Babies in Waiting

Babies in Waiting

Rosie fiore

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

Quercus
55 Baker Street
7th Floor, South Block
London
W1U 8EW

Copyright © Rosie Fiore 2012

The moral rights of Rosie Fiore to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eBook ISBN 978 0 85738 959 6
Print ISBN 978 0 85738 958 9

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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For Ted.
Written because of, and in spite of you. Love you, small boy.

Sitting on the loo, blue penguin pyjama bottoms around her ankles, Louise stared again at the pregnancy test in her hand. The blue cross was very much still there. It wasn’t going anywhere. Pregnant. Who would believe it? Here it was, the baby she’d always dreamed of, but at the wrong time, in the wrong circumstances, and totally and utterly with the wrong man. The irony wasn’t lost on her. One stupid night with Brian. Just one, stupid, drunken shag, and now this. If she were a different woman, she’d have burst into tears and rung her mum or her best friend.

But Louise’s mum was dead, and she wasn’t the sort to have a girly best friend. Anyway, it was a work day, and a busy one. She couldn’t sit on the loo all day. She had to get to work, get on with the day and think about all of this later. She certainly couldn’t think about it at work, not today, not with the branch managers’ meeting and Brian pretending to ignore her across the table. Although she thought they’d been discreet that night in Manchester, she was pretty sure everyone knew. Barrett and Humphries
was too small a company. Until now, Louise hadn’t given the gossip machine much thought. She hadn’t really cared. All her energy had been focused on treating Brian with icy professionalism.

She turned on the shower and switched on to autopilot. She went through into her bedroom, laid out her clothes for the day on her bed and stripped off her pyjamas. She showered quickly and efficiently, blow-dried her short, dark-red hair, and dressed in a maroon suit, with severe lines which flattered her slim, tall figure. She ate a quick breakfast of fruit, yoghurt and muesli and then rapidly applied her minimal make-up, just mascara and lipstick. Her briefcase was already packed, her keys and sunglasses in their usual place by the front door. She rinsed out her bowl, looked around her tidy kitchen and was out of the door fifteen minutes after she’d done the pregnancy test.

It wasn’t until she’d eased her little car out of her quiet road and taken her place in the traffic queue heading towards the town centre that she let herself switch on her brain again. Suddenly, she began to shake. What was she going to do? Clearly, she couldn’t have it. She could just imagine the looks at work as she started to show. Barrett and Humphries was as progressive as an old-fashioned Yorkshire printing firm could be, and she knew they appreciated her skills and professionalism. But if it came to a choice, there was no doubt Brian would win. He was older, more senior, a partner. She’d be out on her ear quicker than you could say ‘discrimination lawsuit’. Yes, she could
probably fight it, but did she really want the humiliation of having her mistake made public?

No, there was no doubt, she’d have to have an abortion, and she most certainly couldn’t have it anywhere around here. Even if she went to a hospital three towns away, Sod’s Law said she’d bump into some colleague, or a friend of a friend. Even York didn’t seem far enough. No. She’d go to London, stay with Simon and get it over and done with as quickly as possible. Edward, her boss, had been nagging her to use up her annual leave. She could take a week or so and be back as if nothing had happened.

As she inched forward in the traffic, Louise decided that going to work was a really stupid idea. She’d be in a world of her own, pale and worried. She might say something silly in the branch managers’ meeting, and Brian would give her his heavy-browed look across the table. He’d think he made her nervous, and that she was carrying a torch for him. There was no way she was going to put herself through that. Pulling into a convenient loading zone, she grabbed her mobile and rang her PA. She made an excuse about a domestic emergency, a burst pipe and a flooded kitchen, and said she’d do her best to be in later. She deftly nosed back into the traffic, made a swift three-point turn in a side road and headed home. Simon wouldn’t be in his office till ten. She’d ring him then, and then go online and find a clinic in London. With the decisions made, the trembling stopped and she felt like herself again.

But two days later, she still hadn’t done what she had set out to do. She just didn’t feel she could tell Simon
everything on the phone or in an email. Eventually, she rang him and asked if she could come down and stay for a few days, saying she’d missed him and was having a few days off work. That done, she set about making the necessary arrangements. She rang a clinic not far from Simon’s flat, and the woman she had spoken to seemed to think they’d be able to fit her in for an appointment at fairly short notice.

She got into London at about four in the afternoon. Simon was a fairly senior civil servant, and she knew he’d clock off at exactly five thirty. She had a key to his flat, so she popped to the nearby supermarket, bought a bunch of flowers, a bottle of wine and some dinner ingredients and let herself into his riverside apartment.

As always, her brother’s home was perfect, and the vases of flowers discreetly dotted around were much nicer than the ordinary supermarket blooms she’d brought. She opened the fridge and saw he’d stocked up because she was coming: the shelves were packed with cheeses, pâté and gorgeous salad ingredients, as well as several bottles of good white wine. She smiled. What else had she expected? He was such a perfectionist. She unpacked the simple groceries she’d brought and put the kettle on. As it came to the boil, she heard his key in the door.

‘Lou! It’s fabulous to see you. And the kettle’s on! Best sister in the world. Won’t you make me a little green tea, please? I’m parched.’ He swept into his bedroom and kept
up a stream of chatter as he changed out of his suit and into pressed chinos and a crisp sky-blue shirt.

Louise always marvelled at Simon’s personal reinvention. He’d completely lost his Mancunian accent, and spoke in a crisp, transatlantic one instead. He’d spent time and money learning to dress well, and he paid attention to grooming: his hair, skin and nails were always perfect. When she remembered the miserable, scrawny teenager he’d been, hiding his thin body in awful, shiny tracksuits, slouching and picking at his bad skin, she was so proud of him. They’d grown up just outside Manchester, in a grey little suburb. Simon had worked hard at school and as soon as he could, taken off for the south to study. He’d got a grant to read Social Policy at LSE, and had built a life and a career for himself in London. She supposed she’d always known deep down that he was gay, and that their lovely but conservative parents would never understand that. But in London he could openly live the life he chose. Once their parents died he’d been more open about his lifestyle. He’d had a couple of long-term relationships, but wasn’t seeing anyone at the moment. Jokingly he’d said to Louise that his social life was too busy for a relationship.

She loved him to bits, but in a funny way, she felt distant from him. He’d worked so hard to make his shiny, wonderful life, and she often wondered if there was space for his slightly hectic, very northern sister in its designer perfection. She knew Simon well enough to know these worries were in her head, not his. He was always loving, rang her often and kept asking her to come down and
stay with him. She didn’t accept his invitations as often as she might have: between work and her studies, things had been ridiculously busy over the last few years.

Their other sister, Rachel, lived down in Surrey with her banker husband, Richard. Simon didn’t like Rachel’s suburban lifestyle, so they didn’t often see each other – he felt they really had nothing in common. Because he was so cold about his relationship with one sister, Louise was grateful that he made such an effort to keep her in his life.

She hadn’t told him about Brian . . . it had been a momentary lapse, an out-of-character mistake she wouldn’t want to admit to. And now, here she was, bringing all her horribly messy baggage to his doorstep. Her stomach lurched. Simon might need something a bit stronger than green tea to get him through what he was about to hear. She took one of his nice French bottles of wine out of the fridge, opened it and filled two large glasses to the brim.

He came out of the bedroom, smiling and turning back the cuffs on his shirt. He kissed her warmly on the cheek, noticing the glasses. ‘Wine! Much better than tea. Come and sit down.’ He led her into the living room and they curled up in opposite corners of the big squashy sofa.

‘Cheers, dear,’ said Simon and took a big gulp of his wine. Louise raised her glass, but the smell of the wine was so strong that it brought on a flood of nausea. She put the glass down on the coffee table and smiled brightly at her brother.

‘So how’s work? Any plans for the summer? Ooh! How are Eric and Julian?’

Simon looked at her curiously. ‘Fine, possibly Rhodes, and they’re very well, thank you. Considering getting married in the autumn. They send their love.’

‘Oh, send mine back, and say congratulations.’ Louise knew that there was a slightly manic edge to her voice. They carried on chatting, but the conversation was stilted and halting. He asked about work, and she told him about the cutbacks they’d had and the people she’d had to let go. He kept looking at her really closely, which made her shift in her seat. How the hell was she going to bring the conversation around to what she needed to say?

She wished she could manage a big slug of the wine to calm her nerves, but the smell of it (wafting over from the coffee table . . . so powerful . . . had there ever been a glass of wine that smelt so strongly?) was making her mouth fill with saliva, and not in a good way. Suddenly, she knew for sure that if she moved suddenly or coughed, or opened her mouth to speak, she’d be sick. She felt a fine sweat break out along her hairline. Simon peered at her intently. ‘Lou, are you all right?’ he asked. She managed a weak nod. He kept staring at her. Out of the blue, he gasped: ‘Oh my God, you’re pregnant!’

She didn’t stay to hear any more, but bolted for the bathroom. When she came out, pale and smelling of mouthwash, ten minutes later, Simon had got rid of the wine and made cups of fruit tea. She edged shamefacedly
into the room and sat back down, wedging herself tightly into the corner of the sofa.

‘I was half joking, but then I saw your face. You are, aren’t you?’

She nodded. ‘How did you know?’

‘Well, the vomiting was a giveaway, but also, it’s not like you to be slow with the wine.’

‘Cheek!’ she said weakly.

‘Well, it’s true! You usually inhale your first glass and pour another while I’m still genteelly sipping. But the main giveaway was the boobs.’

‘They’re bigger, aren’t they?’

‘Dear God. The Met Office has put out an alert for two missing weather balloons.’

Louise began to giggle, then hiccup and then cry. Simon knew her too well to hug her. He got up and fetched tissues, moved her teacup closer to her hand and didn’t speak until she stopped.