The Decision: Lizzie's Story (22 page)

Whatever Mum and Dad said or felt about the situation, I felt confident I could count on their moral support. I was lucky. I’d read lots of stories detailing the unfortunate exploits of pregnant teens and single Mums, shown the door by their families. That would not happen to me. My parents might have no money, but they stood by their family no matter what. To throw me out just for being pregnant would make a nonsense of their belief system; it just didn’t make sense. There would be disappointment and worry, though. I had had big plans: I was going to university in a matter of weeks; I’d wanted to have a career, move away, become independent. If I kept the baby, could I still have the future I’d planned for? If I chose not to have the baby, could I accept that and move on?

As I turned a street corner, with a pang of guilt I realised I was just two streets away from Mike’s. In a matter of seconds, I could go and tell him my news, right now. He was the child’s father. Yet knowing Mike as I did, I knew he would not
welcome the situation and part of me feared his reaction, not only because I felt sure it would be unpleasant, either. Could he unwittingly influence me? Perhaps if he were to say he didn’t want the child, I would say I did – and I would live to regret my defiance. Alternatively, if Mike was to go against my expectations and support me in my choice or even welcome the news (as unlikely as that would surely be), would that mean he and I would unwisely soldier on with our relationship? I knew, deep down, as soon as I had seen the line and dot on the positive tester stick, there was one decision made for me, right there: Mike and I were over. He and I had coasted along for too many months, treating sex like a game without consequences. Well there were consequences. The game was over. I felt a sense of sorrow at this realisation: there must be other teenage couples who could have shared the burden of this difficult decision together? I grieved that Mike and I could not do the same, but the way things stood between us dictated I make the decision without his involvement. So I made a promise to Mike in my head: he deserved to know the outcome of my decision when I had made it. I would tell him and stand by that.

From the labyrinthine streets I stared up at the clifftops, the extravagant redbrick estate on top where Shona lived. Though I couldn’t see her actual house, I fancied she could see me too, ant-like, below. That was the way it had always been between us: Shona was the savvy one; the spoilt one; the one with all the answers, no matter how facile. Just a few short months ago I would have run to her straight away, seeking advice but really wanting her to tell me what to do. And she would have been glad to give it; perhaps she still would? Maybe she would even surprise me with her maturity and insight, like she had when she was just eleven on that very first sleepover. Yet still, I knew I could not go to her now. There had been too many moments when I had deferred to Shona or let myself be swept along by her whims.
Over the years, we’d spent too many hours standing outside classrooms and the headmaster’s office and once, a whole night in a police cell when an underage Shona outside a pub had lightly pushed a policeman with nothing else better to do than lock young girls up who were cheeking him. But worse had been all the instances when I had known what Shona was doing was wrong, even if she hadn’t, but gone along with what she wanted, anyway. So this was my decision to make; no one else could stand in for me and make it instead – not even my oldest friend.

I found myself at the seafront in the blink of an eye, as if teleported there. I leant on the railings. My sisters and I had spent so many afternoons on the beach here. Now, I could see a lone runner race, single-mindedly, across the shale. I recognised her from college; she was in the year below me. Hers was the kind of sporty physique, all angular and lithe, her auburn hair tied up in a careless knot on top of her head. Unaware of me watching her, the girl made it to the steps, clearing them with a hop, skip and jump before jumping over the sea wall, past the still-boarded-up Grange and up the cliff path, to the smaller terraced houses of Winby, past the marketplace.

Back below on the beach, a boy and a girl of similar ages – twins perhaps – were searching the shoreline with a bucket. They were pulling various things from the tangled knots of seaweed the tide had left behind, the water far off in the distance. Shells, bits of rock smoothed by the waves, even a glass fishing buoy. I recalled doing the same with my sisters and wondered when we stopped; I couldn’t remember. Their mother sat on the shale reading a book, her jeans rolled up, her feet dangling in a rock pool – yet wearing a woolly cardigan on top, a strange contrast. Despite it being high season, the donkeys were not tethered to the railings; their keeper must have taken them home early, there were hardly any tourists were about. As if to confirm my thought, the ice cream stall on the beach steps was deserted, its shutters down with
CLOSED in bright red letters. Over by the tangle of seaweed, an argument broke out between the boy and girl over something; their mother looked up briefly, but didn’t intervene.

“I hate you!” The little girl said.

I saw the pain in the little boy’s eyes, the trembling of his lip. I wondered if the little girl knew what she had said or the effect it could have. I remembered all the moments Sal had said the same to me; how much I had stewed and hated her back, yet never said it. Maybe I should have? Perhaps it was just a phrase to Sal and the little girl in front of me now: they didn’t mean it?

“I hate you, too!” The little boy screeched.

“That’s enough!” An adult voice cut through the air, silencing them immediately. Their Mum sighed; her gaze settled on me and caught me looking. She smiled self-consciously. “Kids, hey?” She said.

Embarrassed, I averted my eyes and moved on from the railings, towards the closed mini golf centre, The Foc’s’le, The Penguin Fish Bar and Flossie’s, that sold beach paraphernalia. I meandered past the flashing lights of the open-fronted arcades. Inside, teenagers and the odd tourist were slotting money into penny falls machines and various video games. A grinning boy of about seventeen managed to hook a teddy bear with a crane from another machine for his pale, much-younger girlfriend, then swore copiously as it dropped back down, just inches from the chute. “Rip off!” He yelled, smacking the glass with an open palm. An alarm went off. Within seconds a security guard appeared from nowhere, escorting the still-arguing teen and the pale girlfriend from the premises.

I wandered into the arcade, zombie-like. In a little cabinet were all the prizes you could exchange your tokens for: stickers, some cheap jewellery, embossed
cigarette lighters amongst them. Mum and Dad never liked us coming in these places; they said they were seedy. Then Dad got a summer job in one a couple of years’ back and he had had to contend with our sniping all season about his supposed hypocrisy. We were too young to appreciate work was work and principles didn’t always come into it; all we saw was Dad going back on his word. I wondered if that was what parenthood was really about: putting up with your kids sometimes, as much as nurturing them? I’d never thought of it like that before, but then I supposed we hadn’t been the easiest of children to raise either. But then, was there any such thing?

Mum always said parenthood was the hardest job of all, but I had just assumed it was something people just did. Mum made it look easy: motherhood seemed to come naturally to her, as if she’d done it before. I wondered if I could be like her, or whether I would just screw everything up. The media seemed to think no one could parent successfully without how-to websites, articles, books and programmes galore, covering everything from increasing a foetus’ intelligence through to choosing a school when it was still in utero. I’d seen the feverish despair in various couple’s eyes on television, appealing to Supernanny and her many contemporaries as their families went wrong: “Help us! Our children are running riot and our marriages are falling apart!” It always seemed to be those couples that seemed quite privileged to me, too: they had nice houses, large gardens, money in the bank. If they couldn’t do it, how could I: a teenager, with no money and no home? Yet at the same time, I could see what a nonsense that worry was too. As I had already asserted in my own mind, my mother had started young too and raised us well with little money, in a rented house and with no man at her side for extended periods. I had never believed age, class or money or lack of it defined anyone’s ability on anything else; why would parenthood be any different? There was no reason I could not be a good mother, as long as I took
it seriously and thought my actions through, like my own Mum had. I could not rely on kneejerk fears to make my decision; I must weigh up every solution in the situation carefully if I was to choose the right one.

On the surface, the answer was deceptively simple: I had the child – or I didn’t. Yet the more I considered both, the more complicated both scenarios became: another paradox. An abortion was a deceptively “quick fix”: things could go “back to normal” in a matter of days, weeks at the most. I could go to university and everything else I had planned would fall into place. The pregnancy could be consigned to memory, an unpleasant glitch in my otherwise smooth transition into adult life. For many girls, it would surely be that; it didn’t make them bad people, either. Yet part of me wondered whether it would be as simple as that for me. We were not just talking short term, but the long term as well. Would I be relieved? Or would I look back and wish I had done things differently? If I was to choose that path, I needed to be one hundred per cent sure.

If I were to have the baby, I needed to recognise I was almost certainly taking on the role of a single mother. Even if Mike wanted a role in the child’s life – something I would be keen to encourage - I didn’t believe I wanted him to have a role in mine any longer. We couldn’t use the pregnancy as an excuse to patch up our differences and struggle onwards, together: that seemed foolhardy given our history. I needed to listen to my gut instinct, not hope for the best like we had before. Look where that got us! Our relationship had been the triumph of hope over experience and now was the time to draw a line under it; it was best for all involved, including the child. I didn’t want to be a single mother; it hadn’t been in my life plan, but then it probably wasn’t in most women’s. But Mike and I living together, getting married, being a family – all that “expected” stuff - was out of the question. If “whatever
works” was key, then that would simply not work. Not for me. And if Mike was truly honest with himself, not for him either.

There were so many other factors to consider, as well: working would prove difficult, especially with childcare and public transport as poor as they were where I lived. Did I move away? But what then about my family, my support network? If I were to become a mother, what would become of my education? I had not finished yet and I knew somehow I would not be sated by parenthood alone. Just because I had a child did not make ambitions go away, overnight. I refused to succumb to stereotype, especially when I knew it could be done. How could I tell my child to follow their dreams if I had never followed mine? In fact, in some ways, I needed to follow them all the more, not just for myself but to show my child parenthood – or indeed anything unexpected - needn’t be the end of one’s youth or life.

I knew too there would be various judgements made of me, no matter which choice I made. Whether I had an abortion or kept the baby, people would feel it their right to tell me what I “should” have done. Some would smugly tell me I was being responsible,
not
having the baby; others would tell me I had murdered it, with disgust in their eyes. If I kept the child, no doubt I would be called a drain a society, with no thought for the contributions I might be able to make, or what my child could become. The tabloids carried ceaseless hysterical headlines about pregnant teens and young mothers, suggesting the majority of them did it as a lifestyle choice in order to claim benefits and get free housing. Of course, what those newspapers didn’t say was that nearly all of those young parents and babies ended up in bed and breakfasts instead, like Letty Welles did in Year 11. Letty said the noise at the B & B was horrendous: her little boy, Jack, would cry for hours at the raised voices and slamming of doors, with cigarette smoke filtering up from the communal areas, infecting every room, so
the air never felt clean. She and Jack had constant coughs and colds and there was never enough of anything: milk, food, peace. If those teen parents
were
making a conscious lifestyle choice in order to improve their lives materially, you’d have thought they would have made a better one! But then why would bigots listen to reason, when they were absorbing and regurgitating prejudice?

I was outside again, but I didn’t remember leaving the arcade. Looking down the length of the long sea front, I saw the bright coloured lights blink on, reflected in the tide as it came in. There was no sign of the boy and girl, or their mother. It was dusk. I could hear laughter coming from nearby pubs as drinkers spilled out into the beer gardens that overlooked the cove. I looked at my watch: nearly eight o’ clock! Panicked, I realised the last bus was about to depart. I hitched my bag on my shoulder and ran. The high street was deserted as my feet pounded the pavement: a ghost town, eerie and silent. I could hear my breath catch in my throat as I struggled to keep up with myself. I did not want to have to go to Mike’s and ask him to drive me home, nor could I face Shona’s interrogation. I didn’t want to see either of them, for fear they could read my news etched across my face. Despite my reluctance to return earlier, I suddenly knew: I had to get home. I needed to talk to Mum.

Racing through the marketplace, all the stalls were packed up: not one trader remained. The only soul in the vicinity was a drunk, slumped under the clock tower with a plastic bottle of cider. He gave me a gummy smile as I ran past, yelling something I couldn’t catch. I made it into the bus station to see the number 23 leaving the junction. Barely anyone was on board, yet still the Driver refused to stop or open the doors as I ran alongside, banging on them. I couldn’t hear his words above the grumbling noise of the engine, but from his gestures I knew he was swearing at me and telling me to get back. Finally I was forced to stop, out of breath, with a stitch in
my side. I was forced to watch the bus sail out of the station and onto the link road. Exhausted, annoyed and still panting for breath, I sat down on one of the graffittied benches in the bus station.