What's Yours Is Mine (13 page)

It's about time Grace gave something back to Susannah. She's been Miss Superiority for far too long. I've been against this baby nonsense from the start, but if it swings the balance of power a little towards Susannah, maybe it's not all bad.

I watch my daughters closely the next evening, noticing the subtle changes already developing in their relationship. Grace bites her tongue several times when she would have rapped out a sharp comment, allowing Susannah to pour herself a glass of wine from the bottle in the fridge, and even to disappear outside several times for a cigarette without Grace saying anything, regardless of the fact that she may already be pregnant. As she points out to Grace when she finally risks an objection the third time Susannah goes off to smoke, I suppose we should be grateful it isn't marijuana or something worse. Susannah is well aware of the liberties she's taking, and of Grace's unnatural restraint, the sly little besom. Heaven help us all if she does fall pregnant.

Susannah lounges against the kitchen island as Grace makes dinner, twisting her dreadful hair around her fingers. Even though she's a far better cook than Grace—my elder daughter is domestically challenged: at ten, she made me tea without removing the teabag; and at sixteen, boiled an egg without putting any water in the saucepan—Susannah makes no effort to help. No doubt she's got too used to being rebuffed.

“What did Blake want?” Grace asks casually, as she melts a little butter in a pan on the stove.

Susannah stiffens. “Blake?”

“Tom said he saw Blake's car in the driveway when he was walking back from the station, but Blake had gone by the time he got up the hill.”

“Oh. Yeah. He just stopped by to say hi to Tom. He couldn't wait. I'm sure he'll catch up with him next time.”

Susannah's up to something. Pound to a penny this man's at the bottom of it.

“Michael said you were at the studio all day yesterday,” Grace says, adding flour to the melted butter and stirring in the milk. It's not how
I'd
make béchamel, but Grace always thinks she knows best. “He thinks you're doing some great work, Zee. He was even talking about you holding a show in the summer. Of course, that'll depend on how things go,” she adds hopefully. “Have you—”

“It's a bit early yet, Grace,” Susannah says quickly.

“Sorry. Of course it is. I didn't mean to—”

“I'm not even due till Tuesday. It won't have worked the first time anyway. We probably did it all wrong.”

“Maybe you should go and put your feet up,” Grace suggests brightly. “Just in case. I can finish up here.”

“Well, if you're sure. I do feel a bit more tired than usual.”

Grace misses her smirk as she goes upstairs. I follow, wondering what the little witch is up to. I love Susannah, but I know her flaws better than anyone. I wouldn't put it past her to fake a pregnancy just to get her sister running after her and waiting on her hand and foot. One thing I know for certain: if Susannah ever does get pregnant, nine
months is going to feel like nine years for all of us before we're through.

Susannah shuts her bedroom door behind her, and pulls her leather satchel out from beneath her bed. She riffles through it for a moment, then retrieves a pink-and-white box shoved towards the bottom. My heart sinks as I read it.
First Response 6 Days Early Pregnancy Test
.

I pace impatiently as Susannah disappears into the bathroom. If the test is negative, there may still be time to save us all from disaster. The longer this takes, the more chance there is that Susannah will outstay her welcome, or Tom will refuse to take part in this charade. We can but hope.

The bathroom door suddenly opens, and Susannah flings herself onto her unmade bed, the little white stick still clutched in her hands.

“Crap!” she exclaims, her voice muffled by the duvet.

I peer at the stick.

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Susannah is violently sick, and I couldn't be happier.

“Why didn't you
tell
me?” I demand, holding her dreads out of the way as she bends over the toilet bowl. “I'd never have let you drink so much coffee if I'd known.”

“I like coffee. I
need
coffee. It never made me barf before.”

“You shouldn't have caffeine when you're pregnant,” I scold. “Even if it doesn't make you sick, it's bad for the baby.”

Susannah rocks back on her bare heels and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Bullshit. I drank buckets of Nescafé with the boys, and they were fine. I didn't have morning sickness with either of them. I bet this one's a girl. Everyone says they make you much sicker, something to do with the hormones.”

I hand her a flannel so she can clean her face properly, and quickly squirt Domestos around the rim of the toilet bowl. “You have to start taking care of yourself properly,
Susannah. These first few weeks are crucial. No alcohol, no caffeine, and
definitely
no smoking.”

“Give me a break. Christ, if alcohol was bad for babies, half the population would be gaga. How d'you think most of us are conceived?”

I decide to leave this argument for another day. “How long have you known?”

“I only did the test last week. I knew you'd go off the deep end once I told you, and I didn't want you to get your hopes up if it was a false alarm.” She turns on the faucet and cups her hands under it, splashing cold water on her face. “I'm about five weeks gone.”

“Oh, Zee. You're pregnant! We're going to have a baby!”

“Grace, let go of me and calm down. You're making me feel sick again with all this dancing around.”

She does look a bit green. I release her and perch on the edge of the bath. “Sorry. I'm just so excited! I can't believe the turkey baster actually worked! I never really thought it would. Wait till I tell Tom! He's going to be thrilled!”

“Don't,” she says quickly, “not yet. It's still really early days. You shouldn't tell anyone for a while. Not even Claudia and Blake.”

“I have to tell Tom! I can't keep it secret from him. I promise I won't tell anyone else.”

“Just Tom, then.”

“Cross my heart.” I can't resist giving her another hug.

“Susannah, I can't tell you how much this means to me. You are the most wonderful sister anyone could ever—”

She wrenches herself free. “Shit. I need to throw up again.”

She retches into the toilet until all she's bringing up is clear bile. Even though I know she's feeling dreadful, I can't help a fleeting twinge of envy that she's the one getting to experience this, however miserable it is. A new life, growing inside you! How amazing must that feel?

“When exactly are you due?” I ask, as she rinses her mouth with Listerine and ties back her dreads with a grotty elastic band.

“I don't know,” she says impatiently. “I'm five weeks, so you do the math.”

“You're having a baby, Zee! Aren't you excited? Don't you want to know the exact date it'll be here?”

“I'm having
your
baby,” she corrects. “I've done this twice before, remember? For the next eight months, I'm going to greet each day from the inside of a toilet bowl. I'll get a great big hairy brown line running from my navel to my knickers. My tits will grow so huge they'll block light from the sun. I'll have piles, heartburn, stretch marks, and varicose veins. My feet will swell up, I won't be able to smell coffee or curry without feeling sick, and my chances of getting laid will be roughly the same as the Pope's. Then, at the end of it, I'll have to push a basketball out of an opening the size of a pea. Yeah. I'm really looking forward to it.”

There's nothing she can say to dampen my euphoria.
I dance back into her bedroom and throw open her wardrobe, flicking through the depressing racks of black—black T-shirts, black miniskirts, black jeans—until I find the charcoal wool tunic and cropped leggings she pinched from me last week. They're from Nicole Farhi and cost nearly nine hundred pounds, though I don't suppose Susannah knows that. Irritatingly, they look a thousand times better on her than they ever have on me.

I suppress a momentary surge of guilt as I pull the clothes off their hangers. Susannah probably doesn't earn in a year what I spend in a month at Harvey Nicks. OK, I can afford it, and I certainly work hard enough for my money, but still.

I toss the outfit on the bed. “Come on. Get dressed.”

“What's the rush? Where are we going?”

“First, I'm going to call Dr. Hagan at the Portland. If we're lucky, she'll have a cancellation today. You may not want to know when this baby's going to arrive, but I do.”

“The Portland? You mean where Posh Spice and Zoe Ball and Billie Piper had their babies? You're kidding me, right? That place must cost thousands!”

“Oh,
now
you're excited.” I smile.

“Maybe there'll be some hot footballer or rock star whose wife is having a baby at the same time as me,” Susannah breathes. “We'll fall in love and elope, and I'll end up a WAG like Cheryl Cole.”

“Putting aside the husband-stealing bitch-from-Hell aspect of that,” I point out, “there's also the small matter of you being a little busy delivering that basketball.”

“Spoilsport.” She reaches for her cigarettes on the dresser, but I snatch them away. “Oh, for God's sake, Grace. No drinking, no smoking; I'm going to go mad. I suppose I can at least have sex now I'm thoroughly pregnant?”

Something tells me this is going to be a very long nine months.

“OH MY GOD,”
I say softly. “Oh, Zee. Look. That's our baby!”

The sonographer moves the probe over Susannah's still-flat tanned belly. Such a shame it's covered with those ugly tattoos. She'd be so pretty if she just made a bit of an effort.

She twists her head and stares at the murky black-and-white images on the screen. “What baby? I can't see anything.”

“There,” the sonographer says. “That white bean. That's your baby.”

“Seriously? It looks like a squashed mosquito.”

“Didn't you ever have a scan with the boys?” I ask.

“By the time I got around to seeing a doctor, there wasn't much point.” Susannah shrugs. “I was already so far along there was nothing anyone could do even if there'd been a problem.”

“You didn't have regular pre-natal checkups?”

“Motherhood wasn't exactly something I embraced,” she says sarcastically.

The sonographer clicks and measures, highlighting
parts of the tiny image on the screen and entering the relevant data into her computer. “I'd say your dates are fairly accurate,” she says. “You're seven weeks along, give or take two or three days. That confirms your due date as 22 December.”

“A Christmas baby,” I breathe.

“Give or take two or three days?” Susannah says. “You can't be any more accurate than that?”

“Why would you need to?” I ask. “We know when you conceived.”

“This isn't an exact science,” the sonographer points out. “Normally the closest we can date with the ultrasound is within a few days of conception, which is pretty close. We usually use the date of your last period to estimate conception, and the ultrasound will simply confirm it.”

The sonographer finishes taking her measurements, then hangs up the probe on the side of the ultrasound machine, and wipes the gel from Susannah's stomach.

“It looks like the baby is developing normally so far,” she says. “The heartbeat's nice and strong, and there's definitely only one baby, if you were concerned about twins. Everything checks out. I'll see you when you come back at around thirteen weeks for the nuchal scan.”

Susannah looks puzzled. “What the hell is a nuke scan?”

“
Nuchal
. They'll measure the clear space at the back of the baby's neck, and check for an underdeveloped nasal bone,” I explain. “They're looking for signs of Down's.”

“Is something wrong with the baby?” she says, alarmed.

“There's nothing wrong,” I soothe. “It's just routine, to make sure.”

“But if there is? You'll still take it, right? You won't leave me with a—”

“Susannah, calm down. Nothing's wrong with the baby.”

“All these frigging scans and blood tests. It's all a lot more complicated than it used to be,” she grumbles, swinging her legs over the side of the exam table and pulling down her T-shirt.

“Stop whining. You saw a rich footballer in the waiting room, didn't you?”

“Yeah. With his
wife.
”

She fidgets restlessly as we stand in line in Accounts, picking up and discarding magazines, fiddling with the water dispenser, rattling a charity box on the counter until it spills. Now that she's stopped smoking, my sister has the attention span of a goldfish. I'm already looking forward to the days when I only have a fractious toddler to entertain.

“I promised I'd take you shopping,” I say, as we walk out of the hospital. “Where do you want to go?”

“Harrods,” she says promptly.

“Oh, Susannah, do we have to? It's a dreadful tourist trap. Harvey Nicks is much better. Or we can go to Bond Street—they have some gorgeous baby shops there.”

She looks mutinous. “I've never been to Harrods. You said I could choose.”

I concede defeat with a sigh. Susannah steps into the
street as a vacant taxi cruises towards us, flashing so much thigh I'm surprised the driver doesn't drive into the nearest lamppost, and once inside instructs him to go to Knightsbridge “via the scenic route.”

I study the scan pictures minutely as the cabdriver takes full advantage of this license to fleece. Maybe pregnancy is a bit old hat to her, but to me, it's the most miraculous thing in the world. I run my forefinger gently over the flimsy paper photograph.
This is real. It's actually happening. We're going to have a baby
.