Megan 3 (3 page)

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Because that’s what they do, innit? They get pregnant and they get themselves on the housing list, and then they get a flat. Two–three bedrooms! And then they let out the spare rooms to their friends and make a mint. Oh, I’ve heard all about them.’

I began to hum under my breath.

‘It’s always the same. Free handouts to anyone who wants them! Bet you get a nice little allowance each
week, taxi rides anywhere you want, free nurseries…’

I could feel myself beginning to get really angry. ‘I’m taking my A levels next year,’ I said, ‘and then I’ll be able to put my son in a nursery and get a decent job. I won’t need any handouts then.’

‘So you’ll be out to work all day, will you? Who’s going to look after your kid, then? That’ll be the state again, will it?’

I gave up, leaned back in my seat and stared out of the window. Jack had gone to sleep. He was teething and had been up three times in the night – not for long, though, but long enough to lose his dummy and need a cuddle. And for long enough to wake me up properly, so that each time I’d spent an hour or so staring at the ceiling, trying to sort my life out, wondering just what it was that I wanted to do with it. Or – not what I wanted to do with it – what I possibly
could
do with it now that I had Jack.

The traffic was bad that morning. We stopped and started and jolted around, and I was feeling sick by the time we got to Poppies.

The driver pulled up with another big jolt, waking Jack. ‘You’re here,’ he said, and he didn’t help me out with Jack, as the other one had always done, but left me to manage bags, baby, chair and everything on my own.

‘Thank you very much!’ I said. ‘Lovely journey,’ I added sarcastically – but very quietly. I had to be careful in case I had him for the rest of the term. I put the rucksack on my back, Jack over my arm in the seat, and dragged along the bag of books with the other hand.

Vicki appeared at the office door with a big smile on her face. She was the manager of the place and she was lovely – all the staff were. There were usually four or five of them: half looked after the babies and half tutored the lessons. Girls came and went: there were usually a couple of pregnant ones or girls with brand new babies, but there were also girls with toddlers; children up to three.

Poppies was actually four Portakabins linked together. Each had two rooms, and together they made a small school unit with a nursery attached. We were in the grounds of a big comprehensive, Oakley, although we were completely separate from them and couldn’t actually see the school building from where we were.

‘Good summer?’ Vicki said, and beamed at Jack. ‘Hello, my favourite boy!’ she said, and he gave a scream of delight. ‘He’s getting along well, Megan,’ she said, opening the inner door for me. ‘He’s looking really grown-up.’

‘He’s a year and a month now,’ I said proudly. ‘He’s taking a few steps on his own.’

‘Any words?’

‘A few,’ I nodded. ‘He says “bye-byes” and “g’bye” and “’lo”,’ I said. ‘But sometimes he gets the goodbye and hello muddled up and says goodbye when you meet him.’

Vicki laughed. ‘We’ll have him saying lots of words by the end of term,’ she said.

As I went in, another taxi drew up at the gate and Vicki waved to the girl inside – someone I didn’t recognise – and went down to greet her. I carried on to the nursery to settle Jack, really pleased to be back. Here, I had something to do and girls to chat to. If Jack was getting on my nerves I could offload him, and if I was worried about anything I could ask the staff. They obviously knew better than I did, but, unlike Mum, they didn’t ram it down your throat.

Our lessons weren’t like they’d been at real school, either – not half so disciplined. They couldn’t be really, because although the girls turned up most days, if their babies were ill, their taxis didn’t arrive or they just didn’t fancy it, they didn’t bother to come in. And sometimes lessons were disrupted by the babies or, more excitingly – as had happened last term – by a
girl going into labour. It was all much more laid-back than school: if it was a nice day your tutor might take you out somewhere, to see an interesting building or something, or lessons would be shelved because someone had turned up from the health service and wanted to talk to us about a baby’s speech development or the like.

I said hello to Joy and Stacey, two girls who’d been there last term, and we chatted a bit about what we’d done in the summer. Stacey had just got engaged to her boyfriend and was wearing a blue sapphire ring, which she flashed in front of our eyes at every opportunity.

There was a girl I’d never seen before sitting by the window with a very small baby wrapped tightly in a shawl on her lap. She was my age, or a bit younger, had fair curly hair and was pale and quite thin considering it couldn’t have been long since she’d had her baby. She had some funny old clothes on, like jumble sale stuff, but maybe that was because she couldn’t get into anything of her own yet.

‘You OK?’ I asked, because she was looking anxious.

She nodded. ‘First day nerves,’ she said.

I grinned. ‘It’s not like school – you don’t have to
worry. Everyone’s really nice.’

She shot a nervous look around the room. ‘My landlady said they watch you all the time and if you don’t look after your baby properly they tell you off.’

‘Rubbish,’ I said. ‘If you do something wrong they tell you how to do it.’

She smiled a little. ‘That’s OK then.’ She looked at Jack. ‘You’ve got a little boy, have you?’

I nodded. ‘He’s Jack and I’m Megan.’

‘This is a girl and her name’s Stella. That means star,’ the girl said. ‘My name’s Kirsty.’

I told her Jack was just over a year old and she said Stella was only three weeks.

‘Where d’you live?’ I asked, and she named an area in the opposite direction to where I came from. ‘I’m in a Bed and Breakfast place,’ she said, and pulled a face. ‘It’s horrible.’

‘Haven’t you got any family? Why aren’t you living with them?’

‘My mum said I’d get a flat quicker if they made me homeless.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I didn’t really want to, but I went along with it.’

‘Don’t you and your mum get along, then?’ I asked. I put Jack down on the floor and he leaned on the chair in front of him and reached towards Kirsty’s
baby, patting her foot. ‘Didn’t she want you at home?’

‘We’ve never really got on well,’ the girl said, ‘and then she met this bloke and now she wants to have a baby of her own with him. She said there wouldn’t be room for me anyway, and that I’d get a place of my own quicker if they turfed me out.’ She hesitated. ‘Is it really OK here?’

‘Yeah, it’s fine!’

‘Guess anything’s better than walking round the streets. It’s what I do mostly – I’m not supposed to stay in the B and B place during the day.’

‘Why not?’ I asked, shocked.

‘Stella’s crying wakes people up. There’s a couple of men who work shifts and they don’t like it.’

I pulled a face. ‘That’s their hard luck, then.’

‘And the landlady says it’s regulations or something – everyone’s got to be out of the house for a certain number of hours.’

‘I should ask Vicki about that,’ I said. ‘She’ll have a word with them.’

She shook her head quickly. ‘No, it’s OK. I don’t want to cause any fuss. They might think I’ve been complaining and then they’ll be horrible to me.’

‘So what’s your room like?’

‘Grim.’

‘So’s mine – and I live at home!’

Jack let go of the chair he was holding on to and lurched towards the big dolls’ house. He took about five steps on his own before he fell on to it. I called, ‘Hurray!’ and he turned to smile at me, well pleased with himself. ‘He’s just starting to walk properly,’ I explained to Kirsty.

‘I can’t imagine Stella
walking
. I can’t imagine her any older than she is now.’

I grinned. ‘I used to say that, but the time goes really quickly.’

The nursery was beginning to fill up. Girls gave their babies a last-minute rusk, or changed their nappies, or wiped their faces before they started lessons.

‘Is Jack’s father still around?’ Kirsty asked. ‘Is he your boyfriend?’

‘
Was
my boyfriend,’ I said. ‘He’s hardly been in touch since. What about you?’

She shook her head ruefully. ‘I met him on holiday. Haven’t seen him since.’

‘Didn’t you write to him?’

‘’Course. The address he gave me was a false one.’

I tutted – but the thing about having a baby when you’re fifteen or so is that everyone had some sort of hard-luck story to tell. At Poppies last term there was
Gilly who’d had a baby by her best friend’s boyfriend, Sinna who hadn’t told her mum until half an hour before she’d given birth, Hannah who’d had a dozen boyfriends and had absolutely no idea who the father was and Suzie who’d got pregnant by her stepfather.

The holiday romance one was a new one on me, though. ‘What a pig,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ she nodded. ‘I thought he was really nice, too. He said he loved me.’

‘Were you gutted?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘What about writing to the hotel you stayed in? Or getting in touch with the holiday company or something?’

She shook her head. ‘I thought of all that. I don’t even know if his name’s right, though. And what would be the point?’

‘You might get some money from him.’

‘Do you get money from your ex-boyfriend?’

I shook my head. ‘He’s at university.’

‘Is he any support at all?’

‘Yeah. He sends Jack horrible green troll things on his birthday.’

She laughed. ‘There you are, then.’

At least, though, I knew who he was and if I was
ever really desperate he’d probably help me. And of course I still had the security of being at home with Mum, even if she did drive me round the bend most of the time.

Maria – one of the tutors – came in. She said hello to everyone and went round admiring the babies, then she asked everyone who was doing Geography to go with her. Three of us settled our babies – I tried to ignore Jack’s woeful look at me as I said goodbye – and followed her into one of the study rooms. As I closed the door I heard the first wail of protest from Jack, then for the next half an hour I tried to get into the session and ignore Jack’s plaintive cries coming through the thin walls. Just as I thought I couldn’t stand it any longer and would have to go to him, one of the nursery nurses came in to get me.

‘He’s going through a clingy phase, isn’t he? He just wants you, I’m afraid.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘D’you think you can come and see to him?’

For the rest of the day, then, I did little bits of Geography interspersed with sitting in the nursery with Jack – and hoped that the clingy phase didn’t go on for too long…

My taxi usually came to collect me at four o’clock in the afternoon, but as it hadn’t arrived by four-fifteen I took Jack and all my bags and baggages to the gate to wait. In the front of Poppies was a small garden with a couple of plastic toddler toys, and I sat Jack on the grass next to them and went outside to lean on the fence. I was looking down the road and so I didn’t see or hear the boy until he was almost up to me.

‘Hi!’ he said, making me jump.

I turned. He was about eighteen, good-looking, with a shaved head and dark eyes. ‘Have you just come outside for some air?’ he asked, grinning.

I nodded. ‘I’m waiting for my taxi.’

‘You go here, then, do you?’ he gestured towards Poppies.

‘Yeah. I’m doing A Levels.’ I put this in so he’d know I wasn’t a bimbo. ‘Are you at Oaklands?’

‘In the Sixth,’ he said. He looked over at Jack, who
was trying to pull himself on to a green plastic wheelbarrow. ‘Is he yours?’

I smiled across at Jack. ‘Yes, he is.’ After the mess I’d got into when I’d first met Mark – trying to pretend that I didn’t have a baby – I’d made up my mind that no matter who asked, shop assistants, people in the street, potential boyfriends, I’d tell the truth. Besides, I was standing outside an educational unit for single mothers so it was a bit obvious. ‘His name’s Jack.’ I looked at him again and laughed because he’d just pulled the little wheelbarrow on top of himself and had such a baffled, surprised look on his face.

‘Cute!’ the boy said. ‘My name’s Jon. J-O-N,’ he spelled out. ‘How old is he, then?’

‘Just over a year.’

‘Has he got any brothers and sisters?’

‘No, he hasn’t!’

‘Just checking,’ the boy said. ‘You on your own, then?’

I looked at him indignantly. ‘Bit nosy, aren’t you? What’s with all the questions?’

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but you don’t often get good-looking girls waiting around outside here. And I like to get my facts right before I start.’ He looked at me with raised eyebrows, smiling slightly. His eyes were very
deep brown and considering it was years since anyone had flirted with me, I couldn’t help but smile back. Start
what
? I wanted to ask.

‘I’ve been coming here for ages. Since January,’ I said.

‘Well, I certainly didn’t spot you before.’ He gave me a look again, as if to say that if he
had
spotted me he’d have made a move. ‘I came by bike all last term – went round the main road way.’ He looked at Jack again. ‘So he’s yours, is he? You’re pretty young, aren’t you?’

‘So?’ I said defensively.

‘So nothing. I was just saying. What’s it like having a baby to bring up?’

I opened my mouth but then realised there was nothing I could say to answer. How could I tell him what it was like? There was too much… too many things. They couldn’t possibly be rolled into something flippant and tossed back. I hesitated. ‘It’s OK,’ I said.

I looked at Jack. He was on his tummy and, looking intently at a clump of grass, was trying to put some into his mouth. I left the boy – Jon – went over to the fence and picked up Jack, then opened his mouth and pulled out a few strands of greenery. ‘Grass isn’t nice
to eat,’ I said, and he just looked at me unblinkingly. ‘Grass,’ I said again, and pointed to it. Vicki had told us today that we ought to do this all the time, that naming things would help our babies’ vocabulary.