‘Ask him, what, to kiss me?’

‘Yep. Just march right up to him and say you’ve got a feeling in your throat and would he like to please stick his tongue down it.’ The Yam stuck out her own tongue and wiggled it acrobatically in the air.

‘Gross. Anyway, I have other things to worry about than boys who won’t take the hint.’

Gehna was nearing the end of her first trimester and her mother’s efforts to get her to consider an abortion had moved into top gear. Nina Rai had taken her twice to meet the ob-gyn since Gehna had moved back in. Each time the doctor, a smiling, plump lady whom Gehna liked but who had clearly been briefed beforehand, told her the same three things: a) having a baby was a big responsibility, b) Gehna had narrow hips, and c) aborting the foetus was technically possible even after the first twelve weeks, but then it would be surgical, whereas during the first trimester it could be handled with pills alone.

‘What’s my hips got to do with anything?’ Gehna had asked the doctor.

‘The narrower your hips, the more difficult the delivery. Of course, besides painkillers, there are ways to manage the pain.’

‘Good, because I’m allergic.’

‘To painkillers?’

‘No,’ Gehna had said. ‘To pain.’

Pain was the only part of this whole giving-birth-to-a-baby stuff that gave her pause. She was a wuss. She had always been a wuss. Until today, she only wore one earring because she had made such a scene when Nina Rai had her left ear done that they had to leave the other one untouched.

‘Did you know,’ the Yam said, ‘that giving birth is one of the two most painful experiences the human body can undergo?’

‘What’s the other?’

‘Being burnt alive.’

‘Oh, great. Thanks for that.’

‘I’m saying, it’s got nothing to do with being a wuss. You could be that guy on TV who sticks his head into alligators’ mouths or covers himself with bees or whatever, and you’d still be right to feel scared about this. It’s only rational.’

‘There’s nothing rational about it,’ Gehna insisted. ‘It’s suicide, plain and simple. Listen, you know how much trouble I have getting that damn she-cup out every time I have my period, right? It’s made of silicon, and it’s that small. Can you imagine . . .?’

Gehna and the Yam spent an unpleasant few seconds imagining entire babies, all bony skulls and wiggling toes, emerging from their vaginas.

‘But the good news is,’ Gehna said, ‘no more periods for me, yay. Now I won’t be such a moody bitch all the time. I will look at the world through rose-coloured glasses. La vie en rose.’

‘Damn right,’ the Yam said. Privately, she believed that her friend’s fey moods had less to do with hormonal shifts during PMS than with who she was. Some people were born under a darker star than others.