OMG Baby! (12 page)

L
ucy rings
that afternoon and suggests we meet at the well-being centre just off the Edgware Road and ‘go from there’. When I ask about the honeymoon, she says she can’t talk, she has work to do and she’s sure I have as well, and she’ll see me at six thirty.

That’s why I’m mooching around the reception area of this centre of well-being, picking up and putting down leaflets and wondering if the spherical water feature is actually a new-age drinking fountain. Against the wall is a sofa and side table where a little oil burner spits and hisses menthol vapour. Tinkling music rises and falls. A staircase to the left is sign-posted, ‘Reception.’ I peer up before turning back to the door and looking down the street for Lucy, but there’s no sign of her. A bus moves off that had been blocking the view of the pavement opposite and a huge McDonald’s restaurant is revealed like a spaceship, all glass and lights. Someone familiar is in there.

Is that . . . Rainey?

Is that her? I can’t really see her face, but the hair, the red streak, the turquoise and green scarf, it bloody is. Rainey is sitting at a window seat in McDonald’s finishing off a burger, eating as if she’s ravenous, taking great shark bites.

‘God!’ I whisper, and my breath steams the window. My heart leaps with the betrayal of it. My mind casts around for an explanation as I stare. That fraudster! That liar! She crumples up the burger wrappings, still chewing, and makes to leave. I rush to the door of the well-being centre, planning to confront her, but as she leaves the restaurant, another bus whooshes in and one rumbles out of the bus-stop and she’s gone, leaving me thinking I imagined her.

‘Vegan, my eye,’ I mutter, glaring after the bus, but then Lucy appears, pulling gurning faces through the window. We hug on the doorstep. Over her shoulder I scan the street for Rainey, but she’s vanished.

‘Miss Summers!’ declares Lucy.

‘Ah, I can smell the sunshine,’ I say into her perm-frizzled hair. I pull back to look at her. Her face and arms are golden and smooth; her teeth seem whiter, eyes sparklier. The dress is new: I know all her clothes and I haven’t seen that before. ‘Was it great?’

‘Dude, it was sublime!’

‘It lived up to the brochure?’

‘All I’ll say is that every evening we watched the sun set over the beach drinking champagne in our private Jacuzzi.’

‘Wow.’

‘Wow is right, and we really got into tantric sex and I’m not joking, dude, he made me come with his eyes.’

‘But how did he get . . . ? What?’ I have a mental image of detachable eyeballs.

‘Anyway, dude . . .’ She drags me over to the sofa and I wonder where she picked up this new ‘dude’ thing. We perch on the edge of the seat and Lucy places her hands on my knees. ‘Guess what? I’m pregnant!’ she squeaks. ‘I mean, it’s early days – I’m only just pregnant, four weeks – but I’m so fucking happy.’ She thumps the sofa.

I’m just drawing breath to congratulate and hug her when she grabs my hand and starts dragging me up the staircase. ‘Come on, I have to register for the pregnancy-yoga class here: it’s the best in London, and if you don’t book early, there’s no chance of a place.’

We register and Lucy doesn’t question why I would want to too, presuming that I want to support her, I guess. She’s so excited about everything that I can’t find a way to tell her my news.

Out on the street, we talk disjointedly as if we’re being washed down rapids: bobbing up for air and shouting things. She says, ‘Let’s eat some lamb tagine!’ and I shout out, ‘I’m engaged!’ and we whirl round, with her saying, ‘I’ll be pregnant at your wedding!’ and me saying, ‘I told you you’d be pregnant!’ and her shouting, ‘You’re engaged!’ We end up in a cute, crazily tiled little Moroccan place she knows, and she tells me the full eye-popping details of the honeymoon, which I’ll summarise for you here: they did it under a beach towel, underwater, underground, up a tree, up the bum, up against a wall and upside down.

‘Isn’t it weird being out and not having wine?’ she asks. ‘You can have some, though, Viv. I’ll just sniff it.’

‘Actually, I can’t drink either,’ I say, watching her.

She looks up sharply. ‘Because . . .’

‘Because . . . I’m pregnant too.’ I pull a goofy face.

She looks at me and blinks. Her eyes glisten. She sniffs. ‘Oh!’ she says, and fans her face with her hands. ‘Sorry, I’m really happy. I’m just so happy.’

I smile as if only just realising it’s true – I am pregnant. I am happy. In my mind’s eye, I’m extremely slim, wearing a long floaty cardigan and spooning custard into a cherub.

‘How many weeks?’ Lucy asks.

‘Er, fourteen or fifteen? I’m rubbish at knowing,’ I say.

‘So have you had your three-month scan?’

‘No. When I booked in at the doctor’s, they offered me that, but you have to pay, so we decided not to.’

She looks doubtful, then worried.

‘I’m not private like you. You probably already had a scan,’ I laugh.

‘Not yet, but soon. Hold on, you conceived three months ago?’

‘About that.’

‘Is it Max’s?’ she whispers.

‘Oh yeah, definitely – don’t worry.’

‘You were pregnant at my wedding?’

‘Yeah.’ She’s going to praise me now for being such a great mate and going through with the pole dance.

‘But, dude, you were drinking?’

‘I had two champagnes all day.’

‘You can’t take risks like that! No alcohol.’

So maybe not praise, then.

‘Well, you know what? It was my best friend’s wedding and it was fine,’ I tell her.

She takes a sip of her mineral water, eyeing me thoughtfully. ‘I can’t believe it.’ She shakes her head. ‘I thought you were acting weird. Well, weirder.’

‘Hmm.’ I lean back. ‘It’s getting hard now – this dress is the only thing that fits.’ I stick out my bump and she gasps at the size of it. ‘This’ll be you in a few weeks,’ I tell her.

‘Oh God –’ she stares at my belly ‘– you look like you’re smuggling a giant Easter egg.’

‘I’m what they call “glowing”. Look, what do you know about maternity clothes? I need to get me some of those! Cheap ones, mind,’ I add, and we decide to go shopping, and she says she’ll buy some things too that I can wear now and give back to her when she’s beginning to show.

‘Joint maternity clothes,’ I say. ‘Brilliant.’

‘My style, though – I know what you’re like.’

I agree because I know Lucy thinks I have crazy dress sense. This all stems from the time I started sporting this brown paisley flannelette shirt – Lucy doesn’t get irony, or anything without a collar to stick up. In any case, if she’s going to buy clothes for me, I’m on board.

‘So my mother has moved in with us.’ I drop this in casually.

She shakes her head, then bangs her forehead into her hands. ‘You won’t learn, will you? I can’t say anything to you. You’re like a stubborn bloody mule.’

‘Neigh,’ I say, knowing that’s the wrong sound. What do mules say? Shouldn’t I know these things in my position as mother-to-be? ‘She is so fucking annoying! But on the plus side, Max and I are embracing a vegan lifestyle, and we’re really learning a lot about South America.’ I’m not telling Lucy about McDonald’s – I’m still taking it in myself. Seeing her today has made all the small irritations and minor annoyances of having her to stay come together in a big ball and right now it’s hard to swallow. I must swallow the ball. I must.

‘Aggh, I can’t listen. She just . . . doesn’t deserve it!’

‘No, look, I have a clear plan. I’m going to get to know her now before Angel is born. Even if she is a pain in the arse.’

‘She’s poisonous.’

‘Even if she’s poisonous, and it will either work, which is great because then she can be in the baby’s life, or it won’t, which is also great because I’ll have stopped wondering about her.’ I hold my hands out like I’m catching a ball, for emphasis.

Lucy glowers.

‘She is my mum.’

‘I know. You know what, dude? I have a mum too, but she doesn’t move in and start banging on about Guatemala.’

‘Your mum’s never been out of Cheltenham.’

‘No,’ says Lucy thoughtfully. ‘Anyway, that isn’t the point.’

‘And your mum bangs on about other things, like you marrying Aaron Baton-Bum.’

‘Baton-Bailey, yeah . . . and she hasn’t met Reuben yet either.’

‘Right, so you can officially shut up about mums . . . dude.’ This dude thing is catchy.

‘Yeah, fair enough,’ says Lucy, looking worried.

I smile to myself, imagining Mrs Bond meeting Reuben. Talk about cat and pigeons.

I
get home
about ten thirty in a very good mood, so excited to be pregnant at the same time as Lucy. She’s really proper and thorough about everything, so that will keep me right. I mean, I would have never thought about pregnancy yoga and now look – I’m only enrolled in the best class in London! As I take off my shoes, I hear low voices coming from the living room. Max and Rainey are talking. Hearing Rainey’s sonorous tones, I feel a fresh flash of irritation, that shape-shifter! I’ll ask if she enjoyed her
beef
burger at
McDonald’s
and I’ll do inverted commas with my fingers.

I open the door and find Max sitting holding a cigarette out of the window, a can of beer in his other hand, and Rainey, mid-story, on the sofa. She turns her head and gazes at me but continues speaking. I flop into the armchair, rubbing my feet.

‘You can’t say there isn’t a spiritual connection, Max,’ says Rainey. I glance at him and he gives me the glad eye. ‘I helped for a time in a little children’s hospice in Argentina—’

‘Oh yeah?’ says Max, taking a drag and blowing it outside.

I watch him, liking him, especially his forearms.

‘And José, a little boy I befriended, kept a pet mouse. Of course, he wasn’t allowed to bring the mouse into the hospice, but every time he was well enough to go home, he played with that mouse incessantly. People would say to him, “
Dónde están le souris?
”’

‘“
Souris
” – that’s French, isn’t it?’ asks Max.

‘Anyway, José became gravely ill and entered the hospice for the last time. On the day he died, his family went home and sat in the boy’s bedroom, where they found the little mouse dead in his cage.’

‘No way,’ says Max casually. ‘And what’s your explanation for that? The mouse couldn’t go on and committed suicide?’

‘There is no explanation, Max,’ smiles Rainey sadly, and looks to me. ‘The story merely illustrates that we’re connected spiritually to animals.’

‘Christ! So sentimental – it’s like watching
Bambi
,’ says Max. ‘So if you’re so bothered about animals, what about Dave? He’s a fine animal and you put him out of his own home.’

‘That cat is a very damaged animal with bad energy.’

‘OK, so he’s a bad cat,’ says Max proudly, ‘but if a mouse is supposed to be spiritually connected, don’t tell me my cat isn’t.’

‘He’s connected to you, I suppose. Same energy,’ sniffs Rainey. The insult spins across the floor and crashes between them like a china plate. I swallow the ball.

‘I think you’re a beacon of positivity myself,’ I interrupt, trying to inject some light-heartedness.

Max barely glances my way before turning back to Rainey. ‘OK, so let’s get this straight – you think all animals are connected to each other except the ones you don’t like, such as me and Dave. Are you high or what?’

‘Are
you
high?’ she asks nastily. ‘That would explain your paranoia.’

‘I wish I was, and then I might be able to understand your gibberish.’

‘What about eating animals?’ I throw in, before a full-scale row erupts. They glare at each other for a moment before Rainey drags her stink-eye look away.

‘Should we, you mean?’ she asks, and I nod, meeting her gaze. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘I see, I see.’ I think about saying, ‘Ha! Well, that’s extremely interesting, because I saw you necking a beefburger earlier this evening, so what have you got to say to that?’ but I don’t. I just say, ‘Hmm,’ thoughtfully.

I later ask myself why I didn’t confront Rainey. These are the reasons I think of:

I
didn’t want
to escalate the bad feeling developing between Max and my mother.

I’m a cowardly person who only wants us all to get on really well and love each other.

I’m afraid I would fly off the handle and I’m afraid of upsetting my mother and losing her again.

I want to give her a chance to admit she occasionally jumps off the vegan wagon like a joyous vampire.

I don’t want to believe she is a liar.

I don’t know what to say.

‘
I
don’t understand
how anyone can pollute their bodies with toxins,’ Rainey continues, and sighs deeply.

‘You weren’t saying that the other day when you were knocking back the cava,’ snorts Max, and gives a huge laugh.

She fixes him with a patient stare. ‘And do you think smoking out of that window prevents toxins from reaching your unborn child?’

‘Yeah, I think so, and you’re OK with it, aren’t you, Viv?’

I’m not OK about Max smoking – I want him to quit and he knows it.