Babyville Page 0,93
me you're expecting anytime soon, are you?”
“Fuck off, Mike!” she shouts, which gets the loudest cheer of the night.
With the inappropriate speech over, they bring out the presents: a basket containing two Petit Bateau stretchsuits and a yellow gingham matching comb and brush, a sexy pair of red lacy knickers that I doubt I'll ever manage to fit into, and a bottle of Antiseptic Nipple spray from Boots.
Just what I always wanted.
“Are you sure you don't want anything?” Mark shouts from the kitchen, where he's busy preparing dinner. “Tea? Biscuit? Baby?”
“Nothing,” I shout back, repositioning the vase in the living room, then standing back to get a second look. “Actually, can I have the baby? Now? Please?” I hear Mark laugh, and move the vase back to the coffee table.
Everything needs to be perfect tonight. Viv and Michael have come up to London for the weekend, and tonight they are coming here for dinner. And I feel ever so slightly sick.
Thankfully they didn't ask to stay here. It's not something I could handle right now. They've booked into a guesthouse up the road, and I can't quite grasp the fact that I'm going to be meeting my mother's serious boyfriend this evening, who also happens to be my father.
“You've become the quintessential Jerry Springer family,” quips Mark, unamusingly I think. “All you need now is to discover I'm your brother and we'd be guaranteed a slot on the show.”
“Oh ha bloody ha. Because of that, you can now do the cooking.”
“It's your family. Why should I do the cooking?”
“Because (a) I'll accept it by way of apology for what you've just said, and (b) you're better at it than I am.”
“You only needed to say (b),” Mark laughs, and I smile as I watch him open cupboard doors, checking for cardamom pods and cumin seeds, knowing how much he loves cooking for other people.
I go upstairs to change, again. So far this afternoon I've tried on five outfits, which is quite a feat considering the only things I'm wearing right now are a pair of black stretchy leggings from Mothercare and three men's sweaters from Marks and Spencer. All those sexy little numbers that were supposed to see me through? The men's shirts? The tight sweaters that were supposed to stretch to accommodate the belly? Forget it. They fitted me perfectly until six months, and then overnight nothing fitted at all.
But I manage to find five variations. Do I wear the black leggings and high heels in a bid to look slimmer, or will I just look horribly eighties? Do I wear the gray sweater with the black leggings or is that dull? Should I squeeze into the brown stretchy trousers from M & S, which, although not maternity, were supposed to have seen me through to the end, and really, what does it matter if they're a bit tight and I can't actually do them up anyway? One of my sweaters will cover that in an instant.
Why does it matter so much what my father thinks? But of course I know why it matters so much. It matters because the little girl in me still wants his approval. It may have been my decision to walk away from him completely ten years ago, but I want him to look at me now and be proud. I want him to think I'm successful, beautiful, everything he would want his daughter to be.
And I'd rather not have him think I'm fat, hence the clothing dilemma, although, as Mark said earlier, at thirty-eight and a half weeks pregnant I think I'm allowed to err on the side of large.
I do feel enormous. I've developed the pregnant woman's waddle, belly pushed out and hand resting in the small of my back for support. I feel like a caricature of myself, even as I do it, but it's the only way I feel balanced.
As for how much weight I've put on, God knows. As do the nurses, midwives, and obstetricians, but thankfully that's as far as it goes. Every week they weigh me, and every week, just before I stand on the scales, I announce loudly, “Don't tell me what I weigh.” I figure that since there's nothing I can do about it, there's no point in knowing, because even though pregnancy's the greatest excuse there is, I know that I'll still feel horrific if I've put on more than the twenty-five to twenty-eight pounds the books advise. Also, I'm pretty damn certain I've