London, 2001
Even as a wee'un the threat of turning out like her Aunt Kathy had loomed over Michelle Mallon's head.
Whenever she'd gone and done something particularly feckless, her Ma would give her the same pointed look across the kitchen table and regurgitate the warning she'd heard a million and one times during her teenage years...
"Any more o' that and you'll end up the spit of yer Auntie Kathy! Believe you and me, Love."
Michelle sighed deeply, wiping a hand across her sweaty forehead.
She'd just about managed to pry her forehead from the toilet seat...a location that was every bit as mank as it sounded when one lived in a house full of lazy slabbers.
She hadn't been lying when she told James that she was perfectly somber that morning. Funnily enough, Michelle genuinely hadn't had one drop of alcohol in her system from the night before. Sur-fuckin'-prise!
"Ah fuck it...", she grumbled, her stomach churning quesily.
A fairly sizable part of Michelle wanted to hurl something across the room, craved to smash something to smithereens. Another part of her wanted to cry her lamps out, scream until her throat felt raw and she could finally feel something (anything!) for the first time in weeks...anything but confusion and the overwhelming desire to run and hide.
By some miracle, Michelle had actually managed to keep the whole bloody mess out from under her friends' noses for well over a month—a wee fact that said quite a lot for her pretty feckin' cracker powers of deception.
Setting a hand on her stomach, the Mallon family's only daughter was certain that no one would be able to tell just yet.
So far, only Buster knew and he'd had the audacity to call her a slag—the town bicycle, he'd called her.
Not the greatest encouragement for her to start shouting her news from the rooftops, eh?
Bastard...
Michelle had her options. She knew she had! They were the same three options that her Aunt Kathy had been confronted with more than two decades earlier.
1. Have an abortion...
2. Give the wee'un up for adoption...
3. Get the finger out and try to be a mammy...
Michelle huffed agitatedly, her back flush against the cool tile of the bathroom wall, her eyes shut tightly in frustrated contemplation.
"Why couldn't I have remembered the stupid fuckin' pill, eh?", she ranted aloud, safe in the knowledge that the walls (thank fuck...) weren't paper thin. "Only took one fuckin' time!"
"Ach, not to worry Michelle!", a voice mumbled breezily from somewhere above her. "Sure, that could've happened the Pope, so it could!"
Fit to jump clean out of her skin, Michelle's gaze jolted upwards.
Sure, she hadn't even heard the door open, like!
Michelle's pounding heart only settled when she registered the familiar sight of Orla standing over her sporting a wide toothy grin. Whether her friend had heard enough to cotton on to the true weight of the situation, she honestly couldn't say.
But even if she had, Orla could be trusted not to say anything to the others just yet. At least not intentionally...
"Ahh, I'm not sure it could've actually, Orla", Michelle replied, trying to sound her usual carefree self. "...'specially with all that celibacy jazz, y'know? But thanks...I think."
Orla nodded resolutely, her voice popping in a way that found Michelle fighting back a reluctant smile.
"Not. A. Bother. "
She'd tell them—of course she would—but Michelle needed to get her head screwed on the right way around first.
None of this arseways business, right...