‘I’d give him one,’ said Di, snorting with laughter when she realised her words had a double meaning.
Annie stole a look across at Palma and saw that she was chuckling too. She was very pale and though Annie hadn’t made mention of it, her young friend didn’t seem to be blooming like the rest of them who were plumping and glowing. She knew that Palma had been to the hospital the previous day and they’d found out that she was anaemic, which explained her pallor. Annie hoped the iron tablets they’d prescribed would sort her out. Her hair colour didn’t help – she suited the pink so much more and it made her look fresher, whereas those shades of ash bleached her. They’d given her a scan whilst she was there, Palma had said, and she’d found out she was having a girl. Annie had a mental picture of Palma’s daughter being born with pink hair.
The midwives’ handout included a list of all the important basics. Baby clothes with poppers at the crotch that a lot of cheap versions didn’t feature; a changing station (you could live without it, but it’ll save your back, said Chloe and so she considered it an essential). Nipple shields were cheap but vital because breastfeeding could be painful at the beginning, said Sharon – they were covering feeding in the next session.
Di had found out the previous week that she was having two boys, so her shopping list would be slightly longer but at least not doubled, according to Chloe.
‘I can’t wait. I’m going to raise them so they aren’t twats to women,’ she said to Raychel beside her, but everyone could hear anyway. ‘And they don’t shag their in-laws.’
‘I would consider a feeding bra an essential,’ Chloe went on and produced one from a box at her side where she had a host of gadgets and other aids to show them. ‘Have you all applied for the freebies that came in your pack from the doctor? If not, you should. And there’s a list of other things you can get for free from the internet on those sheets you’re all presently fanning yourselves with, so please read them.’
‘I love a freebie,’ said Cheryl to Annie. Even though she had plenty of money these days, in her mind she was still a woman who had never had much and so she didn’t squander any on daft things she didn’t need. She was carrying a girl and she and John had decided to call the baby Edith after the dear lady who had changed her life. If it hadn’t been for Edith, she would never have had ‘the year of the sunflower’ as she liked to call it. More had happened to her that year than all of her others put together. Losing a love, losing a friend, being stolen from, being cheated, having her heart broken, fighting with Edith’s dickhead nephew, nearly being arrested by a policeman called John Oakwell who made her cry in a supermarket. It had been a busy one, to say the least. The worst and the best year of her life and because of it she was the most contented woman on the planet, married to a man who thought the world of her. Whoever said that life was a rich tapestry had hit the nail right on the head. Her tapestry just happened to be full of policemen, paintings, Cillit Bang . . . and sunflowers.
‘Good to have a bag packed ready for the hospital nearer the date,’ said Sharon. ‘There’s a list of what it should contain on your sheet as well. Lists, lists, ladies, because get organised is our motto. It must contain the three “bigs”: big baggy T-shirt nightdresses, big knickers and a big bar of fruit and nut.’
Raychel nodded. Her Aunt Elizabeth had slipped a huge bar of fruit and nut chocolate into her bag when she had her first baby. ‘Trust me,’ she’d said. ‘You’ll thank me for it.’ And she had. Her aunt had been pregnant at the same time as her two best friends from school and the three of them had been at her first birth because her husband Ben was stuck in the snow in the Midlands. This time, he’d promised to take only local jobs from late October onwards. Her aunt was more like a big sister to her, even though she hadn’t known her until a few years ago. She thought more of her Aunt Elizabeth, and her two adopted aunts – Helen and Janey – than she did her own mother whom she hadn’t seen for years and never wanted to see ever again. She’d told her the sort of lies that would have denied her the joy of motherhood had they not been uncovered. Raychel had loved being pregnant but if it hadn’t been for Elizabeth, she would never have felt a child grow inside her. Although now she was riddled with heartburn and had a pea-sized bladder, insomnia and backache, she wondered how she’d conveniently forgotten the downside of her first pregnancy.
The session ended in good time before everyone wilted. Fil reckoned they had all lost a pound in sweat each, Di probably two. It had been so hot she had barely spoken. That hot.
‘There’s no Aqua Mama tomorrow,’ said Cheryl, when they were outside. ‘It was on the website. She’s had to have the pool drained for some reason.’
‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ said Eve. ‘I was looking forward to seeing what colour swimsuit Fil was going to wear.’
‘It would have been tangerine,’ Fil chuckled. ‘I look so hot in orange.’
‘You’d look hot in a black bin bag, sweetheart,’ said Annie. ‘You’re like the Girl from Ipanema.’ She was showing her age now because no one knew what the heck she was on about.
Fil’s husband was waiting for her outside, leaning casually against a beautiful silver Mercedes sports car. He had on a snow-white shirt and aviator shades, and the group of ladies sighed collectively at him because he looked like Idris Elba’s taller, more handsome older brother.
‘If my maths teacher had looked like him, I’d have had a string of A-stars in trigonometry,’ said Cheryl.
‘I wouldn’t,’ said Di. ‘I’d have been so naughty he’d have had to keep me back every night for detention. Or spanking.’
‘He snores badly,’ said Fil.
‘I’d have quickly learned to live with it,’ said Di.
He smiled over at them and waved.
‘He doesn’t know this yet but he’s going to have to trade that car in for a baby-friendly vehicle very soon,’ whispered Fil. ‘I’ll let him have another couple of weeks of fun then I’ll hit him with the news.’
‘Wear your tangerine swimsuit when you tell him, it might soften the blow,’ Eve advised and Fil walked towards him, mile-wide smile sitting on her lips.
‘You’re quiet,’ said Annie in the car. They’d almost reached Palma’s front door and she’d hardly spoken a word.
‘It’s the heat,’ said Palma. ‘I might not be as big as you lot but I’m feeling it.’
Annie nodded. ‘It’s like having a central heating radiator inside you, isn’t it?’
‘Yep.’
‘Are you seeing Tommy tonight?’
‘Not tonight. I want an early one.’
As Annie pulled up into Rainbow Lane they both spotted the bucket on the doorstep.
‘What the hell . . .’ said Palma, getting out of the car to investigate. She found it was full of ice and placed in the centre of it was a bottle of the elderflower pressé that Palma had taken a liking to. Tommy had left it for her to come home to.
‘And it’s not a bad bucket either,’ said Annie with a smile. That was the sort of thing Joe would do. You couldn’t teach that level of consideration, it came right from the heart. If Tommy was even a fraction of the man that Joe Pandoro was, Palma should cling onto him for all he was worth.
Palma waved Annie off, went into the house and locked the door. She lifted the bottle out of the ice and poured herself a glass and felt it course all the way down her dry throat. Tommy, Tommy, Tommy. The house was full of signs that he loved her: the furry throw he’d bought for her in case she had a nap on the sofa and wanted to cover herself, the flowers in the vase, the chocolates on the coffee table, the card on the mantelpiece with a house in rainbow colours on the outside and on the inside the message: ‘To my favourite girls, from your favourite boxer.’
She had more love in her life now that she’d had in the all the preceding years put together and it was starting to panic her. She couldn’t give like he could; she couldn’t trust anything to work out. She expected the ground to fall away for every forward footstep she took becaus
e so far, that’s all it had done. His glass was always half full; hers wasn’t only half empty but likely to be smashed by someone she hadn’t seen coming at her from behind. She’d hold him back, just like Neil had thought she might and she wouldn’t do that to him. If she couldn’t keep to his pace, it was better that she let him go now.
Chapter 47
Eve was now twenty-three and a half weeks pregnant and the more unsavoury aspects of pregnancy were starting to encroach on her enjoyment of the experience. The heartburn was terrible and she was swigging Gaviscon from the bottle. She was sick of having to go to the loo every five minutes and wished she could poo as easily as she could pee. Constipation, bad dreams, sleep problems, leg cramps, fat ankles that she had to elevate as much as possible and thank goodness it was hot weather because there was no way she could bend over to get a pair of tights on. And the sheer act of breathing was starting to make her breathless. Jacques was a darling and gave her nice leg massages and didn’t want her going into the spare room in the middle of the night even though she knew she was disturbing his sleep with her tossing and turning.
‘Struggling, darling?’ he asked her, peering over the top of his iMac in their shared office at her strained expression and back-stretching.
‘What have you done to me, Jacques Glace?’ she replied with a mock homicidal expression.
‘From what I remember you rather enjoyed me putting that baby in there,’ he winked at her and she let rip with a peal of laughter. ‘Can I get you a coffee or a juice or anything?’
Eve used to love coffee from their temperamental old machine and she had a sudden liking for one.
‘Do you know what, I think I will have a coffee, please.’
‘Coming right up.’ He put a fresh coffee through and Eve sniffed the air, in the manner of a bloodhound picking up a track. Her sense of smell had become ridiculously sensitive since she had fallen pregnant.
‘Are you using a different brand?’
‘No, why?’
‘It doesn’t smell the same as it usually does.’
‘Your nasal receptors are off target. You can experience a lot of miswires where smell and taste are concerned; I’ve been reading about it,’ said Jacques. ‘And your baby brain will be terrible at the moment. And you’re especially prone to infections too.’
‘Thank you, Doctor Glace,’ said Eve, sniffing the air again. That coffee didn’t smell right, and she wasn’t imagining it. There was an acrid, unpleasant note to its aroma.
‘Baby’s the size of a cantaloupe in case you’re wondering. Another week and a half and he’ll be a cauliflower. And what is slightly worrying is that in three and a half weeks he’ll be the size of a cucumber,’ Jacques went on, pointing to the ‘fruit and veg chart’ he’d run off from the internet and stuck on the wall. Eve felt much heavier than if she had a cantaloupe inside her. If the baby took after his father, he’d be more the size of a Chernobyl watermelon by now.
The coffee machine began to deliver its brew to the waiting jug with spluttering objection. ‘Finally. A watched pot . . .’ said Jacques with a smile.
‘You’d have got it sooner if you’d flown to Brazil,’ said Eve.
‘Look, I have it here,’ said Jacques, reverentially carrying a mug over to her and setting it down on the coaster he’d recently bought for her, printed with the photo of their baby at his twenty-week scan. Eve didn’t like using it; she said she felt as if she was burning him. She lifted the mug to her lips and drank – then made a face.
‘You’ll get your love of coffee back, don’t you worry,’ he said. ‘I’ve been reading about it.’
The smell wasn’t coming from the coffee though.
‘Is something burning?’ asked Eve. The odour seemed to be growing stronger by the second. She got up and started sniffing again and her nose led her to the outside door, much to Jacques’ amusement. She opened it and turned right.
‘It’s coming from Effin’s office, Jacques.’
Jacques could smell it now and he could see smoke through Effin’s window. He yelled at his wife to stay back as he opened the door. A patch of Effin’s carpet at the front of his desk was ablaze. Jacques picked up the metal waste paper bin, tipped the contents out, filled it up from the sink in the corner and poured it over the small fire. Smoke started to plume and Jacques stamped the life out of it, then he reached down and pincered up the end of a now very soggy cigarette and put it in the ashtray on Effin’s desk.
‘What’s going . . .’ said Eve, but Jacques wasn’t in the mood for explaining, instead he marched past her, his expression furious.
Jacques caught up with Effin by the train where he and Huw and Thomas were having yet another conversation about how it was running.
‘Effin, can I have a word,’ said Jacques and Effin knew by the way that he said it that the word wasn’t going to be a very friendly one. Thomas and Huw took their cue and melted away.
‘What’s up, Captain?’ said Effin.
‘You’ve nearly burned your office down, that’s what,’ said Jacques, doing his best to rein in his temper. ‘Your cigarette rolled off onto the carpet.’
‘Cigarette, what cigarette?’ said Effin.
Jacques’ patience with Eve’s baby brain did not extend as far as his site manager’s negligence. ‘The cigarette you obviously lit and left to burn.’
‘Hang on, I never smoke inside,’ said Effin. ‘In fact, I haven’t had a cigarette in months. I’ve given up. Angharad says—’
Jacques cut him off.
‘Effin, if I hadn’t been married to a woman who seems to have developed superwoman abilities during pregnancy, I have no idea what the extent of the damage might have been.’
Effin was shaking his head.
‘Jacques, I have not even bought a packet of fags for . . . as long as I can remember. I need to see this.’
‘Yes, let’s see it,’ said Jacques tightly. ‘I’ll show you, shall I?’
Effin set off walking briskly towards his office, Jacques at his side, neither of them saying a word. Inside, Jacques pointed to the cigarette.
‘There it is. I put it in your ashtray. Why would you even need an ashtray if you don’t smoke inside?’
‘I use it for paperclips,’ said Effin, scratching his head in confusion. ‘This can’t be. I haven’t smoked in . . .’ He tried to think back. ‘Well, I had one last week, I caved in . . .’ which didn’t help his argument. He pulled open his drawer where he used to keep his smoking paraphernalia, hoping to prove that the space was now full of pens and Post-it notes and other office detritus, but there sat a box of matches and a packet of twenty Benson and Hedges minus one.
‘I . . . but I . . .’ Effin started spluttering like Jacques’ coffee machine.
‘Look, Effin, I have no idea what is going on but you need to stop pussyfooting around the fact that something is wrong. You’re the talk of the park. I wasn’t even going to mention the sign falling but coupled with this, you’re a danger and I can’t have that.’
Eve, hovering around the door, had never seen her usually calm Jacques so furious. And she had never seen Effin so cowed, either.
‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know . . . what’s up . . .’
‘Take the rest of the day off, Effin. Go home, get some sleep, make a doctor’s appointment. This’ – Jacques picked up what was left of the cigarette – ‘is the second strike against you and I won’t have a third, do you hear me?’
Eve had to turn away. She knew Jacques was right but she couldn’t stand to see Effin so reduced. She went back into the office, sat at her desk and tried to remember what she was doing before she’d started smelling the smoke. Baby brain was one thing but Effin didn’t have that, which meant it could be something far more serious and that would break all of their hearts.
*
That night Palma put on her pyjamas instead of the lovely dress she’d bought for the night out that she and Tommy should have been going on. A big flashy event in Sheffield hosted by Tommy
’s sponsor. She was letting him down, she knew she was. Deliberately.
The taxi drew up outside and she felt sick at what she was about to do. He walked in wearing a gorgeous blue suit, white shirt and tie and the aftershave that made her senses sing. His smile shrivelled when he saw her.
‘What’s up, Palma? Aren’t you going?’
‘I’m sorry, Tommy. I just don’t feel like it.’
‘Aren’t you well, sweetheart? Look, sod the evening, I’ll stay with you . . .’
He would say that. He’d throw what was important away for her because she and the baby were his priority, he’d told her she was, and she couldn’t have that.
‘No, you won’t,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m not having that on my conscience. You go and enjoy yourself. I’m tired and I’m not up to a late night and I’m not hungry. Really. It’s important. People will want to see you, not me. It doesn’t matter if I go or not.’
‘I’m not that bothered about it though,’ he said. ‘I was mainly looking forward to it because we were going together.’
Their first big outing. The event where she would be introduced to his sponsor and everyone else who was important to Tommy in the boxing world. This is my girlfriend and our baby. And he was lying for her benefit, because he had really been looking forward to this evening. The speaker was Mikey Hyde, a boxer he’d looked up to and was desperate to meet and have the obligatory boxing photo taken of the two of them: smiling with their fists butted together. Neil and Jackie would be there too. Neil and Jackie who knew that his baby was someone else’s.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘I’ll be okay. You have a great night. I’m going straight to bed.’
He didn’t want to leave her but he didn’t want to let people down either. He enfolded her in a tender hug, planted a long kiss on her cheek because she’d turned her head from him. Then he left and she felt shit, but the truth was that she’d realised recently how deeply Neil felt when he’d said I’ll do anything to protect our Tommy. Anything. Because you did what had to be done when you cared about someone that much.
The Mother of All Christmases Page 25