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looked like she was losing weight. But still she maintained that nothing was wrong.
    My daily ‘Hiya, how’s it going?’ now had a hidden meaning, as in ‘Hiya, how are you, really ?’ But Sal wouldn’t take the bait. She seemed more and more distant. I felt like she was backing away from our friendship. It was upsetting.
    One Thursday afternoon just before our exams, Sal and I meandered towards the park. We were headed to my house for a bit of English revision. Not that we needed to do any, but we had to at least look like we were making an effort.
    It had been a gorgeous morning, a kind of birds-singing, break-into-song, 1950s-movie-type morning, but as soon as we left school, top-heavy dark clouds seemed to fast-forward through the sky, finally letting loose a torrent of stupidly heavy rain as we passed through the park gates.
    We just stood there, looking at each other and giggling. Within a minute or so, we both looked as if we’d taken a shower in our clothes. I grabbed Sal’s arm and ran towards a huge old oak tree near the swings. We sat with our backs against the trunk, laughing and shivering and watching mothers frantically trying to fasten up waterproof covers on pushchairs. Soon, we were the only ones left in the park. Still the rain drummed on.
    We sat there for a while, hypnotized by the show the rain was putting on just for us. Sal turned and looked at me like she was trying to read my mind – or maybe trying to weigh something up in her own mind. Uh oh, here it comes . I felt a bit sick. Scared.
    ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’ Did I know that what she was going to say would change everything? Maybe not. But I knew it was going to be big.
    ‘I think I’m pregnant.’ Four words, that’s all it took. All I could manage to splutter out was ‘Jesus!’ Nice. Good work. Very supportive .
    Sal began to cry and it just about broke my heart. I put my arms around her and held her tight. She kept saying the same thing over and over again: ‘What am I going to do?’ I said that it would be OK and that we’d figure it out and was she really sure? But I wasn’t getting through to her, so I held her face between my hands and made her look me in the eyes. ‘Listen to me, Sal. Are you sure you’re pregnant? Have you done a test?’ Sal shook her head and sobbed, ‘I know I am. I know it, I know it. How could this happen?’
    We must have sat there for a good twenty minutes before I noticed that Sal was shivering really badly. She looked terrible. We headed to the bus stop, me with my arm around Sal’s shoulders, her stumbling along in a kind of dazed stupor. I think she was all cried out.
    We sat in silence all the way home. I could not have been more shocked. How could this happen? I thought she was supposed to be a virgin … Surely she’d have told me if … When? Who with? And why hadn’t she told me before?
    I led her into my house and straight up to my bedroom. We changed out of our wet clothes. I even let her wear my favourite jeans. She sat at the dressing table while I ran a comb through her matted, damp hair. She was looking in the mirror, but I could tell she wasn’t really seeing much of anything.
    I looked at Sal’s reflection. Would I call her beautiful? Maybe. Definitely. Blonde hair that skims just above her shoulders. She often gathers it up in some complicated arrangement that always looks completely effortless. Brown eyes and permanently honey-hued skin. Lucky cow.
    When I was done with Sal’s hair and had quickly run the comb through mine (boring brown beneath MANY layers of red dye), I sat down on the edge of the bed. Sal turned around on the stool to face me. We were practically knee-to-knee, but somehow more distant from each other than ever before. ‘So, are you going to tell me what happened?’
    She shook her head. No eye contact.
    ‘Okaaay, how late are you?’ The words almost got stuck in my throat. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation