39 Weeks (5 page)

‘You know who it was then?’

‘You make it sound like I sleep around all the time, a different guy every night
. Course I know who it was.’

‘Who? Is it someone I know? Was it Alec?’

‘Alec! He was months ago, nearly a year ago, how could it be Alec?’

‘Well you could have seen him again, you know once more for old time’s sake.’

‘No it wasn’t Alec.’

‘Well who then?’

‘Rememb
er that guy who came on to me at
Gill’s hen night?’

‘No way. You slept with him? But you were giving him all the classic Judy put-downs as I remember it, and didn’t give him a look in.’

‘Yeah and you lot were all telling me to go for it, and
anyway
weren’t you just a bit preoccupied with his mate
at the time, so you probably missed the finale.’

‘
Not that preoccupied, well I didn’t think I was.
I can’t believe he talked you into sleeping with him, he was a
complete scum bag, attractive and everything
I grant you but come on. What were you thinking?’

‘I was thinking it had been a long time since Alec, and even though I’d sworn off relationships with men, I hadn’t decided to become a nun, so I . . .’

‘And he’s the father.’

‘Yes, the good looking scum bag
Matt
is the father
.’

‘Matt, yes that was his name I remember now. Bloody hell, poor you. Will you tell him?’

‘Um no
. That wouldn’
t be my first choice
no
. But I couldn’t
tell him even if I wanted to, I’ve no idea what his phone number is or where he lives, or even what his last name is, or even if Matt
is
his real first name.’

‘You never even got his phone number?’

‘No I wasn’t planning on ever having to speak to him again. He was definitely one night stand fodder, and only managed that status by virtue of the fact I was somewhat befuddled by the amount of Bacardi I’d had that night
. I’
m not proud of sleeping with such a twonk
but what happened happened
.’

‘Did he take your number? Maybe he’ll call you?’

‘Shelley when will you learn that just because they ask
you
for your phone number and go through the whole performance of putting it in their phone, it
doesn’t mean
the
y’re actually going to phone
you
. It’s just a way of keeping score, the new
version of the
little black book, or notches on the bedpost. It makes them feel good to have a lot of girl’s names and numbers in their phone, probab
ly about ninety
nine
per cent of them
can’t even remember
who the girls
are
, what they looked like or where they met them
, never mind giving a moment’s thought to ever contacting them again
.’

‘So you don’t think he’ll phone you?’

‘No I’m pretty certain he won’t. We both knew it was a one night only thing. Except I’m going to be paying for my one night for the next twenty years, give or take.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Mm my thoughts exactly.
But it’s better this way, if I have to do this, which I do, the last thing I want is some scum bag of a bloke interfering, or heaven forbid thinking he had to do the right thing.’

‘You mean like asking you to marry him, or live with him, or offering to support the baby?’

‘Yes I mean exactly that. The last thing I need is to be saddled with a baby and a man, any man, father of the
said
baby or not.’

‘Why on earth didn’t you use a condom?
You of all people?
’

‘I
’m not sure
what you mean by me of all people, but we did use one
. It’s not full proof you know and evidently this was one of the dodgy five percent, or whatever it is, that doesn’t work properly.

‘So you’ll be a single mum.’

‘Yes. God knows how I’m going to manage it but I guess that’s exactly what I’ll be.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Pretty pissed off actually.’

‘No I mean feeling, you know pregnancy-wise?’

‘Oh that.
I feel fine, j
ust like
I
always
do
. I don’t think the whole morning sickness stuff starts for a few weeks yet.’

‘Well that’s good at least.’

‘
Yey hooray for me. Something to look forward to isn’t it?’ I sai
d without a shred of enthusiasm
, and
heaving with sarcasm.

How wrong can you be?
This
evening after I got home from Shelley’s with promises of keeping her updated on my progress
, and swearing her to secrecy at least for the time being
, I had dinner, a micro-waved ready prepared curry, and felt decidedly queasy afterwards. Half an hour later I projectile vomited it back out again.

The pregnancy bible’s both said that not
everyone get’s morning sickness
only about half of all mothers-to-be
, and
it’s
not always in the morning
,
apparently
it could be at any time of the day or night. So why me, and why was it called morning sickness
I wondered,
i
f you could have it at any time?
And was this morning sickness at all, or was I just sick, you know your normal average tummy bug or eaten something that disagrees with you sick
,
that
all
normal average people get
at some time
? I feared that only time would tell, or more specifically tomorrow.

12
th
July -
Week 6
+ 2 Days

I am
now officially
a
fully paid up
member of the pre-mothers up-chuck club
,
otherwise known as morning sickness,
or in my case eight o’clock in the evening sickness.
On the plus side it didn’t interfere with work or getting ready for work in the morning, it did however interfere with any plans I might have had for going out in the evening.
For a week now I’ve
been sick every night, the biggest problem being should I eat when I got in and inevitably throw
it all
up later, or should I wait until after up-chucking time and then have something to eat, neither option appealing to me much.

The last couple of days I’d made sure I ate something in the morning for breakfast, not my usual routine at all existing as I
usually
did on coffee and only the occasional bit of toast on the weekend, and
then
what Mum would call a proper lunch
at . . well lunch time
, so
that
I di
dn’t have to eat in the evening
, and s
o far this seemed to be working but for how long I had no idea.

Work plodded on as work does, and I plodded right along with it, grateful alm
ost for the time I spent there, as it meant that for eight hours a day at least, I wasn’t thinking about baby’s.
Another
month end routine was w
ell underway, and progressing steadily
. No more screw ups on my part, as far as I knew anyway, and I was earning my keep and justifying the recent salary increase.

Shirley had some good news, her grand-daughter Scarlet wasn’t having a baby after all,
she was
just late or
had
miscalculated or something, but anyway not
pregnant. Of
course Shirley’s daughter Vicky
, and Shirley herself,
w
ere
still
in uproar now they knew the fourteen year old Scarlet had been having sex, and I’m guessing Scarlet herself was none too happy that she’d spilled the beans when she didn’t have to, as she’d been stopped from going out in the evenings
,
Shirley said,
for the next two years at least
.
Of course there was no knowing if they’d
all
be able to stick to that, I mean two years is a long time
.
Now why couldn’t that have been me? I’d have happily stayed at home in the evenings for the next ten years if it meant I didn’t have to have a baby. Well five years anyway.

Gill was still maddeningly smug and doing a fairly accurate impersonation of Nigella Lawson every day, and
she
and
new
hubby had decided
, she informed us one morning, that
their
flat was just too small so they were thinking about doing a Phil and Kirsty and relocating to a forever kind of family house in the countryside
, Gloucester
shire
probably
. She waxed on lyrically about how country living was so much better for
raising the
family
she planned to have
, and how it was an essential lifestyle change for those of us who thought about such things and could afford it. Hubby was a plumber by trade so they were coining it in
and by all accounts could easily afford it
.
Good, I thought. You go and live your lifestyle changing life somewhere else, then you’ll have to leave Fishers and we won’t have to listen to you anymore. I’d gone right off her since she got married. She was a lesson to us all, don’t ever get married because you turn into a boring pretentious supercilious prig.

Yesterday we’d all received an e-mail saying that after due consideration it had been agreed by the board of directors, that meant Norman had decided, that we were to be decorated, that is the offices were to be decorated, and some reorganisation of the current office space would be introduced at the same time, the plans of which were to be finalised in the coming weeks. The new paint job, we wer
e told, would start next month
.

That threw everyone into a frenzy of speculation and complaints. Even though no-one knew where or how the office was going to be reorganised some people were already complaining like mad about having to move away from the radiator, or the window, or their spot near the cupboard kitchen. We’d always had an open plan office, since I’d been there anyway, and the mismatched desks were jammed in, in groups of four facing each other. There was fierce competition as to who had the largest desk, or the newest chair, or the most filing space, but essentially we were all thrown into the one big office as best as we could fit. But now evidently that was all about to change. The rumour was that they were dividing up the space
into the various sections, sales ledger, purchase ledge
r, purchasing, etc. and that
manag
ement accounts, that was me, Martin
, and Grahame the accounts, sorry make that finance, manger would be in a separate office. The sales depart
ment was apparently moving to a different
office
altogether, that was yet to be created
behind
the
reception
area
, stealing the space from th
e printing room
which was vast, next to the design department.

If the rumour was true I wasn’t sure how I felt
about sharing an office with Martin
and Grahame. F
rom a work point of view of course it made absolute sense, but from a personal point of view . . . well would you want to spend eight hours a day trapped in the same
small
room
as two middle aged male accountants?
No of course you wouldn’t, and neither did I.

But then I thought it’s only going to be for a few months, so it doesn’t really matter. By Christmas or thereabouts I probably won’t be working here anymore anyway. Or if I could manage to organise some kind of baby minding plan, I might still be working here but on maternity leave for however long it is you have maternity leave for. I really should find out about that. Do you get three months, or six, or twelve maybe? Do you get paid while you’re off, or is it half pay, or no pay?
And are you guaranteed to get your old job back afterwards
, assuming I’d had some success with operation baby minding
that is
?

W
ork carried on as usual but at
every visit to the loo,
every coffee making expedition or
lunch
break
,
everyone was
filled with speculation on the imminent reorganisat
ion and possible implications for
whoever you happened to
be talking to. S
ometimes
the
speculations
were
positive
but mostly not
.
Nobody it seemed could talk about anything else, except Gill and her mind numbing plans for country living, nothing was going to deter her from boring us all to death with that.