Love Hurts, Page 8

  FRIDAY 8TH JANUARY

  Hannah

  My day starts with a text:

  Hey Hannah, u might want 2 check FB.

  Hope ur OK, Anj

  A text from Anj that does not contain a question about French homework is big news.

  It takes me about ten seconds to log in to Facebook.

  Fifteen minutes later I’m still there. I don’t think I can move, let alone put my clothes on. It’s like my body’s in shock or something. Even my brain seems to be broken – I actually can’t believe what I’m seeing. I keep hoping that I’m having one of those dreams where you think you’ve got up but you haven’t.

  It took me a while to work out that a lot of the comments on my newsfeed were about me. Then I clocked the posts on my wall – some nice, some not so. I’ve got a few messages too. I don’t read them.

  There’s another text on my phone. It’s Gideon.

  Not sure if congrats is what ur after, but JIC – yay! Gx

  My throat catches as I read it, but I grind my teeth together and tell myself to focus. I need to know how this happened. I only told . . . and she . . . she couldn’t? She wouldn’t . . .

  I open Katie’s profile. She’s changed her picture – it’s now a close-up of her cleavage with faces drawn on each boob winking at each other. It used to be a photo of me and her dressed up for Jay’s party. I check out her status, but it’s the same as when I last checked.

  No longer an airplane blonde

  Comments are split between people who get the joke and people who don’t. I notice that Marcy has liked Rex’s comment – about having first-hand experience [pun intended] – and I go through to her page. Marcy hasn’t bothered sorting out her privacy settings so it doesn’t matter that we aren’t friends.

  And it means that the whole world can read her status:

  OMG. Hannah Sheppard is 4 months pregnant. Hands up who saw that one coming!

  Aaron

  There’s something in the air. I missed registration because the car wouldn’t start, and the people I share a bench with in Chemistry wouldn’t know what was on the grapevine unless someone plucked the information off and turned it into a smokable substance. I hurry to Geography, hoping to catch Anj before the lesson starts.

  As I turn the corner I see that she’s standing with Gideon, who should be the other side of the school in my dad’s class.

  ‘I always thought she was exaggerating . . .’ Gideon is saying when he sees me coming and shoots me a grin.

  ‘She was. You only have to sleep with one guy to get pregnant.’ Anj has her back to me, but I heard her loud and clear.

  ‘Who’s pregnant?’ I say, breathing a little too heavily after my semi-sprint from the Science block.

  It’s Anj who tells me.

  ‘Hannah’s pregnant.’

  ‘Hannah who?’ says my mouth because it’s not actually connected to my brain.

  ‘Sheppard.’ But I knew that.

  ‘How?’ I say. Which isn’t what I mean. I wish my mouth and brain could communicate. Gideon gives me a cheeky smirk and says something about a ‘special cuddle’, but Anj elbows him.

  ‘It’s all over Facebook,’ Anj says.

  ‘He’s not on Facebook,’ Gideon tells her before I can. It’s the first time I’ve heard someone’s looked for me and I feel awkward. Best to focus on Hannah.

  ‘Is that how she told everyone?’ I can’t believe this is true.

  ‘Not exactly . . .’ Anj looks uncomfortable.

  Gideon fills me in. ‘Apparently Katie told Marcy whilst they were out last night. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t meant to be a global announcement, but then Marcy put it as her status and now everyone’s talking about who the father is.’ He slides a glance through the open door at Fletch, who’s at his desk, head in hands, but it’s me that Anj is looking at.

  ‘Anyone tried asking her?’ I say.

  ‘No one’s seen her,’ Anj says, getting out her phone. ‘I texted this morning . . .’

  ‘I think she might be lying low. There’s loads of people posting on her wall and saying some pretty harsh stuff,’ Gideon says.

  I wish I found this hard to believe.

  Anj taps on her phone, breaking school protocol, before emitting a shocked, ‘Oh my God!’ We look at her and she turns the phone towards us so we can see the screen.

  It’s a Facebook page called ‘Whos the Daddy? Yous the Daddy?’ Normally I’d be appalled by the terrible English, but for now I’m more horrified by the content.

  There’s a picture of Hannah in her school uniform and someone’s drawn a cartoon bump over the top with a question mark inside. There’s loads of members – presumably all from our school – and people have already started posting suggestions as to who might be the father. One of the posts near the top catches my eye.

  Whoever suggested Mr Tyler is way off – his son’s deffo the daddy!

  I don’t know the kid who wrote it, but he looks about ten in his profile pic. Nice.

  Anj clicks on the pictures page and I glimpse a few familiar faces badly Photoshopped onto some less familiar bodies doing . . . well, doing the nasty. Why would anyone do that?

  Hannah

  I’m all cried out for the moment and I feel sick. Mum offered to miss her hair appointment and stay home with me, but what’s the point? It’s not like her being here will change anything. I’ll still be pregnant. I’ll still have a giant knife wound where my best friend stabbed me in the back. No need for Mum to have crap hair as well. This is the first time Mum’s ever let me stay off school without taking my temperature. She’s beside herself with rage about Katie telling Marcy – I’m guessing that’s what happened, anyway; I can’t imagine it was anyone in my family.

  The doorbell rings.

  ‘Go away,’ I whisper.

  It rings again after a while. I risk peering out of my bedroom window and see Aaron at the front door, fiddling with his phone. If he’s ringing me, he’ll be disappointed. I turned my phone off an hour ago. I head down and open the door though.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’

  I open the door wider and he steps inside. He smells nice, safe.

  Then he does something unexpected – he hugs me. As I lean into him and rest my head on a shoulder broader than Mum’s, I think how strange this is. We’ve not hugged before today, we’ve not really even talked that much, but Aaron’s the only person who’s hugged me during all this without being pushed.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ I say into his blazer.

  ‘Shouldn’t you?’

  ‘Point taken.’ I let go and walk towards the kitchen. ‘How’d you know where I live?’

  ‘Anj. And Fletch asked me to send his love. Well, something like that. I think he’s convinced himself that he’s about to become a dad.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I mutter and shake my head as I offer Aaron a drink from the fridge.

  ‘How are you?’ Aaron asks, as he cracks open his can of choice (Diet Coke – huh).

  ‘Pregnant,’ I say. This is so weird. I feel like I’m having tea with the queen or something.

  ‘So I hear. How’s that working out for you?’

  I look at him. He’s a funny one. I can’t figure him out. He’s so direct about stuff but at the same time it’s as if he’s far away from it all, not a part of things.

  ‘Pregnancy’s fine – it’s just my friend that’s a bitch.’ I sip a glass of milk. MILK. I used to hate milk, but these last few days I can’t get enough of it.

  ‘You know most people are just curious, they’re not actually hating you or anything.’ He looks away, embarrassed almost. ‘I guess you’ve seen the Facebook page?’

  ‘What Facebook page?’

  Aaron

  I show her on her laptop upstairs, hating myself for it, figuring it’s worse not to know something like this . . . but I’ve seen more expression on my dad’s face when he’s checking the BBC weather page.

  She clicks off the page and shrugs
.

  ‘You OK?’ I’m the epitome of lame.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘As I said, most people . . .’

  ‘ . . . are just curious,’ she finishes. ‘Well, it’s none of their fucking business, is it?’

  Hannah gets up and kicks the chair out of the way before storming downstairs and, since I don’t know what else to do, I follow her. She’s opening the back door and rushing outside, then she’s standing in the middle of the lawn and screaming so loud I think her voice will break.

  ‘I’m pregnant. All right?’ She spins round to look at the neighbours’ twitching curtains. ‘ALL RIGHT? And I’m fifteen! Fuck off!’

  ‘Hannah . . .’ I say, edging closer, not sure if now’s the right time to point out that she’s still in her pyjamas and slippers.

  ‘FUCK OFF!’ She screams right in my face before collapsing forward so fast I nearly drop her, and she’s kneeling in the cold, wet grass, sobbing and screaming and growling – actually growling. We stay like that a while, me crouching awkwardly, treading the corner of my blazer into the grass, Hannah contorted into my arms, crying herself into silence. I wonder what the neighbours are making of this and I look up to see an old lady and her husband staring out of one of the windows. I give them the finger and enjoy their outraged reaction. They shouldn’t be looking. This is private.

  ‘I’m wet,’ Hannah mumbles and staggers to her feet. ‘Got to shower.’

  I follow her indoors and stand in the hallway where she turns, halfway up the stairs, and asks me if I’ll stay, apologizes for being mental. I tell her not to worry and that I’ll wait in the kitchen. There’s a book in my blazer pocket, one I’ve read before, but since I don’t have anything better to do I start at the beginning once more. Maybe it was a mistake to come here – it’s not as if I was invited. But Hannah needs someone and that someone may as well be me . . .

  ‘Hi.’

  I jump.

  ‘I didn’t hear you,’ I say, putting my book down.

  Hannah smiles, picks up the book to look at the cover and wrinkles her nose. ‘Never heard of it,’ she says before pouring herself another glass of milk and digging out a pack of ginger nuts. I decline the offer as she sits down next to me – she smells of coconut and her hair’s still wet. When I look at her, I see someone I recognize: myself, I think. Not in a literal sense. I don’t wash my hair with coconut shampoo and I have certainly never worn a Little Miss Naughty T-shirt. But she looks soul-weary and I know about that.

  ‘Thanks,’ she says and meets my eyes. ‘I mean it. It takes guts to tell a person what they don’t want to hear. Most people would be too scared to face up to it.’

  ‘You’re not,’ I say.

  ‘Wrong. Facing up would have been telling Mum sooner, or my best friend.’

  ‘You didn’t tell anyone?’ I say, surprised.

  Hannah smiles. ‘I told Gran.’

  I smile too, but hers has turned into a sigh and she slumps forwards, her forehead resting on the tabletop.

  ‘Fletch isn’t the dad,’ she tells the table.

  ‘Thank God for the baby. Anybody would make a better dad than him.’ It’s meant to be a joke, but something tells me she’s a long way from finding it funny.

  ‘You think I don’t know who it is, don’t you?’

  ‘I never—’

  ‘That’s what my mum thinks.’ Hannah lifts her head to look at me, the imprint of the tablecloth on her forehead.

  ‘I don’t think anything.’ I should leave it there. ‘Except—’

  ‘Except what?’

  ‘Whoever it is has a right to know.’

  Hannah winces at this. ‘He will not want to know. Trust me.’

  So she does know who it is. ‘I would,’ I say.

  ‘Well, he’s not you.’ She looks at me with such intense sorrow that any suspicion we were talking about Tyrone dissipates. ‘Can we just leave it?’

  ‘OK.’ Hannah obviously has her reasons. ‘Consider it left.’

  She looks at me for a moment longer, her face softening before she puts her head back on the table. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’ I finish my can and look for a change of topic. ‘Can I have a ginger nut?’

  She pushes the packet towards me and then waggles her fingers for one, still face down on the tablecloth.

  ‘Anything else?’ I ask, wondering if she needs a top-up of milk.

  ‘A dad for my baby?’ she says with a laugh.

  Hannah

  My joke wasn’t exactly funny, so I don’t think his silence is rude as I sit up and down the dregs of my milk. It’s only when I start to stand, turning to offer him another drink, that I realize he’s watching me.

  ‘Me,’ he says.

  ‘You what?’ I say, caught somewhere between sitting and standing.

  ‘I could do it, if you wanted.’

  I sit down with a thump.

  ‘You could say I was the father.’

  FROM

  RANI AND SUKH

  BY

  BALI RAI

  Rani

  There were tears falling down my cheeks as Parvy finished telling us the story. I had hold of Sukh’s hand and, looking down at it, I realized that I had squeezed it so hard, his fingers had gone almost white. I let go and wiped away the tears but they were soon replaced by more. Parvy looked at her brother then got up and came over, crouching in front of me. I didn’t know what to think or do. It was such a shock. How come I’d never heard the story from my own family? I didn’t even know that I had another aunt. And then I realized that my father would never have told me about it – it undermined all his lectures about filthy white girls . . . But surely someone in my family . . . my brothers . . .?

  ‘It’s OK,’ Parvy told me, putting her hands on my knees.

  ‘Why didn’t I know about all of this already?’ I asked her, trying really hard not to cry. And failing.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Parvy told me. ‘I really don’t know.’

  Sukh stood up and started pacing the room. No one spoke for a few minutes before he broke the silence.

  ‘This is so messed up, man. I didn’t know any of this – none of it,’ he told me.

  ‘Our families have had this thing going on for years,’ said Parvy. ‘Dad thought that it was all over – and he didn’t want you to know. He wanted you to grow up without having to deal with the same stuff he had to – all the shame and the sadness and stuff. I only found out because I walked in on an argument, back when you were about six. He sometimes talks about Rani’s dad, Mohinder – they were good friends once.’

  ‘I kinda thought Rani’s name rang a bell when we met but I put it out of my mind. I thought that I was just being stupid . . . And now I find out there’s a feud . . .’ said Sukh, talking to his sister but looking at me.

  ‘Yeah – although it’s been years since anything major happened between our families. Some of the younger idiots kick off now and then – but they just use it as an excuse for fighting and acting like animals.’

  I looked at Sukh and then at Parvy. I was confused. How could I not have known? How could my family not have told me? ‘So your uncle, Billah, was killed?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What happened to my aunt? Something must have happened because until just now I didn’t even know about her.’

  Parvy looked away. ‘She killed herself – jumped in a well, I think. No one really knows because they never found her body. Just her shawl – lying next to the well.’

  ‘But she was . . .’ I began.

  Parvy put her hand on mine and squeezed. ‘I know, I know . . .’ she said.

  ‘Oh, this is horrible!’ I shouted suddenly, and then wished that I hadn’t. But what was I supposed to do? I didn’t know what to think. My family hated Sukh’s family, and there we both were, seeing each other.

  Parvy stood up and walked over to the window. She started to speak but stopped and thought for a while. Then she went on, ‘Our fam
ily had to leave the village after Billah died and Kulwant vanished. The elders thought it would be the best way to stop any more blood being spilt. But the feud continued. Both our fathers moved to Leicester in the nineteen sixties and there’ve been incidents between them, off and on, over the years . . .’

  I shuddered. My mind was going in about a million directions at the same time and I felt numb. Sukh tried to take hold of my hand but I pushed him away. I didn’t want to – it just happened that way. I couldn’t control it.

  Parvy turned and looked at me. ‘There’ve been fights between our uncles, our cousins – we even go to separate gurudwara. It’s been calm for a few years now though.’

  ‘But it just doesn’t make any sense,’ I told her. ‘How could me and Sukh not have known about it?’

  ‘I dunno how someone didn’t let it slip.’ Parvy shrugged. ‘But I’m sure Dad told everyone not to tell you about it, Sukh. When I found out he told me never to mention it again. He said that it was like cutting open an old wound . . .’

  Sukh just sat where he was, looking from me to Parvy and feeling a little hurt at my rejection, I think. I just didn’t want to be there. Didn’t want to be around them. I needed to think . . . I needed to call Nat. I needed to cry again too.

  Something in my head snapped and I shot up from my seat. ‘Gotta go,’ I mumbled, not looking at Sukh or Parvy. I headed for the door.

  ‘Rani . . . wait,’ said Sukh, coming after me, but I didn’t wait.

  I ran to the door, threw it open and went out into the corridor. I rushed down the stairs and out into the street, the glass door to the foyer slamming shut behind me. I looked up, tears blurring my sight, made out a taxi and ran to it, got in and told the driver to go. As he pulled away I saw Sukh standing across the street from me, shouting. I think he was still telling me to wait. I don’t know. I didn’t want to talk to him, didn’t want to touch him. Just wanted to go home. Just wanted to . . .

  Sukh

  Three days after Parvy had told him and Rani about the feud, Sukh sat on his bed with some R & B thing playing on his CD. He wasn’t listening to it. He was sitting thinking, watching the signal light on his mobile flash on. And off. And on. And off. Rani hadn’t answered her phone since she’d run out of Parvy’s flat. Sukh had only heard from her once. She’d sent a text telling him that she didn’t want to talk to him. Her phone had gone straight to answer every time he’d tried calling. Each of the thirty or forty times. And she wasn’t replying to his text messages either. He’d just sent the latest one and was sitting staring at his phone, willing the message tone to bleep at him and put him out of his misery; imagining her face in his mind, thinking about her touch and her smell and the way she tasted when he kissed her.