How do I pull back from this without destroying her?

‘You OK, Greenie?’ she says, her head cocked to one side.

‘Let’s go back to my house.’

She winks, as though she knows exactly what I’m after. She couldn’t be more wrong.

The moment we’re in the den and I’ve closed the door, she’s pawing at me and trying to kiss me and I feel revolted, not with her but with myself.

‘Zoë, stop, please. Sit down. I need to say something.’

‘Am I in trouble?’

I stand in front of her. ‘Look. I really care about you and we’ve had some great times together. But I think we should cool it a bit.’

Zoë looks puzzled. ‘But . . . you love me, don’t you?’

‘I do love you. As a friend.’

‘No. No. It’s more than that.’

‘I meant it when I said you were beautiful, Zoë. And the sex was amazing but we’re both too fragile to commit, right?’

She says nothing.

I plough on. ‘We can still support each other but I don’t think we should be in each other’s pockets. We need to work out what we want to do with our lives and—’

‘I’m pregnant.’

My sympathy wanes: it’s a low blow to lie about that. ‘No, you’re not. We always use something.’

‘If you don’t believe me, go buy a test. I’ll pee on a stick in front of you.’

There’s a note of triumph in her tone that makes my stomach turn over. ‘You’ve done a test already?’

Zoë nods. ‘Yesterday. My period hasn’t come and my boobs hurt, so I went to the family planning centre. I was going to tell you tonight. Look, I bought this.’ She reaches into the new bag I got for her and pulls out a cheap teddy, smaller than her hand. ‘Only from Woolworth’s and I got it in yellow because that way it won’t matter if it’s a girl or a boy—’

I snatch it out of her hand. ‘You can’t have a baby, Zoë. You can’t even look after yourself.’

‘We look after each other, don’t we? And it’s not like we’re going to struggle for money. It’s a bit soon, but accidents happen.’ She grins cheekily but her eyes won’t meet mine.

‘You wanted this.’

‘No. The condom must have split or something . . .’ Her hands reach towards me and it makes me think of waking in ICU, the panic and fear as those figures moved towards me, taking my blood, inflicting pain . . .

Then, there was no escape. But this is worse. ‘Fucking hell, Zoë. You have no idea what a disaster this is.’

‘It’s not a disaster. It’s a shock, yeah, but you’ll get used to it—’