Having Your Jelly Baby

6: Hanging

Hey guys! Sorry about this, but this chapter is going to be the last one for a while. I'm going on an impromptu trip for a month or two and don't actually know how this came to be or entirely sure where the hell I'm going, but ouiii, such is the life of le Rivster :P Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter and I'm sorry for leaving it hanging here but I thought you'd like one more chapter. Lovely song to the side as always, and a picture of how I imagine Laina, just shove some green hair on and a nose piercing :P Lots of love, guys! :) (Also dedicated to the endlessly beautiful and talented Scarlett whose work you all need to go check out as motivation for her to write and complete another story for me to read ;D) xoxo

6: Hanging

‘Did you know that it’s illegal to sack a pregnant woman?’ My mum came out with at dinner a couple of Sundays later (still no bloody word from bloody Laina).

It’s safe to say I nearly choked on my food and crapped myself with fear at the same time.

‘What? Why are you asking?’ I asked, desperately sipping water and trying to get some oxygen and moisture down my windpipe that suddenly felt like it was collapsing in on itself.

My mum crinkled her nose almost in distaste and pursed her lips before answering, ‘Rose’s daughter is suing her old company for firing her.’

‘Oh. Hang on,’ I said. ‘Which one?’

‘Becky. You know, the tall pretty one that was in your year at school, I think, or perhaps she was in Mia’s.’

‘Oh,’ I said, hearing the stutter in my own voice. ‘And er, what do you make of that?’

Mum paused and seemed to think about her answer. ‘Well, I… I suppose that I’m a little bit disappointed in her but they’re rightfully suing.’

Ah shit.

Literally.

The world may as well have excreted on me, I’m not even joking. Anything would have felt better than that feeling of my heart plunging so low that it probably reached the earth’s core and then set itself alight in some sort of heart suicide, that’s how badly it seemed to shock me. It hurt a heck of a lot, too, like my heart had taken a little detour into hell.

She was bloody disappointed. How brilliant.

There are few things worse than a mother’s disappointment, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head apart from the idea of being hit by a car, spat on and then shat on by a duck and then thrown under a bus. Even then, that’d only beat the disappointment of my mother by a miniscule margin.

Anyway, you get the picture.

I knew immediately why Mum was so disappointed: Becky had been Head Girl in my year, with the grades to get into Oxford or Cambridge and with a pretty damn admirable attitude towards school and education. She was pretty and likeable and had everything going for her, but she’d had her first child at eighteen and she was expecting again now. I hadn’t talked to her in years.

Mum was disappointed that she had been silly enough to throw away her bright future by not doing the smart thing and using bloody contraception. Contra-flipping-ception. …Like Inception but with a prefix of contra instead of in. Not that that’s even relevant.

But how could I tell her now? How could I confess to what had been an accident – an accident that I would own up to and not be ashamed of – but disappoint my mum at the same time?

I’ll admit that a part of me had always longed to be fully accepted and appreciated by Mum who never did seem to care about my accomplishments as much as Dad did, no matter what everyone else said, and in spite of the fact that my biggest accomplishment at school was getting an award for Bubbliest Smile. (My 10 As at GCSE and2 As and a B at A Level were overshadowed by Mia’s A*s and As across the board throughout school, so obviously nothing to be proud of there.)