He had not killed his father but I think he sometimes felt that he should have helped him on his way as soon as he was old enough to strangle this waste of space in his sleep. His father was a career criminal, a wife beater, an addict to any hard liquor that came with a screw top or soft curves that came with a screw opportunity. Consent optional. Jaxson had lived a life of unimaginable hell before he disappeared without a trace 20 years ago.

Of course, I didn't know any of that when I met Jaxson at a music festival in Germany just before he vanished. A long weekend, four days and three nights in a foreign country, unsupervised by nagging adults, alcohol flowing freely, bodies held upright just by the pull of the music. Jaxson and his crew had put up their tents right next to ours. I spotted him, shirtless, sipping a German beer with a weird name, Doppelbock or Doppelback, I cannot remember which, from a bulbous brown bottle that contrasted nicely with his flat pale abdomen. A large scar on his chest enhanced his masculinity rather than mar the perfection of his physique, my own hormone-driven body decided.

I had just turned 18, and, despite my naivety, my libido was fully functional, which I found out to my utter horror when I couldn't suppress a moan in the face of this private Boss advert playing out right in front of me. I would have tried to cover it up with a cough, but Janie had heard it and, as my best friend, felt compelled to make me the laughing stock of Field Kraftwerk, the name of the field where we were camping, by shrieking, "Did looking at that piece of perfect male meat just make you come, babe?" And believe me, I am not using the term 'shrieking' lightly here.

The piece of meat in question turned his head and looked me straight in the eye.

"You're welcome," he simply stated, flexed his arm muscles and went back to guzzling the booze, swaying his hips provocatively to Britney Spears's Baby One More Time.

I did not know whether to kill what I had hitherto called a best friend or myself first.

A massive falling-out with Janie and a number of plastic beakers of cheap sparkling wine later thrust me out of the traitor's tent straight into Jaxon's muscly arms. At least, that's where I found myself once my blood-alcohol level had fallen below my blood-blood level, or whatever you call it, and given me my consciousness back.

"Oh, Jesus!" I shouted and jumped up off this perfect stranger's lap as fast as I could. I looked down and noted that I was still fully dressed. That, at the very least, was a good sign. I made a mental note never to touch any liquid containing alcohol again, except for cleaning, while simultaneously trying to remember the events that had led me to Mr Pale Male's lap and trying not to spew up on said Mister's sparkling white trainers.

Despite a thorough mental search, I had to admit defeat. There was only the fuzzy memory of the beginning of our acquaintance, for lack of a better word at that stage. I had been standing in front of my tent in a dangerous state of undress. The alcoholic impact on my fine motor skills had adversely affected my ability to pull up my shorts properly, but this tiny detail had not made me question my dance or singing skills even for a second.

So here I was, feeling like a blend of Anna Pavlova and Celine Dion, while in fact kicking my legs into the air like a kung fu fighter and screaming unintelligible words to go with the music. It was some cover version of Mandy, originally sung by Barry Manilow, now being butchered by this unknown hip hop German band and drunken me.

"Jesus, sweetheart, can you tone it down a bit?"

I spun around to face the owner of this offensive question. After all, I felt like my voice was as smooth as silk and the emotion in the lyrics I belched out pure.

"Is a m... music feshtival! Wha' do ya wan'?" I slurred, turning to find Mr Pale Male behind me with a smirk on his face.

"Exactly, love, a m-u-s-i-c festival!" He spelled out the main word, and I resented the implication.

"Well, you came and you gave without taking

But I sent you away, oh Mandy."

My vocal cords gave everything they had now, in volume, not necessarily beauty.

"Well, you kissed me and stopped me from shaking..."

If only old Barry had been there to do just that. But he wasn't, and I was shaking - so much that I tripped and toppled over. Any good romance novel would have had Mr Strong and Mysterious catch me, kiss me, marry me. Now, this was no romance novel, but an uneven field in the middle of Germany, and I was as drunk as a skunk.

Suffice it to say, I faceplanted. Hard and into the only mud patch in an otherwise bone-dry field, the puddle obviously left over from last week's torrential rain.

After that, recollection of events had been deleted from the hard drive, and I had a tough time determining whether that was a blessing or a curse. Dried mud on my top revealed that the information my brain seemed to have been able to retain was credible enough.

My stomach was already advertising flip-flops, and now my face decided to steal all my body's blood, while the rest of me wanted to die in shame but lacked the determination.

"Feeling a little rough?" His voice brought me back to the present and the gentleness in his tone calmed me down enough to suck in a deep breath. The world stopped swaying for a second before my brain hopped back onto an invisible merry-go-round.

He stood up from the collapsible director's chair next to his tent and handed me a bottle of water from the cool box next to it.

"Small sips, Tess. That'll make you feel better," he advised.

Well, we had at least exchanged names then before commencing with the cuddling. Now, I prayed that I had gone no further than talking and cuddling. I tugged at my shorts.

"Nothing happened!" Jaxson seemed to be looking straight into my thoughts. "I'm not that kind of guy. You were totally out of it. You could hardly stand up but adamantly refused to lie down in the tent of - and this does in no way represent my opinion but is a direct Tess quote - 'the bloody bitch with the forked tongue'. I didn't think leaving you here in this state, unprotected and unconscious, not to mention a little muddy, was a great idea, so... here we are."

Despite being fully aware that my face looked like the aftermath of a massive sun-bathing accident, I looked up into his face. I knew what that meant. "The bloody bitch" and, more importantly, his friends had gone to one of the stages to enjoy the music, while Jaxson had sacrificed the first night of musical bliss and free-flowing beer to the safety of a girl he had never met before. My young heart melted and my arms wrapped around his lean midsection without consulting my better judgement first. His arms found their way around my waist, while his chin decided my head was a great resting place.

I don't know how long we remained in this position nor do I have any idea why this felt so right. What I do know, is that the next three days were the best of my life. I cannot recall much of the music we listened to. I do remember Jaxson's voice, his smell, his body. And Mandy. The song, not any of the competition going by that name. It was the most popular song at the festival and the song that introduced us to each other. We didn't care much about the lyrics and the meaning of the song; we cared about the tune, the party feeling and the touching it inevitably led to.

I have to admit, though, that sharing your bed with someone you have only just met definitely isn't the wisest choice to make at any age, especially not when you are not on birth control and know nothing about the guy's health status, but at that particular time, all I could see was Jaxson. My mind had already conjured a little flat on the third floor with a balcony overlooking the city and two cats - I wasn't prone to grandeur; the house with the picket fence had to wait until Jaxson and I were starting to earn serious money.

Jaxson and I did not just share our bodies; we also shared our life histories, or at least that's what I thought. Mine was pretty boring anyway. I had grown up the younger of two sisters to a happily married couple who fiercely loved the both of us and who might not have been rich by anybody's standards but always had enough to provide for us. Audrey and I fought like cats and dogs but turned into the Kray twins whenever one of us felt attacked by outsiders.

Jaxson volunteered that he had an older brother, Simon, and a younger sister, Carla, both of whom he wasn't really close to. All three of them lived with his father. He didn't say a lot about the man, but I had the impression there wasn't a lot of love lost between those two, either. When I asked about his mum, he simply shrugged, obviously a touchy subject, so I let it go.

We had both just finished school. I was about to start university in the autumn, the first step on the road to fulfil my dream of becoming a teacher, just like my mother. Jaxson remained vague about his future.

It didn't matter, at least not to me. Jaxson was attentive, gentle, a good listener, and I couldn't complain about his bedroom qualities, either, especially considering that he only had a tiny tent surrounded by hundreds of people to work with. Then again, despite my original vow of alcohol celibacy, various fun-sounding and poor-decision-enabling liquids found their way into my system over the course of the festival duration, making my recollection of bedroom activities and other events a little unreliable, you might say, and the choices I made more than stupid, the unprotected sex I had with a virtual stranger being a case in point.

If you asked Janie, whose loyalty I questioned for all of five minutes before embracing her into the fold again, I was a drunken, traitorous "bloody bitch of epic proportions" during those days, leaving her to fend for herself, while I was planning a lifetime of bliss. There isn't much I can say in my defence, apart from a big thanks to good old Janie for being the forgiving kind of person. I would never have talked to me again, had I been in her shoes.

Anyway, as you can imagine, bliss didn't happen nor the flat with the balcony. Otherwise, this story would be pointless, wouldn't it?

When the festival drew to a close and our plane tickets threatened, Jaxson became oddly distant.

"We are so lucky, Jaxson Bowers," I crooned into his ear. "You live less than half an hour away from me by train. I can't wait to see you back in your natural environment. Blue Church sounds lovely."

I didn't catch it then, but looking back on it, I'm almost certain that Jaxson flinched at my words.

"Look, ahm,... Tess. I... The thing is... You are a nice girl and all that, but what happens in Germany stays in Germany... you know what I'm saying?"

For the first time, Jaxson sounded just the way he had looked that first day, like an arsehole. Handsome, but an arsehole nonetheless.

"You don't mean that, Jaxson!" I cry-shouted, throwing my dignity onto the massive piles of rubbish in the field next to us, generated in mass by the otherwise so environmentally-conscious youth of the noughties. "I love you! I have to see you again!"

I threw my arms around him, in a desperate effort to make him change his mind. But, of course, he did not reciprocate the l-word, as I had hoped.

Instead, he gently extricated himself from my embrace.

"Tess, please, you don't know me. You're a nice, decent girl. Trust me, you don't want to be with me. The stupid alcohol loosened my tongue and made me tell you things about me I shouldn't have. Just promise me that you won't even try to find me. Please!"

He was obviously trying to tell me something here. But I was young and selfish, having grown up in a world that seemed pretty perfect from where I was standing at the time. I didn't understand Jaxson's obvious desperation; all I understood was that I had been used, betrayed and discarded.

All I heard in my head was the song.

"Well, you came and you gave without taking

But I sent you away, oh Mandy."

I decided to pick my dignity up before the binmen did and vowed never to see or think of Jaxson Bowers again.

Until three weeks later, when I found out I was pregnant.

* * * * *

The walls seemed to be closing in. I stared at the sticks in disbelief. I had purchased two more just to be on the safe side, after the first test yesterday yielded a rather alarming result.

Both tests corroborated the initial findings.

My heart sank.

I was 18, about to become a student at a great university. My life had been a fluffy blanket of white snow so far. How had I managed to hit the patch of thin ice on a deadly lake so quickly?

True to his word, Jaxson had been incommunicado since my return home. I was sure that my heart was literally broken and would never be fixed again. Jaxson was it for me, the love of my life. At least, the Jaxson before his taxi had pulled up at Field Kraftwerk to take him and his friends to the airport. I still couldn't wrap my head around what had happened in those final moments, but Audrey had put her foot down, when I had confided in her about the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

"This guy is a waste of space and a total moron, Tess. You are not going to try and find him - ever. Do you hear me, sis? You're the best person I know, and if I so much as smell his sorry arse in your vicinity, I will personally castrate the c... ahm... dickhead and make him find out what meatballs really taste like!"

Audrey's fierceness, humour and her accompanying hug had actually made me feel better. My heart had still been heavy, but I had started to work on forgetting this idiot. I had started the process officially by smashing the CD I had burned my new favourite song, Mandy, on about ten times in as many different versions. And I had been doing better than I had expected until my most hated time in the month had failed to appear. I had never imagined that I'd actually pray for my period. At the very least, it had taught me the meaning of the saying that everything is a matter of perspective.

Here I was now, staring at three sticks, my mind refusing to accept the data my eyes were transmitting to my brain.

'Mum, Dad, remember this music festival in Germany you allowed me to go to with Janie a few weeks ago if I promised to stay away from alcohol and boys. Well, about that...'

'Mum, Dad, I know you really want to be grandparents one day. Well, this day might come just a little quicker than you thought...'

'Mum, Dad, I truly love our intact little family, but I believe kids can grow up equally well if one parent is absent from the start. The reason I mention this...'

The bright orange tiles, a testament to my parents being children of the 70s, threatened to give me a migraine, while I scrambled for the right thing to say to my family when I left this bathroom.

I lowered my gaze and focussed on the chipped tile on the floor, a reminder of a huge fight Audrey and I had had when we were little. We hadn't realised that smashing the potato stone we had found in the nearby woods and whose rightful ownership had been in question on the tiles would destroy Mummy's and Daddy's beloved bathroom floor and my and my sister's sitting ability for the next two days. I'm grossly exaggerating, of course. My parents never hit us. And a potato stone, in case you are wondering, is just a stone that, in our childish minds, resembled a potato, no, was the spitting image of a potato and as such worth more than the Crown Jewels. At the very least, it must have been worth more than a tiny tile. Tough luck that Mum and Dad had disagreed.

"Such simple times," I muttered, overcome with nostalgia for a second before the terror of the present intruded again.

Eventually, I made it out of the confines of the bathroom into the living room. Face blackened by mascara, tears running down my face, I stood in front of the three people whose opinion of me mattered the most to me in the whole wide world. My parents jumped up from their settee, my sister ran up to me and hugged me silently.

The best defence is a good offence. I had remembered this old adage while I was staring at the three offending sticks that threatened to end my life as I knew it. But although neither my parents nor my sister had uttered a word, let alone a question, the brilliant speech I had finally drafted, inspired by the aggressive orange of the bathroom, crumbled into carpet mites right in front of me.

"I'm pregnant!" I blurted out, rhetoric skills or finesse forgotten. "What do I do now?"