by Fiona Gibson
By the time they reach the hospital, Nadine has become chattier, like an excited girl. She is all buttoned up in her black wool jacket with a soft blue mohair scarf at her neck, plus a little pull-on black knitted hat and her customary red lipstick. She looks lovely, Rob thinks. He must hold it together for her sake.
‘I don’t want to know the sex, do you?’ she asks as they make their way along the bland, beige corridor.
‘No, I’d rather not,’ Rob agrees.
‘But what if we see?’ she asks excitedly. ‘What if there’s, you know – a tiny little willy swinging about?’
‘I honestly don’t think we’ll see at this stage.’ Rob chooses his words carefully; he knows how sensitive she is about him having gone through this twice before (although what is he supposed to do – pretend Mia and Freddie don’t exist?).
‘Yes, but what if we do?’
‘Well,’ Rob says, ‘we’ll just pretend we haven’t. Anyway, it’s pretty blurry and hard to see anything in real detail.’
Nadine shoots him a look as they take a right turn through swinging doors towards the reception desk. ‘I wish you weren’t so blasé,’ she murmurs.
‘I’m not, I’m just saying …’
‘Well, I think it’s a pretty big deal,’ she retorts in earshot of the receptionist as she whips the appointment card from her bag.
They are directed to a waiting area where Rob pushes coins into the vending machine (coffee for him, nothing for her; these days she only tolerates mint or fennel tea). He carries it to his seat, trying to think of safe conversational topics that won’t have Nadine accusing him of being blasé, or convey that he is in any way anxious. He is, though, mainly due to Nadine’s tiny, bird-like body. While Kerry breezed through both pregnancies, looking more magnificent by the day, he fears that Nadine will struggle to carry the child once it’s beyond the size of a crumpet.
‘So,’ he says, perching on the seat beside her, ‘d’you think they’ll be speculating about why we’ve both taken the day off?’
Nadine shakes her head. ‘I wouldn’t think so.’
‘Don’t you think they must have an idea, though? I mean, Frank and Eddy have both seen us coming back from lunch together. I know we don’t talk much at work but surely they must have picked up on something?’ He takes a sip of gritty Americano from the cardboard cup, reflecting on how quickly he’s fallen into a pattern of staying over at her place every second night or so.
‘Well, I’ve told Eddy,’ she says.
‘What? You mean you’ve told him we’re seeing each other?’
‘No … I mean he knows about the baby.’ She blinks at him, a small smile fluttering across her lips.
‘Really?’ Rob blows out a big gust of air. ‘God. When did you tell him?’
‘On Friday when you were out at the dentist’s.’
‘What, three days ago and you haven’t mentioned it to me?’ Rob glances around the waiting area. Three other couples are chatting happily, clearly unencumbered by the prospect of workplace scandals.
‘You were with your parents most of the weekend,’ she says coolly.
‘I was back last night, Nadine.’ Rob shoots her a vexed sideways glance. He doesn’t know what disturbs him more: the fact that Nadine chose not to mention this, or Eddy knowing the whole of Friday afternoon, but still managing to act normally – asking him to sort out some budget issues, and praising his last Miss Jones column. His editor might be an utter buffoon but he is, clearly, a pretty fine actor too.
‘Look,’ Nadine says with a shrug, ‘I’m sorry, Rob. You know me and Eddy go back a long way. I just felt he should know, that’s all, and I had to talk to someone …’ What about your three best friends – wouldn’t they have sufficed?
‘What did Eddy say?’ Rob asks huffily.
Nadine smiles. ‘He thinks it’s great.’
‘Really?’ So he doesn’t think I’m a dirty old man?
‘Yes, of course. He likes you, respects you … said it’s made him see you in a whole new light.’ Hmmm, bet it did …
‘Nadine Heffelfinger?’ A young blonde woman with a neat, slicked-back ponytail has appeared in the waiting area. Nadine leaps up eagerly. She and Rob follow her down another short corridor and into a small room, where the sonographer greets them with an automatic smile.
‘Hi,’ she says, ‘I’m Kirsty, now if you could hop up please, Nadine …’ Jacket and hat are quickly handed to Rob. He takes a seat as Nadine lies down, with belly exposed and a faint curve of a baby bump, or is Rob imagining that? And in an instant it appears on the screen: a blur of white like the snow outside and there, as clear as day, his child. Head, legs, arms. A beating heart.
‘Look,’ Nadine murmurs, her eyes wet with tears as she turns to him. ‘Look at our baby.’
‘I can see,’ Rob manages to say, although he’s finding it hard to speak. So it’s real. It actually happened, that night with the lemon cake and all that vodka.
‘We’ve got a good, strong heartbeat here,’ the sonographer says, dragging the white plastic gadget across Nadine’s blemish-free skin.
‘Oh, thank goodness,’ Nadine says. Without thinking, Rob reaches up to grasp her small hand; she coils her fingers around his and squeezes. How could he have wished that this wouldn’t happen – that they’d come here to be told there was no heartbeat at all? ‘Rob, are you okay?’ Nadine smiles at him.
‘Yes. Yeah, I’m fine.’
‘Well, everything looks as it should be,’ the sonographer says, ‘but I know it’s an emotional time for both of you.’ She smiles kindly, this freckle-faced girl who barely looks older than Nadine, and nothing about her suggests that she’s judging Rob for fathering this little blur in the snow. Here in this darkened room, he doesn’t feel judged or ashamed. If only, he thinks wildly, they could stay here until the baby comes.
He and Nadine are still holding hands as measurements are taken and dates calculated, and for those few moments, Rob can’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ Mia asks, making her rubbery mermaid plunge through the meringue-like suds in the bath. She and Freddie are still happy to share bathtime, for which Kerry is hugely grateful; so much easier to sluice them both down at once.
‘It’s a girl, stupid,’ Freddie retorts from the tap end. ‘Mermaids aren’t boys. They have boobies.’
Kerry is perched on the loo seat while Buddy dozes on the bath mat at her feet. She is aware that, if she were truly efficient, she would be using this opportunity to fold towels, or scrub out the bath toys box where slimy stuff lurks. Instead, she is leafing sleepily through a nine-day-old Sunday supplement. She flicks to the food page, studying a celebrity chef’s ‘warming family lunches’. Mia and Freddie would probably delight in pumpkin risotto with crispy sage if she were a proper mother who’d trained them to enjoy such sophisticated flavours from birth. On this count, she’s failed. Most of Freddie’s vegetables are abandoned or flicked off his plate, and what hope is there if he won’t even tolerate sweetcorn? It’s bright yellow – and sweet, for God’s sake. The perfect child-friendly food.
‘I don’t mean mermaids,’ Mia says carefully. ‘I mean Daddy and Nadine’s baby.’
Kerry shuts the magazine. Nadine. The mention of her name triggers a small, sharp pain, like a little tinfoil spear being jabbed into her teeth. Freddie and Mia have yet to meet her, and of course they’ll have to at some point, as Rob seems to be ‘seeing her’ properly now. Spending most of the week at her place, by the sound of it. ‘I’d rather be honest with you,’ he’d said, during their last brief conversation, as if expecting one of the ‘well done’ stickers which Mia is always so proud to receive at school. Yet, maybe things will be easier when they have met her, as at least the questions will stop: What’s Nadine like, Mummy? I really don’t know … When can I meet her? Soon, darling, I promise …
‘I said, is it a boy or a girl?’ Mia repeats, scowling up at her mother
.
‘I don’t know,’ Kerry murmurs. ‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
Mia scoops up a handful of bubbles and blows them in Freddie’s face. ‘I don’t wanna wait.’
‘I want a boy,’ Freddie announces.
‘Well, I want a girl,’ Mia counters.
‘We don’t know yet,’ he adds sagely, glancing at his mother, ‘’cause it’s in her tummy.’
‘That’s right, sweetheart.’ Kerry blinks rapidly, hating the fact that she still loses control of her tear ducts occasionally, always without any warning.
‘How big is it now, Mummy?’ Mia wants to know.
‘Er, I’m not sure. About the size of a grape, I’d imagine.’ Kerry kneels down on the floor to scrub at a lump of hardened toothpaste with a wodge of loo roll.
‘When’s it out?’ Freddie asks.
‘Oh. Um …’ How long until the joyous birth, he means, when Kerry will have to pretend to be at least interested, if not awash with delight, this child being a little half-sister or brother to Mia and Freddie. How will she pull off that one? What if he or she looks just like a newborn Freddie or Mia, despite having nothing whatsoever to do with her? ‘I’m not sure exactly,’ she replies finally, picking off the last of the toothpaste with a fingernail, ‘but there are a few months to go yet. They had a scan at the hospital and saw its heart beating.’
She sweeps her hands over her eyes on the pretence of brushing hair out of her face. A week ago now, Rob called to tell her about it, sounding all choked up and emotional. She still can’t shift the image of a blurry scan from her mind. What had he expected her to say – congratulations, or, ‘Ooh, I’d love to have a look sometime, if Nadine wouldn’t mind?’ Maybe she should. That would be the modern approach, wouldn’t it? She could start knitting some little baby bootees while she’s at it …
‘What’s a scan?’ Mia asks.
‘A picture of the baby in the mummy’s tummy,’ Kerry says curtly.
‘Can I see it?’ Freddie asks.
‘Er… . it’s not really up to me, Freddie.’
He glares at her, as if slowly deciding that she’s not quite the fabulous mother he’d once thought she was. ‘Why not?’
‘Because … it’s their baby. You’ll have to ask Daddy if you can see it.’
‘I wanna see it!’ he yells. ‘I wanna see the picture.’
Taking a deep breath, Kerry strokes the top of Buddy’s head. ‘Fine,’ she mutters. ‘I’m sure you can.’
‘How do they do it?’ Mia muses. It’s only now that Kerry realises her daughter has been carefully snipping away at her mermaid’s hair with the nail scissors. Synthetic blonde clumps are floating on the soft clouds of foam. ‘Do they put a camera in her, Mummy?’
‘No, it’s a special gadget that can sort of … see through skin.’ Kerry is sweating now, whether due to the steamy bathroom or the children’s line of questioning, she’s not sure.
‘How?’ Freddie demands.
‘Er …’ Kerry tries to figure out an explanation, even though she’s never been especially adept at telling the children the things they really want to know: how the TV works, why the sky is blue, where planets go in the daytime.
‘Does it make her bleed?’ Mia asks.
‘No, darling, it doesn’t actually—’ Kerry is relieved to snatch her ringing mobile from her pocket.
‘Hi, Kerry? My name’s Harvey. I called you a couple of months ago about piano lessons …’
‘Oh, did you?’ She frowns. ‘Sorry, I’m pretty fully booked now, don’t think I can take on anyone else …’
‘We were cut off,’ he interrupts, ‘and I meant to phone you back but stupidly, I just had your number on a soggy scrap of paper and lost it …’
‘Well, I can save your number now and get back to you if anyone drops out, if that’s okay.’
‘Oh.’ There’s a small silence as, still gripping her phone, Kerry coaxes Mia and Freddie out of the bath and into the pyjamas that have been warming on the radiator. It’s not entirely true that she can’t squeeze in another pupil. Yet right now, after being quizzed about scans and babies, she can’t rouse the enthusiasm to make arrangements. She doesn’t even know where her diary is.
‘I’ve spent weeks trying to track you down,’ Harvey adds. ‘The newsagent had taken your card off the noticeboard and didn’t have your contact details. Then a friend of my flatmate’s mentioned that her daughter’s started coming to you – Chloe Watson?’
‘Yes, she’s had a couple of lessons …’ In Freddie’s room now, with Buddy sniffing about at her side, she surveys the explosion of books and toys on the floor.
‘When she said it was a Kerry, I knew it must be you. I hope that doesn’t sound too bizarre,’ Harvey adds with a self-conscious laugh. ‘It’s just, I’d had a really shitty day doing, er, some work things. I was sitting in my car, having a moment to myself, when this tiny piece of paper – like a bit of napkin or something – blew onto my windscreen with your name on it.’
‘That is weird.’ Kerry motions for Freddie not to wear his wellies tonight, but they’re already being pulled on amidst sniggers as he tumbles into bed. ‘So it was sort of like a sign?’ she adds with a weary smile.
‘I don’t know. Yes, maybe it was.’
Wandering through to Mia’s room now, Kerry takes the brush from her dressing table and works through her daughter’s wavy caramel hair in sweeping strokes. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘maybe I could fit you in on Saturdays, if that’s good for you.’
‘Er, that’s my busiest day unfortunately.’
‘What’s your job, Harvey?’
‘I, er … sort of organise events. Parties, conferences – that kind of thing.’
Nice, friendly voice, she decides. There’s a trace of a northern accent, although not one she can entirely place. ‘Right. Well, I’m sorry but that’s the best I can do. I’m pretty full up during the week.’
‘Okay,’ he says firmly. ‘Saturdays would be good – I’m sure I can sort something out.’
‘Would you want lessons at your house or could you come here?’
‘Oh, my flat’s not suitable,’ he says quickly. ‘I’ll come to you, if that’s okay.’
‘Of course it is. Most pupils do. D’you live in Shorling?’
‘Yes, up by the golf course.’ Kerry puts down the brush and motions for her daughter to choose a story book. Mia chooses to tip out her vast collection of Sylvanian Families animals out of their battered shoebox instead.
‘So, what I’d normally do,’ Kerry continues, still clutching her phone as she helps her to line up the badgers and bears, ‘is suggest that you come round for a chat before we arrange your first lesson. I don’t charge for that, obviously. It’s just so we can talk about the kinds of music you like, and whether you’d prefer to follow a structured course, and work towards exams, or have a more relaxed, free-form approach. It’s also,’ she adds, absent-mindedly tickling Buddy’s ears as he nuzzles against her, ‘so you can be certain that I’m the right teacher for you.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you will be.’
Kerry can’t help smiling at his childlike eagerness. ‘Well, we’ll see.’
‘So when could I do that?’ Harvey asks.
‘Um …’ She frowns. ‘I’m teaching all day tomorrow, then on Thursday I have a meeting for a show I work for. Friday’s a bit hectic so maybe next weekend, if that suits you?’
‘Oh.’ His disappointment is palpable. ‘I don’t suppose tonight would be okay?’
Kerry pauses, carefully placing Mia’s favourite rabbit at the helm of the large toy narrowboat which she’s extracted from under her bed. God, he’s keen – perhaps too keen. What kind of person spends weeks trying to track down a name from a soggy piece of paper when Shorling is awash with music tutors? If you wanted your child to learn the marimba, there’d be someone local to teach them. Kerry fears that, since the split with Rob, and her mainly fruitless attempts to befriend Emily, Lara and the rest of the school-gat
e clique, she’s lost her ability to suss out whether someone is a decent person or not. Yet she’s also … intrigued.
‘Mummy!’ Freddie yells from his room. ‘Hurry up and do my story. I’ve been waiting hours.’
‘In a minute, hon,’ she calls back. ‘Er, okay,’ she tells Harvey. ‘It’s 82 Ocean Drive, the white house at the end. The one with the scruffy front garden that’s probably going to wreck Shorling’s chance of winning Britain’s Prettiest Seaside Town this year. You’ll easily spot it.’
‘Right,’ he chuckles. ‘See you in half an hour then?’
‘Could you make it an hour? I’m just about to launch into the bedtime story routine.’
‘Oh. Um, yeah. Okay.’ He sounds rather perturbed as Freddie bursts into song in the background. It’s more of a taunt, actually, bellowed out to the tune of Stop the bus, I need a wee-wee, but with substitute lyrics: Daaaa-ddy’s baby is a bo-ooy …
‘See you at half-eight,’ she says quickly before ending the call.
Such musical talent at five years old, Kerry reflects, snatching a random picture book from the buckling shelf in Mia’s room. She could be one of those mothers who’s forever boasting about her gifted children – if it didn’t make her want to squash a pillow over her head and cry.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Buddy’s urgent barking announces Harvey’s arrival. While Kerry is slightly regretting arranging to see him tonight, at least someone is keen to spend time with her around here. It’s come to something when, apart from being ridiculously grateful for seeing Brigid once or twice a week, Kerry has become reliant on pupils for adult company. She has even found herself looking forward to Jasmine arriving in a cloud of expensive perfume on Thursday afternoons, despite the fact that piano lessons are merely filling a gap until yoga starts up again.