Doctor Brown confirmed my worst fear and sealed my mother’s loathing of female creatures: we all should be spayed. She asked him to repeat it twice and four times to tell no one and he nodded six times. I let out a giggle when he asked when I’d had my last cycle; it sounded so funny but Mammy fetched me a good hard wallop across the back of the head. I didn’t laugh again.

I sat dumb while my mother talked dates, deliveries and vitamins. I was to take an iron tonic for the baby. There was no talk of where it would live when I had to go back to school. By what they were saying I would miss the first term when I should be starting my A levels which would be a disaster. I’d have three whole months to catch up on.

My father was waiting for us in the car park unaware of the news he was about to receive. I sat in the back seat looking at the necks of the two people who would hate me for the rest of my life and I burst into tears.

–  What’s wrong, girl? asks Daddy.

–  Ha! Wait ’til we get home and you’ll hear all about your lovely daughter! says Mammy.

And he did. Mammy made me stay in the kitchen while she explained that I was in the family way to someone who wasn’t the doctor’s son and someone I didn’t care to name. She stoked the fire with her ‘tramps’ and her ‘disgraces’ but he didn’t rise to it. He chewed the inside of his cheek.

–  She’s only sixteen.

–  She might only be sixteen but she’s only sixteen and carryin’ a baby that’s come from Good Holy God knows where! Pah! We’ll have to get the priest. He’ll find out soon enough! Do the Dirty Magees know?

–  No. No one knows … Daddy?

–  I’ve to see to the beasts, Mary. Do as your mother tells you.

He left us inside where we belonged, ashen-faced, for the outside where he belonged. He would probably have a toke or two on his pipe after news like that. It’s not every day you find out that your daughter is a T.R.A.M.P. I just wanted to tell him I’d only done it once, just once, but then I’d have to say to my daddy I’d done it.

–  Get to your room and don’t come out of it unless you hear me say otherwise. You’re not to even come down the stairs, d’y’hear me? You’re not fit to stand in my kitchen!