Babyville Page 0,59

babies. I could say they're not a part of my life, but unfortunately they have affected my life, as every time a friend rings me up to tell me excitedly she's pregnant, I'm expected to jump up and down with joy, when in fact my heart plummets to the floor.

And another one crossed off the Christmas card list, for I know exactly what will happen. The more sensitive friends will still see me when pregnant, and will manage to carry on a normal conversation. We will talk about work, friends, life, and men, although not necessarily in that order. I might ask how they are feeling, and they will say fine, and we will leave it at that. The less sensitive will sit there all evening and presume I am desperate to hear about their scans. They will presume I am fascinated by tales of their morning sickness, by amusing anecdotes they have built around their swollen feet to make their tales more palatable. They will bang on and on about pregnancy and babies, and nursery decoration, and I will be mentally checking off the minutes, and wondering how soon I can leave without seeming rude.

Although by that stage I'm not even sure I care.

However sensitive the friend, the final outcome is always the same. You send the obligatory card and flowers when the baby is born, and are then expected to pay a visit. You sit there, bored to tears as they cuddle a screaming infant, and try to look interested as you listen to them recounting their birth story for the hundredth time that week.

You go home filled with sadness, because however close you are, you know that's another friend you won't be seeing anymore. You won't have anything in common anymore, since you are not interested in babies, and they are no longer interested in life.

I shudder even thinking about it.

My amateur psychologist friends (the ones without babies) claim that I'm protecting myself from being hurt. I associate commitment, children, with my parents, and my parents with the pain I felt when my father left. They say I don't want to get married or have children because I'm scared.

I say it's because I have more important things to do.

And it's not as if I had a horrible upbringing, terrible parenting, and don't want to inflict that on any children of mine. Sure, the first year was tough. My mother was, to put it mildly, devastated. I'd bring her cups of tea when she was crying, and curl up next to her on the sofa, stroking her hair because that was what she used to do to me when I was upset, and I didn't know what else to do.

Eventually she cried less and less, and soon there was a series of friends passing in and out the door, none of whom was permanent, but all of whom helped to keep a smile on her face most of the time.

“Not ‘uncles,'” she'd say to me, when I questioned why friends of mine were allowed to call their mum's friends “uncle,” and why her friends were just Bob. Or Michael. Or Richard. I understand now, of course. She didn't want to be married. She didn't want commitment. Been there, done that, she'd laugh merrily. She wanted fun. She wanted to feel beautiful, and she wanted to be treated well. Naturally there was sex involved, but it was far more about the attention. And when she felt their attention waning, she'd move on.

So “uncles” implied a familiarity and a permanence that she neither wanted nor needed. A familiarity and a permanence that were never going to occur, even though some of them were really very nice. I remember being particularly fond of Bob. He clearly thought the way to my mother's heart was through her daughter, and, thanks to Bob, my Girl's World had more makeup than any of my friends'. Not only that, my makeup was real makeup and could be used on us as well.

The older I grew, the closer my mother and I became. Some said it was unhealthy, that there ought to be boundaries between a parent and a child, but I loved the fact that I could call her Viv and she didn't mind; that she'd borrow my ra-ra skirts and I'd borrow her jodhpurs; that when I decided to go on the pill at fifteen (not because I was actually doing anything but because I was hopeful), the person who accompanied me to the