Chocolate Cake for Breakfast (27 page)

Bastards
, I thought, refolding the paper and slapping it back down on the coffee table between a tattered copy of the
Listener
and a
Little Tots
parenting magazine.

‘What’s up?’ Mark asked.

‘Some prat saying Alan played badly last weekend.’

‘Well, he didn’t have a great game.’

‘He wasn’t
bad
.’

‘I don’t think you should read the sports news,’ he said. ‘You take it all way too personally.’ He leant forward and picked up
Little Tots
with his left hand, his right arm being currently in a sling. ‘Read this instead.’

‘No, thank you,’ I said. Being pregnant was daunting enough without starting to think about how to raise the child when it arrived. This was a pretty stupid approach, and even I could see that I was eventually going to have to give the matter some thought, but just now I was far too busy comparing life as it was to life as it might have been.

Imagine if I
hadn’t
decided to flick that bit of tartar off that cat’s molar with my fingernail. I wouldn’t have got myself bitten, wouldn’t have started that stupid course of Vetamox, wouldn’t have bloody ovulated, wouldn’t have stuffed up Mark’s life as well as mine, wouldn’t now be keeping up my last pair of respectable work shorts with a row of hair ties looped through the buttonholes on one side and around the buttons on the other . . . It was a particularly stupid train of thought, as depressing as it was pointless.

Mark shrugged, settled back in his plastic chair and opened
Little Tots
himself.

It was the evening of the first Wednesday in February, and we had met at the Anglesea imaging centre for my week twenty ultrasound scan. Week
twenty
. It really is incredible how time flies when you’re wasting it in futile regret. We were the only people in the waiting room, and after a few minutes the receptionist, a slim grey-haired woman who’d been examining Mark surreptitiously through her lashes, stood up and approached.

‘You – you
are
Mark Tipene, aren’t you?’ she said.

Mark lowered
Little Tots
. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Hi.’

‘Could I just take your picture for my son? He’s a huge fan.’

‘Of course,’ said Mark.

‘Thank you so much!’

‘Why don’t I take one of you both?’ I suggested. After seven months with New Zealand’s sexiest sportsman (
News on Sunday
said that, not just me), I had a good working knowledge of pretty much every available piece of photographic equipment on the market.

‘That would be wonderful,’ the receptionist said, handing me her camera.

Mark stood up, and I took the photograph.

‘Oh, thank you, dear,’ she said. ‘How’s your shoulder, Mark?’

‘Not too bad,’ he said, as he always did.

‘So you’ll be fighting fit in time for the World Cup?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Jack – Jack’s my son – was so upset when you hurt it again last week,’ she told him. ‘Those shoulder injuries can be so slow to heal if they need surgery.’

Lucky you mentioned it
, I thought sourly.
After all, he might
not have realised.

‘And you’ll really be wanting to be at your best this year, won’t you?’

‘That’s right,’ said Mark patiently.

‘Well, best of luck. And congratulations to you both.’

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘First baby?’ she said to me.

I nodded, and her smile grew even wider.

‘Oh, now
that’s
exciting. And it looks as if Leanne’s ready for you. Go on down.’

‘Okay, guys, there’s a foot. Spine . . . ribs . . . arm coming across the screen now . . . there’s the head, see?’

‘Yes,’ said Mark, almost under his breath.

I reached out for his hand, and his fingers folded tightly around mine. Although of course you know that pregnancy results in a baby, and that a baby is a little person, actually seeing the little person is quite a revelation.

‘That’s a nice shot of the head,’ said Leanne, pressing a button so that the picture on the screen froze. ‘I’ll just take a few measurements.’

‘It’s not
that
nice,’ I murmured. The baby’s face didn’t show up very well, being soft tissue over bone, so that we saw a skull rather than tiny cute features.

‘I think it takes after you,’ said Mark. I stuck out my tongue at him, and he grinned.

‘Are you hoping to find out the baby’s sex?’ Leanne asked, busily drawing lines across the head on the screen with her mouse.

I said ‘Yes,’ as Mark said ‘No,’ and we looked at each other in dismay.

Proper couples probably manage to discuss stuff like this beforehand
, I thought wearily. ‘Why not?’

‘I just like the idea of waiting till it comes out,’ he said. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I – I just do.’

‘Fine. Whatever.’

‘No, it’s okay,’ I said.

‘Look, it doesn’t really worry me.’

‘Sometimes we can’t tell anyway,’ said Leanne soothingly.

Having measured the baby’s arms and legs, the blood flow through the heart and the size of the internal organs, Leanne printed off a CD of ultrasound pictures for us to take away. While we were waiting for it, Mark signed her coffee mug, the calendar on the reception desk and a diary belonging to one of the sports physicians next door. It was all terribly social, but eventually we made it back out to the car park.

‘Shit,’ he said, kissing the top of my head. ‘I’m late.’

‘For what?’

‘Dinner with World Cup sponsors.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. The World Cup had added another great heap of meetings and ad campaigns to the existing load, and even now, seven months out, the national sporting media seemed incapable of covering any story without slipping in a reference to the likelihood of the world’s best rugby team failing once more to win it. The World Cup was starting to feel like a great brooding presence on the horizon, blocking all view of life afterwards.

‘You’re still coming up on Friday?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Cool. Love you.’ And pulling his keys from his pocket he sped across the car park.

A cranky ginger cat and half of last night’s lemon spaghetti awaited me at home, but postponing our reunion, I stopped at Dad and Em’s.

‘Daddy’s at a meeting,’ Bel told me, coming down the hall. ‘Lachlan Johnson was very naughty at school today.’

‘What did he do?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know, but it was
very
naughty. His mum came and got him after play time.’

‘How exciting,’ I said as we went into the living room together. The TV was on, Caitlin was writing carefully in a notebook and Em lay on the couch with a book.

‘Hi, sweetie,’ said Em, looking up. ‘What’s exciting?’

‘Lachlan Johnson. What did he do?’

‘I have no idea, but they’re holding an emergency Board of Trustees meeting as we speak. I can hardly wait to find out.’ She sat up, letting her book slide to the floor. ‘How was your scan?’

‘It seems to have the right number of fingers and toes, so that’s nice,’ I said, sitting down in Dad’s big armchair. Bel climbed onto my lap and snuggled her face into the side of my neck. I stroked her hair absently, and then stiffened. ‘Annabel McNeil, did you just
lick
me?’

She giggled.

‘Yuck!’ I said.

‘I’m a baby kitten,’ she explained. ‘I’m washing you.’

‘Well, how about you stop?’

‘Annabel, don’t lick your sister,’ said Em. ‘Boy or girl?’

‘We didn’t find out. Mark didn’t want to know.’

‘But you did.’

‘It was the first thing he’d had any say in, so it seemed fair enough.’

‘What hasn’t he had a say in?’ asked Em.

‘Having the thing in the first place, for a start!’

‘For God’s sake, Helen, it’s not a thing, it’s a baby.’

‘I know,’ I muttered.

‘Sweetie, it’s time you started to think about what you’re going to do. Are you going to stay here or move in with Mark?’

I rested my cheek on the top of Bel’s curly head. ‘I don’t know, I . . . Stay here, I think.’

She frowned. ‘Haven’t you talked about it?’

‘He just wanted to see how things went for a while,’ I said very quietly.

‘You can come and live with us,’ Caitlin offered, looking up suddenly from her notebook. ‘I’ll help you look after your baby when I’m not at school.’

‘I want to look after the baby too,’ said Bel. ‘Can I, Helen?’ She squirmed around in my lap to throw her arms around my neck, kneeing me firmly in the stomach as she went.

‘
Bel!
’ I cried, doubling over. ‘Be
careful
!’

‘Go to your room,’ Em ordered. ‘Right this instant.’

Bel fled, sobbing, and I pushed myself up to follow her.

‘Leave her, she’s alright,’ said Em. ‘Helen, love, I really think you need to talk to Mark about what you’re going to do.’

‘I know. It’s just – he’s hurt his shoulder again, and he’s really stressed about it.’ At least, I assumed he was – he hadn’t said so, and I hadn’t pursued the subject. Asking people if they’re worried about their potentially career-ending injuries seems just a bit too much like prodding their open wounds to see if they hurt.

‘Well, why not put your name down at the day-care centre in town in the meantime?’ Em said. ‘Christine Marshall tells me there’s a waiting list of up to a year.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ I said without enthusiasm.

I got home just on dusk – a beautiful clear, pink dusk with one star out – and found Murray waiting on the deck.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Sorry I’m late again.’

Murray rose gracefully and wound himself around my ankles. Picking him up, I sat down on the top step and rubbed him behind the ears, and he began to purr in approval. Just then, low in my abdomen, something quivered. I sat very still, holding my breath. There it was again: a faint stirring sensation as the baby moved. Oh. Wow.

I thought, as I sat with one hand pressed to my stomach, watching the stars come out, that this really was a revoltingly sappy way to behave. Woman resents unborn child, child quickens, woman has epiphany and is suffused with tenderness for the innocent new life burgeoning within her. How corny. How unoriginal. How
wet
. But there you go.

Eventually I got up, fed Murray and fetched the lemon spaghetti from the fridge. I ate it cold, standing at the kitchen bench, and then washed the plate and went to get the phone.

‘Hello?’ Em said.

‘Hi. It’s me. I – I just wanted to say you don’t have to worry anymore. I’m going to be a good mother.’

‘Helen, sweetie, of course you are!’ she cried.

‘I know I’ve been acting like a dick, and I’m sorry.’

‘You have
not
been acting like a dick. Has she, Tim?’

‘No more so than usual, as far as I’m aware,’ came Dad’s voice.

‘Sweetie, you’re doing just fine,’ said Em. ‘When I was pregnant with Caitlin I spent the first two trimesters crying and eating potato-and-gravy from KFC. And she was
planned
.’

This information was surprisingly comforting. ‘Thanks, Em,’ I said. ‘Hey, what did Lachlan Johnson do?’

‘He rubbed poo in another child’s hair. His own poo. He brought it to school in a little container.’