Wicked Game

  November 2003 My mum comes with me to my doctor's appointment.    'He might think I'm forcing you to have the baby adopted,' she says.    The doctor asks how I'm feeling about having a baby.    'Actually,' my mum says, 'that's why I'm here with her. She thinks she wants to have the baby adopted.'    The doctor says I need to contact Social Services.  Steve emails. He says he'll be in Asia till at least June, so there'll be time for me to come and travel with him.   I ask him if he's sure this is what he wants. If he's sure he doesn't want me to keep the baby. He says he's sure.    I phone Social Services.  I tell work I have an appointment with the health visitor. I'm sitting in the waiting room at Social Services opposite another pregnant young woman.    Someone comes out. She looks at the other pregnant woman.    'Amy Chapman?'    'That's me,' I say, standing up as the other woman sha...

  October 2003 Lucy is the only person I've told that Steve and I plan to give the baby up for adoption.     How do you tell people you don't want your baby? But maybe I do want my baby. They'll think I'm a monster.    At work I hear someone say to one of the women in my section, 'Does the girl who's pregnant have a boyfriend?'    'You don't have to have a boyfriend to get pregnant,' she says.    'So she doesn't?'    'She does but he's in Australia.'    They all assume Steve will be coming back in time for the birth. They all assume he's a decent man who'll do the right thing.    I can't bear to tell them that he's booked flights to New Zealand and Asia.     I'm not worth coming home for. I'm not worth doing the right thing for.    Steve asks me to tell him everywhere worth visiting in New Zealand. I send him a list of all the places I visited with information about them.   ...

  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.' ...

  September 2003 My parents are waiting at the barriers at Heathrow.    'She doesn't look fat,' my dad says. 'Everyone says people come back fatter from a year in Australia but, she doesn't.'    See? I'm not pregnant. I would look fat if I was.      But what about-    Don't think about it.     My friends seem to be mostly on holiday but Lucy tells me Becky's having an Ann Summers party next week. This seems completely out of character for Becky. I feel lost. Has everyone changed while I've been away? I don't think I've changed. Except-     No. Nothing's changed.     I go to the employment agency I got my job at the bank with. In a couple of days I've been offered my old job back.    I'm back in the same rut I ran away from.    But it's different now. This is only temporary. In a few months I'll be in Asia with Steve.    He emails. He's still lonely in Broome. Soon he'll go back ...

  August 2003 I'm staying in a hostel in Los Angeles. It claims to be right by Venice Beach but I can't find the beach. Instead I find the internet cafe Global Gossip.    I haven't checked my email since the north shore of Oahu. There is a message from Steve telling me I should find a rich "scetic tank" to buy me drinks in Waikiki. I assume he means "septic tank." I frown at the words till I work out it's rhyming slang for "yank." I tell him about the free tours I went on with the hostel. I don't tell him about Justice. I don't tell him any of the things I wrote in French in Waikiki.    I find the beach, a vast expanse of sand. The sea seems a million miles away. I take off my flip flops and trudge across it, feeling the damp sand between my toes.    The sea is cold. I didn't expect this. It's the Pacific Ocean, it's LA, isn't it meant to always be warm here?    I sit on the beach, writing in French again.     Je ne ...

  August 2003 I go to Waikiki for my last week in Hawaii. I check into the hostel and am put into an empty dorm. I go for a walk in the evening. It's different here from the north shore. Busier, more built up. I think maybe I should have stayed in the tranquility of the north.    I sit on a bench, looking out to sea. A man sits next to me. He is tall and thin with dark skin. He looks like he's in his late thirties. He talks about how he's struggling to find work, how it's hard for native Hawaiians. I awkwardly make sympathetic noises. He asks me where I'm from.    'England,' I say.    He frowns at me. 'You don't look English.'     I shrug. I don't know what to say. I don't know what it is about me that doesn't look English.    He asks me if I want to go and eat with him.    I shake my head.    ''Please,' he says. He tries to persuade me but I tell him I have to go. Back in my dorm a man has moved in. He's sh...