What Good Girls Do

Chapter One

"It was a Porsche," I mumble and she practically snarls.

"You are lucky the Swansons aren't pressing charges. You owe Stephen a major thanks for that."

"Yeah, because it had nothing to do with them being terrified of people finding out their future heart surgeon got a girl pregnant and sent to prison."

"That may be true, but Stephen..."

"He didn't do it for me and you know it. He doesn't give a damn about me."

"He's put a roof over your head. Fed you, clothed you, paid your tuition. He does enough. He's a good stepdad, Annabel." She doesn't pretend he cares - we both know he doesn't. At best, I'm tolerated. Or I am as long as I tow the line and contribute to his image as the perfect family man. But by being seventeen and pregnant, I had officially smashed the line into pieces. With a golf club.

"And you're taking his side? Stephen's side? You actually think this is right and not some kind of 1950s bullshit? Let's all go hide the pregnant girl in some dark hole so no one can see her infinite shame!"

Mum has the good sense to look a little sheepish.

"What do you expect me to do, Annabel? It's his house. And he's just thinking about the girls."

"Because I'm such a corrupting influence. They'll take one look at me and start shoplifting and snorting cocaine."

She growls under her breath, changing gears with enough rage, the engine growls in protest.

"Enough! But I have to think of them too. They're my daughters too. And your sisters."

"Half-sisters," I mumble under my breath. The fact that I shared fifty per cent of my DNA with those little demons was a constant source of horror. We're driving through the centre now. Our part of the city behind us, the side with green fields, and neat pavements and grand houses, has faded into grey. Into tagged walls, and dark concrete and empty shopfronts. Into the side of the city I haven't been to since I was about six. "This is humiliating."

"I think this could be a good thing. Time to think. Time to decide what you're going to do..." She glances down at my stomach like I'm carrying a ticking time bomb instead of a bundle of cells. Mum had figured it out only days after I'd started putting the pieces together myself. When the stomach bug that only hit me in the mornings didn't shift, and the scent of coffee turned my stomach. She bought me the test, and wept after I'd taken it as I sat there, holding the stick so tightly my hand ached. As if I stared at it long enough, the line might go away.

But it didn't go away.

"You don't have forever."

"I'm aware." I snap. My head's hurting. The burst of anger and adrenalin from this morning was now fading into aching bones and a throbbing head. The hours of heated discussions about me as if I wasn't even there hadn't helped, either. "I've just been focussing on my application."

"Annabel..." She looks at me with a potent mix of pity and sadness. A wave of fear washes over me—a feeling I don't have time for. Twenty thousand people apply to Oxford University every year, and they only accept three thousand. I don't have time for feelings.

Mum pulls into a familiar street. The houses here are all chipped paint, broken fences and unkept lawns. Built so close together, I wasn't sure how people knew where theirs began and the next ended. I see Mum's body tense. Her eyes go a little wide. I sit up sharply. The house, my old home, slowly comes into view. This place seems familiar and unfamiliar. I remember playing in that garden; I remember riding my bike along that pavement. But it also feels like I've never been here before.