Just Between Friends

And Rich, the wealthy banker who, if I’d drunk a number of cocktails, we were sitting in the right light, and I squinted, looked passable for Ryan Gosling. He had taken me to some of London’s most expensive bars and restaurants – even a couple of swanky hotels in the New Forest – during our six-month courtship, but he had absolutely no sense of humour. He didn’t even find it amusing when I introduced him to the new Snapchat filters and sent him a video of myself singing ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’ half naked while looking like a fluffy white bunny. It was never going to work. There’d also been Tom from Norway, and a couple of other one-night stands whose names I couldn’t remember.

I had taken a few risks along the way too, having unprotected sex in the middle of my cycle, then watching and waiting for the slightest sign of a pregnancy or a period symptom, wondering whether, if I was expecting a baby, I could give it a go with the father; if maybe there was a chance for us. But no pregnancy had come.

Curious to know about my fertility, I undertook tests which revealed, at the age of 35, that I had a low egg count. When I’d asked my gynaecologist how he thought it would affect me, he’d said brightly: ‘The best way of finding out is to get on with it!’ Noticing the silent tears appear in my eyes, he’d then asked: ‘Have you ever been pregnant?’ He had touched a very raw nerve.

‘Once,’ I’d replied quietly. ‘I had an abortion, a long time ago.’

‘Well that’s good news,’ he’d said optimistically. ‘I suggest you keep trying, and it will happen.’

I had never seen my abortion as ‘good news’.

I felt a despair and loneliness that the years since the abortion had failed to completely shift. When friends all around me had seemed to be gleefully falling in love, getting pregnant or talking about starting a family, I had withdrawn from socializing with them. Friends were easy to lose, it seemed. As time had passed, I had begun to think more and more about the person who got me pregnant when I was 19. I had viewed him through rose-tinted glasses and still wondered how different life might have been if I’d told him the truth, instead of ending our relationship. Would we have kept the baby? Would we still be together now, as a family?

But today, finally pregnant again, at last I felt able to make up for lost time with Katie. I listened with renewed interest – plus a mix of trepidation and awe – as she recounted her birth story, wondering what my experience would turn out to be.

‘Anyway, I’d better go back into the group, we’ll be starting again in a minute.’

‘Keep me posted,’ she commanded.

‘I will.’

This time I didn’t return to my usual seat, I deliberately sat next to Aisha.

Chapter Eight

Aisha

Sunday 2nd May

I had a dream last night that Jason missed the birth.

It was just before the baby arrived. I had gone into labour, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. I searched frantically around the house, panting as my contractions got more severe. Barely able to stand on my feet, I called him endless times, but he didn’t pick up. I called our mutual friends and family, and some of his colleagues, begging them to help me track him down, but no one could find him. I panicked that maybe something had happened to him. Finally I called an ambulance and I could hear its siren whirring down the street coming closer and closer to our house to take me to hospital. I was all alone…

Then I woke up.

The dream left me feeling unsettled; a feeling that, if I was honest, I hadn’t been able to shake since the day I found out I was pregnant.

I had delayed taking the test until I was sure my period was three days late – and even then I promised myself I would wait until the following morning to take it because you’re meant to get a more accurate result first thing. Jason had pulled an all-nighter at work the night before, and at 10 a.m. sent a text to say that they still weren’t finished and he would probably be home very late again. ‘At least I’m clocking up the overtime. I can probably afford that trip to Paris I’ve been promising you,’ he quipped, in an effort to placate me. It was hard to tell over text whether he was being sarcastic or not, and it was typical that he happened to be on an all-nighter at the exact same time that I was going to discover if we were pregnant. I knew he’d be so excited too and I wanted to share the moment with him. But the suspense was killing me. It was a moment I’d waited for, for some time. Jason might describe us as ‘casually’ trying, but it was anything but casual for me.

Jason and I had been open about our desire to have children since we’d started dating six years ago, so once we had got married three years later in Hong Kong I imagined we would start trying straight away, but Jason had been adamant about laying stronger foundations for our financial security before we did. When he’d been transferred to the London branch of the city trading firm he worked for in Hong Kong, ‘Project: Baby’ had been nearly ready to begin, and when he’d racked up a reasonable amount of overtime after a few months, it had finally been green-lit. But then another whole year had passed, without a hint of a pregnancy. Admittedly, neither of us had been fastidious about keeping track of the all-important dates in my cycle for the first six months, but I then began paying close attention. With Jason’s increasingly erratic work schedule, it had sometimes been challenging to pencil in any night of hot sex, let alone on the days I’d been most fertile. And whenever we had found ourselves able to spend a cosy evening at home together, one of us – mostly Jason – hadn’t felt up for it. Scheduled sex had never felt less sexy. When he rebuffed an advance, I had sometimes got the impression that perhaps Jason wasn’t ready to be a father yet, but I had pushed these thoughts out of my mind and carried on. As the weeks had passed, my wish to fall pregnant had grown stronger and stronger; I recalled myself as a young girl pushing my dolly around in the miniature pram Dad had bought me. She was called Brenda. I had loved that doll so much. A strong maternal instinct had been in me from such a young age so when it didn’t happen as quickly as I always imagined it would, I began to get superstitious about it.

If I’d happened to spot a solitary magpie on my jog around the common, I’d saluted it and muttered under my breath: ‘Hello Mr Magpie, how’s your wife and children?’ while urgently scanning the area for his mate and feeling deflated when I couldn’t find them. Each time I’d neared the end of my cycle, finally two weeks post-ovulation, I had obsessed over whether I was going to get my period or not. Each trip to the toilet had become a heightened experience as I hoped there wouldn’t be blood on the loo roll; each day I had been overly aware of my body, wondering if a slight sensation in my abdomen was a premenstrual ache or a tiny, fertilized egg implanting itself in my womb. And then when my period had come, there had been a brief dalliance with denial, wondering whether the first drops of blood were spotting related to implantation. I had googled pregnancy symptoms so exhaustively I knew every possible scenario. But this hope had always been followed by the crushing disappointment and acceptance that I was not pregnant again that month.

At 35, I wondered if I’d left it too late. A year of trying wasn’t long in the scheme of things, but when you were suddenly desperate for something, it felt like an eternity.

But that morning, my period slightly late, I felt different.

I woke up feeling really positive. After receiving the text from Jason, I decided to walk up to Clapham Common to keep myself occupied. Just a short stroll from our flat, I approached the common on the south side, taking my usual short cut through the back streets to reach the open space for a light morning run. I saw two magpies and then three, fluttering playfully between two big oak trees, almost bare of leaves, as crisp and clear as anything. It was a bright day, the air felt fresh and smelled of moist bark, and the dew hadn’t yet dried on the grass.

I stopped to watch the magpies as they hovered around the low braces of the tree, coming together for a moment and then scattering, their movements so rhythmic and graceful, they had to be a little family.

‘One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl…’ There were definitely three. ‘A girl,’ I whispered under my breath. ‘It’s happening – I’m having a girl.’ I felt it in my gut and there was nothing I could do to stop a huge smile spreading across my face.

After a shorter than usual circuit of the common, buoyed by Mr Magpie, his wife and child, I called Jason. He didn’t answer, so I sent him a message:

Hey baby – call me asap!

I tried to get on with some work. But although I read the email from my editor at least five times, as she detailed the list of amends to my latest illustrations, nothing was sinking in.

I tried ringing him again – no response. Even when the little white ticks on WhatsApp had turned blue, so I knew he had read my message, he still didn’t reply.

An hour passed, then two, and still no word. I just couldn’t wait any longer. I decided to take the pregnancy test on my own.

After drenching the stick and my hand in pee, I sat nervously on the closed toilet seat, my knickers still around my ankles, waiting for the result. I started trembling as one minute passed and the control line appeared. Then, slowly but surely, I watched in delight and disbelief as two clear blue lines came into view inside the ‘pregnant’ window.

‘Oh. My. God,’ I said slowly, out loud. ‘Oh my God. I’m pregnant!’ And I looked to the ceiling and personally thanked each of the three magpies that had brought me luck that Friday morning.

Finding out you are pregnant is one of the most defining moments in a woman’s life. The moment you realize that nothing will ever be the same again. And sharing that news has to be handled in the correct way. It was times like this that working from home as a freelancer was particularly hard because although I was glad not to have to contend with the claustrophobic, hot London Tube during rush hour each day, I was all on my own. The cosmos had shifted significantly, I was cradling an enormous secret in my abdomen, but I had no one to tell.

For a moment I was transported back to the times when Jason and I would meet after work when we lived in Hong Kong.

We’d had a small, but really cute one-bedroom apartment in Kowloon, high up on the twentieth floor and with a tiny balcony. The slightly batty porter, who had often been found talking to himself as he manned the security desk downstairs, had had a soft spot for me.

‘Mèilì, Lady Aisha!’ he would say –‘beautiful’ – when I walked past him most mornings, my arm interlocked with Jason’s as we’d head into the city, to our workplaces together.

‘Hey, she’s mine!’ Jason would joke in return, squeezing me tightly.

The thrill of seeing him waiting to surprise me at lunchtime outside my publishers’ building amongst the high rises of Central Hong Kong, looking handsome in his smart suit and attracting a few admiring glances from my colleagues – both male and female – had always lifted my spirits. After work we would meet for cocktails and dinner, or simply get on a tram, travel up to the Peak or explore a new area of the city, always holding hands. It had felt amazing to be on an adventure together…

I checked my phone again to see that Jason had still not responded, so I googled: ‘What should you do when you first find out you’re pregnant?’ and was confronted by a host of instructional lists telling me to work out the due date (20th May), find a midwife and figure out my finances, all the while avoiding a host of food and drinks, including caffeine, soft cheese, raw fish and alcohol: four of my greatest pleasures in life. I suddenly hankered for a double espresso and a cream cheese and smoked salmon bagel.

I looked at the clock. It was midday. I was going to struggle to survive a whole seven hours in possession of this huge secret until Jason came through the door late tonight. Besides, the little blue lines might have faded by then and I wanted him to see them too. I touched my stomach, trying to work out if I felt pregnant; it was all very surreal.

I took a shower and stared at my naked body in the bathroom mirror as I searched for non-existent signs that I looked different this morning. I tried calling Jason one last time but still no reply. Nothing for it – I’d take a leaf out of his book from when we lived in Hong Kong and go and surprise him at work for lunch. I had to tell him the happy news in person.

When I reached Jason’s office building near Moorgate, he still hadn’t responded to any of my messages so I asked the man on reception to let him know I was there.

The City building couldn’t have been more different to my cosy workspace at our kitchen table. I looked at my reflection in the tall, mirrored wall next to the elaborate reception desk. It was still me all right, but if I wasn’t mistaken, I looked a little paler than usual, perhaps a bit fuller around the face. Could pregnancy hormones be kicking in already?

When the receptionist had located Jason, he finally appeared through the lift doors. ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’ he said, looking more concerned than overly happy to see me. I became conscious of my jeans and trainers, a contrast to the smart pencil skirts with matching jackets of the women walking with purpose around me.

I took in his appearance – unkempt hair, bloodshot eyes, and the same shirt he was wearing yesterday, only now it looked like it had been thrown around a dressing room by a team of rugby players.

‘You look awful,’ were my first words. They were allowed because I was his wife and it was true.

‘Thanks, I feel it too,’ he murmured, not looking me in the eye.

‘I’m serious, you look shit.’ I bit my lip; stress wasn’t good for the baby. He was spoiling my special news.

‘It’s been a long night, babe, don’t make me feel any worse. Please,’ he said, firmly and slightly too loud, because a woman nearby glanced over at us.

Self-consciously I rubbed my wedding band. ‘Did you get any sleep at all?’ I probed.

‘A little, in one of the pods,’ he replied defensively. ‘I feel like I’m coming down with something too.’

‘And you had a few beers?’ I continued. I knew the smell of last night’s alcohol and he reeked of it. It reminded me of our early dating days, when he’d sometimes rolled into bed at my flat at 3 a.m. stinking of beer, but desperate to see me, blabbering soppily. A heightened sense of smell was another pregnancy symptom I’d read about.

‘A couple – we popped out at God knows what time to try to unwind for a bit before going back,’ he admitted. I wondered who the ‘we’ was, knowing that late-night shifts were often a solitary job. But I didn’t interrogate him further; he was clearly shattered.

I pressed my fingertips into my belly. Somehow I had expected him to know instinctively why I was here, meeting him for lunch like this, out of the blue. I’d only ever done it once before, and that was on his birthday.

‘Shall we get a sandwich or did you come here just to tell me I look like shit?’ he asked, heading towards the revolving door. He hadn’t even kissed me or reached for my hand. It wasn’t like Jason. I wondered if this was a bad idea after all. Maybe I should have just waited for him to come home in his own time. He seemed awkward about me being here.

We walked in silence into the warm day outside. From nowhere I felt tears fighting their way up to the corners of my eyes. But I wouldn’t let them break free, not here, amongst the pencil skirts and wafts of Elnett.

I forced a smile. ‘Where shall we go then? I’m starving.’

Jason suggested Pret so we got takeaways and, as it was such a nice day, headed to Finsbury Circus Garden. The pregnancy test was burning a hole in my bag. I wanted to steal a look at it, to check it still had a positive reading. That I hadn’t imagined it.

‘So, I didn’t come here to tell you off,’ I said, taking a deep breath and feeling a little stronger for it as we sat down on the grass together. ‘I came because I have some news. Some good news.’

I delved into my bag and encased the little stick in my palm. I moved fractionally closer to him, so as not to show it off to the entire garden, which was busy with office workers eating their own Pret sandwiches.

I revealed the tip of the stick and unclasped my fingers from around its body, so the two blue lines in the ‘Pregnant’ box were clear to see.

I watched his face for a reaction. He was staring at the stick, unmoving.

‘I’m pregnant,’ I whispered, in case he needed it spelling out. He can’t have thought I’d come here to show him a negative result.

His eyes were wide with shock, yet he still said nothing. I looked up at him, my eyes just as big. ‘You’re going to be a daddy, Jason!’

‘Wow. Oh wow, Aisha,’ he said at last, sitting upright, inhaling deeply and blowing the air out loudly. He took the stick from my hand and held it, not caring who might see. ‘Oh wow.’ He was almost laughing. ‘This is for real, right?’

‘Yes, baby – of course it is!’ I said, my eyes darting between the stick and Jason. ‘I really wanted to do the test with you this morning, but you weren’t home and I couldn’t wait any longer. I’m sorry.’

I paused. Willing him to say something – anything – to suggest he was happy.

Another couple of seconds passed.

‘Isn’t it brilliant?’

‘It’s amazing!’ he smiled at last. ‘It’s fantastic!’ and almost immediately it was Jason who was dabbing tears from his eyes.

‘We’re going to be parents,’ I beamed, finally able to let a feeling of pure joy wash over me. ‘We’re going to have a little baby.’

‘It’s – it’s mind-blowing,’ he said, and put a hand on my stomach. ‘To think our child is growing in there.’ And with those words, tears welled up in my eyes too. No amount of blinking could make them stay put.

‘I promise I’ll be a good dad,’ he whispered, tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘I swear, I’ll try my best.’

I pulled him into a big hug and he buried his face into my neck, breathing me in as he cried.

‘I know,’ I murmured. ‘You’ll be the best daddy ever.’

Five minutes later, I was still trying to console Jason, who was properly sobbing, on the grass, in the middle of Finsbury Circus. Was this normal? Surely this scenario should really be the other way around given I was the one with the raging hormones?

‘I don’t know if I’m worthy of this,’ he said, before adding, ‘but I’m so pleased you got your wish.’

He was right, I had got my wish – but wasn’t it his wish too?

In that moment, being pregnant was all that mattered. However, looking back, I couldn’t help but wonder exactly what he meant by not feeling ‘worthy’.

Chapter Nine

Lucy

Wednesday 5th May

The third meeting of The Baby Group was at Aisha’s house that evening and, as she only lived around the corner from me, it meant I didn’t have to carry my heavier-than-it-looked best ceramic dish very far. I had made an organic spinach salad with shaved carrot, toasted pine nuts and mango pieces, topped with a lime dressing – not my best effort compared to the first salad, but still impressive, considering I’d pulled it together after a full Wednesday at work. I needed to start taking things slower. After having a few Braxton Hicks contractions in the night I was fearful the baby was going to arrive ahead of the date of my planned caesarean on 24th May. I still had a week and a half left at work as I was keen to maximize my maternity leave, so this little baby needed to stay put. I turned down Oscar’s offer to carry the salad dish for me, but was heeding his advice to give up going anywhere on the Tube. From now on, he insisted I took an Uber to and from the office, because the last thing I wanted was for my waters to break somewhere between Clapham Common and Leicester Square. So this Baby Group was already proving its worth, allowing me to retain the semblance of a social life, right on my doorstep.

‘You’re basically paying for new mates,’ Oscar had joked when I first told him about joining the group.

‘No, I’m learning how to have a baby!’ I had protested.

Despite owning a sizeable number of pregnancy and childbirth books, most of them had remained unopened. And I had joined the group to grow a network here on my doorstep. I hadn’t found it particularly easy to build strong connections with the women at work and many of my old friends, including Katie, had moved out of London in recent years. I was still making up my mind about some of the others in the group, but Aisha had surprised me and was so far the lead contender for a new buddy.

It was a beautiful evening that felt properly warm, and as I strolled to her house in my flats and a long, clingy black dress – the only dress that still fitted me – I marvelled at how pretty this part of South London was. Most of the homes on the streets around here were well looked after, with pruned roses and the odd palm tree in the front gardens, white slatted blinds at windows and shiny gloss finishes and brass trimmings on front doors. You had to earn a substantial amount to afford one of them.

Oscar and I had only moved to the area two months ago. But our fling had begun two years ago. At first it had been exhilarating. I had never quite been sure if there were other women too and, initially, I hadn’t cared. It had all been part of the fun – stolen evenings in hotels during ‘business trips’ or booty calls after nights out. The sex had been intoxicating. But as time had gone on, my heart had started to yearn for his full attention, just as much as my body longed for his touch. I was falling in love with Oscar. He crept into my thoughts more often, although I questioned whether he was as into me as I was into him.

Then, one evening in January last year, Oscar had called to ask if he could come and stay with me that night. When he came over, there had been something different in his voice. He’d seemed willing to discuss the ‘us’ that had so far been off limits. ‘I’m ready to focus on the future now,’ he had said, before kissing me passionately all the way to the bedroom. The thought that he might want to be with me officially had been electrifying.

We had decided he would still live half the week in his Marylebone bolt hole, and the rest of the week he would spend at my Brixton flat. But my dreams of him and I going the distance, which, in my mind, involved having a family together, had soon become unfounded when he continued to make it crystal clear that he had already done the marriage and babies thing, and he didn’t want to do it again. Not getting married I could live with, but I had been devastated he didn’t want children with me.

So that was when I had had to take matters into my own hands. I had to think about my body; my biological clock. I was fed up of people making assumptions about me. I had to make a decision.

My getting pregnant changed everything. And now here we were – happy – I was so glad he had finally embraced it.

The only thing left to sort out had been where to live – we couldn’t keep the Marylebone/Brixton arrangement with a baby.

‘Clapham seems nice,’ I had suggested, imagining long walks on the common with my baby. Having a newborn in summer had to be the best timing, and I had envisaged a sun-drenched maternity leave of sitting outside pubs sipping a cheeky glass of prosecco over lunch with my new yummy mummy pals, while our babies dozed soundly in their prams next to us.

It wasn’t hard to find the perfect house to rent just south of Clapham Common near the chi-chi and sought-after Abbeville Road, with its handy array of independent delis and boutiques, including an overpriced butchers, a fromagerie, a Gail’s bakery and a gastro pub that buzzed with locals at every time of day or evening. For me it had to be that area – and through a turn of fate, an acquaintance of Oscar’s ran an estate agents in that patch, and found us the perfect place which we snapped up before it even went on the market. It all fell into place so easily. It was a good idea, wasn’t it?