by Clare Fisher
The other good thing about a baby belly is, you’re never alone. Not only are you not alone; you’re with someone you love. Someone you’re not afraid of because they’re already as deep inside of you as it’s possible to be. It’s not just your belly that grows; it’s your whole world. You notice new things, like how there are four different types of tree in the patch of grass outside your flat; you don’t know their names but you know that one has a smooth skinny trunk, the other a fat knobbly one, the other strange silver streaks, the last finger-like leaves. You promise yourself you’ll look all this up in a book, that you’ll be 100% cleverer by the time your baby’s born, except you never do because five minutes later there’s a group of old ladies on the grass doing t’ai chi, at least, you think it’s t’ai chi, you want to ask what they’re up to, but you don’t because now you’re looking at the street-sweeper, wondering where he comes from, if he misses where he comes from, what he’s thinking about as he pushes his sweeper along the path. You wonder how you’ve lived so close to so many things for so long without seeing them. You can’t wait for time to skip forward, for the world to be even bigger – even more yours.
I went to your dad’s house maybe ten or fifteen times before he knew it; I went on Google Maps in the computer room in the library. The man next to me kept asking the girl on the desk to help with his visa application, but the girl on the desk didn’t know about visas, and anyway, there were other people who needed her help, like a man whose YouTube Bollywood show kept getting blocked by the library filter – ‘is not fair; is not dirty’ – and a woman who really, really needed to print off her dissertation and no, she couldn’t wait until tomorrow, the deadline was today, wouldn’t anyone swap with her for ten minutes, oh please? Some people tutted when these people’s problems poked holes in the silence, but me, I just smiled inside; any problem was good so long as it wasn’t mine.
On Google Maps, your dad’s house looked exactly the same as every other house on its street: grey pebble-dash walls and a red-brown roof, a neatly trimmed hedge and a freshly painted garden gate. The day the Google Maps van snuck down his street, the sun was out and everyone was away at the park. It was easy to imagine myself into the neat yellow body of the Google Maps man, carefully unhooking the clasp on the gate, walking up the garden path. I’d go there on a Sunday afternoon – Jenny hated going anywhere on a Sunday and so they never did – and when he saw me, he’d realize how sad and bored he was, and he’d leave. Small. Neat. Simple.
The Wednesday before going there for real, I finally obeyed the doctor’s orders to go to antenatal classes. The class was in a community centre near Brixton. When I left my flat, I was excited; at last, I’d be able to talk about the strange, new things happening to my body. I’d learn all kinds of things that would make me look and feel like a proper grown-up, and when your dad finally saw me in the flesh, he’d know. Also, I might make a new friend, or something.
But when I turned off the High Road into a quiet house-lined street and saw the squat little scout hut with grills over the windows and a noticeboard in its yard so grimy you couldn’t read any of its notices, my heart began to beat its get-me-out-of-here beat.
All I could see was Paul dropping six-year-old Beth off at Brownies, her refusing to get out of the car, him saying she had to, she had to try, her kicking the seat and the glove compartment because she didn’t know how to explain to him, or even herself, why things kept going wrong; why, no matter how hard she tried to make friends, other kids ended up hating her, and because she hated that they hated her, she’d do bad things to them, which of course, would only make things worse.
I can’t go in.
Course you can.
Can’t.
Get a grip; that was then; now is now.
I went in. This community centre/scout hut was a lot brighter than the one where – until I got banned – I went to Brownies. And there were no kids, just women. The problem was, they all knew each other already, and were standing in little clumps, looking at and, in a few cases, pressing their hands against, each other’s bellies. Some had guys with them, and it was the guys I stared at as I found a corner to hide in; they looked as scared as I was.
There was one pregnant woman with her mum; you could tell it was her mum because she was basically a fatter, wrinklier version of the pregnant woman. Plus, the pregnant woman was saying something to the older-her through gritted teeth in the way that is 100% acceptable so long as you share the same blood. They argued, back and forth, back and forth, and then the mum pointed at something in the leaflet she was holding, and they both burst out laughing.
‘Hello! I don’t think we’ve seen you before, have we? What’s your name?’ The only non-pregnant woman in the room marched over to me and gave me a little pat on the shoulder. I didn’t know her and I didn’t particularly like her but watching that mum and daughter had emptied the air around me, and so I didn’t mind the weight of her hand.
‘Beth,’ I mumbled.
‘A lovely name,’ she said. ‘I’m Gloria. And this . . .’ she beamed at my bump, ‘is?’
‘We’re not sure yet.’
‘Of course not. There’s no rush. You wouldn’t believe the number of women who have a sort of brainwave just before the birth. Will the father be joining us or . . .?’
When I’d said we, I’d meant me and you. I was hoping that I’d work out from the way you kicked and wriggled when I shouted different words, what you wanted to be called. But she’d obviously thought something else. ‘He’s at work.’
A few minutes later, Gloria clapped her hands together and told the ‘mums-to-be’ to sit down. Everyone looked around, but there weren’t any chairs. ‘Sorry about that!’ laughed Gloria. ‘I was so busy chatting to some lovely ladies, I didn’t even notice. Those bloody cadets.’ She clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Apologies for the language. But your babies won’t understand . . . yet!’
As we wobbled and squatted towards the brown carpet, the woman next to me muttered, ‘Bloody NHS. I’ll stick with the NCT after this.’
Then Gloria opened her mouth. She didn’t close it for a long time. She spoke as if she was reading off a screen, but when I turned around, there was no screen, only a few noticeboards covered with some kids’ drawings of dragons and some photos of old people eating cakes. She spoke as if she’d swallowed three or four Wikipedia pages and was spitting them out. She spoke about what to pack in your hospital bag and when to pack it – ‘as soon as possible’ – and what pain relief to go for in the hospital – ‘you’re never going to be offered this many drugs at once, so don’t waste the opportunity!’ – and what to expect after the birth – ‘a lot of tears and nowhere near enough sleep’. She spoke about all the things that could go wrong: how your baby could stop moving or could move in the wrong way or could just die right there inside of you and you’d have to give birth to it blue. Blue! Or some other thing to do with the placenta I can’t remember the name of. Or yet another thing. There were so many things, so many of them bad, and from what she said, it seemed like all the good ones needed money and planning and a lot of kind, helpful people around, none of which I had, and I didn’t want to think about not having them, and I didn’t want to talk to the other women, who were all making notes or muttering that they knew all this already, and my heart was being weird again, so I slipped out before the end.
By the time I got home, there was an idea in my head, a new and exciting one: what about my real mum? Sure, she’d walked out on me. Sure, she’d probably forgotten I even existed. But what if she hadn’t? What if all the time between now and then had made her forget how bad I was? What if she was forever checking her phone, hoping I’d call? What if she could imagine no better thing to be than a grandma?
The other thing I noticed at the class was that all the other women were wearing proper pregnancy clothes. They all had the ‘Baby On Board!’ badges pinned to their coats. They argued passionately about different brands of buggy: ‘Oh, the new PramWin is so
good, but I think £500 is a bit much . . . Then the MumuLife is only £345 . . .’ When they met me, their eyes would linger on the stripe of skin between my jeans and my T-shirt. If I saw them looking before they saw me looking at them looking, I’d see the thought that I was doing it wrong smear across their eyes. They can all fuck off, I thought. Except they didn’t; their words followed me around for days, eventually pushing me into Mothercare. Wandering round the rows and shelves and rows and rows of Babygros, baby mats, baby socks and hats and bibs and coats and car seats and pillows and toys and chews and nappies and wipes and creams and dummies and rattles and mobiles and monitors, it hit me: you weren’t going to stay inside me for ever. Soon, very soon, you’d be a real person. A person who needed stuff. So much stuff! There was no way I could afford it, no way. The time had come to tell your dad.
As I left my flat to see your dad for real, I felt 100% sure things would work out. Freshly washed clothes stretched over a freshly grown baby belly: I looked good. But by the time I got off the tube at Harrow and Wealdstone, I felt more like 77%. By the time I’d walked down four identical cul-de-sacs before finding his, it was more like 45%. After that, I stopped counting. The houses weren’t much bigger than on Google Maps but they were complicated; some had ‘Vote Conservative!’ posters Blu-tacked to their windows, others had Labour or Green. Some had cut grass, others wild rushes, others cracked up concrete and plant pots with no plants inside of them, just earth.
Then there was your dad’s house. Someone – probably him – had been chipping away at the pebble-dash since the visit from the Google Maps van; the left half of the house was brick, the right side pebble-and-concrete puke. The line between the two sides was jagged. Had your dad spent weekend after weekend chipping away then giving up? He’d never mentioned it. Maybe there were other things he hadn’t mentioned, too.
There were no net curtains, so through the window I spied a sofa, a TV, a huge table piled with exercise books and an empty fruit bowl, two huge plastic boxes of toys in the corner, and, snaking between all these things, a train set. The lights were on and I was wondering whether they really were home, whether this was the one Sunday afternoon they’d gone out, when I heard a squeal. It came from the alley that ran down the left side of the house. Then a kid ran up it, all blond curls and dungarees and wellies shaped like frogs. He was holding one of those blow-up beach balls. His cheeks were bright red and he looked mighty pleased with himself.
‘You must be Hamish.’ I walked up to the garden wall.
He frowned. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m a friend of your dad’s.’
‘Dad’s not happy today. Mummy wants him to make a table in the back garden but he doesn’t want to.’
‘Oh, that’s not fun!’ I said.
Hamish’s curls jiggled about as he shook his head. He had your dad’s nose. I liked him. ‘It’s not fun no no. I wanted dad to play ball but he wouldn’t do that either.’
‘I’ll play with you.’
Hamish licked his lips, obviously confused. ‘Most of dad’s friends don’t want to play with me.’
‘I’m different.’
He still looked worried so I held out my hands and smiled. ‘Throw to me!’
Squatting down, he hurled the ball into the air. It rose high above his head, then plopped into a flowerbed. Some dainty pink flowers lay squashed beneath it. Bending over wasn’t the best thing to do with you inside of me, but I did it. I threw it accidentally-on-purpose away from the house.
‘Nooo!’ yelled Hamish. ‘That’s my best ball. It’s going to get run over.’
‘Silly me!’ I said. Then I held the gate open. ‘There are no cars yet, so why don’t you come and help me rescue it?’
Hamish stepped towards the gate, then stopped. ‘I’m not supposed to.’
‘It’s fine. I’m your daddy’s friend, remember? And this,’ I rubbed my belly, ‘this is going to be a friend for you, too.’
‘A baby!’ He reached out to touch you but I backed away, and so he stepped into the road, and I stepped back, and he stepped some more, and pretty soon there were a few houses between us and your dad’s house, and part of me thought, oh no, this isn’t what’s meant to happen, but the big bad wolf part assured me it was awesome. I sat on a low brick wall, rolled up my top, grabbed Hamish’s hand, and – smiling all the time so he knew not to be scared – I pressed it on to my belly. I pressed it right up against you.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That’s lovely and warm!’
And that was it. That was as much as you were ever going to know your brother.
‘Would you like a little sister?’ I asked.
He nodded. Then he shook his head. Then he nodded again.
‘Well, that’s lucky for you,’ I said, ignoring the shake, ‘because that’s what’s in here.’
He stuck out his bottom lip and pulled his hand away. ‘But you’re not my mummy.’
‘No. But your daddy is my baby’s daddy.’
‘But . . .’ And then he began to cry. I sshhed him. I tried to distract him with the ball. He cried louder. I shouted at him; still, he wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop and I could feel curtains twitching and people watching and so I grabbed him. I grabbed his wrist and then I grabbed his curls and then I was grabbing him everywhere.
‘GET AWAY FROM MY SON!’
There must’ve been a time between me grabbing him and Jenny yelling in my face. There must’ve been a time when the neighbours came out of their houses and their gardens and their cars and gathered to watch. Well, there were only three or four of them, but when I first saw them, they looked like a lot. Like too much. Everything was happening wrong and too fast and I didn’t know why or how to slow it back down.
Jenny was a red-eyed, greasy-haired mess, dressed in one of your dad’s old jumpers and a pair of leggings with a hole in the left knee. I tried to reassure myself with the fact that I was younger and better dressed, that I’d washed my hair. But she was holding Hamish over her shoulder, his cries had shrunk to cute whimpers, his head was floppy, and from the way the neighbours’ eyes flipped from her to me to her to me, it was 100% obvious whose side they were on.
‘Who are you?’ she said. Her voice was low and shaky, like it was coming from some place buried deep. ‘PHIL!’ She yelled back at the house. ‘Philip! Have you got through to the police?’ Then she turned to the neighbours and, laying on a surprisingly pretty smile, she asked them to please go and ‘fetch’ her ‘husband’.
‘Don’t you want one of us to stay and . . . support?’ asked a grey-haired woman in a bobbly lilac fleece.
‘I’ll be fine, Nell. But thank you. It’s great to know I’ve got neighbours I can rely on.’
Nell nodded, swallowing her disappointment, and hurried towards the house.
When we were alone, Jenny tightened her grip on Hamish, leant towards me and said: ‘Oh, I know about you all right. Phil told me everything. And can I just say thank you. Thank you because, you know what? Things are so much better between us now. So much better. After the hell he went through with you, he’s worked out what he doesn’t want – and what he does. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to my family.’
My hands were shaking. Tears were busting out of my eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled.
Jenny laughed. ‘It’s a bit late for that.’
‘I never meant . . . to hurt you. I think, I think . . . you’re great.’ My hands stuck to my belly, which is a thing they’d started to do without me telling them to, especially when I got scared.
She was already walking away.
‘Jenny.’
I hurried to catch up with her. ‘He was the one who came after me.’
She was almost at the gate.
‘This baby is his.’
At this, she stopped. She didn’t turn round but her shoulders heaved, as if all the air around her wasn’t enough.
Your dad rushed out of the front door, phone pressed to one ear; when he saw me, the I’ve-got-
it-sorted expression fell right off his face. ‘In fact, don’t worry, officer. It’s . . . fine now. Yes, sorry for the bother.’
‘What are you doing?’ Jenny snapped at him.
‘It’s not . . .’
‘It’s yours.’ I thrust my belly in the air. ‘It’s a girl. And it’s yours.’
Phil shook his head, very quickly, from side to side.
‘It is,’ I said. ‘We never used protection, remember? Twenty-eight weeks now. And look, I’m not expecting –’
‘Phil, do something. God’s sake.’
Phil did nothing.
‘You don’t have to get back with me,’ I said, my voice creaky and faraway, like it belonged to someone else, ‘but maybe Hamish could see his little half-sister sometimes? Maybe you could tell him she was a cousin or something?’ I could see it already; me and them at Christmas, a strange but happy family. ‘Or a long-lost sister. He could just call me aunty.’
‘Beth.’ Your dad marched towards me. ‘Get real. It’s over between us. OVER.’
‘But she’s here,’ I said. ‘She’s in me.’
‘So what? She can’t be mine.’
‘I haven’t slept with anyone else.’
They both laughed. ‘That,’ said Jenny, ‘I find hard to believe.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Like I said, he told me everything. Everything.’
She meant Dale. She meant the things I did when I was with Dale. And before. ‘That’s not fair,’ I said. ‘I was fifteen.’
‘Beth,’ said your dad, putting an arm around Jenny, ‘if you don’t leave in the next three minutes, I’m calling the police.’ Then he steered her into the house and they slammed the door. A few seconds later, they closed the curtains.