Babies in Waiting (6 page)

Then he caught my eye, and did a comedy one-two sideways glance at the girls either side of him. One was flicking
her hair like a mad thing, and the other had surreptitiously undone another button on her top. He smiled a bit, and then, and I’m not kidding, he winked at me! Honestly, I think my mouth fell open a bit. No one our age winks. It’s something my grandpa did, or sleazy blokes in
Carry On
films. But James winked at me. He still does it, and I have to say, four years later, I still find it funny, but in a really endearing way. It’s like his way of saying ‘inasmuch’, and the way he watches
Springwatch
every year. Under his cool, well-dressed exterior, despite the fact that he’s a brilliant graphic designer, and even though he’s into really good music, he’s a tiny, weeny bit geeky and middle-aged.

Back to that day four years ago. I decided then and there I wasn’t going to fancy him. He was too cool. Too handsome by far. And he winked. Anyway, I had a boyfriend.

I was still going out with my uni boyfriend, Gavin. We’d lived together in a shared house when we were at university, and I thought we’d find a place together in London as soon as we could afford it. But in the meantime, he’d moved back in with his mum. As she did all his washing and cooked three meals a day for him, he was in no hurry to go anywhere. Gavin thought I was a mug for doing an unpaid internship. His employment strategy involved sitting on the sofa watching
Murder She Wrote
, playing computer games and hoping someone would miraculously offer him a job he couldn’t be arsed to apply for. To be honest, by the time I met James, I think I was already going off Gavin a bit, but I was never going to admit that to anyone, let alone myself.

I got to like James a lot in the three months of our internship. He’d studied graphic design and he was good. He worked very hard and did a lot of extra hours. It was soon clear he was the most talented of all the interns, but he was never pushy and know-it-all about it. I was trying to be a copywriter, and while I really enjoyed my time there, I wasn’t much good at it. Copywriters have to be able to write devastatingly clever things in three words, and I’m not very concise. I ramble on a bit, to be fair. You might have noticed. I put the experience to good use though . . . the agency name looked great on my CV. I went on to do a short course in PR and press liaison and then got a job as a junior at an international PR firm . . . and I’m still there, although I’m a few rungs up the ladder now.

I digress. Anyway, we finished the three-month internship, and on the last day, they offered James a junior designer’s position. It so happened that my birthday was the same week, so we all went out for drinks to celebrate the triple: me turning twenty-two, the end of our time together and James’ job offer. Because of my birthday, Gavin grudgingly said he would come out with my work friends for the first time. He came to join us in the pub in Holborn. Typically, he was very late, so we were all a few drinks down already, and chattering away.

Gavin had the sulks from the moment he arrived. He barely spoke to me at all and didn’t speak to anyone else. He just sat in the corner, frowning into his pint, then got up suddenly and left without saying goodbye. I chased
after him, and caught him outside Holborn Station. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ I demanded.

‘What’s the matter with me?’ he yelled. ‘What’s the matter with you? Simpering away at that bloke who thinks he’s God’s gift, giggling about straplines. You’re such a cliché. You’re not the girl I fell in love with.’ And with that, he stormed off through the barriers into the station.

I was just speechless. There was so much wrong with everything he’d said. Firstly, ‘You’re not the girl I fell in love with’ is such a fucking cliché. And if we were lobbing accusations about clichés around, what about him? Lolling on the sofa, thinking the world owed him a living because he had a 2:1 in Politics. Well, that’s what I would have said if he’d stuck around to hear me rant. Secondly, James doesn’t think he’s God’s gift . . . (although I conveniently forgot that it’s
exactly
what I’d thought when I first met James). And lastly . . . lastly I don’t
simper
!

I poured all this out to James when I got to the pub, between viciously necking glasses of wine. I was so furious. I’d had such a great day, and before Gavin arrived like the ghost at the feast, I’d been having a great time in the pub. I paused to draw breath, and was about to have another huge gulp of pub Chardonnay. Suddenly, James put his hand on my wrist.

‘Toni, I’m going to ask you three questions, and you have to promise you’ll answer them completely honestly.’

‘What is this, like Truth or Dare?’

‘I’m serious. Completely honestly.’

‘Okay.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

‘Question One. What is your dream?’

‘Just one?’

‘As many as you like.’

‘To write. To travel. To make a difference. God, I sound like a Miss-World contestant. I don’t know. I’m only twenty-two. I want a life that’s extraordinary, and I want to share it with someone who feels the same.’ Bear in mind I was quite spectacularly drunk by then. There was probably quite a lot of wild hair and arm-waving that went with that little speech.

‘Question Two. Is that someone Gavin?’

‘Yes. No. It was once. Probably not any more. No. It’s definitely not.’ That was quite a scary thought, and for a moment, I thought I might cry. I put my glass down. ‘Excuse me,’ I said unsteadily, and went to the toilet. I washed my face, combed my hair and put some lipstick on. I don’t know many crises that aren’t made better by combing your hair and putting some lipstick on. So I didn’t love Gavin any more. After three years together, that was huge. Gavin was my most serious, well, to be honest, my
only
serious relationship. What would happen if we broke up?

I didn’t want to think about the implications of that. It was just too scary. So I did what any right-thinking girl would do. I went back out into the pub, bought two flaming sambucas, drank one, gave one to James and asked him to take me home with him.

When we woke up the next morning, I expected to feel
terrible . . . awkward with James, ashamed of myself, awful about cheating on Gavin. But to my surprise, I felt quietly happy. James seemed pretty happy too . . . in fact he was happy twice more that morning. Later, as we sat eating toast in his kitchen, I remembered.

‘You never asked me Question Three.’

‘No, I never did.’

‘What was it?’

‘I’m not saying.’

‘Come on!’

‘No . . . It would have been okay in the pub when we were both pissed. But now it’ll just sound cheesy.’

‘I don’t mind cheesy. In fact I love cheesy. I’ve got cheese on my toast. See?’

That made him laugh, but then his face went serious again. ‘I’m not going to ask you now. But I will ask you Question Three one day. I promise.’

Two years later, on my twenty-fourth birthday, he handed me a beautiful dark blue box that he’d designed and made himself, with the words ‘Question Three’ printed on the lid. Inside was an antique sapphire ring. When I’d stopped crying and said yes, I said to him, ‘You were never going to ask me that in the pub all that time ago. You hardly knew me.’

‘I know. It was mad. You would have thought I was a psycho or it was a line. But I kind of knew, even then, that this was forever.’

Soppy, I know. But that’s James. And I think I’m bloody lucky to have him.

* * *

We woke up late on the Saturday morning, made love, went back to sleep, and then woke up and went for brunch at our favourite Italian coffee shop. I put all the thoughts about my doctor’s appointment to the back of my mind, and concentrated on enjoying a romantic morning with my lovely husband. James bought the papers and we split them between us, reading slowly, sipping our coffees and nibbling on almond croissants.

Two tables away, there was a couple with a baby and a little boy of about three. The baby was sitting in a high-chair and the dad was spooning some neon gloop into its mouth. Its face was covered in the orange stuff. The little boy had a toy car, which he kept bashing really loudly on the table. The mum was trying to get him to eat some toast, but he just kept pushing her hand away. She looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks. She definitely hadn’t brushed her hair and she had a biscuit-coloured handprint on the back of her shoulder. Worst of all, she and the dad hadn’t said a word to each other for the whole meal. It was like they operated next to each other, but not with each other, if that makes sense. I couldn’t stop watching them.

Then the little boy got up a really good head of steam with the car-on-the-table bashing, and James sighed. He turned around and glared at the family, then snapped his newspaper like a grumpy old man and turned away again. Well, that was all it took. I burst into tears. Now I have to admit I am a bit of a cryer . . . by that, I mean I snuffle and tear up when I watch the proposal episode of
Friends
(
every
time), and I need to take tissues when we go to a
wedding. But I don’t think James has ever seen me sob uncontrollably before. He looked very alarmed indeed. He immediately put his paper down and came to sit beside me on the banquette.

The whole story poured out, about the doctor and my rubbish ovaries, and how we had to have a baby right away but I didn’t want to end up not brushing my hair. Admittedly, it was a bit of a muddle and it took about fifteen minutes of patient questioning from James before he’d got all the facts straight. Once he understood, he nodded, motioned to the waitress and ordered us more coffee. Then he took my hand in his and he said, ‘Okay.’

‘Okay? Okay what?’

‘Okay, let’s start trying. We know we want kids, and if it’s going to take time, we’d better get cracking. We might do things in a different order, but it doesn’t mean we can’t still do all the things we dreamed of. We’ll just take our baby backpacking round Thailand with us. In fact, the baby can go in the backpack! It’s all very convenient.’

I managed a sniffly laugh, and hugged him. James always managed to make the most complicated things simple.

The idea of trying for a baby seemed a bit odd . . . I mean, James and I have always had a lot of sex anyway (yes, yes I know . . . too much info again). So, really, all that happened was we stopped using condoms. We agreed that we’d just carry on as normal for the first year, and see what happened. After that we’d start taking temperatures and things and consider fertility drugs. We both imagined it would be a good two or three years before I got pregnant.

James and I had agreed not to tell our families or friends that we were trying, or that we were expecting problems. ‘We’ve got quite enough pressure as it is,’ James said. ‘I don’t need your dad coming round asking if we’re shagging often enough.’

I laughed at that . . . the idea of my conservative, north-London-dwelling, professor father saying ‘shagging’ was too silly for words.

I felt bad not telling my close friends. I have two best mates. Robyn and I made friends at nursery, and we went the whole way through school together. She works in travel now, and she’s a bit of a hellraiser: she’s always off on some jaunt across the world, bungee-jumping or skiing or white-water something-or-other. And my goodness, she can drink! Even James is a bit scared of Rob when she’s on a Friday-night mission. Then there’s Caroline: we met at uni and she’s twenty-six going on forty-five. She’s got much further in her career than I have: she’s the head of PR for some mega investment bank in the City and she’s always on her BlackBerry dealing with the
FT
, and averting huge PR disasters. Fashion is her thing, and she has items of clothing that cost more than our sofa. Rob and Caro both love James, and they were very happy when we got married (and, I might say, the best bridesmaids you could imagine . . . my hen-do . . . wow! But that’s another story). But still, kids are definitely not on the radar right now for either of them.

Caro has a boyfriend . . . Piers. He’s a banker (naturally), but they seem to communicate electronically mostly.
They’re certainly nowhere near moving in together, let alone getting married or having kids. She hates them anyway. I can just imagine Caro’s ‘I smell dog-poo’ face if I told her I was trying to have a baby. When we go out, she always sighs and growls if there are kids around. James calls her ‘Herod’ because she wants to kill all the children.

And Rob, well, Rob is too busy having fun and shagging her way alphabetically through the nationalities. There’s no time for kids right now in Robyn-world. Kids would get in the way of extreme sports, and they’d need to go to bed when she was trying to drink tequila shots off a salsa dancer called Paulo. She’s always said she wants them one day, but for her I think one day is ten years or maybe more in the future. She’d fall over in shock if I told her we were trying for a baby now. James was right. I’d tell them when, and if . . . there was something to tell. Not before.

It wasn’t like I didn’t have support . . . I kept visiting the baby website, and reading the threads about trying to conceive. I didn’t post . . . I didn’t have a story to tell yet, and I had so much to learn. There were lots of women who’d been trying for five years and more. Lots of them were on fertility drugs, had undergone IVF, or had had miscarriages. It was a bit like having a thousand really close friends . . . I got to know the names of many of the regular posters, and they’d let us know when they were expecting their period to start. Together, we’d count the days, and if they didn’t come on when they expected, they’d start wondering whether they should take a test.

Every now and then, someone would excitedly post that they’d had a BFP (it took me ages to work out that this meant Big Fat Positive), and there’d be hundreds of congratulatory messages. The women who managed that then left the TTC group and went to join a group with other women whose babies would be due in the same month as theirs. It was like a graduation.

I found myself logging on every evening at home, then, when I got more involved, I’d log on at lunchtime at work too. I lived through a rollercoaster with Pink_Girl32, who’d been trying for a year. She was about to start fertility drugs, but then out of the blue had a BFP. We wished her well, and she went off to join a birth group, but a few days later she was back, having had an early miscarriage. The doctor had advised her and her partner to try again immediately, and that’s what they planned to do. Then I picked up on the story of Curvy_Sue and her husband, who had finally saved enough for their first round of IVF. Everyone in the group had gone through the drugs and the egg harvesting with her. I first read one of her posts the day after she had had her embryos implanted. I read back through the threads she’d posted on, and found myself totally invested in her story. Along with everyone else, I counted the days until she could do a test, then cheered for her when one of the embryos stuck. I had all this ahead of me, and I felt happy that these women, or others like them, would be there to support me when the time came.