Little Green Riding Hood

I. Knocked Up

It's always fallen upon the shoulders of either myself or one of my brothers to solve. It being the frightful mess that Lorraine, my dear sister, has left behind her after another of her unplanned ruses. Her ruses always seemingly start with a starstruck look in her eyes and end in an expression of piety in mine.

Lorraine unfortunately has an addiction- I wish it was a normal addiction, but frankly nothing about Lorraine could ever be characterised as normal- Lorraine is obsessed with falling in love.

Lorraine just so happens to fall in love as easily as an alcoholic chugs down an unattended bottle of rosé wine. She says that she's as helpless to her falling as a pope is to his religion or a victim to his attacker. She's entrapped in her enamour. It's her duty to listen to her heart.

When her loves break her heart, she turns to her family for aid. Unfortunately, this time a long conversation over a cup of hot cocoa and delicious cake would not resolve the issue.

Life has a way of mocking us. It also has a way of shaking our foundations. Lorraine's string of relationships were all put to an end nine months ago.

Her foundation was well and truly shook when her boyfriend, and father of the now born baby Matty, dumped her. Lorraine had upon our mum's advice decided to confide in Greg about her pregnancy. Greg hadn't taken her newfound state as warmly as Lorraine had believed he would.

Greg, her boyfriend at the time, had said a lot of very unromantic things to her and eventually told her to never go after him again. He didn't want to be a dad at age twenty; he didn't want to support my sister and her baby. Apparently, she was fucked to have thought he'd be around if she got herself knocked up. His words, not mine.

Lorraine, of course, had been torn by the rejection of her partner. Lorraine had been a hopeless romantic from childhood: she'd always told me that she would be one of the lucky few women who settled down with the man they loved, had at least two children and lived in a house surrounded by a crisp white picket fence.

She was distraught by her boyfriend's instinctual reaction. For a whole week after her meeting with Greg, she stayed in her room and only left it to use the loo or pop into the kitchen to grab a bite to eat. She would ignore every utterance thrown in her direction. She never rose to the bait of her joking brothers or dad.

Mum was afraid that Lorraine would put the baby up for adoption, or even worse, have it aborted. So after a week of putting up with Lorraine's odd behaviour, mum decided to get her old daughter back. Everyone listened at the door, that is apart from mum and Lorraine, of Lorraine's room. We were all eager to hear what was being conversed about between the two.

Mum had promised she'd support Lorraine whatever she chose to do with her unborn child and had said, that if it came down to it, she's herself help nurse the baby to adolescence but only if Lorraine had learnt her unmistakable real life lesson. 

At the age of eighteen, my younger sister Lorraine, gave birth to a three-pound-weighing mixed-raced baby boy. Everyone, apart from the baby's father, had been present at the birth. Mum even went as far as to film the whole quite disgusting ordeal. She'd never imagined she'd be a grandma at forty three years of age, she'd excused for her filming. Quite a petty excuse in my opinion.

Lorraine didn't have to ponder long over the name of her child. With sweat embossing her face, giving her an unearthly glow, she'd told the midwife that her son was going to be named Matthew. She'd then looked each family member of her's in turn and said that we could all call him Matty for short, that's if we wanted to.

We were all so very relieved to hear the happiness ring through in her tone as she spoke. Even though it had never been spoken aloud, we were all worried that Lorraine would hate her child for all the trouble it had cost her as a foetus. We were also all relishing the opportune family moment.