Chenille woke up and pulled herself into a sitting position, groaning. God, what a hangover! She didn’t remember that much…

She looked around. Strange, she didn’t recognise the bedroom she was in. Had she slept over at a friend’s place again?

Her vision started to clear more. Then she noticed the bump…

With a shriek, she started prodding herself all over. No, no, this was some kind of a sick joke…!

She soon realised it wasn’t. She was really pregnant; she looked like she was about to pop any minute…

A short blonde woman popped her head round the door, as she had heard the shriek.

“You ok, Chen? Don’t tell me it’s time already. I thought you weren’t due until next month.”

“I wasn’t even fucking pregnant, yesterday!”, Chenille yelled. “Also, who the fuck are you, and where am I?”

“Chen, please, you’re scaring me…”, the woman said, coming over and sitting on the end of the bed. “We’ve been together for long enough…”

Chenille was in a state of shock. None of this made any sense. She flipped completely.

“I don’t believe you! All you’ve done from the moment I woke up is lie to me! I want to go home!”

She struggled out of bed, then went to find some clothes to get dressed in. Trouble was she didn’t recognise any of them…

She eventually managed to get a set of clothes together, refusing any attempts of the blonde to help her, who was by now crying as well…

“Chen!? What’s wrong? Is it something I’ve done? Tell me…!”

“My name is Chenille, not Chen!”, Chenille snapped. “It always has been and always will be. I don’t know you; I’ve never seen you before. As far as I’m concerned, you kidnapped me and did this to me somehow.”

Having dressed, she pushed past the other woman and stomped out of the flat. Problem now was, as soon as she got outside, she hadn’t got a clue where she was…

She dug in her pocket for her phone, and dialled her parents number, not trusting any number in the address book. It still showed, however, as ‘Mum & Dad’…

Her mother answered on the first ring.

“Chenille, darling! Nice to hear from you! It’s been a while…”

“I want to come home, mum!”, Chenille wailed. “Everything’s changed, and I’m scared.”

“What on earth do you mean?”, her mother asked. “Please don’t tell me there’s a problem with the pregnancy.”

“You know!?”, Chenille shrieked.

“Of course I do, sweetie, you told us all about it. You said Lily couldn’t conceive, so you were going to have the baby, and you went to the clinic to get a volunteer to inseminate you.”

“The fuck I did! Mum, you know I’d never get involved with kids. Also, who the hell is Lily?”

“Why, your wife, of course.”

Chenille just collapsed in a heap, wailing. Lily found her on the steps outside the flat and carried her back inside single-handedly. She woke up back on her bed…

Chenille’s mother Abby turned up about half an hour later. She had literally dropped everything and jumped in the car. Lily let her in, and she rushed straight to her daughter’s side.

“At least you look roughly the same”, Chenille said, when she saw her. “Now, what the hell is going on?”

“Are you telling me you don’t know Lily?”, Abby asked.

“Never seen her before today”, Chenille said. “I know nothing about her; she’s a stranger to me.”

With a strangled sob, Lily ran from the room.

Chenille had also taken of the ring that she had been wearing and put it on the bedside table.

“It’s not mine; I want nothing to do with it.”

“I didn’t bring you up to be this heartless!”, Abby cried. “What turned you into such a bitch?”

“Me!?”, shrieked Chenille. “This time yesterday I didn’t know her. I wasn’t even pregnant!”

“Well, that’s obviously impossible”, Abby replied. “Come on, you didn’t get that way overnight.”

Chenille just turned away and cried into her pillow.

Sadly, Abby left the room and went to talk to Lily, who was quietly sobbing downstairs.

“Lily… hey, don’t cry”, she said. “My daughter’s obviously not well. She doesn’t mean what she is saying.”

“It still hurts, Abby”, said Lily. She and Chenille’s mother had been on a first name basis for some time, now.

“Of course it does; it shows how much you care about her. She’s lucky to have you.”

“I’m lucky to have her; I almost cried with joy when she said she was willing to have the baby. We were going to adopt, but the paperwork was a nightmare. We both also felt we’d connect to a child more if at least one of us was the parent. Problem is, because of my problem, I can’t conceive.”

“Oh, the fact you used to be a man, you mean.”

“How the hell could you know that?”

Abby just smiled.

“Mothers know these things, you know…”

“Does Chenille know?”, Abby asked, after a pause.

“Of course. We’ve got no secrets from each other. She said she just loved me as a person; she didn’t care what sex I was. I cried my eyes out when she asked me to marry her.”

Abby sat with Lily for quite a while. She was fond of both her and Chenille. What the hell had gone so drastically wrong…?

Abby decided the best thing to do was act as a mediator, of sorts, between Chenille and Lily. First, she had to find out how much Chenille knew.

She asked Chenille a few questions; it turned out her memories stopped roughly the day that she had met Lily at the club in town, just after she had left for it from home, in fact. Then she noticed the bump on the back of Chenille’s head…

Abby was straight on the phone to the hospital.

“Lily, get Chenille into my car, now!”

Lily reacted straight away; also, for once, Chenille didn’t argue either.

“Hospital, now!”, Abby said to Lily, sitting in the back with Chenille, whilst still on the phone to the hospital.

Because of the late stage of Chenille’s pregnancy, as well as the fact it was a head injury, Chenille was seen straight away, which was a rare occurrence. The doctor took one look at her head and sent her for a scan, saying that they’d also be keeping her in overnight (no arguments!).

Both Lily and Abby stayed in the waiting room, worrying.

Eventually, the doctor came back out.

“She’s had a hard whack on the back of the head”, he said. “She’s actually lucky to be alive. Unfortunately, the brain damage looks permanent. Her memory will probably never come back.”

There was a strangled sob from Lily.

“That means she’s forgotten about me completely!”, she wailed.

Abby hugged her as she cried hysterically…

Abby decided that she need to stay. She wasn’t leaving her daughter in the state she was in, and she felt that Lily needed some company, too. She had nothing to rush back to; Chenille’s father had passed away a few years ago and she had never remarried. Truth to be told, the house was beginning to feel a little empty…

She liked being round her daughter again. Only problem was, she herself was a really attractive woman. She looked like an Amazon; dark-skinned, curly hair, almost an Afro but not quite; She looked like a Wakandan Royal out of the Black Panther movies that had been on recently. She also didn’t look much older than Chenille.

It was no surprise at all that Lily latched onto her. She then made things worse by returning her affections.

They were both sitting at Lily’s flat, resting, as the doctors had ordered them to go home.

“You’re not going to be any help to her if you run yourselves into the ground”, he’d said.

Abby had finally managed to get Lily to go to bed; she was so upset and wound up it was a wonder that she hadn’t collapsed already. However, when she got up to go sit in the living room…

“Don’t leave me alone…”, came a quiet voice. “Please…”

She sat back down on the bed. She then felt Lily’s hand on her back…

Everything screamed in her to get up and leave the room.

She didn’t…

Next morning, they woke up in bed together.

Abby was devastated, but at the same time there was no way she could have left Lily alone. She knew they hadn’t had sex; also, her ‘excuse’ was there was only one bed in the flat and each had seen everything of the other at some point anyway, as she had always been close with Lily and Chenille.

Lily kissed her.

“Thank you”, she said. “Don’t worry, Chenille won’t mind at all, at least she wouldn’t if she was in her right mind. There’s a specific clause in the will catering for this; it’s a condition that specifies that we have to look after each other. Legally, we’re responsible for each other.”

“I’m not sure that’s what they had in mind when they wrote it, though”, said Abby, with a quiet giggle.

Just then, the hospital phoned, and the pair got dressed and hurried in.

Chenille was sitting up in bed; she wasn’t as big as she was before, though. There was also a little cot by the bed.

“Ehm…”, the doctor said. “We were running some tests last night, and someone just popped out. She was in a bit of a hurry.”

“She’s a month premature, so she’s a little small, but she’s quite a healthy baby girl”, he continued.

Chenille had a big smile on her face.

“I don’t care if I can’t remember the pregnancy, I’m keeping her”, she said. “She’s beautiful.”

Lily was more than a little annoyed that she’d missed the birth.

She hadn’t noticed the queer look that Chenille was giving them both…

“You slept together last night, didn’t you!”, she accused.

Sheepishly, Abby nodded.

“It was my fault entirely”, she said.

“No, it wasn’t, it was me that said I didn’t want to be alone”, said Lily.

“Mum, how could you…?”

“Not my fault you’ve only got one bed in the flat”, said Abby. “No way was I sleeping on the sofa, at my age.”

“Oh, so now you play the age card…!”

Chenille couldn’t keep a straight face any longer.

“Mother, I don’t care who you sleep with”, she said, suddenly giggling. “Is she good in bed, Lils?”

Lily’s mouth dropped open, from surprise and embarrassment.

“You remember me!”, she squeaked.

“Yep”, replied Chenille. “The pain of having the baby suddenly shook the old noddle up a bit. I’ve still got gaps, but I remember more of you. I also remember the clause in the will…”

The three hugged, back together.

Chenille then introduced them both to her daughter, Abigail Lily, named after her two favourite people…

Chenille was allowed home a few days later. The head injury was healing slowly and there were no blood clots developing, so it was no longer deemed life-threatening. The nursery wasn’t ready at all; all three took turns decorating and putting together furniture. A load of shopping had had to be done at very short notice, with furniture coming by next-day delivery. Chenille roared her head off when Lily first tried to assemble some flat pack furniture as a surprise…

Abby stayed as well. Now Chenille was back, she ‘begrudgingly’ slept on the sofa, which she hadn’t realised was actually a sofa bed.

However, she awoke one night to find Lily lying next to her.

“She’s having a strop again”, Lily explained. “Abby junior isn’t sleeping, either.”

Abby just smiled, quite content to be in a busy house as opposed to a quiet one.

When Chenille padded across the living room to make coffee the next morning, wearing not a lot, she just kissed the pair of them as if it was perfectly normal…