Babies in Waiting (15 page)

‘Not really. To be honest, I haven’t really looked. Just getting myself down here was about as much as I could manage. Also, I’m not sure whether it’s really ethical to go looking for a job I know I can’t stay in for more than a few months.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t be eligible for maternity pay, but I do know a prospective employer can’t discriminate against you because of it. They can’t even ask you about it in the interview.’

‘Yes, but they’re perfectly within their rights to hire another candidate and say they were better qualified . . . even if their only qualification is a flat belly. I know I’d have hesitated to hire a pregnant woman at Barrett and Humphries.’

‘Fair enough, but you won’t know till you try.’

‘I know,’ said Louise. ‘I’ll start job-hunting tomorrow. But now I’m cold. And the baby wants a hot chocolate.’

‘Oh, the
baby
does?’

‘It’s all for the baby. I’d be happy with a glass of water, but it’s demanding chocolate. And I have to give it what it wants. I’m selfless like that.’

‘Well, conveniently, there’s a coffee shop just around the next bend.’

‘Maybe the baby knew that.’

‘A genius and it hasn’t even been born. Takes after its Uncle Simon, I see. Does the baby need whipped cream on its hot chocolate?’

‘And possibly a muffin. For sustenance.’

She was miserable for the first week. It wasn’t so much homesickness as, well, work-sickness. She really, really, missed her job. Every morning, she woke up and mentally ran through her preparations for work, her commute, and imagined what she would have done that day. She fought
the urge ten times a day to ring Andrew and check up on various projects. Finally, she had to give herself a stern talking-to. She had left. She was no longer running the branch, so it was no longer her concern.

She then spent the next few weeks sending out her CV to large-scale printing firms in the south London area. Once she had a job and went looking for her own place, she wanted to be close to Simon, and within a reasonable distance from Rachel, so she researched firms that fitted into the right sort of geographical area. She was careful to mention in every covering letter that she was pregnant . . . she didn’t want to come to an interview and face their polite horror when they saw her tummy. She needn’t have worried, however: the silence that greeted her deluge of post and emails was resounding. She rang Deidre from HR in Leeds and got the names of a few recruitment firms in London specialising in the printing industry, but when she spoke to the recruitment agents, they were far from encouraging. When she sent in her CV, they made very enthusiastic noises, but as soon as she told them she was pregnant, they started muttering about the economic climate and saying they couldn’t make any promises.

Simon was away every day at work, but Rachel was desperate to spend time with her . . . desperate enough to leave Surrey and come into town to meet her for lunch. ‘It’s ridiculous,’ Louise told her. ‘They’re so excited to hear about my skills, but as soon as they realise I’m knocked up, they can’t get off the phone quickly enough.’

‘But do you have to work?’ said Rachel, picking at her salad.

Louise looked at her as if she was speaking Chinese. ‘I would have told you if I’d won the Lottery. I mean, I have a bit of income from renting out my house, but it’s not enough to survive in London for very long. I don’t want to just blow all my savings. Anyway, I
want
to work. I didn’t spend all these years studying and gaining experience to throw it all away.’

Rachel hesitated. ‘But what about . . .’

‘Rach, if you’re going to have another go at me about the father, I’m going to leave. I’m not asking him for help, and that’s that.’

‘Does he even know he’s a dad?’

‘No. I tried to contact him before I left Leeds, but he wouldn’t talk to me. It’s over between us, and he wants nothing to do with me. And to be honest, I really, really don’t want him in my life.’

‘What if he finds out?’

‘He’s not going to find out. He’s hundreds of miles away. As far as he’s concerned, I’m a blip in his past . . . a little interlude, and now I’m gone, I’m sure he’ll never give me another thought.’

‘It’s a big decision to make for someone else,’ Rachel observed.

‘Who, the baby?’

‘No, the man . . . Brian, is it? You know, Louise, I’m not a feminist . . .’

You don’t say, Louise thought.

‘ . . . but I think if a man forced a woman to have a child against her will, people would be up in arms. It can’t be right to do it the other way.’

‘It’s not against his will. It’s just without his knowledge,’ Louise said flippantly, but her voice sounded unconvincing, even in her own ears. ‘I’ll think about telling him. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ said Rachel. ‘Now, do you want to share a dessert?’

‘I want to share a dessert with myself and my unborn child. Pregnancy makes me greedy. Come on, Rachel, I know you haven’t eaten a whole dessert since 1995, but break out! Live on the edge. You know you want to.’

Another week of sitting at Simon’s kitchen counter sending out CVs and Louise was beginning to despair. She tried to stay motivated, tried to get up every morning and treat looking for a job like a job, but it became more and more difficult. She spent a lot of time on the baby website, and she started reading the posts in the discussion forum section of the site. There was a group for women having babies in September, so she joined that. Many of the women seemed much younger than her, and their preoccupations were very different from hers, but she did find some of the posts about symptoms useful. There were a couple of people who wrote regularly who seemed closer to her age, or at least as if they were educated, professional women she might have something in common with. She started to look out for their posts. She hadn’t posted herself or replied to anything yet, but with time on her hands, she
found herself checking in on the site several times a day. She set up an account and called herself Northern_Bird. Then, one day, she saw a post that really resonated with her. It was from someone called PR_Girl, and was titled ‘Mixed Blessings?’

I am so, so excited to meet my LO,

(Louise knew this meant Little One. It was a bit cutesy, but it was the shorthand everyone on the site used for babies-to-be)

don’t get me wrong. But being pregnant does seem to have made my life more difficult and complicated.

Anyone else feeling really quite lonely? I thought getting pregnant would bring me closer to people, but I feel like I’m losing all my friends. None of them are in the same place as me, and some of them, my boss at work, for one, think I’m ‘throwing my life away’.

Then the whole thing is also putting pressure on my marriage: my OH is worried about money and how we’ll afford time off for me to stay home with the baby. We both earn pretty good salaries, but we’re going to have to cut back a lot to manage. I don’t understand how anyone can afford to have a baby, let alone more than one. We live just outside London, by the way.

It was touch and go whether I’d fall pregnant at all, so I am truly excited to meet my miracle baby. But it looks like precious and valuable things come at a price.

The post was signed ‘Txx’. Before Louise could think about it, she was typing a reply.

Dear Txx,
Our situations may be very different, but I really know what you mean. My pregnancy wasn’t planned and I’m doing it on my own. I’ve moved down to London from the north and given up a very successful job. Right now, I don’t have one to replace it. I’ve had to leave a whole life and friends behind. I also already love my baby-to-be

(she couldn’t bring herself to write LO)

and can’t wait to meet him/her, but there are days, like today, when the price seems high. There are just so many unanswered questions about our future. I’m not used to that, and I’m scared.

She thought for a while, then signed the post ‘Lou’.

She kept an eye on the thread for the rest of the day. A couple of other women posted. Most of them said things like ‘Can’t really relate, but sending hugs ((()))’, and one posted something a little critical, that suggested women
who were pregnant with healthy babies should just be grateful. PR_Girl, or Txx, whoever she was, didn’t post again on her own thread.

The next morning however, when she logged on, there was a ‘friend request’ from PR_Girl and a personal message.

Hi, Northern_Bird (Lou, is it?),
Thanks so much for your reply. You made me feel
like I wasn’t alone; I had a very bad day yesterday, and seeing your reply when I got home made me feel a lot better. You said in your post that you’ve just moved down to London . . . so thought you could maybe use a friend to chat to. I might be able to help with some suggestions about coping in this big, horrible city.

Anyway, hope you’d like to be friends. Drop me a line sometime.

Toni
xx

Louise smiled and accepted the friend request. A new friend, at the safe distance created by being online, sounded like just what she needed.

She stopped getting up at eight and started sleeping in a bit every day. The pull of the sofa and daytime TV was also strong, and there was a bookshelf in Simon’s spare room with piles of detective novels that she’d never had time to read because she’d always been too busy working.

So it happened that when the phone finally rang, she was dozing on the sofa in a pair of tracksuit bottoms, with a Val McDermid mystery open on her bump.

‘Louise?’ a male voice with a northern accent said. For one horrible moment, she thought it was Brian. But then he said, ‘It’s Edward.’

Her ex-boss. Louise struggled into a sitting position and tried very hard to sound as if she hadn’t just woken up. ‘Edward! How nice to hear from you.’

‘Listen, I’m ringing on the off chance you haven’t been snapped up yet. How’s the job hunt going?’

‘Oh, you know . . .’ Louise said. God, she sounded intelligent. She just wasn’t awake enough to lie with breezy conviction. Edward waited for her to expand on this clever statement. In the end she came up with, ‘I’m looking at a number of possibilities. Nothing concrete yet.’

‘Well, I’ve just had a call from an old college mate of mine. Adam Harper. He’s got a banner-printing business down in Surrey and he needs someone at short notice. It’s a small operation, nothing like you’re used to, but if you’d be in a position to help out an old friend of mine for a few months, I’d be most grateful.’

Now Louise was awake. ‘A few months?’

‘Yes, the mad old bugger’s had a chance to go sailing round the world on one of those tall ships. He’ll be away for four or five months and he needs someone to mind the shop while he’s out of town. I think he might want you to live in his house too, while he’s away, if that’s at all possible.’

Louise said calmly, ‘Edward, could you hold on for a second?’ she put her mobile on mute, put it down on the coffee table and did a crazy, bum-wiggling dance around the room. Then she picked up the phone again. ‘Sorry, someone on the other line. Well, I’d certainly be interested. Could you give me this Adam Harper’s details?’

Now this was worth getting dressed for! She showered and put on clean clothes, then wrote a covering email and attached her CV. She had it ready to go in her drafts folder, then she picked up the phone, offered up a little prayer, and rang the number Edward had given her.

A young woman answered the phone. ‘Harper Graphics, good afternoon!’ she said in a breezy Australian accent.

‘May I speak to Adam Harper, please?’ Louise said, in her most businesslike tone.

‘No worries!’ the girl chirped, ‘I’ll get him for you!’ There was a moment’s silence and the receiver clunked down on a hard surface. ‘Adam!’ Louise heard her yell. It didn’t sound like a very professional operation. She heard footsteps approaching, and Adam Harper came on the line. ‘Hello?’ he barked. His voice was deep and gravelly, with a faint Scottish accent. Louise introduced herself and explained that Edward had suggested she contact him. She launched into her professional patter about training and experience, but he cut her off. ‘If Ed recommended you, that’s good enough for me.’

‘I’ll send you my CV by email . . .’

‘Yes, yes. When can you get down here? This afternoon?’

‘Well . . .’ That came as a bit of a surprise. Should she play hard to get? Imply she was too busy just to drop everything? On second thoughts, Adam Harper didn’t sound like a man who’d be impressed by corporate game-playing.

‘How long will it take me on a train from London?’ she said.

‘About an hour. I can pick you up from the station. Trains run every half an hour from Waterloo at twenty past and ten to.’

She did a rapid calculation. ‘Right, well, I’ll see you at the station at three twenty then,’ she said briskly. Adam seemed to be happy with that. She told him what she looked like and they rang off. She sent off the email with her CV, although she doubted he’d bother to read it. It wasn’t until ten minutes later that she realised she hadn’t told him she was pregnant.

She rushed around, packing her briefcase, changing into a suit and doing her hair and make-up. She dashed off a text to Simon, telling him she was going down to Surrey for an interview and would be back later, then trotted down the stairs and out of the building. She’d already decided to splurge on a cab to Waterloo: there was no point in getting hot and dishevelled on the Tube if she could avoid it.

She bought a coffee and a newspaper, found the train without a problem and was on her way. Only then did she relax and allow herself a little laugh. Edward had rung her a little after midday. It was now two thirty and she was on her way to an interview which could solve all her
problems in one fell swoop (what was a fell swoop, she wondered? Well, whatever it was, it seemed she had one and it was doing its job).

The train ran mercifully on time, and forty-five minutes later, she stepped off it on to the platform at Chertsey. Adam Harper had told her to look out for a Land Rover and she scanned the parking lot for 4x4s. Then she heard a roar, and a rattly old olive-green Land Rover, which must have been at least twenty-five years old, came barrelling into the parking lot and stopped at the station steps. The driver’s door burst open with a creaking groan and a tall, rangy man stepped out. ‘Louise?’ he said.