noose. I knew how to do it. I’d read about it on Wikihow. You had to make an s shape, then compress it while you tied a knot in the middle, leaving two loops – one that you hung from the ceiling, the other you put your head in.
It was easy, and actually, it looked quite pretty when I’d finished, like a decoration. I wished I’d made one ages ago, and hung it on the wall.
Another thing I’d read, though, was how people usually shit themselves when the noose tightened, and I didn’t want that. In death, I wanted to be beautiful.
I heaved the chest of drawers away from my door and went out on to the landing to the bathroom. The door was shut, but I could hear the sounds of someone coughing and spluttering and throwing up. It was Annie. Poor Annie. I’d made her sick. I’d made her sick from the pain of my words.
&n
bsp; The realisation snapped me out of my thoughts and brought me back to a world where Annie lived. I slumped against the wall, put my head in my hands and waited for her to come out.
I was ruining everything.
Minutes passed. She was still in there, retching and gagging. There was a violence to this that I’d never known in ordinary sickness.
Then there was silence for a while, followed by the sound of the toilet flushing and the rush of water. The door opened. She looked at me, startled. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘What are you doing, more like?’
She pushed past me and headed to her room. I followed her. There on the floor was all the mess of a junk-food banquet: chocolate wrappers, empty Pringles tubes, crisp packets, cake crumbs and cans of Coke and Fanta and Sprite.
‘Fucking hell, Annie,’ I said, and the truth knocked into me like rapids. All this time, she’d kept the focus on me and my problems, but we never even thought about what might be wrong with her. She was killing herself, secretly, just as surely as I was.
65
Annie
Hope had been ready to die the other night, I knew that she’d have done it if I hadn’t wrecked it for her by being in the bathroom when she needed it. I was ill. I’d managed to keep it at bay when things were good with Hope, but it was back now with a vengeance. While she was in her room making a noose to hang herself, I pulled out my suitcase from under my bed, where I stockpiled all sorts of things for just this kind of occasion. I lifted the lid.
Rows and rows of chocolate bars glinted in the dim light: Galaxy, Dairy Milk, Turkish Delight, Mint Cream, Flake, Crunchie … And there were crisps, too. Mini tubes of Pringles, Scampi Fries, Chipsticks, Monster Munch, Salt ‘n’ Shake. And drinks: bright-orange Fanta, Coke, Irn-Bru. It was like staring straight at Paradise.
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