The frog princess was the nearest to the yellow door. Presumably when one went in, they all moved up a chair, into the heat of the previous sitter, intimately. We are all women. We are bound to protect ourselves. The cap and the pill, the scrape of the spatula taking our smear, to save us from semen and from cancer. We are the responsible ones.

But there were children with the women here and there, subdued children eating chips or drawing on pieces of paper on the floor.

Fourteen-year-olds with kids and thick mascara, slim with strange fat faces that had not lived, but had overseen, screaming and crying, the birth of offspring from the trunk below.

Certainly, none of them looked afraid. They were all quite comfortable in their evening club, the Family Planning Clinic.

I’m afraid I haven’t planned. Heavy with child I come to ask for an extraction.

Would this one listen?

Was it to be the man from behind the yellow door? She had hoped it would be a woman on this visit. A woman’s touch would be less horrible, perhaps.

But these were all women. Look at them.

The needles of that one clocking like Madame Defarge, her soiled yellow hair piled up on her head and red lipstick like a gaping wound. And there one writing, probably a letter, holding the paper sideways and chewing her nails.

The hall smelled of women, too. Cheap scent and costlier scent like fly spray, sticky underarm deodorant, hair lacquer, babies and washing-up hands.

Rachaela felt sick. If that happened, where was the lavatory? There must be one. She should have asked.

She could feel it, pressing against her belly from beneath, like solid indigestion.

Try not to think of it. She took slow breaths of the nauseating air.

A girl in a purple suit began to talk to her friend beside her.

‘I don’t like this waiting. Gets on me nerves.’

Teah.’

Yes, thought Rachaela.

‘Don’t know what he’ll say this time. I reckon he fancies me.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘Well why not?’

‘It’s more’n his job’s worth.’

The purple girl toyed with a packet of cigarettes beneath the ‘No Smoking’ sign, playing with them like a toy. If she could not consume them at least she could hold them.

‘He keeps on, give it up. I’ve tried ain’t I? I started with all that worry.’

‘Yeah.’

‘All them counsellors and psychiatrics. Was I sure? ‘Cause I’m bleeding sure. Can’t have another kid can I? Can’t afford it and he’ll leave me.’

‘Oh Lyn.’

‘Well he would have. We was in a fix as it was. An’ I took the bloody pill. I did. Regular. And then I goes up the shute. That would have been number three.’

‘Lyn, you always go on.’