Babies in Waiting (12 page)

‘I can’t really . . .’ Gemma said doubtfully. ‘I said I’d be home.’

‘Text your mum. Please,’ he groaned, pressing himself against her. ‘Tell her you’re at Lucy’s. I beg you.’

Gemma took out her phone and sent her mum a quick text. As soon as she finished typing, Ben dragged her into the living room and started to pull her jumper off over her head.

‘In here?’ Gemma said.

‘Look,’ Ben replied and pointed to the enormous floor-to-ceiling mirror that hung opposite the fireplace. ‘I want to watch us.’ He pulled her boots off and took her jeans off her and then stood her in front of the mirror in just her underwear. ‘Oh, Gem . . .’ he groaned. ‘You’re so hot.’

She had never seen him so excited. In seconds, he had pulled off his own clothes, and laid her down on the thick carpet. He lay on top of her, and she felt him start to slide into her.

‘Ben, wait!’ she said breathlessly. ‘We haven’t got a condom.’

‘I know,’ he said, his eyes glazed with lust.

‘But what if we . . . I mean . . . we could . . .’ As she spoke, she felt Ben slide all the way inside her. She looked seriously into his eyes. ‘Do you want to, Ben? I mean, I really do, but do you want to—’

He was thrusting and panting. ‘I want to, baby, I do, oh God . . . I want to—’

‘You want to have a baby?’ Gemma gasped, but as she said it, Ben came hard, yelling and arching away from her, and she wasn’t totally sure he had heard her.

She didn’t know how, but she knew, in that instant, that they had done it. They’d made a baby. And sure enough, two weeks later, her period, which was always on time, didn’t come. She waited two more days, then took a bus to the next village. She didn’t want to buy a pregnancy test in the local chemist: the pharmacist had known her all her life, and besides, there was too good a chance of bumping into someone she knew, or worse, one of her mother’s friends.

She went home and locked herself in the bathroom. She knew before she did the test that it would be positive, but when she saw the little blue cross appear she began to shake uncontrollably. There was no going back. Well, there was a way out, but she wasn’t even going to give that a moment’s thought. She would never do that.

She’d read up on the internet and knew she was about four weeks along. She knew about the risks of miscarriage, and it seemed best to get through the twelve-week danger period before she told anyone, even Ben. It seemed to her if she were twelve weeks pregnant, properly pregnant, everyone would have to take her more seriously. It wouldn’t be hard to keep it a secret . . . she was used to keeping everything to herself. Ben never really talked to her, and her parents definitely didn’t. She kept her conversations at school to the purely superficial, talking about
course work, ballet or parties. They were revising for exams, so luckily it wasn’t a big social time.

Once she knew she was pregnant, she didn’t want to keep on sleeping with Ben. She still texted him every day, but when she went around to his place she tried to avoid having sex. She knew all the books and websites said it was fine to have sex, but she was pretty sure that it couldn’t be good for the tiny baby in there to have all that bumping and thumping going on. Ben got pretty ratty when she kept making excuses. He’d snuggle up to her, but when she said that she was too sore after tennis, or that she would have to go soon to get home, he’d slump back on his side of the sofa and reach for the X-Box controls. Things between them got even more strained, and, although he never said anything, Gemma knew he was wondering why she kept coming round if she wasn’t going to sleep with him. It was only for a few weeks, she told herself. Once everything was out in the open and he knew about the baby, things would be brilliant.

James was crying. The only time I’d seen him cry before was when he asked me to marry him, but here he was, sobbing like a baby. I was surprised. I mean, I knew I’d cry. With my hormones as they are at the moment, I cry if my shoelace is untied. He was absolutely fine, just sitting there, holding my hand, but then the woman put the wand thing on my tummy and the fluttery, wooshy sound of a rapid little heartbeat filled the room. I felt him grip my hand tightly and I looked over and his eyes were all red and teary. Then the woman said, ‘If you look here, there’s a little foot.’ At first it just looked like we were peering into a snowstorm, but as she pointed bits out on the screen, I started to be able to see. I saw a round head and the long string of beads that made up the spine. She took all sorts of measurements and then she printed out a set of three little photos for us, printed on funny shiny paper, like the kind you got in old-fashioned fax machines.

I’d seen sonogram pictures before . . . they all looked the same, and if someone at work showed you one, you
had to smile politely and pretend you could see what it was, or that there were features you could identify. But now we had our own, nothing was more fascinating than those three little bits of paper. I knew we’d stare at them for ages, scan them and post them to Facebook and email our friends and family, and generally be the sonogram bores we’d laughed about.

We went to sit in a coffee shop and stared at the pictures like they were priceless relics. ‘It looks like it’s got your nose,’ James said.

‘And look at those long legs! Just like you,’ I pointed. It was the twelve-week scan, so too early to tell the sex of the baby, although we still weren’t sure if we wanted to find out (well, I was, but James said he didn’t want to know). The best part was that our baby was there at all, and seemed to be perfect. Although I’d had a bit of morning sickness, had done six or seven positive pregnancy tests and had all sorts of other typical symptoms, I don’t think I’d quite believed it until I’d seen that fuzzy little figure on the screen. But there he or she was. Toes, fingers, a little turned-up nose. A tiny, perfect person.

Yes, yes, I know this probably bores you too. I know billions of people have done this before. I know it’s not a unique miracle, but it was to us . . . and I suppose it is for every first-time parent. I knew that the girls in my birth group on the baby website would get excited with us. We’d all been counting down the days until our twelve-week scans, and we’d all cooed enthusiastically over the pictures as people posted them. For a few, the twelve-week scan
had brought heartbreak, when there’d been no heartbeat, or the baby hadn’t grown beyond a little bean and had died.

I’d come a long way in the eight weeks since I’d found out I was pregnant. The first few weeks, I admit, had been a little crazy.

I knew nothing. Less than nothing. It was ironic . . . I’d learned all sorts of things about how to fall pregnant, but nothing at all about what would happen when I actually was. I went for a walk around Mothercare one Saturday, and found I was staring at all sorts of unfamiliar objects. I had no idea what they were for. I saw women fill trolleys full of stuff: fluffy stuff, clothes, gadgets, toys . . . How can something so small need so many things? Are these women all suckers? Or did we actually have to go out and spend thousands of pounds on equipment we never knew we needed?

On top of that, I realised I had no clue what was actually going on inside my body. I knew about morning sickness, and I figured the sore breasts were part of the hormonal changes, but what was actually going on in my uterus? So, the next day, Sunday, when James had gone to play five-a-side football, I sat down with the baby book he had bought.

Half an hour in, I was nervous. Within an hour, I was terrified. Two hours later, and I was feverishly googling spina bifida, and by the time James came back, I was kneeling in front of the fridge, wearing rubber gloves and chucking half the contents into the bin.

‘Good grief,’ he said, dumping his kitbag on the floor and kicking off his muddy boots. ‘Has pregnancy turned you into a domestic goddess? What are you doing?’

‘Cheese,’ I said madly rootling around in the back of the fridge.

‘Do you want some? Is this your first craving?’

‘No,
no
cheese. I can’t eat any cheese . . . I might get listeria and the baby might die. And no pâté either. And what about that night last week when I had three glasses of wine with the team after work? We need to go to the supermarket and get spinach.’

James gently took my arm and got me to stand up. He kicked the fridge closed. ‘Love, you’ll be fine. You’ve always eaten pretty healthily, and I’m sure you’ll carry on doing that. We’ll get you all the vegetables you want, but you don’t have to chuck out my Belgian pâté . . . You don’t have to eat it, and it’s not actually a threat to the baby, just sitting there in the fridge. And you can eat cheese, just not ones with rind or mould, or made with unpasteurised milk.’

I nodded, and sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. But then I noticed.

‘Your boots!’ I gasped.

He looked a bit exasperated. ‘What about them?’

‘They’re covered in mud.’

‘I know, I know . . . I’ll clean them. Sorry. I’ll even wash the floor.’

‘It’s not that . . . what if you got cat poo on them? I could get toxoplasmosis.’

He didn’t even say anything that time. Just looked at me for a long moment.

‘I’m a total hysterical crazy, aren’t I?’

‘You’ve just got information panic overload. You know not to believe everything you read on the internet about most things . . . why are you freaking out about this?’

I thought for a long time. ‘Because everything else in my life that I’ve done, I’ve really only been responsible for myself. Now I’m sharing my body, and I’m responsible for someone else’s
whole life
!’

That statement shocked James into silence. He sat down opposite me at the table and took my hand. ‘You’re right. I hadn’t thought of that,’ he said quietly. And, of course, that made me cry again.

‘Come on, squirrel,’ he said gently. ‘Let’s go and sit in the living room.’

We went through and he settled me in his arms and held me quietly until I stopped sobbing.

‘I can’t take it, James. I can’t be scared for nine whole months . . . and then for every minute of every day when we have this tiny, helpless thing to look after. This is too big.’

‘I know this sounds an obvious thing to say, but people have been doing this for thousands of years,’ James said. ‘It seems hard, but it can’t be that difficult.’

‘I wish my mum was still around. I’d ask her how she managed,’ I sobbed.

‘I could ask my mum,’ said James hesitantly.

His mum lived in Sussex, and we both felt a little guilty
that we didn’t see her more often. She was sweet and terribly kind, and she’d always been very nice to me. She wasn’t the typical mother-in-law at all. Eileen was a stay-at-home mum, and she was good at all the mum things like cooking and baking, and she did amazing birthday parties for James and his brothers. I knew she was over the moon she was going to be a grandma again (one of James’ older brothers already had two kids), but I hadn’t actually spoken to her.

I thought about it for a bit. ‘I’d like to ring her if that’s okay.’ James looked at me, really surprised. In all the years we’d been together, I don’t think I’d ever rung his mum of my own accord.

‘Okay,’ he said, encouragingly. Before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed the cordless phone and speed-dialled her. Eileen answered in that old-fashioned way, with the last four digits of her telephone number.

‘Seven eight one two?’

‘Hi, Eileen, it’s Toni.’

‘Toni! How lovely to hear from you! How are you feeling?’

She was so polite, she managed to keep all surprise out of her voice, and responded purely with warmth. It made me want to cry again.

‘I’m doing all right, Eileen . . . still a bit of morning sickness, but apparently that’s a good sign that everything’s doing what it should.’

‘Not too tired? I was so exhausted in those first few weeks with James I didn’t know what to do with myself!’

‘No, so far so good, I’m not falling asleep at my desk or anything.’

‘Oh good,’ she said, with a little upward inflection, and then she left a little gap of silence to give me the chance to say whatever it was that I’d rung to say. She was very good like that. I launched straight in before I could bottle it.

‘Eileen, I know you’re going to think this is crazy, but would you mind if I asked you a question?’

‘Of course not, dear.’

‘Were you scared?’

‘Scared?’

‘When you fell pregnant. When you had the boys. Were you scared? Because I’m absolutely terrified about everything, and I don’t know if that’s normal. Then I start worrying about stress hormones affecting the baby, and I get more scared because I‘m scared being scared will hurt my baby.’

‘Oh my goodness,’ she said, then she thought for a while. ‘Well your generation definitely has a lot more information than we did . . . and you get a good deal more fiddling about from doctors and nurses.’

I had to smile at ‘fiddling about’ . . . she said it with such prim distaste. She spoke again.

‘We didn’t have any of your ultrasound scans or growth charts or anything like that, and if we were lucky, we only had Dr Spock to refer to.’

‘The Vulcan from
Star Trek
?’

‘No, dear, that’s Mr Spock.’ Eileen had raised three sons, she was very culturally literate about these things. ‘No, Dr Spock was the childcare guru of my day. But to be
honest we just did things the way we thought best, or the way our mums showed us. And we managed. Or at least, I think we did . . . my boys seemed to turn out all right.’

I looked at James sitting on the sofa, his blond head bent, trying to be supportive without eavesdropping, and I remembered all the little things he’d been doing for me in the last few days.

‘I think your boys turned out fantastically.’

‘I can’t stop you worrying, Toni, but maybe the best thing to remember is this. Worrying won’t change what happens. It’s not like a work project where you can take steps to fix something. That baby is inside you and growing, and either he’ll be fine and grow perfectly, or he won’t. Not much you do is going to change that.’