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!
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.
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