OMG Baby! (3 page)

M
orning
and the sun sparkles through every crack in the shutter frames, making halos on the peeling paint. The room is already hot, the smell of damp stone replaced by baked clay and drains. I’m not properly awake but am aware of Max sleeping close by. I glance across. There he is, arms behind his head, sheet gathered around his groin like a nappy. Normally when I wake up, I jump out of bed after a few seconds to turn on the shower, but today I feel as if I’ve woken on a waltzer ride at the fair and I’m about to be sick in a bag. I lie completely still, trying to think up a strategy. Food is my only hope. I get off the bed and stay low. I scuttle to the grocery bag without retching and sit cross-legged on the stone floor. I grab the biscuits, ripping the packet open with my teeth and ramming two in my mouth; flaky pastry with a synthetic lemon overtone. I take a swig of water and shove in two more. I watch Max’s ribcage rising and falling. The fur in his armpits sticks up like a cockatoo’s fan. The line of dark hair running down from his belly button under the sheet. His head back, big nose in profile, quite noble. His lips are parted, bottom teeth a bit crooked. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.

He turns onto his side. One arm flops over. Now he’s facing me with his eyes closed, his black eyelashes making him look as if he’s been messing about with make-up. He opens one eye and closes it again.

‘What are you, some sort of weird rodent, crouching there, nibbling?’ he mutters.

‘Get up loser!’ I say in what I think is a rodent-type voice. He doesn’t move.

I take another swig of water and break off the end of the baguette. The sickness has passed, but I think I should probably keep eating, just to make sure. I unscrew the jam and dip a bit of bread into the jar.

How life can change in such a short time. Only last month I’d decided to live life alone. I was a rock. I didn’t need love. Anyhow, now here I am with Max and pregnant. That’s about as un-alone as you can get. It’s just like Nana says – you never know what’s round the corner. Only right now is certain. I chew thoughtfully. I wonder where in the world Nana and Reg are now. I’d like to tell her about the baby. How will she feel about being a great-grandmother? I need her help to contact my mother, Lorraine, who was last in touch to say she couldn’t make Nana’s wedding as she was touring South America.

Funny isn’t it that my seventy-year-old nana is now to be found globetrotting as a newlywed. The last postcard from them was of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

‘Its falling down!’ she wrote in biro on the front. Nana and Reg let loose on the world . . . I have a number to call when they get to Egypt next week. I’ll break the news then.

Next week. I think about next week. Next week when we’re back in London, expensive London, London where I have no job and only three months’ rent money . . . and wait, let’s chuck a baby into the equation as well.

Oh my God, we’re fucked! I put down the jar of jam and crawl towards the bed.

‘Max!’ I say close to his nose. The eyelashes flicker. ‘Max!’ I say louder. He turns onto his back again, holding his crotch. I lean over him. ‘Max!’ His eyes open and he focuses on me with a slow smile.

‘God, you are insatiable, woman. Let me wake up, would you?’

‘We can’t have a baby.’

‘Huh?’ He licks his lips, tasting his mouth.

‘You and I can’t have a baby. We aren’t responsible.’

He props himself up on his elbows and blinks. His slept-on hair sticks up at the back in a rosette.

‘We can’t bring up a child. Look at us!’

‘Viv, what are you on about?’

‘I don’t have a job. You don’t have a regular income. Where will we live? We need a house!’

He sits up and drinks a glass of water. He sets the glass down taking a deep breath. ‘If you needed a job or a house to have a baby, half the population wouldn’t exist.’

‘No, we’ve just got carried away in the moment and we haven’t thought this through. I’m in the process of setting up a business and I can barely pay the rent. How much money do you have?’

‘Cash or assets?’

‘Both.’

‘What’s on my back.’ He smiles, then seeing my face, adds, ‘About a grand, two maybe, if I sold the bike.’

‘Do you know how much it costs to raise a child? I mean, I’ll Google it, but I know it’s a hell of a lot more than that!’

I unzip a suitcase and take out the first thing I can grab: leopard-print shorts, espadrilles and a pink T-shirt.

‘What’re you doing?’

‘There’s no internet here, is there? I’m going to the internet café and I’m going to research it.’

‘Hold on, Viv.’

I twist my hair up into a bun. ‘You coming?’

‘Hold on a minute!’ He gets up, pulls on boxer shorts and slopes off behind the green panel. The next thing I hear is him peeing from a height and the toilet working up to a flush. He reappears. ‘Coffee?’

‘Can’t we get one at the internet café?’

‘It’s closed.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

He shrugs as he fills the tiny kettle. I sink onto the bed. He takes two cups and spoons coffee into them.

‘First thing to do is get a test,’ he says, glancing at me. He reaches into the fridge. The tiger tattoo moves across the plane of his shoulder. He brings up a milk carton, sniffs it and pours, topping it off with boiling water. He sits beside me and hands me a cup. I watch a lone coffee granule spin on the surface.

‘We’ll go as soon as the chemist is open. Then we’ll know for sure, won’t we?’

‘And what will we do then?’

‘Then we’ll work it all out.’ He puts an arm round me and downs the scalding coffee in one. ‘We’re smart people. We’ll figure it out. If we need more money, we’ll get some.’

‘How? I once read online that raising a baby can cost over two hundred grand.’

‘You don’t have to pay up front, though.’ He nudges me with a shoulder.

‘Where will we live?’

‘My place, or your place. Babies don’t need much.’

‘You don’t know that. Online—’

‘Viv, not all the answers are online, OK? Some things you just have to go with. What are you saying? What’ll you do if you think you can’t afford it?’ He shoots me a glance that hits like a slap in the face.

I look down at my hands. ‘Have a baby.’

‘Exactly . . . So I’ll get dressed.’

W
e walk to the chemist
, through the old town, down cool cobbled steps. Below us, and just visible through the crouched houses, the Mediterranean glitters like turquoise glass. I feel the sun beat heavily on my skin in a kind of rhythm. Max lights a cigarette, letting go of my hand and keeping it out of my way. Of course this is something I should be worried about now. There will be loads of things. I read somewhere pregnant women should avoid curry, but somewhere else that they should eat it, and what do women in India do with themselves, anyway? I’ll research this whole thing online, no matter what Max says. That is, if the test is positive. I mean, we’re acting as if I am definitely pregnant, and at the moment we don’t know for sure – we’re balanced on the seesaw of Fate.

I wonder if he could choose, would Max actually want to have a baby now? Would I? How could either of us ever answer that question? The issue has come up now, hasn’t it? Because of this pregnancy or non-pregnancy, we’ve taken the idea in, accepted it, so if I’m not pregnant, will we be disappointed? My mind circles, taking pathways and dead ends, as if I’m stuck on one of those decision trees. I’m stuck because I don’t know the answer to the very first question.

Is Max father material? Not that long ago, I didn’t even consider him shag material, and now the two of us might have made a whole other person. His main motivator, as long as I’ve known him, has been getting himself laid. Are any of his skills transferable into fatherhood? I wonder. I walk along looking at him and thinking about that.

‘Max, how many women have you slept with?’ I ask after a while.

He half turns round. ‘Why?’

‘I’m just wondering whether you’d be any good as a father.’

He frowns. ‘Oh. Yeah, I get it – if I’ve slept with loads, then I’m obviously a very understanding and inclusive person, not to mention persuasive, and if only a few, then I have self-control and virtue?’

‘Something like that.’

‘In that case, the question to ask isn’t how many, but what kind of women have I slept with, since we already know I have no self-control or much virtue,’ he says.

‘OK, have you ever slept with anyone really fat?’

‘Sure.’

‘Who was the fattest person you’ve ever had sex with?’

‘Gillian McGuiness. She was fifteen stone.’

‘And what happened?’

‘She left me after about two weeks.’

‘Why?’

‘She said I didn’t have enough money.’

‘You still don’t have enough money.’

‘True, but I have talent.’

‘Who’s the weirdest person you ever slept with?’

‘Hmm, I once had a fling with a woman who would only do it through a hole in her tights.’

I wrinkle my nose. ‘You didn’t do it?’

‘Of course. Why not? I wanted her to be happy.’

‘So you really are inclusive and understanding, but sadly also skint and a bit weird.’

‘This works both ways, you know, Viv. What about you? Who’s the ugliest person you’ve ever slept with?’

‘You,’ I say.

‘Bar me,’ he says at the same time.

‘Hmm, I think it would have to be a guy called Greg who once bought me some Milk Tray. He had these horrible sticking-out teeth and no chin. I ended it by saying I had to revise, but really it was because of the teeth-chin thingy. They just . . . Urgh, no.’

‘You lied to the poor fool.’

‘I know. I felt very bad about it.’

‘And the Milk Tray?’

‘Ate them all myself.’

‘That story tells me you’re selfish, greedy and a liar . . . also shallow.’

‘Oh yeah, you’re definitely better parent material.’

We’ve reached the bottom of the hill now and are in the main town. We stop and Max points across a small square to a row of shops.

‘Well, we’re here. That’s the chemist over there.’

We hesitate for a few seconds, squinting into the sun, and then I set off walking purposefully across the cobbles.

L
ater that morning
we return to Max’s room with a Spanish pregnancy test. He translates the instructions and I sit on the edge of the bed holding the flat plastic stick upon which both our futures teeter.

‘OK, when you’ve peed on it for three seconds, you get one blue line, right?’

I nod, staring at the little plastic window in wonder.

‘That is just to show the test is working. I think it says here if you’re pregnant, a second blue line will appear. Would that be right?’ He looks doubtful.

‘I don’t know. Give me that.’ I snatch the instruction sheet. ‘It says under the two blue lines, “
Si embarazada
.”’

‘“Yes, embarrassed,”’ he translates.

I gawp at him. ‘Embarrassed? What?’

He shrugs. ‘It must be how they say “pregnant”.’

I study the picture on the instructions. ‘Right, well, shall I go and wee on it, then? Get it over with?’ I stand and make towards the curtained area.

‘Wait.’ He hugs me. ‘Whatever the outcome, I love you, right?’

‘OK. I love you as well.’ I stare at the stick over his shoulder, break free and make towards the toilet.

‘Wait,’ he says.

I stop. ‘What?’

‘Want me to come with you?’

‘No, I’ll be OK.’ I give him a reassuring pat and slip behind the curtain to follow the instructions to the letter.

Then we sit on the bed holding the test and we wait. A shadow seeps across the first little plastic window. We watch a blue line appear. I look into Max’s face. His eyes search mine. The second window is now wet. We watch and we wait and a second faint blue line appears and it gets darker until there is no denying it. There are two bold blue lines.

Si embarazada.

Yes, I’m embarrassed.

S
o I’m back
beneath the grey fug of London with Max and someone else as well – two for the price of one. Waking up in my own bed in my own flat has helped me to properly absorb the news. In Spain, everything was bathed in romance and sunshine, skewed. Now I have the man (he’s moved in) and I’m having his baby. Quite a result. I feel like high-fiving myself. Obviously, I’ll be the best mummy ever. I’ll be smiling a lot of the time and wearing things I haven’t tended to before, mummy things like thin-gauge cardigans, big knickers and low ponytails. I’ll be firm about some things – table manners, road safety – but mostly I’ll be a lot of fun. I think of all the times I’ve had fun with kids – well, the one time, when I played with my friend Ramona Parker’s little sister, chasing her round the garden with sticks. Then she chased me, but she had dog poo on her stick . . . Anyway, I know how I’m
not
going to be: I’m not going to be like my own mother. Be really hard to be worse: even before she left, when we lived in the shitty bedsit together with Uncle Whoever She Was Seeing At the Time, she was unpredictable. I have memories of us – one minute we’d be making stuff with bottles, mobiles out of coat hangers, the next I’d be dumped with the neighbours. She’d be dancing, then suddenly sobbing. Forgetting to get me from school. Angry with me, dragging me, then singing to me, plying me with Jaffa Cakes. Finally leaving me at Nana’s with no explanation, to wonder all my life, What did I do?

Hell, being pregnant seems to stir up a lot of emotional debris, and floating on top in a raft of her own is my mother. I can’t stop thinking about her. How did she feel with me growing inside her? Did she ever look at me and feel happy?

I wonder how you go about getting on
The Jeremy Kyle Show
. They’d track her down and save me the bother and we could be reunited. ‘Abandoned daughter pregnant!’ ‘Mother who deserted daughter now a grandmother!’ Yes, and they’d plug her into a lie detector and make her do a paternity test to tell me who my father is. I need to know these things now for genetic reasons.

Finding my mother is proving difficult with Nana away, but find her I will. I look out of the window, narrowing my eyes. She should know about her grandchild, and she can’t run for ever. I imagine how she’ll react; I picture her crying and vowing to be in her granddaughter’s life as a force for good. A fantasy, I know, but I also know I’d take anything, any insight she can offer, any thin scrap of a relationship without terms or conditions. Forgiveness – it makes me cry.

But no, save your tears, Viv. Stop thinking confusing thoughts about your mother. Concentrate instead on Max and having his baby. I think about all the times in the past when I thought I might have been pregnant, those tense moments, those risks I took and how I imagined it to be. It was a pretty star cloud of a thing, with decorated nurseries and tiny little shoes and silver hairbrushes. I imagined the moment of discovery: hugging the father, who looked a bit like Gary Barlow, crying with joy and dancing about together. When in fact Max and I just sat on that bed in Spain looking at the stick for a good long while. Then he checked the instructions one more time and whispered, ‘Whoa . . . shit!’

‘I’m pregnant . . . I am pregnant,’ I said into the middle distance.

‘You are.’

‘I am with child.’ I started nodding. ‘I’m having a baby all right.’

Max clutched my hand, his knuckles turning white as he squeezed.

‘Congratulations,’ he said.

‘And to you.’

We looked into each other’s faces in awe and then laughed in sudden gasps and said stuff like ‘Fucking hell’ and ‘I can’t believe it’ and then we booked flights to London.

The funny thing is, when you have this kind of news, you want to act, start building a nest. Everything has changed, but nothing has changed. The sun is in the sky, everyone’s going about their business, and there is absolutely nothing to do but wait . . . And obviously research. I’m starting an online pregnancy scrapbook so others can benefit from my wisdom, when I get time. I’m tired a lot – bone-weary, drop-on-the-floor tired. Yesterday I had to chop an onion in shifts because I was too tired to stand up.

But it’s good to be back in the Big Smoke. In a way I missed the traffic, the drizzle and the leaflets; there’s not enough people giving out paper in other places.

Max has set up the studio to work on his landscape exhibition. That’s what we’re calling his flat now that we’re both living at mine. It’s going well. It’s been a week of total bliss, just me and Max and Dave – fresh from the cattery and sulking behind furniture. Max is besotted with this baby. He keeps talking to my belly, saying, ‘I am your father,’ in a Darth Vader voice.

Anyhow, today Christie, my old assistant, and I are setting up an office for our new company, Dream Team PR. We decided we really need an office to be credible. The thing is, though, we can’t afford an office, so we’re going to be crammed into the top corner of a converted warehouse for £500 a month, including broadband, cleaning of common parts and shared kitchenette. I’ve already contacted our old colleague Mike to ask if he’ll come and help with setting up our website. He owes me since I rescued him when he was jilted at his own engagement party. Our first contract is to produce sex-themed crackers for my best friend Posh Lucy’s wedding, so we’ll be busy today sorting through whips and butt plugs.

Before that I’m meeting Posh Lucy for a breakfast wedding meeting. My objectives for this meeting are:

T
ell her I’m pregnant
.

A
sk
if I can be excused from the sexy pole-dancing at her wedding on account of me being pregnant.

G
et
her to pay up front for her sex-themed wedding crackers on account of me being skint.

I
think
if I’m direct and to the point, it should all go swimmingly.

‘
I
’m having
real trouble getting the ice sculpture for the wedding,’ says Lucy.

We’re in an upmarket organic juice bar she chose. This isn’t like her and it makes me worry – that and her twitchy eye. She sips madly on her pomegranate smoothie with double wheatgrass shot, while ticking off items on her to-do list. I’m playing with my ‘veggie medley crush’, feeling sick.

‘I wanted something phallic,’ she continues.

‘What like?’

‘A cock, Viv. One with champagne coming out.’

‘Oh, I see. Yeah, that would be . . . in keeping with the theme.’

‘I have two more places to try. You’d think they’d be able to carve just about anything out of ice, wouldn’t you?’

‘I’d have thought so, yes. Those ice-carver guys! Would you not fancy having, say, a swan, then?’

She ignores me and continues down the list.

‘And your sex-themed crackers, Viv – what’s in them? I spoke to Christie and she didn’t know! You do realise it’s next week?’

‘Ah well, you see, you have a choice. The edible slogan panties do push the price up a bit unless you go unisex, and it depends what you write on them. We got them to quote for “Reuben and Lucy” with the date and we’re in the final negotiations on price.’

‘Viv, I do not want my wedding guests getting a pair of unisex knickers with my name across them. Bloody hell, I knew I couldn’t trust you!’ She’s finished the drink now but keeps on sucking the straw noisily.

‘No, you can. You can trust me. As I said, you can choose. We also have mini penis-shaped bubbles, lube tubes and chocolate boobs.’

‘How many things per cracker?’ She narrows her eyes.

‘Four pieces, not including a joke or a fortune cookie. I’ve got some here for you to have a look at,’ I say brightly.

She waits silently while I place bits and pieces on the table. She opens and sniffs the mini lube tube.

‘Bubblegum?’ She waves the tube under my nose.

‘Mmm, that’s, er . . . quite nice,’ I say hoarsely.

She examines the edible pants. They’re mould blue with black trim and black writing.

‘Actually, these are quite amusing in their terribleness.’

‘That’s what I thought!’

She arranges the lube, pants, chocolate boobs and bubbles in a line. ‘So each cracker will have these?’

‘Yup, and a joke, or even one of these fortune cookies if you want.’ I slide a few into the middle of the table and we open one each. I read mine aloud: ‘“When the time comes, say yes.”’

She screws up her face. ‘“Those who tunnel deepest need no eyes,”’ she reads, then tosses the paper strip.

‘Best of three.’ I hand her another cookie.

She breaks it open. ‘“You are not a cat.” What the fuck are these?’ she laughs.

‘Who writes them? I want that job.’

‘Let’s have them – they’re funny.’

‘So all these things will be in a pearl-white cracker, and we’ll write the guests’ names on in swirly writing.’

‘You won’t do it, though, will you, Viv? Not with your handwriting.’

‘No, not me – someone with nice girly swirly writing. Someone who writes menus on chalkboards in pubs.’

‘Good.’ She smiles briefly.

‘And the cost will be three pounds per cracker. That’s as low as I could make it. Special deal for you. You want eighty, so you owe me two hundred and forty pounds, please, and can I have it today so I can finalise the order?’

She takes out her purse and peels off some notes. I’m jealous of/impressed by cash-carrying people. Why am I not one of them?

She watches me closely as she hands it over. ‘Don’t let me down, though, Viv. This is my actual wedding day, OK?’

‘When have I ever?’

‘That time inter-railing when you went off with Fabio.’

‘In adulthood, have I ever?’

‘You went home early from my thirtieth.’

‘I had flu. God, it’s amazing how you keep all these details to mind! How is there room for any sane thought in your head?’

‘There isn’t.’

‘I won’t let you down, I promise.’

She nods.

‘Your wedding is going to be brilliant!’

She smiles.

‘Hell, you’ve even got me pole-dancing with you!’ I decide on the spot not to try and get out of the pole-dancing and to only break the news about me being in the family way after the wedding. She’s fragile.

‘Yeah, we need to practise that routine again. I don’t think you’ve got the timing of the final swing properly.’

‘Actually, I think
I’m
in time with the music. You are the one who’s slow.’

‘We’re supposed to end up on the floor with our left arms up.’

‘About that – couldn’t we just wrap a leg round the pole at the end?’

‘No!’ she shouts, and bangs a fist on the orange Formica. A few heads turn. ‘I want you to do it my way!’

‘O-K,’ I say quietly.

She looks out of the window with a huge shuddering sigh. Her shoulders drop, she lets her hands fall open, and I see her eyes are shiny with tears.

‘Hey…Cold feet?’ I ask.

She shakes her head slowly, swallowing a sob.

‘Has he?’

‘Sorry,’ she whispers, beginning to cry. ‘It’s just . . . it’s just I haven’t told you about it with everything you were going through, but . . . I’m not pregnant,’ she says, as if finally admitting it to herself. ‘And we’ve been trying for six months.’

I slide my chair over, put an arm round her. ‘Oh.’

‘I got my period today.’

I sit for a while, wondering what to say. ‘Is that long enough to try?’ I venture. ‘Six months. I mean, is there a norm? How long is it supposed to take?’ And what am I, some fertile freak who gets pregnant from a toilet? Thank God, thank God I didn’t tell her.

She rubs her brow. ‘It can happen as soon as you start trying, or it can take up to a year. They don’t worry about it unless you’ve been trying for over a year.’

‘Well, then. You don’t want to be up the duff on your wedding day, anyway, do you?’

‘No. It’s just for the last six months Reuben hasn’t wanted to use anything. He says, “
Amor
, we are two people very much in love. Let Nature take its course.”’

‘That’s a quite good impression of him.’

‘Anyway, Nature hasn’t taken its course. He’s disappointed. I’ve become obsessed.’

‘You have to have a lot of sex. There was this girl at work who was properly trying. She had ovulation charts and wee sticks. She had sex every day. Her boyfriend was terrified of her.’

‘We have sex every day.’

‘But still . . . You do?’

‘Yeah, if I’m not in the mood, he has this ointment and ribbed—’

‘Do not go on.’ I hold up a hand and she smirks for a second before the worry comes down like a shutter and she’s back to mournful gazing. ‘Look, let’s get things in perspective. You haven’t been trying that long. I really think it’ll be OK.’

She sighs heavily.

‘I mean, I’m no expert, but you look hellish fertile to me. I’d be willing to bet – and put money on, mind – that you’ll be up the duff this time next month.’

‘Do you really think so, Viv?’

‘I do.’ She looks unconvinced, turning her head to the window and sighing. ‘Want me to sing “Chiquitita”?’ I sing the first line.

‘No.’

‘Want to see how long we can have a conversation using only the lyrics of Smiths songs?’

‘We were not cool students, were we?’

‘In our own way.’ I shrug. ‘Want another fortune cookie?’

She miserably opens her hand, wipes her eyes and frowns as she unwraps the paper. ‘“Your tongue is your ambassador,”’ she reads.