East Fortune by James Runcie Read Free Book Online

nostalgia. How stupid could she have been? Why couldn’t it have happened when they were happy and free, when they had experienced all the early stages of discovering each other, when trust was absolute and everything had been an adventure?
    She checked for the symptoms of pregnancy on the Internet, knowing that she had virtually all of them, and picked up a test in the chemist. She looked at the instructions on the back of the packet and saw that she wouldn’t have to wait more than a minute for an accurate result. Anyway she already knew. She bloody knew.
    How could Sandy have done this to her? How could she have let it happen?
    She drank down a full glass of water. Then she looked in the kitchen for a container. There was a measuring jug, the glass bowl they used for beating eggs and the china basin for the apple cakes they cooked to remind them of home.
    Krystyna wished her mother was still alive. She wouldn’t tell her father or her brothers.
O mój Bo
e.
    None of the containers were appropriate or hygienic. For a moment she wanted to smash them on the floor.
Skurczybyk.
    She opted for the transparency of the glass. She carried the bowl into the bathroom and set it down at the foot of the chair. Then she went into the bedroom and took off her trainers, her socks, her jeans and her pants.
    She returned to the bathroom and sat down on the chair. She read the instructions again:
    1. Remove the test from the airtight package.
    2. Holding the strip vertically, carefully dip it into the specimen. Do not immerse the strip past the max line.
    3. Remove the strip after four to five seconds and lay the strip flat on a clean, dry, non-absorbent surface.
    She had forgotten to prepare the surface. She thought of kitchen towelling but realised that would confuse the test paper. She brought a white side plate back from the kitchen and sat down once more.
    Gówno.
    She picked up the bowl and peed into it. Her urine was the colour of straw. She did not know if that was good or bad or whether it mattered.
    She pulled out the test strip from the packet and lowered it into the bowl. She wondered if her thoughts could have any effect on the outcome. Could she will the colour bands not to appear?
    And if they did not appear would she be relieved or disappointed?
    The test result took as long as Sandy must have taken to die. She wondered what he would say if he could see her now. Not that she would have let him.
    She put the strip on the plate, poured the bowl into the toilet, and rinsed it in the sink. Then she dressed and washed her hands, drying them on a towel that was still damp from Eva’s morning bath. It never did dry properly. That was another thing that annoyed her.
    What am I doing here? Krystyna thought. Why?
    She stood looking at the piece of paper. The control and the test lines had both begun to colour the pale pink of baby clothes. ‘
Cholera jasna,’
she said.
    She walked back into her bedroom and lay down on the bed.
    It was a hot afternoon and she wanted it to be dark but she was too pre occupied to get up and close the curtains. She would just look at the sky and the tenement block opposite.
    The test was positive.
    Gówno, gówno, gówno.
    Perhaps it was all some sick test of fate to find out how strong she was. She decided not to see a doctor. What would be the point?
She knew.
    Out in the streets of Edinburgh the only people Krystyna noticed were mothers with children. They were lifting prams and buggies on to buses, squeezing into the lift of the St James’s Centre, strapping their babies into backs of cars whose stickers warned other drivers to take care:
Princess on Board, Proud Mum, Dad’s Princess.
She couldn’t move without noticing that a lot of people had had a lot of sex:
Baby Under Construction, It Started With a Kiss, I Love My Bump.
    â€˜Fuck off,’ Krystyna wanted to say. ‘
Spierdalajcie
.’
    The kids themselves were dropping their dummies and small