Babyville Page 0,79
Your baby's intestines are now coiled and contained inside the abdomen, while the liver secretes bile and the pancreas secretes insulin. And now the really exciting stuff starts! Those little fingers and toes are no longer webbed and the nail beds have begun to develop.
“What are you doing?” Mark comes in and places a mug of soup on the bedside table, then sits next to me on the bed to look at the book. We sit in silence for a while, and eventually Mark touches my arm.
“Can we talk about this now?” he says gently. I nod. “How are you feeling?”
“Scared.”
“Does that mean . . .” He pauses. “You're going to . . .” He looks up at me, eyes filled with hope. “. . . Have this baby?”
“Of course I'm going to have this baby. It's a baby! There's a baby growing inside of me, for God's sake, and I've seen it! Mark!” I look at him and catch my breath as the full realization hits me in the face. “We're going to have a baby!”
“I know,” he laughs, putting his arms around me and enveloping me in a hug so tight I practically lose my breath. “Isn't it fucking amazing!”
Mark stays for supper. I wish I could tell you I provide him with a similar gastronomic experience to his Sunday lunch, but in the event we order in a curry from the Indian restaurant in the village. I do, however, manage to supply the mango chutney.
We talk for a long, long time. At least it feels like a long, long time, but when I eventually say goodnight and climb into bed, thoroughly exhausted, I manage to catch sight of the clock just before I fall asleep, and it's 9:22.
What did we talk about? We talked about our child. About our values. About children of friends, and what we like and dislike about their upbringing, how we would do things differently with our own.
We didn't talk about the logistics. How two people will jointly raise a child when they are not together, but really, that's no big deal. Look at the divorce statistics in this country, for heaven's sake. Isn't it one in three? Or maybe even higher. It's just as normal for children to grow up in one-parent families, and at least our child won't be subjected to any bitterness or acrimony between its parents, because we were never together in the first place. Well. Barely.
Mark can fulfill his dream of being a father and I can carry on with my career just as I was before.
“The only thing is,” I said, when we'd exhausted our dreams, “how the hell are we supposed to tell everyone at work?”
“Ah yes. That had crossed my mind.” Mark sighed.
“I told Mike Jones I was pregnant just to see his reaction and he practically had heart failure in front of me.”
“What?” Mark was horrified. “You told him?”
“Don't worry. He thought I was joking. I just wanted to test him, and the result wasn't what I wanted to hear.”
“So don't tell anyone.”
“Oh, be serious. You think that somehow they won't notice?”
He shrugged. “You don't have to tell anyone yet. You're not showing, and we can work out the best way to tell people in a few weeks.”
“So you're okay about them knowing it's your baby?” I was flabbergasted.
“I want the whole bloody world to know it's my baby! Especially when everyone knew Julia and I were trying and presumed it was my fault when nothing happened. I don't just want to tell them, I want to commission a television series about it.”
“Good idea,” I mused. “But not great. Surely a whole series is just a touch over the top? How about a short thirty-second ad to go out just after Coronation Street for a week? That's much more low-key.”
He smiled, but his attention was elsewhere and I knew what he was thinking.
“Mark? What's the matter? It's Julia, isn't it?”
He smiled sadly. “I've been so excited I haven't even thought about Julia in all this. And I suppose if it isn't me, then it must be her, but even if there's nothing wrong at all, how in the hell is she going to take this?”
“Mark, if no one else is going to know for a while, then Julia doesn't need to know either. But when we do start telling people, make sure you tell her first. I can't imagine anything worse than Julia hearing this from someone else.”
“I know,” he said, nodding, still thinking