by Nick Hornby
I’d told Mum I was going out after school, so I had no idea whether she was going to be in or not. I’d told her I was going round to a friend’s for tea, and I’d be back around eight. If she knew I wasn’t coming back straight after school, she sometimes went out for a drink with someone from work, or went round someone’s house for a cup of tea. I’d warned them, but Alicia’s mum and dad said that seeing as it was a serious situation, they’d just come in and wait for her if she wasn’t there.
Something made me ring on the doorbell, rather than just get out my key and let everybody in. I suppose I didn’t think it was right to let Alicia’s mum and dad in without warning Mum first. Anyway, there was no answer at first, but just as I’d got my keys out, Mum came to the door in her dressing gown.
She knew something had happened straightaway. I think she probably knew what that something was, as well. Alicia, her mum, her dad, four unhappy faces…Put it this way, she probably wouldn’t have needed three guesses. It had to be sex or drugs, didn’t it?
“Oh. Hi. I was just in the middle of…”
But she couldn’t think what she was in the middle of, which I took to be a bad sign. I suddenly got worried about the dressing gown. Why couldn’t she tell us she was having a bath? If that was what she was doing? Having a bath is nothing to be ashamed of, is it?
“Anyway. Come in. Sit down. I’ll just go and put something on. Put the kettle on, Sam. Unless you’d like something stronger? We’ve got some wine open, I think. We don’t usually, but…And there might be some beer. Have we got beer, Sam?”
She was babbling. She wanted to put it off too.
“I think we’re fine, thanks, Annie,” said Alicia’s mum. “Please, can we say something before you get dressed?”
“I’d rather—”
“Alicia’s pregnant. It’s Sam’s, of course. And she wants to keep it.”
My mum didn’t say anything. She just looked at me for a long time, and then it was like her face was a piece of paper that someone was screwing up. There were these folds and lines and creases everywhere, in places where there was never usually anything. You know how you can always tell when a piece of paper has been screwed up, no matter how hard you try to smooth it out? Well, even as she was making that face, you could tell those creases would never go away, however happy she got. And then this terrible noise. I’d never see her if she ever found out I was dead, but I can’t imagine the noise would be any different.
She stood there crying for a little while, and then Mark, her new boyfriend, came into the living room to see what was going on. So Mark explained the dressing gown. You didn’t have to have any special powers to read the minds of Alicia’s mum and dad. Their minds were easy to read, because they were written all over their faces and eyes. You people, I could hear her dad saying to me, even though he wasn’t saying anything now, just looking. You people. Do you ever do anything else? Apart from have sex? And I wanted to kill Mum, which was a coincidence, because she wanted to kill me.
“Of all the things, Sam,” Mum said after what seemed like ages and ages. “Of all the things you could do. All the ways you could hurt me.”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” I said. “Really. I didn’t want to get Alicia pregnant. It was the last thing I wanted to do.”
“Here’s a good way of not getting someone pregnant,” said Mum. “Don’t have sex with them.”
I didn’t say anything. I mean, you couldn’t argue with that, could you? But her argument did mean that I could only have sex two or three times in my life, and not even that many times if I decided I didn’t want kids. That decision wasn’t mine to make anymore, though. I was having kids whether I liked it or not. One kid, anyway, unless Alicia was having twins.
“I’m going to be a grandmother,” said Mum. “I’m four years younger than Jennifer Aniston and I’m going to be a grandmother. I’m the same age as Cameron Diaz.”
Cameron Diaz was a new one. I hadn’t heard her mention Cameron Diaz before.
“Yes,” said Alicia’s father. “Well. There is a great deal about this whole thing that is unfortunate. But at the moment we’re more worried about Alicia’s future.”
“Not Sam’s?” said my mum. “Because he had a future too.”
I looked at her. Had? Ihad a future? Where was it now? I wanted her to tell me that everything was going to be all right. I wanted her to say that she’d survived, so I could too. But she wasn’t telling me that. She was telling me that I didn’t have a future anymore.
“Of course. But we’re more worried about Alicia because she’s our daughter.”
That sounded fair enough to me. When Mum started howling, it wasn’t because she was upset about Alicia.
“Alicia, love,” said my mum. “You’ve only just found out, right?”
Alicia nodded.
“So you don’t know what you think yet, do you? You can’t possibly know whether you want to keep it or not.”
“Oh, I know that,” said Alicia. “I’m not killing my baby.”
“You’re not killing a baby. You’re—”
“I’ve been reading about it on the Internet. It’s a baby.”
Alicia’s mum sighed.
“I wondered where you’d been getting this stuff from,” she said. “Listen. The people who post things on the Internet about abortions, they’re all evangelical Christians, and—”
“Doesn’t matter what they are, does it? Facts are facts,” said Alicia.
The whole conversation was a mess. It was all over the place. Cameron Diaz, evangelical Christians…I didn’t want to be listening to any of this stuff. I didn’t know what I did want to listen to, though. What would have been better?
“I’d better be off,” Mark said. We’d all forgotten he was there, and we all looked at him as if we still weren’t quite sure whether he was.
“Home,” said Mark.
“Yes,” said my mum. “Course.” She waved at him half-heartedly, but he didn’t have his shoes on, so he had to go back into Mum’s bedroom.
“So where does all this leave us?” said Alicia’s dad.
Nobody spoke for a while, apart from when Mark walked back through and said good-bye again. I didn’t really understand how anyone could expect talking to leave us anywhere at all, apart from in the place we already were. Alicia was pregnant, and she wanted the baby. If things stayed like that, then you could talk until you were blue in the face and it wouldn’t make any difference.
“I need to talk to my son in private,” said Mum.
“There isn’t any private anymore,” said Alicia’s dad. “Anything you have to say to him involves us. We’re all family now.”
I could have told him that was a stupid thing to say. Mum went nuts.
“I’m sorry, but I’ll be talking to my son in private for the rest of my life if that’s what he and I want to do. And we’re not family. Not now, and maybe not ever. Sam will always do what’s right, and so will I, but if you think that allows you to come into my house and demand the right to hear my private conversations, then you’ve got another thing coming.”
Alicia’s dad was about to have a go back, but Alicia stepped in.
“You’re not going to believe this,” she said. “But Dad’s actually quite clever most of the time. He wasn’t very clever just then, though. Dad, do you think you’ll ever want to talk to me in private without Sam and his mum being around? Yes? Well, shut up then. God. Honestly.”
And her dad looked at her, and then he smiled, sort of, and so did my mum, and it was all over.
The first thing Mum said when they’d all gone was, “Do you think it’s just bad luck? Or are we stupid?”
I was conceived because my mum and dad didn’t use contraception. So what I wanted to say was, You were stupid, and I was unlucky. But I thought it was probably best not to. And anyway, I couldn’t really tell whether I’d been stupid or not. Probably I had. One thing it doesn’t say on the side of a condom packet isWARNING !YOU MUST HAVE AN I
Q OF A BILLION TO PUT THIS ON PROPERLY !
“Bit of both, I expect,” I said.
“It doesn’t have to ruin your life,” she said.
“I ruined yours.”
“Temporarily.”
“Yeah. When I’m your age, everything will be OK.”
“Ish.”
“And then my baby will have a baby.”
“And I’ll be a great-grandmother, age forty-eight.”
We were sort of being jokey with each other, but we weren’t happy-jokey. We were both staring at the ceiling trying not to cry.
“Do you think she’ll change her mind about having it?”
“I dunno,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“You’re not leaving school,” she said.
“I don’t want to. Anyway, she’s not having the baby until November or something. I can do my GCSEs at least.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know.”
I hadn’t spent an awful lot of time thinking about what I was going to do with my life. I’d thought about college, and that was about it. And Alicia hadn’t ever thought about her future, as far as I knew. Maybe that was the secret. Maybe people who had it all worked out…maybe they never got pregnant, or made anyone pregnant. Perhaps none of us, Mum and Dad and Alicia and I, had ever wanted the future badly enough. If Tony Blair knew that he wanted to be prime minister when he was my age, then I’ll bet he was careful with his condoms.
“Your dad was right, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah,” I said. I knew what she was talking about. She was talking about what had happened at Consuela’s.
“That’s why you went to Hastings?”
“Yeah. I was going to move there and never come back.”
“You did the right thing in the end, anyway.”
“I suppose.”
“Do you want me to tell him?”
“My dad? Would you?”
“Yeah. You owe me, though.”
“OK.”
I didn’t mind owing her for that. There was no chance I’d ever be able to pay her back for everything else, so that was just a bit extra on top that she wouldn’t even remember.
CHAPTER 10
Here are some things that happened in the next few weeks.
My mum told my dad, and he laughed. Really. OK, that wasn’t the first thing he did. He called me a few names first, but you could tell he was doing it because he knew he was supposed to. And then he laughed, and then he said, “Bloody hell, my grandchild’s going to be able to watch me playing Sunday League. Had you thought of that?” And I was going to say, “Yeah, that was the first thing me and Alicia said to each other,” but seeing as this was my dad, he’d probably have thought we were being serious. “I’m really going to look after myself now,” he said. “Forget about seeing me play. He can play with me. Two of our players are fifty. And we’ve got this really good fifteen-year-old keeper. So if your kid’s any good, he could be playing alongside me. I’ll only be forty-nine when he’s fifteen. He might have to move to Barnet, though. And drink in the Queen’s Head.” It was all stupid, but it was better than a bollocking. And then he said that he’d help us out if we needed help.
They found out at school. I was in the toilets, and this kid came up and asked me whether it was true, and I just made this stupid face while I tried to work out what to say, and then I said, “I dunno.”
And he said, “Well, you should find out, man, because that’s what she’s telling people. My mate goes out with someone from her school, and everyone knows there.”
And when I asked her about telling people, she said she’d told one person, and that person was dead as of that minute. Anyway, once this kid knew, everyone knew. So I went home and told Mum, and she called up the school, and we went in to talk to them. If I was asked to write down one word which described the reactions I got from the head and the teachers, that word would be “interested.” Or maybe “excited.” Nobody had a go at me. Maybe they thought that wasn’t their job. Anyway, it turned out that the school had just introduced a strategy for teen pregnancies, but they had never had a chance to use it before, so they were pleased, really. Their strategy was to tell me that I could still come to school if I wanted, and to ask me whether we had enough money. And then to ask me to fill out a form to tell them whether I was happy with their strategy.
Alicia and I went to hospital for a scan, which is where you look at the baby on an X-ray machine and they tell you everything is normal, if you’re lucky. They told us everything was normal. And also they asked whether we wanted to know the sex of the baby, and I said no and she said yes, and then I said I didn’t care either way, really, and they told us it was a boy. And I wasn’t really surprised.
Alicia and I kissed on the way back from the scan.
I suppose this last bit is headline news, really. I mean, you could say that everything was headline news, in a way. A year ago, if you’d told me that the teachers at school weren’t too bothered about me making someone pregnant, I’d have said that there were about ten pieces of headline news in that one sentence. I’d have said it’s one of those days when they have to make the news longer, and the program on afterwards is late, and they say, “And now, a little later than advertised…” But none of it seemed such a big deal now. Alicia and I kissing, though, that was something new. Or rather, it was new again, because there had been a time when it was old. (And before that, a time when it was new for the first time.) You know what I mean, anyway. It was a new development. And a good one too. If you were going to have a baby with someone, then it was better to be on kissing terms with them, on the whole.
It was different with Alicia now. It changed when she stuck up for me and my mum at our house. I could see that she wasn’t just an evil girl who wanted to destroy my life. I hadn’t even realized that I’d been thinking of her that way until she told her dad to back off, but a part of me must have been, because it was like she came out of a shadow, and I was like, She’s not terrible! It was my fault just as much as it was hers! Probably more my fault! (A long time later, someone told me about something called a morning-after pill, which you can get from your doctor if you’re worried that for example your condom might have come off. So if I’d owned up that night, the night that something half-happened and then half-happened again, none of this would have happened. So if you look at it that way, it was 150% my fault and maybe 20% hers.) And also, she was still very pretty. And also, her looking so ill made me want to look after her better. And also, everything was a bit of a drama, and I couldn’t imagine spending any time with people who weren’t on the stage with me.
And then when we came out of the hospital after the scan, she just put her hand in mine, and I was glad. It wasn’t that I was in love with her or anything. But it’s a weird thing, seeing your kid inside someone, and it needed some kind of, I don’t know, celebration or something. And there aren’t many ways you can celebrate when you’re walking down a street near a hospital, so a bit of hand-holding was about as close as we could get to making sure the moment was something special.
“You OK?” she said.
“Yeah. You?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
“Is it all right if I do this?”
“What?”
And she squeezed my hand, to let me know what the what was.
“Oh. Yeah.”
And I squeezed her hand back. I’d never got back together with anyone before. Whenever I’d split up with anyone, I’d stayed split up, and I’d never really wanted to see them again. There was one couple at school who were always splitting up and getting back together, and I’d never understood it, but I could see it now. It was like coming back to your house when you’d been on holiday. Not that anything had been much of a holiday since we were last together. I’d been to a seaside town, but I hadn’t had a lot of fun there.
“You got sick of me, didn’t you?” she said.
“Didn’t you get sick of me too?
”
“Yeah. I suppose. A bit. We saw each other too much. Didn’t see anyone else. I don’t mean, you know, boys. Or girls. Just friends.”
“Yeah. Well, I know what. Let’s have a baby. That’s a good way of, you know, seeing less of each other,” I said.
She laughed.
“That’s what my mum and dad said. I mean, not exactly that. But when they were trying to talk me into having an abortion, they said, ‘You’ll have to see Sam for the rest of your life. If he wants to stay in touch with his kid.’ I hadn’t thought of that. If you are a proper father, I’ll know you forever.”
“Yeah.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“I dunno.” And after I’d said it, I did know. “Actually, I like it. I like the idea of it.”
“Why?”
“I dunno.” And after I’d said it, I did know. Maybe I should never say anything, I thought. I should just listen to the questions and answer them on text or e-mail when I got home. “Well. It’s because I’ve never thought of the future that much before. And I like knowing something about it. I don’t know if I like the reason I’ll know you forever. The baby and all that. But even if we’re only friends—”
“Do you think you might want to be more than friends?” And that’s when I stopped and kissed her, and she kissed me back, and she cried a bit.
So on that day, two things happened that made what I’d seen that night when I got whizzed into the future more likely. We found out she was having a boy. And we got back together.