Wicked Game

  October 2003 I walk to work through the park, past the squabbling geese, past the playground with the paddling pool and the sand. It's empty except for one woman and a little girl. The woman sticks her hands in the sand.    'Handprints! Handprints! Handprints!' she says. The little girl laughs.    I wonder if that will be me in a few years.    The woman looks older than me, early thirties. A normal age to have a baby. No one has a baby at twenty three. Teenagers have babies. Thirty-somethings have babies.    I get everything wrong.    I have to tell people at work that I'm pregnant. I need time off for appointments.     'And after you told me you weren't pregnant,' says my supervisor.    'I didn't know I was then.'    'How can you not know you're pregnant?'     She thinks I'm stupid. Everyone thinks I'm stupid.    I walk home in the dim evening light. I wish Steve wasn't ...

  October 2003 I don't know what to expect at the Brook Clinic. I imagine myself bursting through the door and dramatically announcing I'm five months pregnant and I can't have this baby in front of a group of tense young women and girls in a waiting room.    In the event I walk into an empty room, carefully closing the door behind me. A member of staff appears. I tell her I think I'm pregnant and I need to do a test.    'How old are you?'    'Twenty three.'     She tells me Brook Clinics are for women up to twenty five, so I can have a free test.    I get the feeling she disapproves of me using the service. I'm an adult. I'm wearing my smart office clothes. I don't look like someone who needs a free test. I don't look like someone whose life is in crisis.    I go to the toilet with the test.    As we wait for the result to appear she asks me how far along I think I am.    'Maybe five months.' ...