Okay. That had sounded a bit odd, but he couldn’t not congratulate her, could he? Given that she’d been going for IVF with a sperm donor, this had to be good news for her. She was bound to be pleased. Unless she thought an anonymous sperm donor would be better than him.
Good grief. She was pregnant with his baby.
They should have been more careful.
They were inside the building now and Pranav had definitely just said something to him but James had no idea what.
‘Sorry, mate, I think I misheard what you just said. Could you tell me again?’
It was extremely difficult to concentrate on the answer and it was also extremely difficult to concentrate in the meeting.
‘Are you alright?’ Pranav asked him on the way out.
‘I’ve got a bad headache,’ said James, making a snap decision. ‘I’m going to take the rest of the day off.’
He put in some calls to cancel the other two meetings he’d had lined up for that afternoon and started to walk the couple of miles back to the flat, to clear his head.
The walk didn’t help. By the time he got home, he still had no idea what he thought about the baby.
Well, that wasn’t strictly accurate. He did know some things. He knew that he was happy for Cassie, because she’d wanted a baby so much. He knew that he was going to have to be involved in the baby’s life because there was no way that he’d be able to live with the knowledge that there was a child in the world whocouldhave an involved father but didn’t because he, James, had made the decision not to be involved. That would be doing to the baby what his own father had done to him, and he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did that. He also knew that he wanted the absolute best for the baby, and for Cassie, obviously. And that, even though he was of course going to be involved, he had no role model in his life and he’d probably inherited shit-parent tendencies from both his own parents and he’d probably mess up repeatedly, so it was a good job that he was going to be involved from afar.
And he also knew that he had absolutely no idea what to say to Cassie.
No idea at all.
He really couldn’t speak to her.
He’d send her a quick text to let her know that hewasthinking of her, but was busy. And then he’d get on with some work in his study, the mind-numbingly boring number-crunching kind, that you did have to concentrate on because otherwise you’d make a mistake.
Maybe while he was working his subconscious would figure out for him what he should say to Cassie.
He put the kettle on and tapped out a message.
So sorry, manic day. Speak very soon. Congratulations again.
One grey tick, two grey ticks.
It didn’t help his number-crunching, or his subconscious, that he kept glancing at his phone to see if the ticks had turned blue.
They went blue about an hour in. And then he got a reply.
She’d sent a photo, with a caption.
It was a scan photo. Easily recognisable because they all looked the same. Friends and colleagues liked to show them to you and, really, as a non-parent-to-be, it was hard to be that enthralled by them. Just a black and white grainy picture of the inside of a uterus, which was always a bit weird if you knew the owner of the uterus – probably not a very New Man reaction, so he’d never say it out loud, but definitely weird. And a blobby thing which was the start of a baby.
He read the caption.
The baby. Picture from 12 week ultrasound. Next one will be at around 20 weeks, to check for anomalies.
God. Anomalies. That was when they’d discovered that Cassie had lost her baby. She’d be beside herself with worry until then, presumably. He should send her a message to try to comfort her in some way. She’d been a great help when he’d confided in her.
Am guessing that this will be a worrying time for you and that you’ll be nervous until the next scan. As you said to me when I visited Leonie’s grave: one step at a time. One day at a time.
When he’d pressed Send, he took a proper look at the scan picture.
And, in fact,thisblob,hisblob, didn’t look exactly the same as the other blob scan photos he’d seen. It looked… It actually looked quite beautiful. It was going to grow into a person. It was going to grow intohisbaby. And Cassie’s baby, obviously.Theirbaby.
He needed to google to check exactly what the twelve-week scan showed.
