‘I know.’ She was still beaming.
They sat there, smiling at each other like loons, with James’s hand on Cassie’s tummy, until they were called for the scan.
‘Oh my God oh my God oh my God,’ Cassie babbled. ‘Now I’m scared. There could still be something wrong.’
They stood up together and James clasped her hand. ‘I’m sure everything’s okay,’ he said. Please God he was right. ‘And I’m here.’ Yeah, not such a helpful thing to say. Where had he been the rest of her pregnancy to date? Sitting in London, worrying about her, thinking about her but not knowing what to say to her. What an idiot.
They held hands right into the room, Cassie gripping his like it was the only thing keeping her standing.
By the time she’d lain on the bed, rolled down the – frankly peculiar, but also clever – large, stretchy waistband on her jeans and had jelly smeared all over her tummy, and the sonographer had done some chat, James was feeling pretty jittery himself.
‘And everything looks great,’ the sonographer told them a few minutes later. The relief was immense. ‘Let me talk you through all the different things we check for.’
James leaned forward so that he could focus better on the screen. Apparently he and Cassie were holding hands again.
The baby had grown so much since the last scan. There was a miracle going on inside Cassie.
‘Would you like to know the baby’s gender?’
‘No,’ Cassie said. ‘Yes. I don’t know. James?’
‘I don’t know,’ James said. It had to be her decision. Common courtesy. He might be the father but she was the one doing all the hard work here. Hereallywanted to know, though. Right now. All his friends,allof them, who’d had babies, had chosen not to find out the sex. And he did get that, totally, because obviously surprises were cool. But equally, this sonographer womanknewwhether or not the baby was a boy or a girl. So James wanted to know too. ‘You choose,’ he said.
Cassie was still thinking.
‘Yes, please,’ she suddenly squealed.
‘You sure?’ James asked.
‘Are you certain?’ the sonographer asked.
‘Yes. I am.’ Cassie spoke so loudly that both James and the sonographer jumped a little and then they all laughed.
‘Okay, so here goes.’ The sonographer paused. Cassie squeezed James’s hand so hard that he wondered if it might be possible for someone to break a bone like that. ‘It’s a girl.’
‘Oh my goodness.’ Cassie turned to look at James and he leaned down and hugged her, hard, with the arm that didn’t have the possibly broken hand.
‘Oh my goodness,’ she said again when he finally sat back up.
‘Yup.’ No other words. James would never have believed you could love a baby so much before it was even born.
‘I’ll print the photos out for you now,’ the sonographer told them.
‘Could we get two sets of all of them?’ Cassie didn’t look at James as she spoke.
When they left the room, Cassie carefully gave one set of the photos to James, again not looking at him.
‘Thank you.’ He took them equally carefully.
This was awful now. They couldn’t just part like this. They needed to talk more.
‘Would you like to have lunch with me?’ he asked. He looked down at Cassie. She was pressing her lips together, like she either didn’t know what to say or was about to say something she didn’t think he’d want to hear. ‘We’re having a baby together,’ he said, not quite sure even as he said it where he was going with that.
‘Lunch would be great,’ she said, after a few seconds. ‘Is Mexican okay for you?’
‘Mexican’s great.’
They didn’t chat much on the way to the restaurant, because Cassie kept nearly falling over, so they were both occupied in keeping her upright.
