And Baby Makes Two (10 page)

If my mouth hadn’t been filled with vomit I’d’ve made some snappy answer to shut her up. Like, “I’m fine. This is what I do instead of having a second cup of tea.” It wasn’t even morning sickness, really. I got it all the time, morning, noon and night.

But my mouth
was
filled with vomit so I just gagged.

“Do you want me to make you a cup of tea before I go?”

I swear, the woman was a tea junkie. You wouldn’t want to be on the
Titanic
with
her
. Instead of a life-jacket, she’d throw you a cup of PG Tips.

“Agggh!” I choked in reply.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” I gasped. “I’m brilliant.”

I spat the remains of my breakfast into the bowl, rinsed my mouth with the glass of water I kept next to the loo for these emergencies and shuffled to the door.

She was still there.

“Are you going to school?”

She thought I should stay till the end of the year. To make sure that I did, she was blackmailing me. If I didn’t make an effort to go to school, even if I was puking up all over the place, she’d cut off my pocket-money.

“Do I have a choice?”

She wasn’t exactly subtle.

“No,” she said. “You don’t.”

I glared. “Well then…”

“
This
is what it means to be grown up,” she informed me. “You made your bed, and now you’re going to have to lie in it.”

I didn’t say anything. I hoped she could see in my eyes how much I hated her.

“Though knowing you, I shouldn’t think you actually made the bed first,” said my mother.

*  *  *

After the Spiggs left I got dressed.

I used to look forward to getting dressed in the morning. What mood was I in? What colours should I wear? You know, that sort of thing.

But not any more.

The only mood I was ever in was pregnant. My tummy was as big as a basketball, my breasts were like melons and my bum looked like it was padded. The only good thing about any of this was the breasts. Les was a breast man. He thought my breasts were great this size.

I stood in front of the full-length mirror on the back of my door.

I didn’t look like Cindy Crawford
or
Posh Spice. I looked like an inflatable girl that had gone wrong.

Plus, I didn’t have much that really fitted me any more. Stretch jeans and miniskirts aren’t exactly designed for a bulging body. And maternity clothes are. Which means that you might as well wear a dustbin bag with holes cut out for your arms. I’d seen a few pregnant women in dresses that actually showed the bulge, but there was no way I could go to school like that, it was asking for trouble.

I’d blown most of my savings on a maternity dress that was really cool. I found it in this trendy boutique for mothers-to-be. It was a knee-length A-line with a square neck and long sleeves, and an adjustable belt thing that tied high up at the back so you could wear it even after you had the baby. It came in green or blue. I reckoned green might make me look too much like a moving hillock, so I got it in blue. As per usual, Hilary Spiggs went mad when she found out how much I’d paid for it.
She
wanted me to wear the old junk she brought home. But I looked great in the dress. Only I couldn’t wear it every day, could I? I
never
wore the same thing twice in a row, unless it was pyjamas. I wasn’t going to let pregnancy force me to drop my standards.

The doorbell rang while I was trying on a heavy black jumper Charley’d left behind. It was so big that I didn’t look pregnant, I looked like I was swimming in treacle. I could leave my flies open and no one would ever know.

“I didn’t realize the ‘builder’ look was in this season,” said Shanee when I answered the door.

She used to wait for me at the post-box on the corner, but now she called at the house. I wasn’t sure if the Wicked Witch had put her up to it – to make sure I went to school – or if it really was because she got tired of waiting so long for me to get ready.

I struck a model-like pose.

“Am I radiant?” I gushed.

Pregnant women were supposed to shine like a radium dial. Everybody said so.

Shanee tilted her head on one side. “Well,” she said, “you do have a few more zits.”

It was all right for the headteacher and Hilary Spiggs to say I should stay at school. They didn’t have to put up with the teasing and taunting.

“What’s that you’ve got under your jumper, Lana?” shouted one of the Year Eights as Shanee and I walked into the building. “You smuggling footballs into school?”

So funny I forgot to laugh.

Sometimes it was footballs. Sometimes it was melons. Other times, they’d just laugh, without saying anything.

I wasn’t going to look over to count them, but there were about three of the pimply little cretins hanging out by the entrance. They were practically wetting themselves, they thought they were so hysterical.

“Ignore them,” said Shanee. “They’re baby dorks.”

It was what Shanee always said.

The baby dorks weren’t the worst, though. The worst were the older dorks. There were a couple of the real hard cases who would kind of slide up to me if I was on my own, smiling and drooling. “I hear pregnant women are always horny…” they’d say. Or, “I hear pregnant women are really desperate…” Or, “How about letting me have a taste of your milk?” Rude stuff like that.

“They’ll get tired of it eventually,” said Shanee.

This was also what she always said.

I didn’t say anything. A hot bubble of something that wasn’t quite air and wasn’t quite water had lodged itself in my throat. “Loo,” I muttered. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

We headed for the loo.

There were about a million girls stuffed into the toilet. It sounded like a hut full of chickens. A couple of girls were actually using the cubicles, but most of them were squashed together at the sinks, checking their make-up in the mirrors.

“Jesus,” Shanee groaned. “You couldn’t get a lizard through here.” She glanced at me anxiously. “Can you wait?”

I clapped my hand over my mouth and shook my head.

“Coming through!” shouted Shanee. “Coming through!”

No one so much as looked over. They were all too busy with getting their eyes right and admiring each other’s clothes. Normally, I’d’ve been with them.

I forced my way in. There was a free toilet right at the end, but I couldn’t get to it.

The hot bubble was beginning to burst.

I choked.

“She’s going to be sick!” screamed Shanee. “Get out of the way. She’s going to be sick!”

The girl who was blocking my way made a face, but she flattened herself against the girl in front of her, holding her mascara wand in the air like a flag.

“Jesus,” she muttered. “No wonder everybody warns you about having sex.”

*  *  *

“So, Saturday,” Gerri was saying. “We’ll blitz the lot. Miss Selfridge, Hennes, Gap…” She winked at Shanee. “We can even hit the Notting Hill Housing Trust Charity Shop if you want.”

Amie opened her packet of crisps. Cheese and onion. The smell was enough to make me gag.

“Sounds great to me. I want to get a top like that one we saw in
Cosmo
. You know, with the V-neck and the stripes?”

I chewed on a plain water biscuit and tried not to yawn.

I was used to school being boring, but not
lunch
, for God’s sake.

“It’s tempting,” said Shanee. “I got a brilliant denim jacket in the Trust last time we went. But I can’t go on Saturday.” She made the face of someone who has suffered a lot. “I’ve got to mind the brats.”

“Bring ’em with you,” said Gerri. “We can handle three of them between us.”

Shanee groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding! I’d rather take a bear shopping with me. It’d behave better and we’d get on the news.”

Gerri turned to me. “What about you, Lana? You can still squeeze through the aisles, can’t you?”

“Oh, hahaha.” I bit into another biscuit. “Actually, maybe I will come along. I want to check out Mothercare. It’s time I started thinking about his clothes.”

“What makes you think it’s going to be a boy?” asked Gerri.

“I just know.” I shrugged. “You have a feeling about these things.”

Amie choked. “I’d’ve thought you’d’ve had enough of feelings.”

“And I should probably check out the baby books…” I went on. “I still haven’t decided about breast-feeding.”

“Please, no … no more about breast-feeding.”

To my surprise, it was Shanee who was holding up her hand and looking pained.

“Am I being a breast-feeding bore?” I enquired. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Amie and Gerri both looked at Shanee.

“Well, you do bang on about it,” she said defensively.

“Among other things,” mumbled Gerri.

Amie started humming “Rock-a-bye Baby” under her breath.

“But it’s important.” Now I was the one who sounded defensive. “It can mess up a kid for life if you get it wrong.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to talk about it all the time,” said Shanee. “Talk about something else.”

I couldn’t talk about something else. Most of my topics of conversation had dried up. I didn’t even see that many films any more. The cinema seats were too uncomfortable for more than a few minutes. And, in case you’re interested in irony, now that I had a free source of videos I always fell asleep on the couch before they were over.

“Like wha—” I began. But I didn’t get any further. Another bubble was rising in my throat. My mouth felt like a cup of half-finished hot chocolate that had been left under the bed for a couple of weeks.

“God!” I gasped, and jumped to my feet, scattering the rest of my lunch on the ground. “I’m going to be sick again.”

Gerri groaned. “You’d think you’d carry a stack of sick bags with you,” she said.

There was one person I never complained to, and that was Les. Not about all the regular general aches and pains, or the morning sickness, or the indigestion, or the sore tits, or anything like that. I didn’t want him to think I was a whingeing pregnant woman. If I felt like I was going to puke, I didn’t gag and choke and rush off with my hand clamped over my mouth the way I would’ve if I was with Hilary or Shanee. I excused myself with a smile and a vague grunt and just wafted away. I ran once I was out of his sight. And I always turned the tap on in the bath when I had to be sick, so he wouldn’t hear. I never talked about nappies or breast-feeding or anything like that with Les, either. I mean, Shanee complained and she was a girl, it should’ve been interesting to her. I didn’t want to bore Les or make him think I expected him to go shopping for stuff for the baby.

And there was one part of my life that pregnancy actually improved.

My sex life. I hadn’t realized before that certain men found pregnant women a real turn-on, but they did. Les said pregnant women were sort of exotic and exciting. He said none of his friends had ever made it with a pregnant woman. They were all really curious about it. And jealous.

“Imagine,” he said. “
Me
, the boy in my year voted most likely never to have sex. What a hoot.”

Hilary and Charley finally got back together around Easter, and, as soon as they did, Les started dropping round after work again.

At first he’d have a beer, eat a takeaway and watch the news or the football before we got into a clinch, but after a while he didn’t even bother to eat.

He thought my breasts and my bum were fantastic. “Now that’s what I call a real handful,” he’d say admiringly.

It was almost surprising that he actually understood I was pregnant. For all he ever said about it, he might have thought I was just putting on weight. We never talked about me being pregnant except in connection to the size of some of my external parts. It was a wonder, as my nan would say. A real wonder. I looked at myself and started counting the months before I could get into real clothes again, but Les looked at me and saw a sex goddess. A sex goddess who couldn’t get knocked up.

“Natural birth control,” is how Les put it. “Sex without fear.” He grinned. “And without condoms.” Les didn’t like condoms, he said it wasn’t the same. He obviously didn’t know from personal experience, but that was what his friends told him.

I was happy to be his sex goddess. Even if most of the time I felt more like hell’s plaything, it was great for my ego. For someone who’d been a little slow in getting started, Les was making up for lost time. He was always hugging and stroking me, and he’d have to be really tired or pissed not to want what he called “a quick roll in the hay”.

That’s why I thought that when Les started talking about his summer holiday he meant we were going away together. To somewhere romantic with room service where we could make love for hours instead of minutes just in case the Spiggs came home unexpectedly.

We even looked through the brochures together: Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Spain… To be honest, they all looked pretty much the same – a blue blob of water, a blob of sand dotted with bodies, and a hotel – but I didn’t care
where
we went. I knew wherever we went, we’d find a private lagoon with a palm tree and water the same blue as my good maternity dress.

Then one night Les turned up with a bottle of fizzy wine.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked as he unscrewed the top.

“You won’t believe it, but I’ve been sort of promoted. They’re transferring me to Finsbury Park.” He puffed out his chest. “Manager.” He laughed. “That makes me the youngest manager in the company.”

I forced a happy smile on to my face. This
was
good news. Les was a manager at only twenty-one. He’d be a director or something by thirty. We’d live in the suburbs and I’d have a four-wheel drive with tinted windows and lots of kids and dogs in the back. But I couldn’t be that happy about it
now.
It meant I could never just drop by the shop any more. It meant he had further to come.

“But that’s not all.” Les grinned. “They finally agreed my holiday time. I booked my package this morning.”

I didn’t hear “my”. I heard “our”.

“Really?” I couldn’t exactly bounce with excitement (not without knocking something over), but there was excitement in my voice. “Where are we going? When?”