‘A shrimp,’ he mumbles when I don’t say anything else. ‘Maybe that’s what we can call it, “shrimpy”.’
‘Jim, shut up,’ I mumble. I feel bad for being so moody. I can’t help it though. In less than a fortnight, we seem to have gone from best of mates – two people who actually have fun – to me weeping at not being able to work the tin opener.
Jim sidles off to the other side of the bookshelf, taking his book and dragging his feet in mock rejection. I bite my lip. I feel awful.
The fact Jim seems to be taking this so well isn’t helping. Despite the shock, ever since we found out, it’s weird, he’s had this look on his face; a look of boy-like wonder that says, ‘I just got the best surprise of my life.’
But me? I don’t feel like that. I don’t even know how I feel.
After the official showing of the pregnancy test, I mainly lay on my bed, listening to the strangely comforting soundtrack of inner city London, or did cool, long lengths at the outdoor swimming pool, anything to stop the noise in my head.
Both Vicks and Gina must know something’s up though. I’ve refused wine for three nights at home. I told Gina I’ve got cystitis, but I don’t think she’s buying it. ‘Cystitis?’ she said. ‘Likely story. You must be pregnant.’ She was joking, but I nearly fell off my chair. Plus when Vicky called me at work the other day, my voice was doing strange things. ‘What’s up with you?’ she said. ‘What’s happened? You can tell me.’
‘I’m pregnant!’ I wanted to shout. ‘I’m up the bloody spout, what the hell do I do ?!’ But I promised Jim I’d wait until the twelve-week scan before I went blabbing to everyone. In that typical male way, he likes to do things that don’t concern him by the book but I’m not sure I can wait that long.
‘How pregnant are you now?’ enquires Jim, looking up from his book.
‘Oh, I don’t know, about six weeks I think, why?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Why?’
Here we go again.
‘Because it says here that by seven weeks, the baby’s internal organs are in place, its brain is fully developed, and the body measures around two point five centimetres long.’
I almost gag.
‘That’s around an inch,’ I squeak, in disbelief. ‘How can it be?’
How can it be? I’ve barely got my head around any of this and yet its brain is a week off being fully formed? Its entire personality practically in place! There’s still a part of me too, who doesn’t really believe it. Even though Dr Cork threw her head back and laughed when I told her I’d done three tests, I can’t accept it.
‘For heaven’s sake my girl!’ she spluttered, in that soup-thick Irish accent. ‘I think we can safely say you’re expecting, can we not?’ But I didn’t believe it. Not really. Even when she scrolled down on her calendar, looked at me over her half-moon glasses and gave me a date: December fourteenth. ‘Ah! A little Christmas baby.’ I didn’t believe it was true.
I pick up another book, A Bloke’s 100 Tips for Surviving Pregnancy.
‘Your partner’s pregnancy may mean that you both rethink your domestic situation,’ it says. ‘It is still common for partners co-habiting and expecting a child to decide the time is right to get hitched.’
Right. But was it common for those ‘partners’ to be friends and not lovers? Was it common for them not to be co-habiting, or ever likely to be? Should we, after all, be rethinking our domestic situation and just get hitched anyway? Where were the rules for us? The top tips for us? I didn’t need My Best Friend’s Guide to Pregnancy, I needed, Help! I’m Pregnant, and it’s my Best Friend’s!
I look around me; the place is swarming with couples, the men protective of their girlfriends and wives who house the offspring that soon will make their nuclear, normal families. I look at Jim, still nose in his book. What were we? A pair of frauds.
I decide to take the Bundle of Joy. I figure some real-life tales may help with the denial. I go to the till and stand in the queue of couples, two-by-two, Noah’s bloody Ark.
I’m aware that my heart is beating but it’s only when I feel Jim’s hand on my shoulder, then his arm around my back that I realize I’m crying – again – that tears are rolling down my face and the woman at the till is staring at me.
‘Come on,’ says Jim, softly, stepping in front of a sea of staring faces and paying for the book. ‘I’ve got an idea. Let’s go to Frankie’s.’
Frankie’s is an old jazz club on Charing Cross Road. Jim and I stumbled upon it a couple of years ago, a night that ended up with us dancing ourselves sober to a Bossanova swing band. It became our place after that. ‘Would madam care to dance ce soir?’ Jim would call and ask me, then we’d get all dolled up and we’d hit Frankie’s, dance the night away.
But I don’t want to go now. Frankie’s won’t make this any better.
‘I dunno,’ I say, as we glide down the escalator, ‘I’m just not sure I’m in the mood.’
We go anyway – after all I’m not in the mood for anything. It’s only just gone 6.30 p.m. by the time we arrive and thankfully it’s almost empty.
We sit at the bar sipping on virgin pina coladas which makes me want to laugh and cry all at the same time. Laugh because Jim is sipping on a drink with a cherry and an umbrella in it, as a show of solidarity, when really he’d kill for a beer, and cry because why did we have drinks with umbrellas and cherries in anyway? It didn’t feel like we were celebrating.
My chin starts to go again.
‘Sorry, I’m a mess, I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ I say, forcing a smile.
‘Hey, come on,’ says Jim, dragging his stool closer, ‘Look at me.’
‘I’m scared too you know.’ He takes my hands in his, trying to ignore the snail trail of snot up one side where I’ve wiped my nose. ‘I’m scared shitless to be honest.’
‘But you seem…you’re amazing…you’re just handling this so well, so much better than me. It’s like you’re, I don’t know, happy about it all,’ I say.
He thinks about this, clears his throat. ‘Well, I’m definitely not unhappy about it. I’m thirty Tess. I don’t want to end up some sad old bachelor boy, no children, no life, answering the door in my underpants.’
‘You do that already.’
‘Oh. So I do.’
The barman places a bowl of dry-roasted peanuts on the bar which only makes me want to blub some more. Mainly because I can’t even have one. No peanuts, Dr Cork said. I can’t even have a goddamn peanut.
‘Give it time,’ Jim says, ‘it’s so early.’
‘I know, it’s just, I can’t help feeling this has fucked everything up. You could have met someone else, got married, done it properly, we both could have. But things are going to be so much more complicated now.’
I lean back in my chair and squeeze my eyes shut. Every time I think of one consequence of all this, another rears its head, a can of worms.
‘But I was never after a wife, Tess, you know that,’ says Jim, making me look at him. ‘All that wedding, two point four kids conventional thing was never something I dreamt of.’
I look at the floor.
‘But I did, Jim,’ I say, looking up at him. ‘I did dream of that.’
A horrid silence. Jim stares at his drink. It’s only as the words leave my mouth that I realize how true they are. I had it all planned.