Christened

Her pupils dilated in sync with the contraction of her vagina about my glans.

'Back. Slow...'

The blissful friction of withdrawal left me further blinded. We kept to the tempo but I varied the depths I plumbed; sometimes shallow, sometimes deep but never entirely. Not yet...She repeated the phrase like a mantra, one that became less potent with each successive stroke. Somehow, it was imperative that we came together. Gina felt it as much as I did and her cry, as I slipped out of her and spurted on to her pubic mound, was as much one of frustration as of pleasure.

'I'm sorry...'

'It's all right.'

She touched the come into her flesh with the head of my cock.

'I'm christened...'

I've never believed in omens. They only become meaningful in retrospect. Yet why, out of all the things she could have said, had she said that..?

...One night, a few weeks later, she started to bleed in the bath. Gerry called an ambulance but by the time it arrived it was too late.

Ber heard about it from Anne, a friend of hers who worked in the hospital.

'She said she's home already. They didn't keep her in long. There was nothing they could do.'

'Did she see her?' I said.

'She didn't say.'

Ber was the same colour as the knickers Gina had been wearing that last time. She was always on the lookout for triads of misfortune. A friend of hers from school had lost a baby the year before. Now there was Gina. It meant she was next.

I felt motion sick as I embraced her.

'I said awful things about her,' she said.

'Shh.'

My throat tasted like bile.

'We should call over.'

'It might not be the best time...'

'No. Oh God, poor Gerry. And Paul...'

I pictured the fat little boy whose odious heart persisted in its beating. Why couldn't it have been him?

'You're hurting...' she said.

'Sorry.'

I cradled her bump like I had done with Gina just before...No. The fall had nothing to do with what had happened. It was too long ago. Women lost their babies all the time, for all kinds of reasons.

'Are you okay?'

Ber touched my neck.

'Everything's going to be all right.'

It was possibly the most disgusting thing I had ever said but it was what I was supposed to say and it was what she wanted to hear. She hugged me again.