Babies in Waiting (23 page)

The baby was much bigger than at the twelve-week scan, so they couldn’t see all of it on the screen at once. But the sonographer was very good and pointed out each part so they would know the baby was all right. Rachel held Louise’s hand very tightly and kept giving little gasps. ‘Do you want to know the baby’s sex?’ asked the sonographer.

‘Of course,’ said Louise, just as Rachel said, ‘Oooh, no!’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Louise, a little more firmly.

‘Oh Lou, don’t. You’ll jinx it. You’ll spoil the surprise!’ said Rachel. Typical Rachel, thought Louise, spouting phrases that didn’t actually mean anything. She would normally have let something like this go . . . a fight with Rachel was never worth it. But this was her baby and her only chance to find out the sex. She had to stand her ground.

‘Jinx what? And spoil what surprise? I may know what sex the baby will be, but I still won’t know anything else. It’ll be like meeting a total stranger.’

Rachel didn’t say anything else, but she sat back in her chair, with two hot little circles of pink on her cheeks. She looked as if she might cry. Louise felt awful. She knew that Rachel was living this experience vicariously, and, in choosing to know the sex, she was choosing something Rachel would not have done herself. She knew asking her sister to be there would be a mistake. There was nothing to be done, though. The sonographer waited patiently, her transducer poised over Louise’s taut stomach. Louise looked at her and nodded. She moved the probe slightly and then pointed at the screen.

‘See for yourself.’

Louise burst out laughing. ‘Well, that’s the tiniest meat-and-two-veg I ever saw!’

Rachel leaned over her and peered at the screen. ‘Oh my God, Louise . . . it’s a boy!’ she shrieked, ever one to state the breathtakingly obvious. ‘You’re having a little boy!’

After the scan, they went out for lunch, and Rachel chattered away at a million words a minute. Her colour was high, and she barely touched her food. She went on and on about private schools, football clinics, and how she’d be going home to look on the internet for tiny denim dungarees . . . so eighties, but really fashionable again, didn’t Louise know. ‘What about names?’ she said suddenly. ‘Are you going to go with the “grandpa chic” fashion?’

‘The what?’

‘Oh, it’s very trendy these days to go with a little-old-man name . . . like Charlie, or Alfie, or Sid.’

Louise laughed at this. ‘I haven’t even thought about names, Rach . . . maybe we should go for “Dad” chic . . . think of all those names no one uses any more. I could call him Alan . . . or Dennis . . . or Colin!’

Rachel looked truly horrified, changed the subject and started prattling on about pushchairs. She’d done extensive research, and was willing to give her folder of reviews to Louise . . . on loan of course. She took a quick sip of water, and then stared hard at her plate. Definitely time to call it a day, Louise decided. Through Rachel’s barrage of conversation, she’d barely had time to absorb the news she’d got at the scan herself. And she could see that Rachel was trying so, so hard not to cry. She made an excuse about work, they paid the bill and went their separate ways.

On the drive back to the farm, she began to think about the little boy she was carrying. She was glad she’d found out the sex . . . suddenly it made him seem very real. She
imagined a red-faced baby, a little curly-haired toddler, a gangly ten-year-old. My son. She thought: Hello, I’m Louise, and this is my son.

Her phone bleeped as she drove, and when she stopped at the motorway services (as always, for a pee break), she checked the message. It was from Simon. ‘You didn’t ring!’ it said. ‘Waiting in breathless anticipation. Am I an aunt or an uncle?’

She typed a quick message in reply. ‘Well done, Uncle Si. You’ll have to teach him about show tunes and football. All’s well, by the way. Ring me later.’

She got back on the road, and was in the office by midafternoon. Everything was running smoothly . . . a big job had just gone out and the schedule was clear for the rest of the day. She checked her emails, and there was one from Adam. No subject line, and just one word. ‘Well?’

She sent him a single-word one in response. ‘Boy.’

He must have been at his computer – they were in port somewhere in Spain that week – because he replied immediately.

‘I wish you great joy with him, my lovely. In my experience, boys adore their mums. They’ll give you grey hair jumping out of trees and running around like animals, but they’re just great. Grazed knees and all, he’s going to own your heart.’

She smiled at this. Her fledgling relationship with Adam was being conducted via email, and the odd echoey telephone call when he could get an internet connection and hook up via Skype. Oddly though, it felt close and easy
. . . she couldn’t explain it, but in the two weeks they’d spent together and the four weeks since, she felt as if they were really intimate. Funny how she could feel that way about a man she’d never even seen naked, and yet the father of her child was pretty much a stranger.

She answered a few more emails, and then wandered around the shop floor and made sure everyone was happy and had what they needed. Then she went back to the office and rang Toni to tell her about the scan. Toni was thrilled for her, and wanted to know all the details about head circumference and whether her dates had changed. They got off the phone after about twenty minutes, and Louise found herself straightening pencils on her desk. She really didn’t have anything to do. She thought about packing up for the day and going to make some tea and stroke Millicent. And then she found herself doing something she wasn’t expecting to do at all. She opened an email and entered Brian’s email address. She typed quickly: ‘Had my scan this morning. All is well, and the baby is a boy. Just thought you might want to know. L.’

She hit Send before she could think about it, then shut down her computer and left the office.

‘Honest to God, Lou,’ I said, as we sat having lunch on the South Bank one sunny Saturday in June, ‘I’m a heifer! The size of me! I’m two weeks less pregnant than you are, and look at me! I’ve got fat fingers . . . I can’t wear any of my rings, my belly’s the size of St Paul’s, and look at my cankles!’

Louise laughed and helped herself to another chip. She can eat anything, and not gain weight. It’s bloody annoying, but she looks like a model for a pregnancy catalogue. She’s still all tall and slender and her bump is this neat little thing that looks like she pops it under her T-shirt every morning like a fashion accessory. The rest of her is still the same. Slim legs, slim arms, slim face . . . whereas I am the Michelin woman, all rolls of chubbiness and water retention and permanently red in the face because I’m so damned
hot
all the time.

‘You’re blooming, Toni,’ Louise said. ‘You’re like a gorgeous, blossoming milkmaid, and for your information, you couldn’t be a heifer. Heifers are virgin cows who haven’t had a calf. And what are cankles, anyway?’

‘I have no ankles. My water retention is so bad my calves go all the way down to my feet. Hence cankles.’ I looked down at my puffy legs. From our stroll along the South Bank on the way to lunch they seemed to have got bigger, if that was possible. I sighed. ‘It may be worse than that. I think I may have thankles.’

‘You may be uncomfortable, but you look lovely. I’m your friend; I’d tell you if you looked hideous. I bet James says you’re gorgeous.’

‘James is no fool. He’s not going to mess with an unpredictable pregnant woman. He tells me I’m gorgeous several times a day and then stands well back in case that’s become one of the things he gets yelled at for saying.’

‘Do you yell at him a lot?’

‘Not yell, as such.’

‘Shriek? Whine? Nag?’

‘A bit . . .’

‘Which one?’

‘All three, pretty much. I like to mix it up.’

I was joking with Louise, but I’m afraid it was all true, to a certain extent. At twenty-six weeks, I was already horrendously uncomfortable. I was hot, hot, hot all the time and it was only the beginning of June. With another fourteen weeks to go, through the heat of summer . . . well, it didn’t bear thinking about. On top of that, I wasn’t getting a summer holiday this year. I’d be too far gone to fly anywhere by July or August, and anyway I was trying not to use any holiday days so I could tag them all on to my maternity leave and get away from work a bit earlier.

Every year James and I had been together we’d had a cracking summer holiday. One year we went to Greece, and the next we had two weeks in Egypt. We’d been clubbing in Spain and one year we’d splurged all our cash and gone to Australia. We’re both total sun bunnies, so the hotter the location the better. That summer holiday was the highlight of my year. Now I couldn’t imagine wanting to go somewhere hot . . . even the watery spring sunshine in June was making me swelter.

I’d stayed home in April when James went snowboarding . . . it had been a bit of a sore point, but there was no point in my going and sitting around the chalet for days. We’d lost quite a bit of money on the deal, and I’d sulked for a week when James got back. He pointed out, logically, that we’d have lost even more money if he hadn’t gone, and I pointed out even more logically that it wouldn’t have been all that much if he hadn’t spent heaven knows what on copious drinks every evening. I mean, for heaven’s sake, he had a Jägermeister in his hand in every picture on Facebook! He tried to say it was because he missed me so much, but I gave him the frozen stare and he stopped talking.

Louise looked at me closely. ‘Are things okay between you guys?’

‘Well . . . things are a bit strained. I mean . . . joking aside, I know I’m being difficult, and totally focused on myself, but I’m pregnant, for heaven’s sake! My body’s been taken over by an alien life force! James is doing what he can but he’s, well, he’s James. Don’t get me wrong . . .
he’s sweet and funny and loyal, but maybe . . . no, never mind.’ I stopped myself.

‘Maybe what?’ Lou said quietly.

‘Maybe our relationship was supposed to be all fun and romance . . . and now we’re facing real, grown-up hard stuff it just isn’t strong enough.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘I don’t know. It never used to be this hard.’

‘I’m going to sound like your grandmother now, but was he your first serious boyfriend?’

‘Well no, I had this boyfriend all through uni . . .’

‘Uni boyfriends don’t count. That’s not real life. Not work and rent and pressure and . . .’

‘And babies.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Well then, James was my first serious real-life boyfriend. Why? Do you think that’s a problem?’

‘Oh God,’ said Louise laughing, ‘I’m the last person to give romantic advice. I’m a walking disaster area when it comes to men.’

‘Have you ever been married?’ I asked tentatively. We’d never talked about Louise’s romantic life. I knew nothing about the father of her baby except that they’d broken up.

‘Never married, no. I had two long-term relationships in my twenties. When the last one broke up, I went travelling, then I worked and studied and worked some more. And then suddenly, I was in my late thirties and . . .’ She stopped.

‘And?’ I was really intrigued now.

‘And . . . well, I was in a brief relationship that didn’t work out. And here I am.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Brian.’

‘How did you meet him?’

‘Work.’

Boy, did she look prickly. I decided not to keep questioning her, but there was something odd about the situation, that was for sure.

To be honest I was a bit miffed, because I’d shared quite personal stuff with her about my marriage and my feelings. We hadn’t been friends for long, but we’d got close very quickly. Because we were both going through our first pregnancies, we were experiencing all sorts of things for the first time and it was all so intense . . . it was great to have someone you could ring or text about every little thing. She also went on the baby forums, like I did, and we often joked about people who posted there. That was something James really didn’t get . . . this massive online community of women, all chatting to one another for no other reason than because they were pregnant. But Louise got it, and it was nice to have a real friend to share it with.

Even though we had quite a bit in common, I felt that with Lou, there was always a wall. There was stuff she just didn’t want to talk about. She’d told me a little bit about the guy whose company she was running and I’d got the feeling that maybe she liked him more than you
would normally like your boss, but she’d only met him recently, and he wasn’t the mysterious Brian. And she told me about her brother who was gay and very cool, apparently, and her sister who was a posh housewife and desperate to get pregnant, and her sister’s friends whose teenage daughter was also pregnant . . . That seemed like a safe topic of conversation, so I went with that.

‘How’s the teen mum?’

‘Who, David and Samantha’s daughter? She’s okay, I think . . . having a girl. She must be about twenty-four weeks now.’

‘Do you speak to her?’

‘We email. She’s also in Surrey, some super-posh bit of Weybridge, I think. She seems really happy at the moment, her mum went off the rails for a while but she’s back home now and stable, and the mother of the baby’s father seems very involved. She seems pretty happy with how things have turned out, to be honest.’

‘Who’d have thought it, eh?’ I said thoughtfully. ‘James and I thought we were too young for this at twenty-six and twenty-eight . . . and she’s what, seventeen?’

‘Eighteen.’

We’d decided not to find out the sex of our baby, but I was soooo tempted to ask in the twenty-week scan. Most people in our group on the baby forum were finding out, and changing their profile signatures . . . they’d sometimes put something twee, like ‘team blue’ or ‘team pink’, or they’d announce the name they were planning to call the child, and put the signature in pink or blue. There
were others, like me, who didn’t know, and some of them used ‘team yellow’, but that sounded too much like a baby with jaundice to me. So I just left my signature as it was: ‘PR_Girl, Toni, married to James, expecting 14/9’. But, to be honest, now Louise knew she was having a boy and the teenager . . . Gemma, I think her name was, was having a girl, I kind of wished I knew.