One Thing Led to Another

From: [e-mail]

To: [e-mail]

I was wondering, now we have our glad rags back, you free tomorrow night?

I am now!

I am on my way back from lunch, after reciting the email word for word and relaying the whole dry cleaners scenario to Anne-Marie and Jocelyn and basically the entire office, when I feel the growling vibration of a text message in my pocket.

It’s Jim.

Warren. House party tomorrow. Keep it free.

Presumptuous or what! Now I get my own back. I text:

Sorry, no can do, have hot date with sexy ex. Ha! Kiss that! One all. I do have a social life of my own, you know.

My phone rings immediately. ‘Jim’ flashes up.

‘Oh, now that is lame,’ he says.

‘Come again?’

‘Resurrecting an old boyfriend. I don’t think that counts.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t realize this was a competition!’ I laugh.

‘You started it. You’re the one who said “one all”.’

Jim is always like this when he is on school holidays. Too much time on his hands, gets very childish.

‘It’s a date isn’t it?’ I say. ‘He’s a bloke isn’t he? He fancies me, I fancy him, what’s not to like?’

‘Fine, it’s just, you know, take your good friend Jim for example. Not one to resort to dredging up old flames when in need of a bit of excitement, I travelled far and wide for romance and found an Italian corker who can offer me first class stays at exquisite hotels with no strings attached.’

‘Annalisa found you, remember? White as a sheet, having just barfed in a bin in Rimini town centre you were so hungover, I seem to remember.’

‘She didn’t know I’d just barfed in a bin.’

‘Bet she did, bet she could smell it on you.’ (I always sink to Jim’s level eventually.)

‘No, I was gentlemanly and paid for her coffee actually and anyway she fell for my northern charm and quick wit.’

‘Whatever.’

‘Yeah, whatever. The point is, I thought you hated Laurence?’

‘What makes you think it’s Laurence?! I know it’s hard to believe but I have had other boyfriends, you know.’

‘Not ones you’d call your “sexy” ex, you haven’t.’

I protest but Jim’s right. I would not call any of my other exes my sexy ex. Not because they weren’t sexy at all (I like to think I have upheld some standards in my life) but because Laurence was THE sexy ex. The One. Or as near as damned as I’ve ever been to it.

‘Anyway,’ I continue, feeling ever so slightly triumphant, that Jim has even thought about my past relationships enough to even make this observation, ‘I never said I hated him.’ Did I? He broke my heart; I was gutted for a while. OK, maybe I hated his guts for a while but I never actually hated him. ‘We were young, I expected too much. That was like, seven thousand years ago now anyway. Give the guy a break.’

‘I’ve got nothing against Laurence,’ protests Jim. ‘It was you that he upset, or have you forgotten the night you got back from travelling and demanded I come round, having drunk a bottle of wine in about half an hour feeling practically suicidal? What makes you think he’s changed is all I’m saying.’

‘Jesus Jim, it’s just a date, he didn’t ask me to marry him.’

‘OK. Well that’s OK then,’ says Jim, cheerily now. ‘Have a good time and make sure you give old Cane a damn good seeing to.’

I hang up, walk back to work smiling to myself. Jim really is weird sometimes.

I text Gina ‘how’s the evil hangover?’ And look at my watch: 1.53 p.m. There’s seven minutes till lunch officially ends. Still, a lot can happen in seven whole minutes. I go to the Ladies and then, I don’t know why, perhaps it’s women’s instinct that draws my attention just then, to something in my bag. Shimmering among the bus tickets and leaflets about cultural events I know I will never get round to attending, the blue wrapper containing the other pregnancy test from the pack of two I bought glints at me from the bottom of my bag. I’m not pregnant, I can’t be, I had a negative test. (Shelley Newcombe told me back in Year 9 that you can never have a positive after a negative.) But it cost me fifteen pounds and I really don’t like waste. And so I go into a cubicle and I get it out. It’s less of a conscious decision, more of a cleaning-up exercise, just as you might eat the one leftover stick of Kit-Kat that was making your desk look untidy. I wee on the little stick and balance it on top of the toilet roll holder, not thinking, just doing. Then I set the timer on my watch for two minutes.

1.50

This is ridiculous, I’ve even got PMT: sore boobs, knackered, short fuse, the Works

1.30

No period though and that’s a fact, I’m a week late; I’m never a week late

1.00

I am stressed though, that’s also a fact and I bet two seconds after doing this negative test, I’ll come on (ruining my best knickers it’s always the way)

0.45

I glance at the test, yep, just as I thought

0.30

Two lines emerging, God, I hate wasting money, especially due to paranoia

0.25

Misplaced, neurotic, paranoia

0.14

I pick up the test and tear off some toilet roll – I’m wrapping it up now, to throw in the bin

0.10

But then the light catches it – the breath catches in my throat

0.08

It can’t be, can it? can it? oh my God! tell me it can’t!

0.06

I feel like I might throw up, I swallow, take a deep breath, exhale slowly, then look at it again

0.04

But it’s still there

it’s still there…

a cross, a bright blue fuck-off cross! I’M PREGNANT! I’M FUCKING PREGNANT!! and I can hardly breathe, I can’t get my breath – help me! – my lungs won’t expand, and all I’m aware of, apart from this sensation, is a great surging, flooding of blood to my head…

If it wasn’t suddenly rush hour in the toilets, I might be making much more noise by now. But I can hear someone in the cubicle next to me, blowing their nose, and I know – she even does that in her own special way – that it’s Anne-Marie, so I don’t, I don’t make a sound. I just stay where I am, hand clasped over my mouth, my world having just shifted on its axis, and me hanging off the side by one fingernail.

My first concern (which points towards promising maternal impulses at least) is that I must have pickled whatever is there, if it really is there, by the alcohol consumed last night, the sambucas at Greg’s birthday drinks, the drugs. Shit, the drugs! I had a spliff with Gina last night and I am overcome with a murderous guilt, a guilt I am wholly and completely unprepared for. And then comes the shock, it hits me like a wall. Shock, guilt, shock, what the hell do I feel? The emotions seem to thrash over me, like merciless ice cold waves, pinning me to the back of the toilet door and stealing my breath.

There’s the sound of flushing next door, the taps running, the pad-pad of Anne-Marie’s hemp boots and the creak of the door as it shuts behind her. I’m feeling a whole kaleidoscope of emotions now but what are they? Am I happy? Is this elation I’m feeling? Or is it horror? I don’t know. I can’t think.

I hold the test in my hand, my breathing shaky, my palms moist, and suddenly I’m very angry. Angry that the other test lied to me, even angrier for doing this – getting pregnant in the first place, and now I’m angry at myself for handling this so badly.

Then it occurs to me. This cannot be right. No, it must be the alcohol from the weekend, turning the test positive. Like litmus paper. But I’m clutching at straws of course; I don’t really believe that. Plus, something instinctive tells me I am pregnant. I feel different. In that moment, the whole toilet cubicle in which I am standing seems to spin and to distort, as if everything I have ever known, ever experienced as my life, the feeling of just being me, is annihilated and I feel utterly disoriented.

I have to speak to Jim. Now. But I can’t face seeing someone I know, so I don’t take the lift down I take the stairs, two at a time.

Outside, everything looks different, as if I’m looking at it for the first time. It’s raining, pelting it down, and so I run, clutching my phone, to the doorway of a recruitment company at the end of the road. My hands are shaking as I find Jim’s number. I’m pregnant, I’m fucking pregnant!

It rings and rings and then he finally picks up.

‘Hello.’

His voice sounds muffled, sleepy almost.

‘Jim it’s me again.’

‘I know. Listen, can I ring you back?’ he whispers. I hear a woman cough.

Oh brilliant, Annalisa’s there. I am phoning him to tell him I’m carrying his child, and his Italian F.B. is in his bed on one of her impromptu visits to London, almost definitely naked. I met her once, his gnocchi nookie, on one of her ‘romantic’ breaks to East Dulwich.

‘You should get togezzer with Tess, she is adorable!’ she apparently said to Jim afterwards. ‘You’re an English lost boy,’ she always says to him. (She means loser, but she never quite gets it right, and ‘lost boy’ sums him up so much better I always think.) I have nothing against her. I really couldn’t care less if she was in his bed four times a year, but now? ‘Christ Jim!!’ I want to say, but I can’t, because it’s not his fault. I mean I know it takes two to tango and all that, and that if I am pregnant (I am still hanging onto the fact this might all be a very large mistake), it’s his doing as much as mine, but I can’t start going all jealous wannabe girlfriend on him now. It’s just…stood here, his DNA fusing with mine, it’s in slightly bad taste, that’s all.

And so I say, ‘It’s really pretty important. I do need to speak to you. Now.’

‘OK, hang on,’ he says, and there’s a few seconds where he obviously puts his hand over the receiver and explains he has to take the call.

I can picture him now. He is getting out of bed, hair sticking up, skinny legs making for the door, holding his privates. He is slipping on his dressing gown, going into the kitchen and picking up the other phone.

‘So what’s wrong, hey?’

The concern in his voice makes me well up, my voice starts to wobble.

‘I am pregnant after all.’

Silence. He swallows.

‘What do you mean? You did a test, it was negative.’

‘I did another, it was positive.’

‘How do you know?’

‘There’s a cross.’

‘What sort of cross?’

‘A blue one.’

A pause. Just the sound of his breathing.

‘Are you sure you’ve read the instructions properly?’

‘Yes. I’m sure, I’m not that stupid.’

There’s another silence and then when he speaks again, there’s a tone in his voice I’ve never heard before.

‘Is it mine?’ he says softly. And as the tears finally fall, and I say, ‘Yes, yes, of course it’s bloody yours,’ I realize that the tone in his voice, was hope.

We arrange to meet outside the Tate Modern after work; I’ll bring the test so he can see it for himself. I put the phone down and walk back to the office, under a cloud, through a city sheathed in rain. I imagine that everyone I pass: a group of smokers huddled outside their office, a queue outside the post office, can see inside my womb, red and illuminated. And I have never felt so extraordinary in my entire life.

When I get in the lift for the third time today, who should step in behind me but Julia, my ridiculously glamorous friend from Journalism College, who is eight months pregnant herself. She’s features editor of Luxe now, having actually worked her way up rather than got to the first place that would have her and never moved again, so we often bump into each other like this and have some awkward conversation about how I should send her some features ideas, which of course I never get round to.

‘Hi,’ she says, but I’m not really listening, I’m too fixated on the words that bubble threateningly in my throat. ‘I’m pregnant too!’ I want to say. ‘Help! What do I do!?’ But I don’t obviously, that would be ludicrous. So instead I say, ‘Had a good week?’

‘Yeah, chilled out,’ she says, stroking her bump. ‘It’s all I can do to haul myself off the sofa these days. Fraser’s started calling me The Rock, because I’m so hard and big and immovable,’ she laughs. Then she says, ‘Oh God, don’t. My pelvic floor isn’t quite what it was.’ Then she laughs again and I do too on some very obvious delayed reaction.

I imagine she can sense it, smell the fact I’m pregnant. They say pregnant women have heightened senses. I know any minute now she’s going to say it and it’s making me nauseous with anticipation. I run through what I’m going to say in my head, how I’m going to explain.

‘Tess?’ she says eventually.

‘Yes?’ I gasp. Oh shit, here it comes.

‘I said have you?’

‘Have I what?’

‘Have you got anything planned for the weekend?’

‘Oh right! I say, letting out an almighty sigh of relief. She’s frowning at me now.

‘Yeah, quiet.’

I can sense her looking at me, but I stare at the floor. She giggles.

‘You’ve met someone haven’t you?’ she whispers in my ear. ‘Go on, I can tell by that face.’

I don’t stop staring at the floor.

‘Oh no! I know! You’ve finally got it together with Jim – that’s it isn’t?’

‘No!’ I snap, making her start back ever so slightly.

‘Oh right. It’s just, you were looking kind of shifty that’s all.’

Thankfully it’s then that we get to the eighth floor and Julia waddles out as I mumble something about having a hangover.

I rush to my desk, the email’s there. I didn’t send it. Thank fuck I didn’t send it!

To: [e-mail]

Yes I’m free, if I haven’t been taken in by a polyamorous cult by then.

(Or if I haven’t been impregnated.)

I press delete.

By some miracle, I make it through the rest of the day, the sun sinking behind St Paul’s by the time I meet Jim outside the Tate.

He’s sitting on one of the black rubber benches when I get there. His gangly legs are stretched out in front of him and he’s carrying a bunch of freesias with foil wrapped around the stems.

He looks up when I say hello and squints into the light.

‘These are for you,’ he says holding out the flowers. They smell amazing. ‘I’m sorry about before.’

‘About what?’

‘Er, for being in bed with Annalisa when you rang to tell me you’re pregnant? I feel awful.’

‘Don’t worry, honestly I’ve forgotten already.’ A picture of her, nude, black hair flowing all over the pillow pops into my head. ‘Was she naked?’ I ask.

‘I thought you’d forgotten,’ says Jim. ‘Sorry,’ I mumble. ‘I have, I have.’

I sit down beside him. The evening sun flickers like embers on the river in front of us. ‘Anyway,’ I say. ‘Look at this.’

I undo the front pocket of my bag, take out the test and hand it to him. He unwraps it, looks at me, squeezes my thigh, then holds up the test to the light.

‘Mmm. There’s definitely a cross there isn’t there?’

‘Really? Oh God, I was hoping…Do you think?’

The reality hits me, there’s no getting away from this now. I burst into tears, tears of pure shock.

‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘I just don’t know what to do. I cannot believe this is happening, what are we going to do?’

Jim rubs his face with his hands then puts an arm around me and we don’t say anything for a while, just stare blankly at the water. Then Jim says, ‘I don’t know. But whatever happens it will be alright, OK? I promise. Whatever happens, I’m here for you.’

In reality there never really was any question of whether I was going to keep the baby.

‘It’s your decision,’ Jim said, as we walked across Millennium Bridge. ‘I’ll stand by you whatever you decide.’

It felt like I was alone at that moment. As if the glittering towers at either side, the Gherkin glowing orange like a burning rocket and the river below us were holding their breath, awaiting my decision.

But the truth was, I had already made my decision. The decision was made the moment the blue cross emerged. If I was eighteen, I wouldn’t think twice, I’d have an abortion. But I am twenty-eight, a grown woman and besides, the way things are going lately – Laurence showing up out of the blue and now this, the second earth-shattering event of the year and it’s only April – half of me wonders whether life is trying to tell me something and I should sit up and listen.

‘I want to keep it,’ I say. And even though I mean it, I still want to gobble all the words back again as soon as they’ve left my mouth.

‘You do?’ Jim stops, turns and looks at me. He looks…what is that look?…delighted?! And for a fleeting second, I think what a brilliant dad he’ll make and maybe, just maybe this isn’t so terrible after all.

‘Yes,’ I say looking at him. ‘It’s scary as hell but I do. I mean, it’s not sunk in yet, and this isn’t conventional. Actually it’s utterly mental! But…’

But what? I think.

‘But to have an abortion would feel like the coward’s way out,’ I say, and for that moment I really believe what I’m saying. ‘It would feel like not choosing life. Not just literally in terms of the baby, but for me, for us.’

Jim gets hold of my hand. We’re right on top of the bridge now and the wind is blowing our hair sideways, making our eyes sting.

‘I agree, Tess, it’s alright, I agree…’ He says beaming at me now.

‘And the main reason,’ I add.

‘What’s the main reason?’ Jim asks.

‘In the future, the years to come, I couldn’t deal with what could have happened, you know?’

‘I know, I know.’

‘I couldn’t deal with what might have been.’

CHAPTER FIVE

‘I knew as soon as I set eyes on Mac that I was in big trouble. At fifty to my twenty-six, he was way too old. But he was so bloody sexy – a big hairy bear on wheels, how could I resist that? People stare when he’s pushing Layla down the street in his leathers and old enough to be her grandad but I don’t care. He’s not what I expected, but he’s a kitten. The most loving dad Layla could ever wish for.’

Georgie, 27, Brighton

I could tell Jim was secretly delighted by his own virility – by the fact that he shot and he scored. But I also knew, despite his usual optimism, that he was freaked out beyond belief.

The days that followed were totally surreal.We were both – we still are – in a state of shock and took to calling each other sometimes three times a day with phone calls that went a bit this.

Me: Hello

Jim: Hello

Long pause

Jim: How are you feeling?

Me: Weird. How are you feeling?

Jim: Yeah, weird

Long pause

Jim: I’m going to be a dad, I can’t believe it

Me: You can’t believe it!? Try being the one who’s got to carry the thing for nine months

Jim: I thought I wouldn’t be able to have kids though, that I’d have killed all my strong swimmers with all the booze I’ve quaffed

(See, I was so right about the virility thing)

Me: Well you can and it’s true

Jim: I know, I just can’t believe it though, it’s like it’s happening to someone else

That particular line was not that encouraging. And I told him so.

We’re on the fourth floor of Borders on Oxford Street in the Parenting section.

I need to say that again.

We’re on the fourth floor of Borders on Oxford Street in the Parenting section.

Nope. Still sounds ridiculous.

I lean against the bookshelf leafing through a book called Bundle of Joy: 101 Real Stories of Motherhood as if I do this every day, as if I do, actually, belong to this weird species, most of them mutant-shaped, milling around the shop floor, hand in hand: ‘The Expectants’.

But I am not expectant. At no point did I ever expect this! When that positive test emerged it was categorically the most unexpected thing I have ever experienced in my life. Things like this don’t happen to me, they happen to the people I interview – everything happens to the people I interview, but not to me.

My life has been one big cushy ride so far, which is why I’ve always blagged it when it comes to taking precautions against life’s eventualities. After all, the less stuff happens to you, the less you think it will, don’t you? I never did lie awake at night, dissecting my last session of oral sex and panicking that I hadn’t listened in Biology and it was perfectly feasible to get pregnant from a blow job after all. I rolled my eyes at Mrs Tucker our ‘personal health’ teacher – you can imagine what she got called – who said you could get pregnant by withdrawal – something that evoked all the risk of a banking transaction to me.

Some would say I’m reckless (my mum would, but then my mother thinks caffeine after five p.m. is reckless). I would say I’ve always been relaxed, optimistic. OK, I admit it, veering towards winging it and hoping for the best. And yet, here I am, and the thing that’s caught me most off guard, aside from the stampede of hormones currently taking over my body like an occupying army, is that I’ve been caught out. My winging it wings are out of fuel, my Bank of Blag is cleared of funds, my cat’s nine lives are all used up. Game’s over Tess Jarvis. You’ve officially fucked up.

It’s late afternoon, ten past five, and the sun is pouring in through the floor-length window, illuminating a column of dust particles which swirl to the ground, a reminder of the passing of time, of the seconds, minutes and days since my news. In the bookshop café to my right, there’s the clatter of tea cups and saucers, normal people getting on with their normal lives.

Two aisles in front, I can just see Jim’s head of dark, overgrown hair buried in a book and I am immediately transported back to the day we met. He was stood like that then too, the first time I saw him, on the second floor of the John Rylands Library, head buried in the The Death of the Author, bathed in autumn sun.

I remember thinking, just as I do now, he looked a bit vacant with those full lips hanging slightly open. But I liked his slim, defined face too, this guy with the hair that had its own mind.

I squint to read the title of the book Jim’s reading: You’re Pregnant Too Mate! The Essential Guide for Expectant Fathers. And have a sudden inexplicable urge to blow out the brains of the author. He’s been reading it since we got here. Don’t ask me how we got here either, it wasn’t a conscious decision. One minute we were buying his mum a present for her birthday. (Already made the seamless transition from friend to mother-of-child, side-stepping girlfriend and wife as I go…) The next, we’d wandered in here, on auto-pilot really, me looking as shell shocked as if I’d just emerged from a national disaster, a look I’ve been sporting for more than a week now.

I go back to my book – a cheery story of a woman whose morning sickness was so bad she would dry heave at Tesco’s cheese counter – but the words start to blur, I can’t concentrate. Everything in here is too loud, too bright.

Ever since we decided we were definitely going ahead with this, the whole world has felt like this: like I’ve woken up in a different one.

I go home, I watch TV with Gina, I go to Star’s and sip sweet Turkish tea and chat to Emete whilst she mends my trousers. I do everything I’ve always done, and yet it doesn’t feel like me doing it. It’s like someone has hijacked my body. Someone pregnant.

‘Hey, listen to this,’ says Jim, leaning over the bookshelf. ‘It says here that at six weeks pregnant, your baby is the size of a shrimp – how cool is that?’

‘Right, yes, very cool,’ I say, trying to sound enthusiastic. ‘Although I don’t much fancy the idea of a sea creature setting up home in my body.’

‘Right,’ nods Jim and goes back to his book.

‘A shrimp,’ he mumbles when I don’t say anything else. ‘Maybe that’s what we can call it, “shrimpy”.’