My mom got pregnant with me in high school

My mom got pregnant with me in high school. My bio father bailed the same day she told him. No calls. No help. Nothing.

She missed her own prom. She swapped a glittery dress for nappies and double shifts, and did her qualifications at a kitchen table while I slept.

So when mine came round this year, I said to her:

"Mum. You missed yours because of me. Come to mine. With me."

And she laughed, and then she cried so hard she had to sit down.

And my stepdad Nolan was made up about it.

And my stepsister Peyton nearly choked on her coffee.

"You're bringing your mum? To prom? That's — that's actually pathetic."

And I ignored her.

And later she went again.

"Seriously, what's she even going to wear? One of her church dresses? You're going to embarrass yourself."

And I ignored that too.

And prom came, and my mother looked unbelievable.

A soft blue gown. Her hair done properly. And that smile.

And she said, quietly: "What if people stare? What if I ruin this?"

"Mum. You made my whole life. You can't ruin anything."

And we got to the courtyard for the photographs.

And Peyton came across in a glittery thing that cost more than my car, and pointed, and said it loudly.

"Why is she here? Is this prom or bring-your-parent-to-school day? What an embarrassment."

And her friends did that laugh.

And my mother's face went.

And something went up through me.

And Peyton had no idea that her own father was four feet behind her.

And when he heard it, he came round very slowly and did a thing I will remember for the rest of my life.

"Peyton. Sit."

And the two things Peyton said before the courtyard, which are in the first part of this and which I have always run together.

***That's actually pathetic.*** And the one about the church dresses.**

And I wrote above that I ignored her both times.

I did not.

The first one I did ignore, in the kitchen, in the February, about four days after the video went up.

The second one was in the March and I answered it.

I will not put the whole of what I said, because it is not good, and because it was about her mother.

Four or five words, in a hallway, with nobody else there.

And she went upstairs and that was the end of it, and she never said another thing about my mother's clothes.

And eleven weeks later she stood in a courtyard and said what she said in front of ninety people.

I have told forty people that I rose above it twice.

And the actual sequence is that she went at me, and I went at the one thing in her life that is open, and she waited eleven weeks and then did it back where everybody could see.

What he actually did.

Almost nothing, and it took about ninety seconds.

She sat down on the low wall, because when Nolan Gorrie says a thing in that voice, people do it.

And then he crouched down in front of her and said four or five sentences that nobody else heard.

And then he stood up, and he went over to my mother, and he said something to her, and she laughed.

And that was the whole of it. There was no scene. About nine people were watching and by the time he stood up they had gone back to their photographs.

And I have told this, since the May of 2025, as the day my stepdad took my stepsister apart in front of the entire year.

And the five months before I asked him, which I have skipped over in one clause.

May to October.

And in them I had about nine opportunities to ask Nolan Gorrie what he had said to his daughter in that courtyard, because I saw that man four or five times a week.

And I did not ask, and I have made myself work out why, and it is not delicacy.

It is that I did not want to know.

As long as I did not ask, those ninety seconds were what I had decided they were, which is a father choosing my mother over his own child in front of ninety people.

And that is an extraordinary thing to have in your family, and I had it, and I told it.

And the minute I asked him, it was going to turn into something smaller and sadder and more complicated, because things always do.

And the only reason I finally asked, in the October, is that I had started seeing Sinéad in the September and she had asked me a question about Peyton that I could not answer.

So I did not go and find out because I wanted the truth.

I went and found out because somebody had made the not-knowing uncomfortable.

What he said to her.

I asked him in the October, five months later, because by then I needed to know.

And he told me straight away, which I was not expecting.

He said: "I told her she was out of order and that she'd be apologising. And then I said sorry to her."

And I said sorry for what.

And he said: "For the eleventh."

The eleventh of May, 2025.

Which is eleven days before that prom, and which is the day Peyton's mother was supposed to come and did not, for the fourth time in about two years.

And Nolan had known since the Thursday. Carleen had rung him and said she could not do it, and he had not told Peyton, because he wanted to get through the weekend.

And Peyton found out on the Sunday when her mother did not turn up.

And on the twenty-second of May she stood in a courtyard and watched a girl arrive at a prom with her mother on her arm.

That is not an excuse. She said what she said and she said it loudly and she said it about a woman who has never done one thing to her.

And her father, who is a decent man, crouched down in front of her and apologised for his part before he made her apologise for hers.

And I have told forty people that he destroyed her.

What I have not told anybody.

There is a video of the kitchen.

The moment at the top of this — my mother laughing and then crying so hard she had to sit down — is on a phone.

Because my friend Immy was in that kitchen and I had told her, two days before, what I was going to do.

And when I said it, Immy had her phone up.

And my mother did not know.

She had her back half to the counter and she did not see it and nobody told her, and when it was over we all went out for something to eat.

And it is forty seconds long and it is beautiful and she is beautiful in it.

And it went up on the seventeenth of February, 2025, and it did about forty thousand, which in a town like Brackmoor is everybody and then some.

And where the idea came from, which I have never once said out loud.

Not from me.

I saw one. In the November of 2024, on my phone, in bed — a girl in another country taking her mother to a prom, and the mother crying in a kitchen.

And it had done millions.

And I watched it twice and I did not think anything about it at the time, or I thought I did not.

And eleven weeks later I was standing in my own kitchen with a friend holding a phone.

And when Sinéad asked me, in the April, where the idea had come from, I said it had just occurred to me one day.

And then about three weeks after that I remembered the video, whole, including which bed I was in when I watched it.

And I have not told one person that, including her, until I wrote it here.

Because the whole of this — all eighteen months of it — rests on a daughter having had a lovely thought about her mother.

And what actually happened is that a girl of seventeen saw a format.

What that means about the rest of it.

That I had told somebody before I told her.

Two days. Immy knew on the fifteenth of February and my mother found out on the seventeenth, in her own kitchen, with a camera up.

And I have gone round and round whether that matters, and in the April, with a woman called Sinéad, I got to the bit that does.

It is not that I told a friend first. Everybody tells a friend first.

It is that I told her what I was going to do and when.

And Immy brought her phone on the seventeenth because I had told her to be there.

So the sentence I have been quoting for eighteen months — Mum, you missed yours because of me, come to mine — was said to a woman in her own kitchen with a camera on her, by a daughter who had set the time.

And the two days between telling Immy and telling her, which I have let stand as a detail.

The fifteenth and the sixteenth of February.

And I have gone through what is in them, because Sinéad asked me what I did with forty-eight hours.

I told two more people.

Not just Immy. Her sister on the Saturday, and a lad called Deri from my form, on the Sunday afternoon, who I am not even close to.

And when I told Deri, I told him it was happening on the Monday.

Which means that by the time my mother was standing at that counter on the seventeenth, four people under nineteen in Brackmoor knew what was about to be said to her and roughly when.

And one of them was in the room with a phone.

And the thing I have not been able to put down since the April is that I remember the feeling of those two days.

It was not nerves about asking her. I knew what she would say.

It was waiting for Monday.

What my mother asked me.

In the March, about four weeks after.

And she did it the way she does things, which is sideways and on the way out of a room.

She said: "That video. Were you filming when you said it, or did it start after?"

And I said it started after.

It did not start after. It starts about four seconds before I open my mouth, which anybody can see, because the first thing on it is me looking over at Immy.

I am looking at the camera before I say the line to my own mother.

And my mother has watched that video. Of course she has; everybody in Brackmoor has.

She was not asking me a question. She was giving me a chance to say something.

And I said it started after, and she said: "That's what I thought," and she went out and put the washing on.

And the line about her dress, which is in the first part of this and which I put there on purpose.

***A glittery thing that cost more than my car.***

My car cost nine hundred pounds. It is a 2011 thing with a wing that does not match.

And her dress cost about four hundred, which I found out later and which I knew roughly at the time, because everybody knew what everybody's dress cost that year.

So that sentence is true in the way a thing can be true and still be built.

And I have used it in every telling, because it does a job in about nine words: it makes her rich and me not, before she has even opened her mouth.

And her father is a joiner and her mother is not around much and that house is not a rich house.

And four hundred pounds for that girl's prom dress came out of the same place two hundred and ten pounds for my mother's came out of, which is somebody doing extra.

And in the October, when Nolan told me about the eleventh, he mentioned in passing that he had got Peyton's dress in the March.

He said it the way you mention the weather.

What Peyton saw.

She had seen it.

That is the thing I did not work out until the October, when Nolan told me about the eleventh and I started actually thinking about his daughter as a person.

Peyton Gorrie had watched that video, probably about nine times, like everybody at Dunmoor had.

And then on the twenty-second of May she stood in a courtyard and watched the whole thing happen again, live, with about ninety people there and three or four phones up.

And what she said — is this prom or bring-your-parent-to-school day — I have always heard as her attacking my mother.

And in the October I heard it for the first time as somebody saying: you're doing it again.

Which does not make it all right, and which does mean she was the only person in that courtyard who was not entirely wrong about what was going on.

And the night itself, which nobody has ever asked me about.

Everybody asks about the courtyard. Not one person in eighteen months has asked me what the prom was like.

And the answer is that my mother was in that hall for about two hours and twenty minutes, and for about ninety minutes of that she sat at a table with two other mums who were helping out.

Because I was with my friends.

That is what happened. We did the photographs and we went in and we were together for about half an hour, and then Immy and the others were by the doors and I went over.

And my mother went and found something useful to do, because that is what that woman does in a room where she is not sure what she is for.

And at about half ten I came back and found her and we danced to one thing and she laughed and it was lovely and it is in my head forever.

One song.

I took my mother to a prom she had waited eighteen years for and I gave her one song and a car park.

And on the way home she said she had had a brilliant night, and I think she meant it, and that is somehow the worst part of the whole thing.

What my mother said before we went in.

***What if people stare? What if I ruin this?***

And I have quoted that in every single telling, because of what I say back to her.

And in the June I finally sat with what she was actually asking.

She was not frightened of being stared at. That woman has done nights on a till since she was nineteen; she is not frightened of a courtyard.

She was asking what it was for.

***What if I ruin this.*** This. Not your night. Not your prom.**

She had worked out, somewhere between February and May, that there was a thing happening that was bigger than a woman going to a dance with her daughter.

And she was asking me, on a doorstep, in a blue dress, whether she was going to be good enough at it.

And what I said back was a lovely line about how she made my life.

Which is true, and which is also not an answer to what she asked.

And my bio father, who is in the first line of this and who has never been in it since.

***He bailed the same day she told him. No calls. No help. Nothing.***

And that is the opening of every version I have ever given, because it sets the whole thing up in about eleven words.

And it is true up to a point and I have known where that point is since I was about fourteen.

He paid. Not much and not for long — from about 2011 to 2016, and it stopped when he went abroad, and it was never a lot.

And he wrote twice. Once when I was eight and once when I was eleven, and my mother gave me both of those letters when I was fifteen and let me decide.

And I decided not to answer them, which is mine and which I do not regret.

And no calls, no help, nothing is the line I use, and it has three words in it that I know to be untrue, and I have said it to about forty people including at a college session in September.

Because the mother in this story works better if there was nobody at all.

And my mother has heard me say it, in that kitchen, more than once.

And she has never corrected me either.

The dress.

It cost two hundred and ten pounds and she paid for it herself and I did not know that until the August.

I had said I would get it. I had money from work and I had offered twice and she had said we would sort it out.

And then in the April she went on her own on a Tuesday and bought it, and when I asked her about it she said there had been a sale.

There was no sale. My aunt told me in the August, laughing, as a nice thing about my mother.

And in the August I also found out why.

Because she had worked out that if I paid for it, it was a present from me, and if she paid for it, she was going to a prom.

That woman did four extra shifts in the March and the April for a blue dress so that she would not be a thing I had arranged.

And I have spent eighteen months telling people she looked unbelievable.

And the twenty-second of May itself, which I have told as a night that happened to us.

There were three phones up in that courtyard when Peyton said it, and I know that because I have seen two of the clips.

And in the June somebody at Dunmoor put a longer one together — the courtyard, and then us going in, and about nine seconds of my mother laughing at something inside.

And it did well, and it was kind, and the comments underneath it are about her.

And I shared it. That same evening, from my own account, with four words on it.

And then I shared the other one, the short one, on the Sunday.

So in the week after that prom I put my mother in front of people twice more, with my own hands, having already done it in February.

And she said nothing about either, because by then she had worked out what the arrangement was.

And when she finally asked me to take the February one down, in the January, she asked about that one only.

She did not mention the two I had shared myself. Not once.

Which means she had decided, somewhere in there, which battle was worth having with me.

Nolan.

He has been my stepdad since 2019 and he has never once in six years made a point of anything he does.

And in the October, after he told me about the eleventh, I asked him why he had not said at the time.

And he said: "It wasn't your business, love."

And then he said the other thing.

He said: "And you were having a nice night."

So a man watched his own daughter get humiliated in a courtyard in front of ninety people — which he caused, partly, and which he knew he had caused — and then kept the reason to himself for five months so that my prom would not be spoiled.

And in those five months I told that story about forty times, in front of him, twice at his own table.

And the two times Peyton tried, in the June, which I have put down as me being short with her.

I can do better than that, because I remember both.

The first was in the kitchen at theirs and she said: "Can I say something about prom?"

And I said: "I'd rather not, to be honest."

Four seconds. That is all it took to close it.

And the second one was about a fortnight later, in a car, and she got further.

She said: "I was horrible. I know I was. But there's a—"

And I said: "Peyton. You were horrible to my mum. That's it, really."

***That's it, really.***

And she said okay, and put her music on.

And she was about to tell me about the eleventh of May.

I am almost certain of that, from how it started, and I have never asked her, because asking her means telling her I know — and telling her I know means telling her how I found out, which is that I went to her father behind her back in the October.

So a girl tried twice to explain herself to me and I shut her down in under ten seconds both times.

And then five months later I got the explanation out of her dad instead.

Peyton, since.

She apologised on the twenty-fourth of May, two days later, at the house, to my mother, properly, standing up.

And my mother hugged her and that was the end of it as far as my mother is concerned, and those two are fine now; Peyton rings her about once a month, which I did not know until the September.

She rings my mother.

And she and I have not had a proper conversation since that courtyard.

Eighteen months, in the same family, at the same table at Christmas.

And that is not her doing. She tried twice in the June and I was short with her both times, and after the second one she stopped.

And the forty tellings, which I should be straight about, because they are not forty.

I have been saying forty since about the October because it sounds like a figure somebody has counted.

It is more, and most of them are not in person.

There is a thing I wrote in the June for a page at Dunmoor about the prom, which is about nine hundred words and which has the kitchen in it and the courtyard in it.

And there is the caption I put on the video I shared, and the one on the second one.

And in the September I did it at a thing at my college, in a session about personal statements, as an example of something you can write about.

I used my mother's night as an example of good material.

That is the sentence and I have been trying to write it for about four months.

And a woman in that room said it was really moving.

And I said thank you.

And the last thing.

The video is still up.

It is the first thing that comes up if you search my mother's name, which somebody at her work found out in the November.

And in the January she asked me to take it down.

She did not make a thing of it. She asked once, in the kitchen, on a Sunday, and she said something about how it was a bit odd for people at work.

And I said I would look into it.

And then I did not, because it is Immy's account and it would be a conversation, and because — and this is the part — it had done eleven thousand more by then and people were still finding it.

And in the March she asked me once more, and I said the same thing.

And she has not asked again.

And last month I was at that house and she had the radio on and she was doing something at the sink, and she said, to nobody: "I'd have gone anyway, you know."