Babies in Waiting (19 page)

‘Not much to do,’ Louise said, holding up the kettle and gesturing at the table of teatime goodies, ‘my sister is a domestic goddess.’

‘And you were hoping to hide in the kitchen,’ Gemma observed. ‘Me too. What a fuck-up.’

Louise, veteran of a thousand business meetings, didn’t let her face betray her shock at the teenage girl’s swearing.

She resorted to the eternal conversation of pregnant women everywhere. ‘So, how far along are you?’

‘Fourteen weeks. You?’

‘Eighteen weeks on Tuesday. How are you feeling? You been sick?’

‘Not at all. Just hungry all the time.’

‘Oh my God, I know! Me too,’ said Louise and laughed. ‘I’ve been looking at those sandwiches and wondering how many I could nick if I rearranged the plate so Rachel wouldn’t notice.’

Gemma smiled for the first time. She was really very pretty, Louise thought, and everyone would see it if she could get rid of that permanent teenage pout. That said, she had good reason to pout: her life wasn’t going very well right now.

‘Maybe we could just take the whole plate and duck out of the back door,’ she said. ‘They wouldn’t miss us.’

Just then, Rachel came into the kitchen. Clearly, Louise could be trusted to put a kettle on, but not to actually make the tea. She started bustling about, putting things straight that were already perfect. Louise and Gemma stood side by side by the sink and tried not to get in her way. Suddenly, she looked up and looked at them both. Her eyes were very bright. ‘Gosh!’ she said gaily. ‘Look at all the preggie tummies in here! Isn’t that lovely!’ Then she grabbed two platters of cake and sandwiches and swept out into the living room. Louise could hear her being bright and bubbly to Richard and David.

‘What was that about?’ Gemma asked.

‘She, um . . . she’s been struggling to fall pregnant. I think seeing the two of us, pregnant by mistake, is just a bit hard for her.’

Gemma turned to look at her. ‘Oh, I’m not pregnant by mistake,’ she said calmly.

‘You . . . what?’ Louise was sufficiently stunned to forget her manners.

‘I decided I wanted to be a mum more than anything. My boyfriend and I talked about starting a family, and I got pregnant. So here I am.’

‘And your boyfriend . . .’

‘He’s saying now that he didn’t really mean it. We’ve broken up. But he loves babies. I think he’ll come round eventually. I honestly believe everything will be okay.’

Louise was shocked. She couldn’t help it. She had come to Rachel’s, thinking she could be the one impartial, nonjudgmental adult this girl met. But she hadn’t expected to hear this. Louise was flummoxed. She’d expected a tearful, frightened young girl. Instead Gemma was self-possessed and graceful, and, mad as it was, she’d had a dream and now it was reality. Nevertheless, it made her heart ache. Gemma was such an innocent. The situation was totally insane, and Louise was not quite sure how to get that across to her. She went for the subtle approach.

‘You do know that what you’ve done is crazy, don’t you?’

Gemma looked at her. ‘Is it?’

‘Well, yes. You can’t just get pregnant and think it’ll solve all your problems. What about the other people involved? Ben, is it? And the baby?’

‘I wanted to do it at first because I really, really wanted to hold on to Ben. But I’m not so sure about that now. He’s being pathetic, so if he’s not around I’m not sure I’m all that fussed any more. As for the baby, I’m going to love it, and be there for it always. I want to be a mum. I wish people would just understand that.’

‘And what about your parents?’

‘My mum’s either busy doing charity stuff or getting her hair done. My dad’s always at work or busy with recreational activities. They haven’t noticed me in years.’

She pulled a face when she said ‘recreational activities’. There was no doubt what she meant, Wow. Louise had never thought this would be easy, but she had no tools at all to deal with someone who was as blunt as this.

‘And what about you?’ Gemma asked.

‘What about me?’

‘My dad said you’re on your own. Where’s your baby’s father?’

‘He’s, er . . . he’s up in Yorkshire. We’re not together.’

There was an awkward pause. ‘We really should go through and talk to the others,’ Louise said.

‘Okay,’ said Gemma, looking for all the world like the perfect, obedient teenage daughter. ‘Let’s go and be polite. I’ll pretend you gave me a good talking-to and that I feel so much better, and you can tell them that I’ve got a good head on my shoulders. What do you think of that?’

When Louise got back to the flat, she told Simon all about Gemma.

‘She sounds utterly terrifying,’ Simon said.

‘She was. It’s that growing-up-posh thing. She’s so self-possessed. I don’t think she’s nearly as confident as she pretends to be, but she decided she’d be honest with me, and she was. She’s got into this situation and she’s dealing with it. Amazingly, she seems really happy about it. And despite all his millions and his power and influence there’s nothing her dad can do about it.’

‘Sounds like she quite likes putting one over him.’

‘She implied he’s unfaithful to her mother a lot.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ Simon said. ‘He’s got the look of a man who thinks he’s entitled.’

‘Entitled to what?’

‘Anything he wants. So I don’t suppose you gave her too many facts about your situation?’

‘Knocked up by accident by a married man? Having the baby without telling him? No, I didn’t think it would do her any good to know that.’

‘Well, when you put it like that it does sound pretty rotten,’ said Simon. Louise recoiled like he had slapped her. She didn’t expect criticism from Simon. Not him, of all people.

‘Thanks, Simon. I know. I really do know. But this is my lot, and I’m just trying to get on with it.’ She stood up to leave the room. Her face felt hot, and she thought she might cry.

‘Relax, Lou. I wasn’t having a go. It’s just when you put it in such bald terms . . .’

‘That’s rich, coming from you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you’re the reason I’m doing this. I was going to have an abortion, and you talked me out of it.’

‘Come off it, Lou. Nobody talks you into or out of anything. You’ve always done exactly what you were going to do. All I did was say aloud what you were already feeling in your heart.’

There is nothing more infuriating than someone being absolutely right in the heat of an argument. There was a long moment of silence, then Louise did what every sane, rational adult would do. She said, ‘Yeah, well, sod you!’ and stormed off to her bedroom. Simon, wisely, left her to it.

Subject: Bloody Siblings

Dear Toni,
I hope you can forgive my endless bleating, but I’ve had one hell of a day with both of my siblings. Tea with the pregnant teenager was predictably awful for three reasons. 1. She’s not terrified or regretful, she wanted to fall pregnant and she’s really happy about it. She’s scarily determined and I had nothing of value to tell her at all. 2. Rachel walked into the kitchen and looked at us both all teary-eyed and said something about ‘all those preggie tummies’, making me feel grade-A Awful. So yes, the principle of limited good is alive and well in Surrey, as you suspected. And 3. Well, there isn’t a 3. I can’t even complain about there not being
enough cake . . . there was a mountain of superb cake. My sister should bake for England.

‘Anyway, I came home and just had a stupid row with my wonderful brother Simon, because I’m feeling all oversensitive, and he said something that was true, but not what I wanted to hear.

Sorry for the offload. Hope your weekend was better than mine.

Love,
Lou
X

A reply came back within minutes:

Subject: Re Bloody Siblings

Dear Lou,
Go and make Simon some tea and say sorry. Blame your hormones. I blow up about four times a day at James. I have to make a lot of cups of tea.

I also had a fairly rotten weekend, details too long to share here.

Listen, I’ve got a mad idea . . . tell me if you think this is overstepping the mark, but why don’t we have lunch tomorrow? I know you’ll be moving to Surrey soon to start your new job. You’ll be living in the same neck of the woods as us, more or less, and maybe we could be more than digital friends? So while you’re still a lady of leisure, why
not come into the West End and meet me for a sandwich? There’s a nice place near my office called Jack’s, corner of Kingsway and Great Queen Street. If you’re free, I take my lunch at one, and it would be great to meet you in person.

Love
T
xx

P.S. If you say yes, I’ll be the short blonde with the belly which may be pregnant or may just be a bit fat.

When I woke up in the morning, I remembered my spur-of-moment email to Louise. I regretted it a bit. Would she think I was some kind of freaky internet stalker? It seemed odd to be taking a friendship from the anonymous safety of the online world to the really quite intimate realm of sitting opposite one another in my local sandwich shop. What if she was a psycho? Or a fifty-year-old bloke who got off on pretending to be a pregnant woman? All of these options seemed fairly unlikely, but who knew? I’d never done internet dating, but I had lots of mates who had, so I knew to take precautions. I should let someone know where I’d be and who I’d be meeting, in case she chopped me up into little bits and left me in rubbish bags around the West End.

I fired up my laptop in the kitchen while I ate my breakfast and checked my email. There was a message from Louise. ‘I’d love to meet you. I’m tall with short, reddish-dark hair and a tummy like half a football. See you at one.’ Ah. Well, then this was definitely happening. James
came in from the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. His hair was wet and he smelled of sharp, lime-flavoured shower gel. In years gone by, I would have checked the clock and if we had a few minutes I’d have whipped off his towel for a naughty pre-work quickie in the kitchen. But things were still fragile between us. We’d had a massive row the day before. I’ll spare you the details, but it came down to James pointing out that we’d barely had sex since the day I’d found out I was pregnant, and me trying to explain how I didn’t feel my body was my own and I felt uncomfortable about sex, and him saying did that mean he was going to be a born-again virgin, because I had at least twenty-five weeks to go, and me saying that it wasn’t fair for him to pressure me, and him saying ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake’, and me bursting into tears, and then him saying that I’d started using tears as a weapon and storming out. Whoops. Those were the details. Now you have them. Sorry for not sparing you.

Anyway, he came home after about an hour, and we’d made a tentative kind of peace, and I said I would try, and he said he would do his best not to be a pushy bastard. We didn’t actually do the deed on the Sunday night, but we did a bit of cuddling and kissing on the sofa, and that was okay. So things were fine between us, just a bit delicately balanced, if you know what I mean.

I smiled at him, and he gave me a sweet grin back, then went to the fridge to get some juice. It was an odd feeling, feeling awkward around James. He’s my best friend, and I can normally say absolutely anything to him, but this
was new. Sex has always been something easy and comfortable for us: it’s never been an issue before. I knew I’d caused the problem . . . I’d been avoiding it for weeks now. I’d worked up quite a repertoire of excuses. I was tired, my back was sore, I felt sick. Or I’d just go to bed first and pretend to be asleep. It wasn’t that I didn’t fancy him . . . it was just that sex was the last thing on my mind. All my attention was turned inwards, focusing on the busily multiplying cells in my uterus. I knew James had noticed . . . he could hardly have missed it. We’d gone from several times a week to pretty much nothing for the past ten weeks. I also know it must have taken a lot for him to say something. James just isn’t a confrontational guy. He’ll usually do anything to avoid a row. He must have been very frustrated indeed. Oh, and let me tell you, I wasn’t ignorant . . . I knew perfectly well that it wasn’t dangerous or bad for the baby . . . I just didn’t want to do it.

But I was smart enough to realise that I was going to have to get over myself or my relationship with James was going to end up in trouble. I wished I could just have a few glasses of wine to relax, and then get on with it, but the wine was out of bounds.

All of this ran through my head as I showered and got dressed for work. James left before me, and he gave me a very sweet and tender (non-sexy) kiss and a hug before he left, which made me feel a bit better. But he was gone and I was halfway out of the door before I realised I’d not told him about my lunch with Louise. I would have emailed him, but I knew he was out of the office all morning at
a client pitch. Ah well. Jack would keep an eye out for me, and hopefully Louise wouldn’t be a serial killer.

It was Sod’s Law that my phone rang at twelve fifty-five. It was a client who needed some gentle reassurance, so I was a good five minutes late walking into Jack’s. It was quite busy, and every table was occupied. Would I know her, I wondered? It hadn’t occurred to me that it would be impossible to spot a pregnant belly if the woman was sitting down. I looked around the tables, and there was only one woman on her own, and sure enough, she had short, dark-reddish hair. She was sitting with her back to me. I walked over hesitantly.

‘Lou?’ I asked. The woman looked up and smiled. She had a great, wide grin and twinkly, laughing eyes. She stood up quickly. ‘Toni!’ she said, and gave me a friendly kiss on the cheek. Suddenly, all my silly fears seemed ridiculous. She seemed lovely and I felt an instant connection. She was right about her tummy . . . it did look like half a football.

‘Sorry, I’m late,’ I said. ‘Nervy client.’

Jack came over and we ordered a couple of sandwiches and fruit juices.

‘I don’t actually know what you do,’ Louise said. Her Manchester accent was noticeable.

‘PR,’ I said.

‘Ah . . . silly me . . . PR_Girl. Of course. What kind?’

Out of the industry, no one ever asks that. They assume there’s only one kind.