NEGATIVE!

Oh my God!

Completely, absolutely, utterly and unambiguously negative.

Thank Christ. Thank the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Thank God and all his angels, archangels, cherubim, seraphim, cloud-attendants and beard-trimmers *

(* and thanks to Helen Fielding for that rather brilliant last sentence.)

I bought a pack of two tests last night after work. The rain was hammering down, and I sat on the bus like a zombie, feeling so small and alone. Rather unhelpfully, as I approached the chemist, my iPod started playing ‘Footloose’. It was dark. It was raining. I was on my own. I was on my way to buy a pregnancy test. Somehow, ‘Footloose’ didn’t quite fit my mood. So I turned it off, entered the chemist, located the pregnancy tests, bought a pack of two, and earned myself pretty much the same disapproving look I got when I bought my first one at the age of 18. Nice.

I was sceptical about doing the test in the evening, as I’d repeatedly read, during my near-obsessive Googling the last couple of days, that a you get a more accurate result if you do it in the morning. Plus, I’d drunk about 2 litres of water and several cups of tea at work, so I imagined I was pretty ‘diluted’, shall we say. All the same, I couldn’t wait, so the second I got through my front door, I flung off my coat and my boots and vanished into the bathroom.

Now, the instructions seemed pretty straightforward. Hold stick like so, pee on this bit for five seconds, put the cap back on, put it down, amuse yourself for three minutes, then cry/whoop/faint with relief/scream in horror/suffer brain embolism as appropriate. So I did. The leaflet, which I also read obsessively,  said it would show one pink line if I wasn’t pregnant, and two if I was:

I had four lines. FOUR. 

How very helpful.

One totally obvious standout dark pink line (which would suggest ‘not pregnant’) and three very very barely perceptible palest pink lines (which would suggest ‘what the fuck?!’). Now I just didn’t know what to think, so, on H’s advice, decided to wait until the morning. I couldn’t concentrate on a thing and was beginning to go out of my mind, so I went to bed, feeling more alone and frightened than I’ve ever felt.

I woke up at 6am today, my bladder raring to go. I sleepily repaired to the bathroom to do the second test that was in the packet, and this time...

One dark pink line against a totally brilliant white background.

I am sans frogspawn.

And also, I am SO going back on the Pill. If I have to spend another week worrying like this, I’ll end up having a stroke.


Oh, and incidentally, when I left my house this morning, 'Footloose' was resumed at full volume.