hours, convincing myself I don’t need to do the test, that everything is all right, and pregnancy is a laughable concept when it comes to my body. But I know I need to bite the bullet.
I haul myself up, clutching the box in one hand, and head for the loo. The pressure on my bladder means I need to pee again anyway, and my heart starts beating fast as I realise I’ve had to pee a lot lately.
Just do this and get it over with, I tell myself, opening up the box, then the foil, then sliding off the cap. I lower myself onto the toilet and try my best to pee onto the stick, almost hoping I’m missing my target and putting off the result.
I replace the cap, set the test on the window ledge, then wash my hands. Seconds tick by and I can’t bear to look. As if in a trance, my feet carry me back out to where Kate is sitting on the sofa.
‘And?’ she asks, her head snapping up as soon as she hears me enter.
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know. It’s in there.’ I jerk a thumb towards the loo door as if it’s contaminated.
‘Do you want me to go see?’
I nod. ‘Please.’ I don’t know why, but if the news comes from Kate, it will almost feel cushioned . . . filtered through another reality. If the result is positive, of course. While my brain knows it could be negative, my body is telling me a different story.
Kate nods, then strides purposefully into the bathroom. There’s nothing but silence – no sharp intake of breath, no ‘hurrah!’ of relief – and my fingers furiously work a sock as I hear her footsteps come back into the lounge.
She sits down on the sofa beside me, and I tilt my head slowly to meet hers. I can’t make out her expression.
‘Well?’ I ask finally, when I can’t bear it any longer.
She takes my hand, and I know, even before she tells me, what the answer is.
‘I’m pregnant,’ I say, and she squeezes my fingers. ‘I’m going to kill Edward.’
26
ZOE, SATURDAY, 7.15 P.M.
M y feet burn from walking so much. Liquid seeps from broken blisters, where my shoes have rubbed them raw. I’ve only been in Paris a few hours, but it seems like days. I feel . . . I pause, trying to get a grasp on my emotions, and a muttered French curse drifts over my head as the person behind me steps past. I don’t know how I feel, exactly, other than I don’t feel like me. At least, not the ‘me’ who got off the train this morning.
Although the evenings are lengthening with summer approaching, I know it’s only an hour or so until darkness falls. I should be panicking at the possibility of spending the night on the Paris streets alone, but I’m not. Not yet, anyway. I’m suspended between the past and present, not caught in either, and still unable to envision the future.
I felt this way when I was pregnant with Milo, too: incapable of believing I was actually going through with it, knowing my past was behind me now that I was a mum-to-be, yet the future as a mother seemed completely unfathomable. That first pregnancy is a no-man’s land, where you’re neither a person in your own right any more or a mother yet. I wish now I’d enjoyed it more, instead of wishing it away – anxious to finally meet the baby growing inside of me.
I used to laugh when people told me to enjoy the newborn days, the toddlerhood, because ‘they grow up so fast’. Some days – when Milo had colic or screamed like a banshee because he hated his buggy – time seemed to stretch for hours.
But in the end, those people are right. It does go fast. And when you only have that child for two years, it seems like the blink of an eye. His little face – the face that was fading slightly, like a photo greying over time – bursts into technicolour. I close my eyes, trying to imprint the sharpness of the image on my brain before I lose it again. For just a second, it feels like he’s right there in front of me. I can almost smell the mix of baby wipes, yeasty bread and earth his body gave off, and the rush
I haul myself up, clutching the box in one hand, and head for the loo. The pressure on my bladder means I need to pee again anyway, and my heart starts beating fast as I realise I’ve had to pee a lot lately.
Just do this and get it over with, I tell myself, opening up the box, then the foil, then sliding off the cap. I lower myself onto the toilet and try my best to pee onto the stick, almost hoping I’m missing my target and putting off the result.
I replace the cap, set the test on the window ledge, then wash my hands. Seconds tick by and I can’t bear to look. As if in a trance, my feet carry me back out to where Kate is sitting on the sofa.
‘And?’ she asks, her head snapping up as soon as she hears me enter.
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know. It’s in there.’ I jerk a thumb towards the loo door as if it’s contaminated.
‘Do you want me to go see?’
I nod. ‘Please.’ I don’t know why, but if the news comes from Kate, it will almost feel cushioned . . . filtered through another reality. If the result is positive, of course. While my brain knows it could be negative, my body is telling me a different story.
Kate nods, then strides purposefully into the bathroom. There’s nothing but silence – no sharp intake of breath, no ‘hurrah!’ of relief – and my fingers furiously work a sock as I hear her footsteps come back into the lounge.
She sits down on the sofa beside me, and I tilt my head slowly to meet hers. I can’t make out her expression.
‘Well?’ I ask finally, when I can’t bear it any longer.
She takes my hand, and I know, even before she tells me, what the answer is.
‘I’m pregnant,’ I say, and she squeezes my fingers. ‘I’m going to kill Edward.’
26
ZOE, SATURDAY, 7.15 P.M.
M y feet burn from walking so much. Liquid seeps from broken blisters, where my shoes have rubbed them raw. I’ve only been in Paris a few hours, but it seems like days. I feel . . . I pause, trying to get a grasp on my emotions, and a muttered French curse drifts over my head as the person behind me steps past. I don’t know how I feel, exactly, other than I don’t feel like me. At least, not the ‘me’ who got off the train this morning.
Although the evenings are lengthening with summer approaching, I know it’s only an hour or so until darkness falls. I should be panicking at the possibility of spending the night on the Paris streets alone, but I’m not. Not yet, anyway. I’m suspended between the past and present, not caught in either, and still unable to envision the future.
I felt this way when I was pregnant with Milo, too: incapable of believing I was actually going through with it, knowing my past was behind me now that I was a mum-to-be, yet the future as a mother seemed completely unfathomable. That first pregnancy is a no-man’s land, where you’re neither a person in your own right any more or a mother yet. I wish now I’d enjoyed it more, instead of wishing it away – anxious to finally meet the baby growing inside of me.
I used to laugh when people told me to enjoy the newborn days, the toddlerhood, because ‘they grow up so fast’. Some days – when Milo had colic or screamed like a banshee because he hated his buggy – time seemed to stretch for hours.
But in the end, those people are right. It does go fast. And when you only have that child for two years, it seems like the blink of an eye. His little face – the face that was fading slightly, like a photo greying over time – bursts into technicolour. I close my eyes, trying to imprint the sharpness of the image on my brain before I lose it again. For just a second, it feels like he’s right there in front of me. I can almost smell the mix of baby wipes, yeasty bread and earth his body gave off, and the rush
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