‘What? She can say whatever she wants and I can’t? I can’t help my colour, y’know.’ Eram shoved his hands deep into his pockets. ‘It’s a sensitive topic.’

The smiley, plump ob-gyn doctor walked out of an examination room. Gehna introduced both Eram and the Yam to her.

‘These are my best friends. Though at the moment I feel like bashing their stupid heads in with a frying pan.’

‘Well, that’s nice your friends are here,’ the doctor said. ‘Unfortunately, our ultrasound room can only accommodate one other person besides you and your mother.’

Before she could finish, Eram and the Yam were racing each other down the corridor. What started as a fast walk became an all-out sprint and then rapidly degenerated into a shoving contest as they simultaneously reached the door to the exam room.

‘Move.’

‘You move.’

‘I’ve been her friend longer.’

‘So, what? I got here first.’

‘I don’t want to have to hurt you, Casper.’

‘Listen, fatty—’

In the end, Gehna had to break it up. She kept a stern face on as she dispatched both of them to the cafeteria until after her ultrasound, but she was secretly torn.

I really do want them to get along with each other but, on the other hand, it’s quite nice to be fought over like this. In a perfect world, there would be a fixed schedule where they would be friends one day and fight over me the next and then be friends again the next day.

‘So, Gehna,’ the doctor said, as she rolled Gehna’s T-shirt up away from her stomach, ‘your mother tells me you’ve decided to keep the baby.’

‘Yep. I thought might as well, right, since there’s nothing good on Netflix.’

The doctor’s smile froze on her face. ‘She’s joking,’ Gehna’s mother said quickly. ‘She jokes when she’s nervous.’

‘Oh, well, there’s nothing to be nervous about. This is a completely painless procedure.’

She then went on for a while about the completely painless procedure. Gehna wasn’t really listening; she’d watched enough Juno reruns to know how the jelly would feel on her stomach. What she was nervous about was that the ultrasound would reveal, with all the cold finality of hi-tech science, that there was no baby. After all the tears and drama of the last three months, that cone of light—or was it the cone of sound—would shine into her vacant, unoccupied and totally baby-free uterus. The jig would be up. She would be branded a charlatan. A fraud who concocted a pregnancy scam just to get a bit of attention from people.

‘Mmm, what?’

‘Don’t say “what” like that, Gehna,’ Nina Rai said. ‘The doctor was asking whether she should start or if you’re waiting for, uh, for anyone.’

Gehna figured that what the doctor really wanted to know was where the father of the baby was. Father of the baby. It was weird to think of that shy, condom-fumbling boy as the father of anything. She hadn’t even told him she was pregnant because she hated the idea of becoming a movie cliché, of seeing the dawning horror on his face when she gave him the happy news. Even if, by some extreme chance, he was pleased that he’d made a baby with her, what then? She would only have tied an almost-stranger to herself, and to her life, forever. Gehna was sure she didn’t want that.