“Very successful. We think they’re going to go ahead with the one-way system and the pedestrianized zone. There won’t be any cars in the middle of town except handicapped and emergency vehicles.”
“Great,” Helen said, sitting down at the kitchen table.
“Shall I put the kettle on?” Trish asked.
“Thanks, Mum.” Trish put the kettle on and dried her old brown teapot. “Could we have peppermint?”
“Is your stomach upset?” Trish asked, putting peppermint teabags into the pot.
“A little bit … Mum?”
“Yes?” Trish put two mugs on the table.
“How did you know you were pregnant?”
Trish sat down and stared at her daughter. “I knew when I skipped a period. But before that I felt sick, almost from the beginning, and my breasts were tender. That was the sign with all my pregnancies. Why are you asking?”
The kettle shrilled and she automatically turned to pour boiling water into the pot. When she turned back, Helen still hadn’t spoken.
“What do you want to do?” Trish asked. “Do you know who the father is?”
“Not for sure,” Helen said, looking down at her empty mug. “It could be Martin, or it could be Phil.”
“You’re not planning to get married then?”
Helen shook her head. “Absolutely not. I thought I was safe because I was on the pill, but then I had those antibiotics for my throat around the time of Cathy’s birthday, remember? And Gaynor says those could have stopped it working. I’ve missed two periods, and my breasts are sore, and I never feel like eating anything.”
“Then you should go to the doctor and find out for sure,” Trish said. “It does sound as if you’re pregnant though. Do you want to have it?”
“It’ll spoil everything,” Helen said, and began to cry.
Trish poured out the tea. “Well, babies are people. I didn’t understand that for a long time, but it’s true. If you have this baby it’ll certainly change everything. But you do have a choice.” Trish knew all about this from the women’s group. “Abortion is legal now. If you go to the doctor and tell her you really can’t face going through with it, as a single mother, and you’re so young, very likely you’d be able to have a termination at the Infirmary. You’d have to have counseling, but they’d do it. Two periods—eight or ten weeks? It should be quite simple.”
“I don’t know if I could kill it, though,” Helen said, putting both her hands around her mug for warmth. “Babies are people, and if you’d done that we wouldn’t be here. I’d like to have a baby. And doesn’t having an abortion mess you up so you can’t have babies later, when you want to?”
“No,” Trish said, firmly, taking a sip of her own tea. “That’s a myth.”
“Even so. I’d like to have it, but I don’t know how I could.” Helen looked up at her.
“You can keep on living here and have it, and I’ll help as much as I can, but I’m not going to stop working and take charge of it for you so you can keep on living your life the way you do now,” Trish said. “I’ll help out financially as much as I can, but you know I don’t have all that much money. Gran might be prepared to help too—well, you know she won’t understand, but I think we could use some of her money to help and she would want to do that if she could understand. We can probably manage. But it will be a struggle, and your life is going to have to change a lot. Is that really what you want? It’s a lot of work having a baby. I found it overwhelming when I had Doug.”
“But I won’t have to put up with Dad as well,” Helen said.
“You’ll have to tell your father he’s going to be a grandfather, if he is. If you decide to have it. Oh my goodness, I’m going to be a grandmother!” Trish got up and hugged Helen. “I have to say that’s a very exciting thought.”
“Thank you, Mum,” Helen said, then wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “Thank you for being so helpful, and thank you for saying that.”
In April, George took the Oxbridge entrance exams, and in June he took his A Levels. He got his three As and was duly accepted into New College Cambridge. “I did think of Oxford because of you and Dad, but this is the best place for what I want to work on,” he said.
In mid-August Helen had her baby, a girl. She gave birth easily, in six hours, without any of the complications Trish had gone through. Trish was with her the whole time. She called the baby Tamsin. “Why did you pick that name?” she asked, after they filled out the birth certificate, with the blank for “father” marked defiantly “unknown.”
“I thought it was pretty,” Helen said.
“It is pretty,” Trish agreed. “And so is the baby, she looks just like you.”