'Too much, too young'

1980 - June, I remember it quite clearly.

I was doing my 'A' levels. Spread over days and weeks, exam after exam. In between exams I got a call from Elaine. She was in hospital, in the maternity ward. The baby was early, two months early. I caught the bus up to see her.

I was her only visitor that afternoon. She looked fine but the birth had been sudden and traumatic. She went into great detail about it all; epidurals, pain, blood, birth of very small baby boy. Baby whisked away to get special care. She got up from the bed and took me down to see the baby. We had to stand behind glass, we were not allowed into the room protecting the premature babies. She pointed out her baby, scraggy and tiny.

I found the whole experience surreal. In the last few months my friend had got pregnant, got married, had a cyst the size of a grapefruit cut out of her and given birth to a premature baby boy.

It was two years since we had left school.