Megan 3 Read Online Free Page A

‘My landlady said they watch you all the time and if you don’t look after your baby properly they tell you off.’
    ‘Rubbish,’ I said. ‘If you do something wrong they tell you how to do it.’
    She smiled a little. ‘That’s OK then.’ She looked at Jack. ‘You’ve got a little boy, have you?’
    I nodded. ‘He’s Jack and I’m Megan.’
    ‘This is a girl and her name’s Stella. That means star,’ the girl said. ‘My name’s Kirsty.’
    I told her Jack was just over a year old and she said Stella was only three weeks.
    ‘Where d’you live?’ I asked, and she named an area in the opposite direction to where I came from. ‘I’m in a Bed and Breakfast place,’ she said, and pulled a face. ‘It’s horrible.’
    ‘Haven’t you got any family? Why aren’t you living with them?’
    ‘My mum said I’d get a flat quicker if they made me homeless.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I didn’t really want to, but I went along with it.’
    ‘Don’t you and your mum get along, then?’ I asked. I put Jack down on the floor and he leaned on the chair in front of him and reached towards Kirsty’sbaby, patting her foot. ‘Didn’t she want you at home?’
    ‘We’ve never really got on well,’ the girl said, ‘and then she met this bloke and now she wants to have a baby of her own with him. She said there wouldn’t be room for me anyway, and that I’d get a place of my own quicker if they turfed me out.’ She hesitated. ‘Is it really OK here?’
    ‘Yeah, it’s fine!’
    ‘Guess anything’s better than walking round the streets. It’s what I do mostly – I’m not supposed to stay in the B and B place during the day.’
    ‘Why not?’ I asked, shocked.
    ‘Stella’s crying wakes people up. There’s a couple of men who work shifts and they don’t like it.’
    I pulled a face. ‘That’s their hard luck, then.’
    ‘And the landlady says it’s regulations or something – everyone’s got to be out of the house for a certain number of hours.’
    ‘I should ask Vicki about that,’ I said. ‘She’ll have a word with them.’
    She shook her head quickly. ‘No, it’s OK. I don’t want to cause any fuss. They might think I’ve been complaining and then they’ll be horrible to me.’
    ‘So what’s your room like?’
    ‘Grim.’
    ‘So’s mine – and I live at home!’
    Jack let go of the chair he was holding on to and lurched towards the big dolls’ house. He took about five steps on his own before he fell on to it. I called, ‘Hurray!’ and he turned to smile at me, well pleased with himself. ‘He’s just starting to walk properly,’ I explained to Kirsty.
    ‘I can’t imagine Stella
walking
. I can’t imagine her any older than she is now.’
    I grinned. ‘I used to say that, but the time goes really quickly.’
    The nursery was beginning to fill up. Girls gave their babies a last-minute rusk, or changed their nappies, or wiped their faces before they started lessons.
    ‘Is Jack’s father still around?’ Kirsty asked. ‘Is he your boyfriend?’
    ‘
Was
my boyfriend,’ I said. ‘He’s hardly been in touch since. What about you?’
    She shook her head ruefully. ‘I met him on holiday. Haven’t seen him since.’
    ‘Didn’t you write to him?’
    ‘’Course. The address he gave me was a false one.’
    I tutted – but the thing about having a baby when you’re fifteen or so is that everyone had some sort of hard-luck story to tell. At Poppies last term there wasGilly who’d had a baby by her best friend’s boyfriend, Sinna who hadn’t told her mum until half an hour before she’d given birth, Hannah who’d had a dozen boyfriends and had absolutely no idea who the father was and Suzie who’d got pregnant by her stepfather.
    The holiday romance one was a new one on me, though. ‘What a pig,’ I said.
    ‘Yeah,’ she nodded. ‘I thought he was really nice, too. He said he loved me.’
    ‘Were you gutted?’
    ‘Pretty much.’
    ‘What about writing to the