One Thing Led to Another by Katy Regan

this negative test, I’ll come on (ruining my best knickers it’s always the way)
    0.45
    I glance at the test, yep, just as I thought
    0.30
    Two lines emerging, God, I hate wasting money, especially due to paranoia
    0.25
    Misplaced, neurotic, paranoia
    0.14
    I pick up the test and tear off some toilet roll – I’m wrapping it up now, to throw in the bin
    0.10
    But then the light catches it – the breath catches in my throat
    0.08
    It can’t be, can it? can it? oh my God! tell me it can’t!
    0.06
    I feel like I might throw up, I swallow, take a deep breath, exhale slowly, then look at it again
    0.04
    But it’s still there
    it’s still there…
    a cross, a bright blue fuck-off cross! I’M PREGNANT! I’M FUCKING PREGNANT!! and I can hardly breathe, I can’t get my breath – help me! – my lungs won’t expand, and all I’m aware of, apart from this sensation, is a great surging, flooding of blood to my head…
    If it wasn’t suddenly rush hour in the toilets, I might be making much more noise by now. But I can hear someone in the cubicle next to me, blowing their nose, and I know – she even does that in her own special way – that it’s Anne-Marie, so I don’t, I don’t make a sound. I just stay where I am, hand clasped over my mouth, my world having just shifted on its axis, and me hanging off the side by one fingernail.
    My first concern (which points towards promising maternal impulses at least) is that I must have pickled whatever is there, if it really is there, by the alcohol consumed last night, the sambucas at Greg’s birthday drinks, the drugs. Shit, the drugs! I had a spliff with Gina last night and I am overcome with a murderous guilt, a guilt I am wholly and completely unprepared for. And then comes the shock, it hitsme like a wall. Shock, guilt, shock, what the hell do I feel? The emotions seem to thrash over me, like merciless ice cold waves, pinning me to the back of the toilet door and stealing my breath.
    There’s the sound of flushing next door, the taps running, the pad-pad of Anne-Marie’s hemp boots and the creak of the door as it shuts behind her. I’m feeling a whole kaleidoscope of emotions now but what are they? Am I happy? Is this elation I’m feeling? Or is it horror? I don’t know. I can’t think.
    I hold the test in my hand, my breathing shaky, my palms moist, and suddenly I’m very angry. Angry that the other test lied to me, even angrier for doing this – getting pregnant in the first place, and now I’m angry at myself for handling this so badly.
    Then it occurs to me. This cannot be right. No, it must be the alcohol from the weekend, turning the test positive. Like litmus paper. But I’m clutching at straws of course; I don’t really believe that. Plus, something instinctive tells me I am pregnant. I feel different. In that moment, the whole toilet cubicle in which I am standing seems to spin and to distort, as if everything I have ever known, ever experienced as my life, the feeling of just being me, is annihilated and I feel utterly disoriented.
    I have to speak to Jim. Now. But I can’t face seeing someone I know, so I don’t take the lift down I take the stairs, two at a time.
    Outside, everything looks different, as if I’m looking at it for the first time. It’s raining, pelting it down, and so I run, clutching my phone, to the doorway of a recruitment company at the end of the road. My hands are shaking as I find Jim’s number. I’m pregnant, I’m fucking pregnant!
    It rings and rings and then he finally picks up.
    ‘Hello.’
    His voice sounds muffled, sleepy almost.
    ‘Jim it’s me again.’
    ‘I know. Listen, can I ring you back?’ he whispers. I hear a woman cough.
    Oh brilliant, Annalisa’s there. I am phoning him to tell him I’m carrying his child, and his Italian F.B. is in his bed on one of her impromptu visits to London, almost definitely naked. I met her once, his gnocchi nookie, on one of her ‘romantic’ breaks to East