A skinny girl sits staring out of a round window, watching clouds drift by. There is a pen in her hand but no notes on the piece of paper in front of her. If you look closely you can see that she is biting her lip. Eventually, she sits upright and looks at her watch. It's eleven thirty and she's late. She stands up with a sharp jerky movement and moves toward the door, collecting her scratchy wool scarf and a stripy knitted hat that lay on the bed as she walks. There's no need to look for a coat - she's been wearing it all morning. There's no central heating in this part of the college and the electric heater is warms only the corner of the room. She hasn't used it yet this winter.
 
She skips down the three flights of stone stairs and past the porter's lodge. For a moment she forgets where she left her bike but finds lying against the tall college wall, buried beneath three others. It takes a few moments to untangle the machines. The top one, a pink racing bike, falls over but she leaves it where it lies for the tourists to fall over. Her bike is a heavy, cast iron beast that she has christened Doris. It seems to suit the funny old bike, with its heavy pedals, white basket and racing green body. Doris was not built for speed, and it takes a moment for her to sustain a rhythm that is faster than walking. The air is cold, colder than she would have expected and she remembers that she's forgotten her gloves. Martha, as her mother calls her, or Marty, as her friends call her, wishes that she'd taken a taxi. It's not far she consoles herself, just across Parker's Piece and round the corner. She narrowly avoids cycling into the mediaeval ditch that runs alongside Trumpington Street for Doris is as unwieldy as she is heavy, and reaches the park. The wind is stronger here and she has to struggle to stay upright. Marty's frustrated now, perhaps even angry.
 
I may as well be honest because I'm sick of lying. That's half the reason I'm writing this. I am Marty, named by my parents after Martha, the selfish sister of Mary the perfect Mother of Christ. My birth certificates states my name as Annabel, a curiously insipid name that reminds me of blonde girls that live in Putney and marry merchant bankers. I became Martha when I was four, and Martha, or Marty, I have been ever since. I liked the name Marty. It sounded androgynous and unusual compared with the feminine names of my university friends: Flora, Emily, Georgette... Yes,  I know a Georgette. I tease her mercilessly about it. It sounds like she's a tiny girl/boy, a miniature George.
 
Halfway across Parker's Piece I got off Doris and walked. I wished that I could leave her there. I wondered what I must have been thinking, to buy a bicycle that was more effort to cycle than walking. It took more  ten wind chapped minutes to get to the clinic, and I silently cursed myself for avoiding my own GP who prognosticated in the mahogany splendour of a comfortable study  just opposite the college. But Doctor Franks was old, or so I though then, as I balanced on the threshold of my nineteenth birthday. I didn't want him prodding me, putting his fat fifty year old fingers inside me. I wasn't sure if that's what doctor's did, for my type of problem but I didn't want to take the chance. I'd seen his nails when I'd gone to him about an ear infection. They were short and ragged. I thought about him examining me, then biting his nails. It was a horrible, irrational, thought. 
 
The clinic was discreet. A small door with a nameplate was the only indication that it existed. I took off my hat and pushed the door. Nothing happened, and for a moment I panicked. Then I saw the sign saying ‘Pull' and felt foolish. The door lead straight into the waiting room and suddenly I was too hot. Pulling the hat from my hair, I whispered my name to the receptionist and the time of my appointment. She looked up, nodded slightly and went back to her work. I wasn't sure whether to sit down or wait for further instructions. There was an awkward pause, so, in a rare moment of decisiveness, I turned and sat on one of the orange plastic chairs that lined the small waiting room. There weren't many of us waiting. Three chairs down was a slight brunette with what seemed to be her built for rugby boyfriend. They looked miserable and in love. There was a girl with sandy hair who can't have been more than sixteen and I thought ‘poor cow'. Then I realized that I was only eighteen and felt so sorry for myself that I felt it in the back of my throat.
 
A slapping sound caught my attention. The receptionist, her head still bowed over her work, was hitting a clipboard against the front of the counter. We all looked up, girlfriend, boyfriend, sandy hair and me. The brunette nudged me and said, in a quiet voice, you've got to fill in some forms. The receptionist gave her a sympathetic smile of thanks. I took the file and rolled my eyes, but the mute automaton behind the counter did not see.  I filled in the form against a background of the smell of bleach. I used the only pen I had on me, a red one that lived in my pocket . I wondered if it was rude to fill in the form in red ink. It asked for the usual things: name, address, GP, why I was there. I left the last bit blank for a long time, and finally wrote, ‘possibly pregnant', which seemed absurd. I felt silly, hysterical little girl working herself up into agonies because she had unprotected sex, once. I could just see the nurse telling me to be more careful next time, giving me a handful of free condoms with a sad shake of her head.