When we finally get to meet our child, sort of, we don’tsee much on the screen, and certainly the little grain of rice isn’t giving us many clues.
‘They’re in there on their own, I can tell you that much,’ says the technician, passing a wand over my still-flat stomach. I push my tummy muscles out, hoping to create some semblance of a bump.
And then we hear the rapid-fire thtum-thtum-thtum of a heartbeat and really, is there a more glorious sound? Luna or Jonah sound as though they are already running full-pelt at life. We listen to this beautiful sound. I want it as my ringtone. I want it sampled in the biggest pop hit of the summer. I want to hear it every single day. Our little grain of rice may only be a few inches from the fingertips resting on my stomach as the crow flies, but he or she already feels half a universe away.
‘Oh my God.’ Johnny exhales quietly, not wanting to talk over the sound. I can feel him tingling with excitement. We leave the clinic, feeling garlanded, and like more of a unit than we have in a long time.
That evening, as we sit watching TV, there’s a softness to us. Because I don’t want to watch documentaries on Tin Pan Alley and he’d rather eat a nipple than watch anything with even a passing mention of a designer handbag in it, we decide on neutral territory. A Canadian crime series.
Johnny places his hand on my stomach, giggling as he does so. In this moment, we are warm and calm and glad of our lot in life. I notice an actor, a minor character, whose eyes are an arresting, ambrosial brown with long eyelashes that seem to have a life of their own. He’s more Mr Snuffleupagus than man. As I clock the name of Detective #3 in the credits, Ted Levy, I think to myself,I could stand to have a son like you.
When I mark twelve weeks pregnant in the calendar, and only then, I decide to call Mum and tell her. I have thought of this exact moment many times in my life. She probably has too. I can already hear her intone into the hallway, sitting at the mahogany telephone desk under the stairs, ‘Oh, thanks be to Jesus FINALLY.’
Instead, something else happens. ‘Oh, sure I know that,’ she breezes back. ‘Johnny already told me, last week.’
‘When do you and Johnny… and why didn’t you say anything before now?’
‘I was waiting to see how long you’d take to say anything,’ she replies. This is very on-brand. I’m incensed, making a mental note to bollock the living daylights out of Johnny for this later on.
‘Don’t be too hard on him now,’ Mum says. ‘He’s just too excited to keep it all in. Like a little kid on Christmas Eve.’
And he really is. ‘What did we ever talk about before this happened?’ I ask him later as he googles ‘travel systems’, and I’m only half joking.
‘We’ve talked,’ he says, a little uncertainly.
I also break the news to Francesca, who is still liberated from the usual run of things on her maternity leave, knowing that she will somehow be relieved to finally have me figured out. The ongoing mystery of Married-and-yet-Child-Free Me has miraculously worked itself to a solution.
‘Welcome to the madhouse, babes!’ she says, sounding very much like she is speaking from a madhouse.
Carrie is told the news over a Sunday-morning breakfast in Bluebird on the King’s Road, where she insists on us going every time.
‘Huh, I knew you were going to say something like that,’she says coolly, before correcting herself. But it’s too late. We’ve both heard it.
‘But that’s amazing news! You must be so excited.’ She summons a waiter, her smile papering over the mood. Her face is still somehow like a kicked-in bollock. ‘I’ll have a glass of rosé, which’– she tries to laugh lightly and not too cruelly– ‘I guess you won’t be able to have for a while.’
Boyfriend or not, the reality that Carrie hasn’t had a child yet at thirty-seven is a wound that hasn’t ever quite scabbed over. Years ago, we had the Child Chat, and she was sure with every single cell in her being that she would have two boys. She was unabashed in her hope, and utterly convinced that it wasn’t so much a matter of if, but when. ‘Jeremy and Jack,’ she would say, as though she could will them into being by saying their names enough. The way she said it made it sound as if they were already here, and she was already proud of them.
‘I dunno about the kid thing,’ I’d admitted to her as we swung our legs over the balcony of the Camden Palace, huffing Smirnoff Ices as though we were entering the Prohibition era at dawn. I was pretty good at being single back then, and babies did not feature in this particular frame. ‘I think I’d prefer to be a dad. That’s a nice low bar I can get on board with.’
But here and now, over breakfast burritos that remain largely untouched, Carrie makes to leave. It feels like our friendship has suffered a hairline fracture, and neither of us really knows who issued the blow.
‘I really need to get on. I’m off to Seville for two weeks on Sunday! It’s going to be a blast.’ She’s left the last bit unspoken:My life without the kids I always thought I was going to have will always be a little bit better than yours.
My mind soon becomes a carnival of ideas and hopes, a joy to visit as my future unfurls and takes shape. If it’s a boy, he will have his dad’s shoulders and my dark grey eyes. Johnny’s sense of fairness, and my vulgar wit. If it’s a girl? She will be amazing at everything she ever wants to do, and effortless in the doing. If I think long enough, I can already feel tiny toes graze my lips, soft as kitten paws. I see myself running my finger along the dimples of a baby’s knuckles, and burying my face in fleshy arm rolls that smell of contentment.
When I am fifteen weeks pregnant, there’s finally a bump, thrillingly visible through my clothes. Less thrilling is how challenging it is to get a seat on the tube. I shift my weight from foot to foot, placing my hand at the top of my stomach, in case anyone thinks I’ve just had a really decent lunch. Young finance types, the sort of young pricks who fax and email me codes and/or lunch orders every day, sit there with their headphones on, eyes joined in holy matrimony to their phone screens. One morning, I get so hacked off about it that I decide to partially abuse my privilege as a person bringing life into the world and start making theatrical retching noises, hoping this will clear a space. The young lad in the priority seat keeps his eyes fixed on the floor, and I inwardly remind myself to order a Baby on Board badge. I am standing so close to him that my small bump is practically resting on his shoulder.
Every time I go to the toilet, I check my underwear and every time I am relieved to see they are unblemished. I can actually feel myself unclench.
Until the moment does eventually come, despite all my hoping and wishing. It’s a sun-drenched June morning, the sort of morning that makes even the grotty flat seem ripe with promise. When I go to the toilet first thing,I only catch the streak of rust on my knickers out of my eye’s corner. I can feel adrenaline flood every part of me, and a wholly new sort of pain starts as a speck, then becomes a dot, then refuses to stop growing and getting more acute. The streak of rust in my knickers can only mean one thing: paradise is being revoked.
I stand stock-still next to the bathroom sink, afraid to catch my own eye in the mirror, willing things to stay the same. ‘Please stay,’ I whisper, over and over again, attempting to order my body to do what I want it to. I will stay still in this exact position for five more months if I have to. I conjure up the picture of a baby, then a child, then a teenager, hoping that willing them into existence in my mind’s eye will give us a shot at making it.
With trembling fingers, I grab my phone off the lip of the bath and turn to Google for answers. ‘Very light bleeding is common and can happen in early pregnancy. It could be due to harmless inflammation, or changes in your cervix.’ I still see the baby, then the child. Surely I wouldn’t be seeing them so vividly if they weren’t really coming?
But the streak of rust soon gives way to something redder, angrier.
‘If you’d like to hold a funeral for your baby, that is something that can be arranged, and we can recommend people to help with that, but when a baby is born under twenty-four weeks’ gestation, there is no legal requirement to have a funeral,’ a kindly nurse explains.
