LITMIR.BIZ

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these men walking about carrying cows. I suppose that’s atmospheric, is it?’

      Megan arrived, glancing at her watch, already dreading the dash back to the East End and morning surgery. She snatched up a menu.

      ‘Did you get your results?’ she asked Jessica.

      Jessica nodded. The black-shirted waiter arrived, and they placed their orders, pointing at the menu as he couldn’t understand their English. When he was gone, Megan and Cat watched Jessica, and waited for her to speak.

      ‘It’s endometriosis,’ she said, pronouncing the word as if it had been new to her until quite recently. ‘The results of the laparoscopy say that I’ve got endometriosis.’

      ‘That explains the pain you get,’ Megan said, taking her sister’s hands. ‘That terrible pain every month.’

      ‘Endometriosis,’ Cat said. ‘That means – what? That’s to do with your period, right?’

      Megan nodded. ‘It’s a menstrual condition. Fragments of membrane similar to the lining of the uterus are where they shouldn’t be – in the muscles of the uterus, the Fallopian tubes, the ovaries. Basically, all these horrible, inflamed bits that bleed when you bleed.’

      ‘It stops you getting pregnant,’ Jessica said. ‘And it hurts like hell.’

      ‘They can’t cure it?’ Cat said.

      ‘It disappears after the menopause,’ Megan said.

      ‘That’s something to look forward to then,’ Jessica said.

      ‘You can control it by taking the pill. You stop the periods, you stop the pain. And stop the condition from deteriorating. But the best cure for it…’

      Jessica looked at her, smiling bitterly. ‘This is the funny bit, Cat. I love this bit.’

      ‘The best cure for endometriosis,’ Megan said quietly, ‘is getting pregnant.’

      ‘It stops you having a baby,’ Jessica said. ‘But it only goes away if you have a baby. Isn’t that perfect?’

      ‘Symptoms disappear when you get pregnant,’ Megan said. ‘But it’s true – the symptoms make conception difficult. Not impossible, Jess. Please believe me.’

      Megan put her arms around Jessica, and her sister pressed her head against her. Stroking Jessica’s head, Megan glanced out of the window, and saw the slabs of bloody meat being carted into the fleet of white vans. All the headless, yellow-white carcasses and the panels of bloodied flesh. The men with their bloody, Jackson Pollock-splattered white coats.

      Their breakfasts arrived at that moment and Megan gasped, the vomit rising in her throat. She pushed her sister away and quickly fled from the table. When she returned from the bathroom, Cat was tucking into her sausage sandwich, but Jessica hadn’t touched her pancakes.

      ‘What’s wrong with you, Megan?’

      ‘It’s nothing.’ She looked at her porridge and felt like being sick again.

      ‘Megan,’ Cat said, the stern elder sister demanding the truth. ‘What’s happening?’

      Megan looked at her sisters and knew that it was madness to think she could keep this thing from them. They were her best friends. They would understand.

      ‘I’m pregnant,’ Megan said.

      Cat put down her bagel. ‘How long?’

      ‘Eight weeks.’

      ‘How does Will feel about it?’

      ‘It’s not Will’s.’

      ‘Okay,’ Cat said. ‘Okay.’

      Jessica struggled to speak. ‘Well – congratulations,’ she said eventually. She stroked her sister’s shoulder, smiling through a thin film of tears. ‘I mean it, Megan. Congratulations.’

      Cat shot Megan a look.

      Megan shook her head. ‘No.’

      ‘You’ll be a terrific mother,’ Jessica said.

      ‘But you’re not…’ Cat’s voice trailed off.

      ‘No,’ Megan said. ‘I’m not keeping it.’

      Jessica looked at her.

      ‘I’m not keeping it, Jess. How can I? I hardly know the father. And even if I did, I still wouldn’t keep it. I’m not in love with him, Jess. And this is the wrong time. It’s just completely the wrong time for me to have a baby.’

      ‘The wrong time?’

      ‘I’ve just started work. I just did six years at medical school – six years! – and another year as a house officer in hospitals. I’m not even fully registered for another year.’

      ‘You just started work?’ Jessica said. ‘Wait a minute – you’re going to have an abortion because you just started work?’

      ‘That’s right,’ Megan said, angry that she had to justify herself.

      ‘Do you know what it means to go through an abortion?’ Jessica said.

      ‘Jess,’ said Cat, trying to stop her. ‘Come on.’

      ‘I almost certainly understand the procedure better than you do,’ Megan said.

      ‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ Jessica said. ‘Some things you can’t get from books. They hoover the baby out of you. That’s what it amounts to. They get a fucking hoover, and they hoover this baby out of you, then stick it in a bin, or they burn it, they throw it away like a piece of rubbish. That’s how they will get rid of the baby, Megan, just so you can carry on with your precious career.’

      ‘And do you know what it means to go through a pregnancy without a father?’ Megan said. ‘Or to go through life as a single parent? I see them every day in my surgery – women with the life sucked out of them. You sit out in Highgate waiting for Paulo to come home, and you have no idea what women are going through in the real world. I’m sorry, Jessica – that’s not going to happen to me.’

      ‘So selfish. So bloody selfish. You think I’m not in the real world? What makes you think that Hackney is any more real than where I am?’

      ‘This is not about you, Jess,’ Cat said. ‘It’s not about you and Paulo and your baby. This is Megan’s decision.’

      ‘It just makes me sick,’ Jessica said. ‘These women treating abortion like it’s just another form of contraception.’

      ‘These women?’ Megan said.

      ‘As though it’s no different to a condom or a pill or something. Why did you let it get this far? Why did you have to make a baby? Why did you have to do that?’

      ‘It’s not a baby,’ Megan said. ‘Not yet. And I can’t cope with my work as it is – it just wouldn’t be fair on the baby.’

      ‘You think that killing it is fair on the baby? You don’t care about the baby, Megan. You care about your career.’

      Jessica stood up. Cat tried to stop her, but Jessica shook her off.

      ‘That poor little thing, Megan. That poor little thing.’

      Jessica threw some money on the table and walked out. Megan and Cat let her go. A couple of porters whistled at her.

      ‘It’s natural, isn’t it?’ Megan said. ‘Not to want this baby?’

      Cat stared out of the window at the meat market. All this would be gone soon. She suddenly felt exhausted.

      ‘It’s the most natural thing in the world,’ she said.

       Six

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