Babyville Page 0,62
diary to my mother. “You work it out. Look, my period was on the twelfth of February, so I would have had another on the ninth of March, which means it's due on the third of April, so why have I got all the PMS symptoms now?”
Viv looks at the diary, then looks into space as she checks off her fingers, then back at the diary. “You did have a period on the ninth of March?” she says slowly.
“Of course I had a period. Didn't I?” I suddenly realize what she's saying and I sit down on the stool with a thump. “Didn't I? Oh fuck. Viv. I don't know. I can't remember whether I had a period or not.”
“Look, if you remember what you did around then, you might remember whether you had a period or not, okay?”
“Okay.” I nod my head, trying to ignore the fact that my heart is now thumping like a mad person's.
“On the ninth of March you had a meeting with Mike Jones at three P.M.” She looks at me expectantly but I shake my head. I have a million meetings with Mike Jones and they're all indistinguishable. “You had a drink with someone called Johnny in the evening.”
“Oh, I remember that!” We went to a bar in Gabriel's Wharf. “But I don't remember having my period.”
“On the tenth you were in an edit suite.”
“Nope.”
“Evening you had a meeting with Stella?”
“Nope.” It's all blank. And I don't remember if I was having a period.
“I think, my darling,” my mother says, gritting her teeth, and unable to hide the pained expression, “that after this we ought to go and get a pregnancy test.”
My heart threatens to jump right out of my mouth.
We don't say very much on the way back. Viv's being incredibly sweet and sympathetic, and keeps rubbing my arm and looking at me with this huge concern. At home she sends me off to the bathroom while she bustles around the kitchen making tea and talking nineteen to the dozen about rubbish to try to retain a sense of normality. I, meanwhile, feel as if I have woken up in the middle of a particularly surreal dream. Not nightmare, because nothing has happened yet, but I feel as if I am an observer, as if this is happening to someone other than me, and I am only vaguely curious at the outcome, to see what this person, who looks like me, sounds like me, and talks like me, will do.
I have locked the bathroom door and tipped the test out of the Boots bag, and I note that my hands are shaking, but even then I note it only with vague interest. I have never done a pregnancy test before. I have never needed to. And although I am shaking, I also know as an absolute certainty that I will not be pregnant. How could I possibly fall pregnant on the one time, the first time, that I actually allowed myself to get carried away in the heat of the moment and didn't use a condom?
Plus of course there is Mark, because did he not say that Julia hates him because he is infertile? Did he not sit on my sofa, after the unfortunate event that I no longer wish to think about, and say that his relationship is shit because Julia blames him? That they have been trying for months and she has been pregnant and the problem is definitely, undoubtedly, his.
I pull the package out of the box and look at it for a while, then I pull out all the notes and instructions and read them from cover to cover. Not that I'm putting it off or anything. Because I am not pregnant.
“With the tip pointing downward, hold the absorbent sampler . . .”
“Maeve? Are you okay? Do you need me?” Viv's standing outside the door.
“It's okay, Mum.” Funny how I revert back to calling her “Mum” at times of need. Not that I need her, but it really is comforting to know that she's here right now. Just in case.
In case of what?
Because there's just no way I'm pregnant. No way. No fucking way.
Eventually I feel the urge to pee again, which isn't surprising because I have been running back and forth to the loo amazingly often these days, but then that could well be because of the water I'm drinking. The Daily Mail Detox Diet said at least two liters a day, so I've been swigging it back