‘He didn’t mean it, he really didn’t …’ Niquita said, quickly and breathless.

‘Shit.’ Margaret Rose, then composing herself. ‘He push ya hard?’

She listened to the details of the shoving-off-the-wall and the name-calling while giving the girls some biscuits. She listened to their sobs that turned into a flushed nervous laughter, they made shapes to leave and said they would be back tomorrow and every evening, laying on Mammy’s bed until Margaret Rose was home in her kitchen sitting on the same couch she fell off and with the stove lit and minding little Evan again. And just as it was Falling Asleep Finally Time, Niquita seemed unsure about making a break out the door, and suddenly began to sob miserably.

‘I’m late.’

The vestal virgin. Shit.

It was awful and she was late and there was no sign of her friend atalltalltall, sobbing still, shoulders heaving, and Johnny had told her before doing it that it couldn’t happen the first time, he had made her so sure, convinced her, because if it did happen the first time, it would be because she wasn’t a virgin at all, and that it would be because she was a slut, and so she believed him, because she is a virgin … was one, but she was sure Jonathan O’Keefe would still definitely maybe marry her, though he couldn’t wait any longer, because there was a long queue of good-looking wans of the Lally’s ready for him, and she knew deep down in the place where women find answers, for she was soon a woman, and all the bother and blather that was coming down on her, but for now it was maybe all over, she didn’t know, still, a part of her was convinced he’d still marry her and they could tell a white lie to make it all much better. Pretend the baby came early. Or something. But a part of her wasn’t convinced at all, and she was so very sorry. She heaved. Then retched. And she was also starting to get fat already, well, more sort of thickened around the waist, bloated, but her Michaela felt it was nothing good Spanx wouldn’t solve. Margaret Rose rolled her eyes to heaven, and of course Niquita wasn’t happy about this at all, because now he was laughing at her most of the time for being fat and seemed to be trying to make a pure fool out of her, and she remembered what happened to Auntie Krystal when her waist started to thicken like this and the wedding dress was a fiasco and no one ever let her live it down, as if everything that happened in her life and the lives of those close to her, good or bad afterwards, was all her own fault for bringing sin in the door. And Mammy should really get up out of bed, now this minute, because the wedding would need to be tomorrow or at the very latest next week to stop everyone knowing that she had a thickened waist. And Niquita began hyperventilating and shaking and shaking. Margaret Rose pressed her daughter about who knew. No one knew. Except Michaela. She sobbed. She knew right away. And now Mammy. And she flicked her eyes downwards. Promise. Swear to God and hope to die.