And perhaps Father Christmas does exist after all, because a few days after the Headmaster reluctantly gave Larxene one more chance at school I receive a cheque in the mail with this month's benefits. And last month's, and last month's, going right back to August when I moved here. I almost burst into tears with joy as I huff and puff my way up the stairs back to my flat, at once holding the envelope firmly and very carefully, as though crumpling the cheque could make it disappear. I spend the evening budgeting on the backs of Larxene's paintings: if my baby is due to arrive some time in February, then I'll need to stop working at the end of January…how long can I afford to stay at home? I cast my memory back to when Larxene was born, glancing at her as I do so. She's grown so much, into this scrawny, grumpy little kid who pulls the limbs off her fifth-hand dolls and eats courgettes because I told her they were made from troll bogeys. I'm just contemplating my utter failure as a parent when she looks at me with those big watery eyes.

"I don't think Naminé's mum and dad like us," she says offhandedly, the syllables sticking in her mucusy throat. She's developing a bit of a cough. I heave myself up off the floor, my knees clicking, and pull one of our blankets off the bed so I can wrap it around her shoulders. She nestles into it, sniffing conspicuously. "Today they got home before you came to pick me up. I said hello but they looked at me funny."

I sit down again. "At least Naminé seems to like you." This optimistic analysis makes Larxene lighten up a little.

"We played dressing up today. Selphie has lots of dresses. I got to wear one, it was blue with bows and a ribbon at the back and flowers on the bottom."

"I bet you looked really cute," I say, punching numbers into my tired old calculator. Bits of the screen have stopped working, so I'm never sure about things like whether the third digit in is a six or an eight, but it's still better than my mental arithmetic. Maybe I could even get Larxene a late Christmas present. Something useful, maybe, like food.

"Not as cute as Selphie," Larxene says sourly. "I looked weird." She toys with her picture book, tormenting the pages. "I want a haircut," she adds finally, "Like Selphie. I want pretty hair." Larxene has never had her hair cut: there have always been better things to spend money on. It hangs around her shoulderblades, a bright blonde that might look like silk with proper care, but thanks to the ultra-cheap shampoo in the bathroom just forms ratty tails around her neck. She knows that I couldn't pay for a hairdresser, even a cheap one, so I don't say anything in reply. After a while she says "Oh, and Naminé asked me to say, do you want to come over on tomorrow, because her parents are going out." She gives me an imploring look that says "Please say yes". We engage in a silent battle of wills. Finally I give in, saying "Okay, but not if your cold gets worse."

"I don't have a cold," says Larxene in a suddenly much clearer voice. She loses interest in her book, crawling over to me. "Are you doing money stuff again."

"Sadly, yes." I look over my hand-drawn spreadsheets, almost every figure scrubbed out and written again several times. "I'm trying to put some money aside so I don't have to work after I have my baby."

"You get to stay at home?" Larxene asks excitedly, putting her greasy fingers all over my hard work, much more interested now. She reads the numbers aloud, slowly and deliberately: "One, four, two, oh… one, three, ten… ruh-en-tuh. Rent."

"Yes, that's all of this," I say, gesturing to the chilly, threadbare room around us. "And this column is for utilities, that's water and electricity and gas, and this column is for food..." I've lost her, evidently, because she interupts with a loud: "But you're staying at home after the baby is born?"

"Well, for a few months, hopefully," I say, not wanting to get her hopes up. I'll have to get back to work eventually: even tax credits only go so far. Larxene now puts her cold hands on my baby bump, waiting until she can feel my unborn child wriggle, whereupon she says urgently: "Hey, come out now. I want Mummy to stay at home with me."

I half prise her away, half pull her into a hug, her chin resting on my shoulder. "I don't think it can understand English yet."

"Ienzo Lillyford in the other class has a baby sister," Larxene tells me. "His Mum brought her in one day and we all got to have a look. Everyone said she was super cute. But she was ugly."

"You were ugly too, when you were born," I say. "But I still thought you were beautiful. That's what Mums are supposed to do." I wonder if my mother thought I was beautiful. I think about her less these days, which is funny, because she always used to have a greater presence in my mind when I was lonely and miserable before. Larxene laughs at me and she says "You're silly". I think that maybe she's right, especially when I find myself shaking nervously at the front door of Naminé's beautiful semi-detached brick house the next morning, all too aware that her parents' cars are still parked in the drive. We shiver for a few minutes in the cold and snow, Larxene clinging to my back, when a small but severe-looking man in a two-piece suit and a substantial raincoat opens the door.

"You must be Miss Braefern," he says as I quietly try to pretend that I am not significantly taller than him. He looks up at my daughter and adds politely, "Hello, Larxene."

"Hello Mister Naminé's Dad," says Larxene. Actually, her cold is a little bit worse than yesterday, and you can hear it in her voice, but I didn't have the heart to keep her in bed when she wanted to go to a warm house overflowing with fancy dress costumes and hot chocolate so much.

"Come in," says Mister Naminé's Dad, stepping aside for us. I stamp snow out of my feet on the doormat just as a patter of feminine feet signifies Naminé running down the stairs to greet me. Almost as soon as she's arrived, her father disappears off outside with nothing more than a grunt of "Goodbye," to his daughter.

"He's very shy," Naminé says as he drives away, ushering us into the kitchen where Larxene reluctantly climbs down off my back. "You shouldn't be forcing your mother to give you piggy backs," Naminé chides, "Pregnant women aren't supposed to carry heavy loads."

"Are you calling me fat?" Larxene cries out, her face crumpling into a laugh, and Naminé rushes at her and picks her up and goes "Oh, you," as she swings her about, finally sitting her down on the work surface. I look on enviously as Naminé tickles Larxene into submission. It's been a long time since I've had enough energy to do that sort of thing. "All right, now I've got to make tea for your Mummy. Do you want hot chocolate?" Larxene nods vigorously, still giggling. I happily ease myself into one of the high seats against the counter, gently thawing out while Naminé amuses my daughter by telling her some story about a spotty teapot. Very briefly, an ironic thought occurs to me: isn't this what fathers do? Look on while their children play with their mothers?

"I'd ask if you wanted to come upstairs, but you look very comfortable there," Naminé says once a hot cup of tea is in my hands. I force myself to stand up again, just in time to see Naminé's mother disappearing out of the door. We glance at each other as she goes, and as we do something strange happens: we are suddenly joined together for that very brief moment, two mothers who might be worlds apart but still have the same hopes and fears and loves for their children. But then she frowns just a little bit, and when she's gone my chest feels a little empty, the way it always does when I realise I've been judged.

"Mum thinks you're going to be a bad influence on me," Naminé laughs, shovelling Larxene onto the floor again. "You know, with the whole pregnant thing and all. Like it's contagious."

"Imagine that," I say dryly. We go upstairs into Naminé's cute little bedroom, which doesn't look like it's been redecorated since she was six years old: a pink wallpaper adorned with cupcakes smiles down on us, a collection of fluffy and well loved teddy bears cuddle on the bed, and the lavendar carpet even through my wet shoes feels soft and inviting. In fact, the only things that suggest that the inhabitant of this room isn't a little girl are the posters of some horribly attractive male pop star gazing stoically down at me, hair perfect and facial scars forming an attractively rugged X across the bridge of his nose.

"Feel free to take your shoes off," Naminé says, noticing me glancing floorwards. I shake my head, murmuring something about it being too much effort (you try being flexible with a baby stuck to your belly), but by the time I've settled down into a bean bag chair it's not too much more to ask of my already tortured spine to reach over and untie my shoelaces. "Selphie's staying at her friend's house," Naminé says when she notices me looking around for the bouncy little girl who usually accompanies my free babysitter. Then she turns to Larxene. "Hey, Labby," she goes, "Do you want to go downstairs and watch TV for a while? I promise I won't tell on you." And sure enough Larxene nods and hurries away, waddling a little as she goes, trying her best not to spill her hot chocolate.

"Labby?"

"That's what Selphie calls her."

I look at Naminé. I look at the posters, feeling a familiar pang of that odd emotion probably only gay people can experience, a mixture of longing and jealousy. I want that muscle tone and smooth, masculine jawline and intense gaze. I also want somebody with all those features, and as far as I'm aware most straight women don't want to resemble their ideal partners. I look at the easel set up in the corner, a half-finished painting resting on its horizontal bar.

"That's nice," I say, cocking my head towards it. Naminé gushes and hurries over to take it down.

"Oh, no, no, it isn't finished yet. Goodness." She stows the canvas away behind the easel. "I'm doing it for my Mum's birthday."

"Do you want to go into art?" I ask, suddenly noticing how tiny Naminé's feet are. I carefully tuck mine under my skirt, hoping that she didn't notice them before.

"I don't think so. I just like it as a hobby. I think I'm probably going to go into my Dad's company when I leave school."

"Your Dad has his own company?" I ask, unable to keep the jealousy our of my voice. Without meaning to, I begin to fantasise about what kind of business I would own, if I could. A garden centre, maybe, or a plant nursery.

Naminé blushes. "Yeah, Mum works there too. It's just a consultancy thing, but, yeah. You probably think it's awfully elitist and upper-class for them to get me a job at the company, but I don't really know what to do with my life anyway, so, you know. I'll still have to work hard and pull my weight to get a good job there."

"Can they get me a job?" I ask, joking into eternity. But Naminé doesn't realise, because she says in that same bright, well-meaning voice: "Maybe, if you did business or ICT at school." This innocence makes me laugh bitterly.

"I left school at fifteen, Naminé. I didn't even graduate." I say this with a coldness that she maybe doesn't deserve, but before I can correct myself she looks down at her thumbs and promptly changes the subject.

"Hey, Marluxia, I asked Larxene to go downstairs because I want to talk to you, you know, about how you are."

I look away, hoping that my hair is long enough to disguise the Adam's apple in my throat. This is stupid, I think, that I'm so terrified that she's going to realise I'm a man, because for God's sake I am so fat I couldn't even pass this bulge off as a beer gut: but the worry is still there, tugging at me restlessly. I pull my shoulders closer into my body and hunch my back more. Hands, I think suddenly, ihands/i, too big, too masculine; before I know it I'm pulling the sleeves of my jumper over my fingers. The pop star silently judges me. He knows, and he sees that I am pathetic.

"I know you're kind of struggling right now," Naminé continues when she realises I'm not going to tell her how I am. "Larxene's told me some things-" Legitimate hot panic flushes, however briefly, through my system, like the shudders you get at night when the sheets crumple around you and suddenly it feels like insects are crawling all over your body- "About not being able to have heating and not doing anything for Christmas, and, I just want to say, if there's anything I can do to help out, financially..." she trails off, sitting down on the floor next to me. Is she offering me money?

"God, Naminé, no," I say, putting my head in my hands. Suddenly something inside me hurts, maybe because I've missed the kindness of strangers so much, or maybe because I know that if I was rich and she was the pregnant one I probably wouldn't offer her a single munny. "You barely even know me. And besides, it's fine, my benefits finally came through yesterday so I've got enough to tide me over."

"You're on benefits?" Even though she tries, Naminé can't disguise that tone of voice all well-off people take on when they talk about welfare. "I thought you were working?"

I look at her through my fingers, trying not to be angry at her for her ignorance. "Yes, but most of my pay goes into rent, and the rest of it isn't really enough for two of us." She looks at me guiltily and doesn't say anything, so I add, "And my job doesn't come with maternity leave, so I've got to save up for that too. And a babysitter for when I do go back to work."

"It must be really difficult trying to get by on your own," Naminé says. I sit up a little straighter, but only so I can drink my tea. It's still hot, and the liquid almost scalds my throat, but I appreciate the warmth. Larxene really wasn't exaggerating about not being able to afford heating. I nurse my cup, happening to notice a chip in the china as I do so.

"I'm kind of used to it," I say. Naminé shuffles awkwardly. Suddenly I have half a mind to tell Naminé what it was like at the beginning, the real beginning, when all I had to sleep in was the back seat of a banged-up old car, and the only way to stop lechers peering down the front of my shirt and slapping my arse was to pick the least dangerous of them and stick to him, because she hasn't got a clue in her pretty bedroom with her life sorted out for her how fucking difficult it is for the rest of us, but something in her melancholy eyes and her sweet little face stops me. "I mean, I owe you for looking after Larxene during the day anyway."

"Oh, no, don't worry about that. I'd do it for longer if I didn't have to go back to school." I don't think my conscience would let her even if she didn't, actually. We sit quietly for a while, picking out the sounds of Larxene yelling gleefully at the television downstairs. Finally Naminé says: "If you ever want to talk to me about, you know, girly stuff, then feel free. I know the other Mums at school don't really talk to you, and." She stops suddenly. Her expression is tortured. She looks away and says, "I really don't like how they're treating you. The manager at the factory you work in is a friend of my Mum's, and sometimes the others talk about you at the school gate. Some of the things they say about you are just, really…really mean."

And for some reason, the fact that the idle "But she's so young, isn't she"s and "I'm only letting her stay on the team because she's pregnant"s that I hear from the Radiant Garden childbearing collective upsets Naminé so much is almost more heartbreaking than overhearing those comments myself. Maybe I'm just jealous that's she's so innocent, that she doesn't have this thick skin I had to develop if I didn't want to be crushed underfoot by people who didn't give two shits about me.

So I shrug. "I've had a lot worse." Somewhere in the back of my mind, I happen to wonder why Naminé always looks so sad, not just when she's taking it upon herself to care about me but all the time; even when she laughs and jokes with the children there's this quiet pain behind her eyes.

She stands up, putting her tea aside. And then she says "I don't want you to feel lonely," and I want to laugh at her because she's so sweet, at least until she reaches down and gathers me into her arms. I don't mind Larxene using me as a human pillow, taxi and climbing frame because she isn't fazed by my hard, solid bulk, but I still automatically shy away from any other kind of human contact, including Naminé. She senses my discomfort and pulls away quickly, but she still knows what I am like underneath my loose clothes, and that frightens me.

"I think Larxene's been watching TV for long enough," she says, and disappears down the stairs, calling "Labby! Labby!" as she does so. Labby. I'm not sure if I like it or not. My friend Larxene, the first Larxene, certainly wouldn't have ever stood for it (the closest she came to having a nickname was when she briefly decided she wanted everyone to call her the Black Queen of Death, but it never caught on). While Naminé tries to prise Larxene from the telly, I fiddle nervously with my hair and adjust my clothes, my hands finally coming to rest on my stomach. I can feel the baby moving, not its usual restless kick but the gentle vibrations of a little person in there, already very much alive.

"Hello, you," I say half affectionately. "I hope you don't turn out to be as loud as Larxene was. A quiet baby would be really nice this time around." This makes me laugh. I wouldn't be so lucky.

I hear Larxene coming back up the stairs long before I see her, her voice deafening by the time she launches herself at me with a yell of "Bean bag! Bean ba-ag!" We struggle for control of the bean bag chair for a moment or two, but like a good parent I let her get it in the end, joining Naminé on the bed instead.

"So," I say, pointing to the posters, "Who's this? A celebrity crush?" This makes Naminé blush all over again.

"S-Saix Kaeman? I just like his music," she says. I'm not sure I believe it. Not with four copies of his pretty face gazing impassively down at me. "He comes from Radiant Garden, actually. My friends and I are going to go see him live in February, hopefully."

I look at Saix Kaeman's face. "He's quite cute," I admit. "Probably wearing more make up than I am, though. Is that conspicuously photogenic scar real?"

Naminé nods. "Yeah, apparently he got attacked once by a gang." Then she quickly adds: "I think, anyway. I remember reading about it in the paper, is all."

"We knew a guy with scars on his face once," Larxene announces from the bean bag. She's making it into an impressive nest, wriggling around until the beans are all in the perfect position for lounging. "He had an eye patch and he never showed me what was underneath so I think he had a bi-on-ic eyeball. Also he stole Mummy's boyfriend but I don't remember that." I give Larxene a stern look: she's not supposed to talk about the past, even when I'm around to clamp my hand over her mouth if she starts saying things that are too delicate.

"Who told you I used to be with Demyx?"

"He did," says Larxene, her voice somewhat muffled by the bean bag, which she is exploring with her face. I frown in her general direction, wondering what else Demyx might have told her.

"It sounds like you've had an interesting past," Naminé says. I wouldn't exactly call it interesting, as such, so I just shrug at her.

"I used to live in Hollow Bastion." I hope she knows enough about the crumbling old town for that to be adequate explanation, and luckily she smiles knowingly, saying "I went there once." I want to say try living there, but suddenly I remember that even through I called Hollow Bastion my home for four years I still hardly knew anything about the dusty construction sites and resilient residents. So the conversation moves on, to other things, children and school and toys and cooking and cute males and everything else that real girls are supposed to talk to each other about. Then Selphie gets home and we have lunch. The girls make a snowman. I fall asleep on the sofa. Naminé gently wakes me up after dark when it's time for Larxene to go home, and as I gather up my flimsy coats and push Larxene's gloves onto her wriggling hands she murmurs very gently in my ear;

"I mean it, if you ever want to talk, you know where to find me."

I nod. "I know. Thanks." She brushes her hand against my arm very briefly. I realise dully in that moment that I have made the mistake of letting somebody into my life again, but somehow I can't quite bring myself to make plans to drive Naminé away again as soon as I don't need her any more.