Chloe had never really felt that she knew her own body. She didn’t admire herself in the mirror while she got dressed. She didn’t have a specific feature that she liked to highlight with her clothes. She had barely ever even masturbated, and when she had attempted it it had been more through a desire to understand the fuss than out of anything resembling lust. She’d been given a vibrator years ago, and she used it intermittently, but only really in an attempt to understand why other people liked them. And yet now, she could feel that something was different. It wasn’t just that she felt sick from the moment she woke up to the moment she fell asleep. Nor was it the fact that her breasts were so swollen that putting on a bra made her wince. Her jeans were tight, she slept longer and deeper than she ever had before, and she woke with a ravenous hunger she had never previously experienced. But that wasn’t why she knew she was pregnant. She would have known without any of the symptoms. She just – and she couldn’t really explain how or why – knew. There was something different. Something inside her which was undeniably, unquestionably, alive.

She bought a pregnancy test at a chemist’s a mile or so from the house, making sure that no one from her school was lurking behind her. Then she went to a pub, bought a pint of sparkling water and went to the bathroom to confirm what she already knew. She sat, her jeans and knickers around her ankles, feeling completely and utterly calm. Even the bleachy odour of the pub bathroom smelled sweet to her. In films, people always peed on the stick then placed it face down while they waited. But Chloe watched the urine seep down the little window. The two pink lines appeared, vivid and rude, without waiting a second, let alone the three minutes the test suggested.

It was the first pregnancy test she had ever taken. Thanks to good contraceptive fortune, and having clockwork periods, she had never had so much as a scare before. She had sat with Zadie, once, while she took one. Zadie had been ashen-faced when they bought it, and they had walked back to the house in silence. She had sworn Chloe to silence. ‘Max would have a fit,’ she had said. ‘It would ruin his whole future.’ Chloe wondered now if it might have been more about the fact that a pregnancy would have aroused Max’s suspicion that Zadie was sleeping with someone else than a concern for his future. It was weird. Every time she had a memory of Zadie, now, she found something mean to say about her. Little digs. She had never said a single bad word to, or about, Zadie, until recently. And now she couldn’t stop.