Dyan Sheldon - And Baby Makes Two

“Imagine,” he said. “ Me , the boy in my year voted most likely never to have sex. What a hoot.”

Hilary and Charley finally got back together around Easter, and, as soon as they did, Les started dropping round after work again.

At first he’d have a beer, eat a takeaway and watch the news or the football before we got into a clinch, but after a while he didn’t even bother to eat.

He thought my breasts and my bum were fantastic. “Now that’s what I call a real handful,” he’d say admiringly.

It was almost surprising that he actually understood I was pregnant. For all he ever said about it, he might have thought I was just putting on weight. We never talked about me being pregnant except in connection to the size of some of my external parts. It was a wonder, as my nan would say. A real wonder. I looked at myself and started counting the months before I could get into real clothes again, but Les looked at me and saw a sex goddess. A sex goddess who couldn’t get knocked up.

“Natural birth control,” is how Les put it. “Sex without fear.” He grinned. “And without condoms.” Les didn’t like condoms, he said it wasn’t the same. He obviously didn’t know from personal experience, but that was what his friends told him.

I was happy to be his sex goddess. Even if most of the time I felt more like hell’s plaything, it was great for my ego. For someone who’d been a little slow in getting started, Les was making up for lost time. He was always hugging and stroking me, and he’d have to be really tired or pissed not to want what he called “a quick roll in the hay”.

That’s why I thought that when Les started talking about his summer holiday he meant we were going away together. To somewhere romantic with room service where we could make love for hours instead of minutes just in case the Spiggs came home unexpectedly.

We even looked through the brochures together: Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Spain… To be honest, they all looked pretty much the same – a blue blob of water, a blob of sand dotted with bodies, and a hotel – but I didn’t care where we went. I knew wherever we went, we’d find a private lagoon with a palm tree and water the same blue as my good maternity dress.

Then one night Les turned up with a bottle of fizzy wine.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked as he unscrewed the top.

“You won’t believe it, but I’ve been sort of promoted. They’re transferring me to Finsbury Park.” He puffed out his chest. “Manager.” He laughed. “That makes me the youngest manager in the company.”

I forced a happy smile on to my face. This was good news. Les was a manager at only twenty-one. He’d be a director or something by thirty. We’d live in the suburbs and I’d have a four-wheel drive with tinted windows and lots of kids and dogs in the back. But I couldn’t be that happy about it now. It meant I could never just drop by the shop any more. It meant he had further to come.

“But that’s not all.” Les grinned. “They finally agreed my holiday time. I booked my package this morning.”

I didn’t hear “my”. I heard “our”.

“Really?” I couldn’t exactly bounce with excitement (not without knocking something over), but there was excitement in my voice. “Where are we going? When?”

Les stopped pouring.

“ We ?”

“I’m going with you, aren’t I?” I thought he was joking. “Remember we looked at the brochures?”

He thought I was joking.

He laughed. “Get real, Lana. I can’t take you to Greece. You know that.”

Did I?

“Do I?”

He rolled his eyes the way Charley does when Hilary can’t find her keys and has to take everything out of her handbag again .

“Of course you do. I’ve only got two weeks, you know.” His eyes moved from my face to my tummy, looming in the space between us like a giant balloon. “You can’t fly with a bun in the oven. Not when you’re as far gone as you are. Everybody knows that.” He laughed again. “And there’s no way I’m taking a bus to Greece.”

I laughed along, as though I really had been joking. I didn’t know about not being able to fly at the end of your pregnancy, but now that he said it, it sort of made sense. But it would never have occurred to me that Les would book his holiday for when I couldn’t go. If anything, I thought he’d have waited till after the baby was born and we could give him to my nan to look after while we went away. She had nothing else to do.

If Charley told Hilary he was going on holiday without her she’d have gone ballistic. She’d’ve made his life hell and never shut up till he gave in. But I wasn’t like her . I was understanding and tolerant. I knew that a man needs outside interests and friends of his own. I was tolerant of his need for space. I sucked back some tears.

“Oh,” I said. “Well, Greece sounds like it should be fun.”

“It sure as hell should be,” said Les. He took a large gulp of his wine. “I can’t wait.”

I took a tiny sip from my glass. I could tell by the smell that it was going to give me indigestion.

“So,” I said brightly. “When are you going?”

“End of August. That way I get an extra day with the bank holiday.”

But not enough extra to go by bus, obviously.

“End of August,” I echoed. The end of August was when the baby was due. I touched my glass to his. “Well, I hope you have a good time.”

I had an appointment at the clinic four days before I reckoned the baby would be born. I put on my cool maternity outfit, but the only shoes that were really comfortable were my trainers, which kind of ruined the effect. I put on my make-up and tied my hair back, which made me look older. Then I put some dance music in my Discman and practically skipped to the practice, I was that happy. Only a few more days and I wouldn’t be pregnant any more. I couldn’t wait. I felt like I’d been pregnant most of my life by now. It was hard to remember being able to sit at the table for more than five minutes before my back started aching. It was even harder to remember being able to have a cup of tea without feeling like somebody was pouring acid in my blood. But soon that would all be over and things would go back to normal. The best part was about to begin.

The doctor told me off for not going to the birthing classes.

“I thought you promised me you’d try and go.”

It was more a question than a statement.

“I know I did,” I said. It was incredible how many people sounded just like my mother. “And we were going to, really, but my boyfriend had to go to the States for a few months. For work. It was sudden.”

She peered at me over her glasses. “You could have gone on your own.”

I smiled, sort of shy and embarrassed. “I didn’t fancy going without him.” Which I didn’t.

“It’s not too late,” said the doctor. “There’s a class next week.”

By next week I shouldn’t need any classes. By then I’d be a mother.

Or maybe not.

The doctor said I’d got the date wrong.

“The baby seems small, Lana. Do you think you could have made a mistake?”

I said I supposed I could have.

“This is all new to me,” I joked.

She gave me a Queen Victoria smile. You know, like it hurt.

“Well, you’re doing very well,” she assured me. But the baby wouldn’t come until September. “Virgo,” she said. “That’s a good sign.”

I got a book on horoscopes out of the library on my way home, so I could see for myself whether Virgo was a good sign or not. I didn’t have much else to do. It was the summer holidays, wasn’t it? Shanee and her family had gone to her grandad’s in Ireland for a few weeks. Les was in Greece with his mates. Even Gerri and Amie were away.