No Place For a Man by Judy Astley Read Free Book Online Page B

organically, not just because it was better for the eater but because he was sure that spraying chemicals about rotted gardeners’ brains. Emily was quite good at crying quietly so the hoeing woman took no notice of them. It was just as well it wasn’t Natasha sitting next to her with this kind of problem, everyone would hear her wailing about it for miles around. Whatever she’d promised Emily, though, someone who could be more effective in the practical sense would have to know sooner or later. It would be best in the long run to tell Emily’s mum, for one thing they’d need money – an abortion wasn’t going to be within pocket-money range – but Angie wasn’t used to having her mid-week afternoons interrupted by her own children. Emily was supposed to be seventy miles away, safe and cosy in her boarding school. Angie was probably up at the gym having an aromatherapy massage or her toenails revamped or something.
    ‘Your mum should have let you stay at school here with us,’ Zoe said, thinking aloud.
    Emily looked confused. ‘Why? Don’t girls get pregnant at your school then?’
    Zoe shrugged, ‘Well, some I suppose. I mean, well, instead of getting pregnant you could have just gone down the road to Boots and bought condoms and stuff if you hadn’t been shut away miles from the shops couldn’t you?’ She couldn’t actually imagine, herself, shopping for that sort of thing, at fourteen you really didn’t want to think about the embarrassment factor if you didn’t have to: she’d only just got to the point of not blushing handing over money for Tampax at the checkout. Emily looked way too young as well. She was so thin, her legs looked like Bambi’s and she often walked with her hands folded across her front as if she hadn’t got used to having breasts. Her long brown hair was thin too and flopped miserably each side of her face. Zoe would bet she never got asked for ID when she requested a half fare on the bus.
    Emily came up with half a grin. ‘Yeah that’s a good one. That means I can blame the school. I like that but I don’t think my mum will go for it. And we’ll both get expelled when they find out.’
    ‘You’re joking!’ Zoe was outraged. ‘I don’t think that’s an expellable thing at our school. And both of you? Why?’
    ‘Betrayal of trust or something. No shagging is in the rules, written down. “Any boy and girl caught …”’
    ‘They actually caught you at it?’ Zoe giggled, ‘How embarrassing !’
    ‘No, course they didn’t, but when I start to get fat, that’ll be pretty obvious. And they’ll know it was Giles. Giles and me, we’ve been together since last year. Everyone knows, even the teachers make jokes aboutus. If we sit together in class they call us the Happy Couple.’
    ‘You could lie.’
    ‘What, to save him? Why should I? After he asked if it was really his? There’s only been him, and only that once. He knows I’m no slapper, the bastard.’
    Zoe shrugged. She didn’t know what Emily got up to at school. She’d assumed it was all hockey and compulsory cross-country running and lashings of prep, like in Enid Blyton. Now she wondered if all they ever did was screw each other senseless behind the gym or whatever, out of sheer boredom. If that was it, then maybe it was the school’s fault for not letting them just laze about watching telly. That was something that really sapped the energy.
    This all felt unreal. It had been a shock just to have found Em waiting outside school for her. It was an even bigger shock to find that she, Zoe, was the only person Emily wanted to tell about her pregnancy. They’d been at the same playgroup, so if it was something to do with being her oldest friend, well she certainly qualified. But not her closest friend, surely. Since Emily had gone off to her Oxfordshire school they hadn’t really had that much to do with each other. Angie liked the single life and in the holidays Emily and her brother Luke always seemed