Lifesaving for Beginners

that’s good. I think that means she’s thinking about it.
    Then, ‘I’ll be back in a few days, Milo. You’ll hardly notice I’m gone.’
    I say, ‘Mam said she’d be back in a few days.’ I don’t know I’m going to cry until I start to cry. The thing about Mam was that she always did what she said. If she said she’d be there to pick you up at three o’clock, then she would be. The only time she didn’t do what she said she was going to do was when she went to Ireland, because she never came back. Not really. It doesn’t count if you come back and you’re dead.
    Now I’m sort of crying and shouting at the same time, as if I’m not in the middle of an airport with millions of people all around. I say, ‘I will notice you’ve gone. I always notice when people are gone.’
    After a while, I get myself to stop crying but now I think that maybe I’ve pressed a button by accident because I can’t hear anything down the phone. I say, ‘Faith? Hello? Are you there?’
    Faith says, ‘I’m here.’ Her voice is a whisper, like she’s telling me a secret.
    I say, ‘Can I come with you? Please?’ I cross my fingers because Carla says it brings you luck. I cross my toes too, except I’m not sure if that brings you as much luck.
    And then she says, ‘OK.’
    ‘OK?’
    ‘OK.’
    ‘OK, I can come to Ireland with you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I promise I’ll be good.’
    ‘You’d better be better than good.’
    I’m not sure how you can be better than good but I say, ‘I will,’ just in case she changes her mind.

 
    March 1987
    I’m seven months pregnant and I don’t even know. Fifteen years old and seven months pregnant. I haven’t got a clue.
    Minnie works it out, in the changing rooms of O’Connor’s Jeans in the Ilac Centre. I can’t get the Levi’s over my belly.
    I say, ‘Coconut snowballs,’ by way of explanation. I laugh when I say it. Minnie doesn’t laugh. She looks at my belly so I look at it too. I say, ‘I’m a bit bloated after the Big Mac.’ Minnie puts down the jeans she’s holding. She stretches her arm towards me. Puts her hand on my belly.
    She says, ‘It’s hard.’ She pokes it like she did with the frog we dissected in biology yesterday. Then she drops her hand and moves away from me.
    I say, ‘What?’ Minnie doesn’t scare easy.
    She says, ‘It moved.’ She points at my belly and when I look down, I think I see something. A ripple along the skin.
    I say, ‘Oh shit,’ and I back up until I bump against the mirror of the changing room.
    Minnie says, ‘You’re up the duff.’ That’s what Minnie says about her mother when she’s pregnant. Up the duff. Minnie’s mother is always up the duff. Minnie hates how up the duff her mother always is.
    The minute she says it, I know it’s true.
    Minnie says, ‘You did it. You had sex and you never told me. We’re supposed to be best friends. We’re supposed to tell each other everything.’ Her face is flushed with shock and I don’t know if it’s because of me being up the duff or me not telling her that I’d done it.
    ‘I only did it twice.’ It doesn’t seem real. Even now.
    ‘Twice?’ She’s livid. We always assumed Minnie would be the first one to go.
    ‘Jesus.’ I sit on the stool in the corner of the changing room. All of a sudden. As if my legs have forgotten what to do with themselves. ‘What am I going to do?’
    Minnie shakes her head but hunkers in front of me. I realise how serious this is when she touches my hand and squeezes it. But then she shakes her head again. ‘How the hell can you be this up the duff and not know?’
    I shake my head. ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘And who the hell was it? You haven’t gone out with anyone since . . .’ She stops talking and looks at me. I nod.
    Minnie says, ‘Elliot Porter?’
    I say, ‘Yes.’
    Saying his name is enough to bring me right back to that sick, heady, dizzy, delirious feeling. It is like a hollow, the feeling. Right inside you. A hunger pain that no amount of food can ease.
    Elliot. Elliot Porter. Right from the start, Mrs Higginbotham calls him ‘an unsuitable boy’. He doesn’t introduce himself at the front door. Nor does he take his hands out of his pockets. She has a thing about men’s hands and their pockets. Elliot Porter walks up to my front door, knocks on it and, when Mrs Higginbotham opens it, he says, ‘Is Kat in?’ like he’s been at the front door millions of times, except he hasn’t. He’s never been at