“Yes.” I nod earnestly. “I learned I definitely want an epidural.”
“Have a general anesthetic, darling,” interjects Mum. “Or a nice cesarean!”
“You can’t have a general anesthetic.” Noura stares at her incredulously. “They don’t just hand them out, you know!”
“Becky’s going to the top place in London!” Mum retorts. “She can have anything she wants! Now, darling, if I were you, I’d have the Thai massage and the water birth before labor begins, then the epidural and aromatherapy to follow….”
“This is labor!” Noura shouts, clutching her hair. “You’re having a baby, not ordering from a bloody room-service menu!”
There’s a shocked silence.
“I’m sorry,” she says, more calmly. “I…don’t know what came over me. Let’s have a short break. Help yourselves to drinks.”
She heads out of the room, and a muted babble of chatter breaks out.
“Well!” says Mum, raising her eyebrows. “I think someone needs to do their shallow breathing! Janice, shall we go to Liberty now?”
“Just let me finish this row….” Janice clicks frantically with her knitting needles. “There! All done. Coming, Becky?”
“I dunno,” I say, torn. “Maybe I should stay to the end of the class.”
“I don’t think that Noura knows what she’s talking about!” Mum says conspiratorially. “We’ll tell you everything you need to know. And you can help me choose a new handbag!”
“OK, then.” I get to my feet. “Let’s go!”
By the time I’ve finished shopping with Mum and Janice and had my hair appointment, it’s gone six. I arrive home to find Luke in the study. The lights are off, and he’s just sitting there in the gloom.
“Luke?” I put my bags down. “Is everything OK?”
He starts at my voice, and raises his head. I peer at him in surprise. His face is taut, with a deep crease between his brows. “It’s fine,” he says at last. “Everything’s fine.”
It doesn’t sound like it’s fine to me. I come into the study, perch on the desk opposite him, and study his face.
“Luke, what was the crisis at work today?”
“It’s not a crisis.” He musters a smile. “I used the wrong word. It was just…an incident. Nothing important. It’s all been resolved.”
“But—”
“How are you?” He strokes my arm. “How was the class?”
“Oh.” I cast my mind back. “Er…it was fine. You didn’t miss much. Then I went shopping with Mum and Janice. We went to Liberty’s and Browns….”
“You haven’t been overdoing it?” He surveys me with concern. “Did you take a rest? Remember what Venetia said about your blood pressure?”
“I’m fine!” I wave an arm in the air. “Never felt better!”
“Well.” Luke glances at his watch. “We should be going soon. I’ll take a quick shower and call a taxi.” His voice is cheerful enough, but as he gets up I notice a tense set to his shoulders.
“Luke…” I hesitate. “Everything’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Becky. Don’t worry.” Luke takes both my hands in his. “Everything’s fine. We have little crises every day. It’s the nature of the job; you know it is. We deal with them and we move on. Maybe I am more preoccupied than usual. I’m just very busy right now.”
“Well…OK,” I say, mollified. “Go and have your shower.”
He heads down the corridor to our bedroom and I dump my bags in the hall. I am quite tired, actually, after my afternoon with Mum and Janice. Maybe I’ll have a shower too, after Luke’s finished. I could use my revitalizing rosemary gel and do some invigorating yoga stretches.
Or else I could have a quick Kit Kat. I go into the kitchen and am just getting the box down, when the doorbell rings. That can’t be the taxi already.
“Hello?” I say into the intercom.
“Hi, Becky?” A crackly voice comes back. “It’s Jess.”
Jess?
I press the buzzer in astonishment. What’s Jess doing here? I didn’t even know she was in London.
“The taxi’s booked for fifteen minutes’ time.” Luke puts his head round the kitchen door, wearing only a towel.
“You’d better get some clothes on,” I say. “Jess is just coming up in the lift!”
“Jess?” Luke looks taken aback. “We weren’t expecting her, were we?”
“No.” I hear the gentle chime of the doorbell to our apartment and start giggling. “Quick, get dressed!”
I swing the door open to see Jess, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a tight brown tank top, which actually looks quite cool in a seventies, retro way.
“Hi!” She gives me a stiff hug. “How are you, Becky? I’ve been seeing my tutor, and I thought I’d drop by. I tried ringing, but the line was busy. Is it OK?”
She looks slightly nervous. Honestly! As if I’m going to say no, it’s not, go away.
“Of course!” I warmly clasp her back. “It’s fab to see you. Come on in!”
“I brought a present for the baby.” She reaches in her rucksack and pulls out a brown romper, with I Will Not Pollute the World printed on the front in beige.
“Er…fab!” I say, turning it over in my fingers. “Thanks!”
“It’s made of natural hemp,” Jess says. “Are you still planning an all-hemp wardrobe for the baby?”
All-hemp? What on earth is she—
Oh. Maybe I did say something like that at Mum’s party, just to stop her lecturing me about evil bleached cotton.
“I’m going…part hemp, part other fabrics,” I say at last. “For…er…biodiversity.”
“Excellent.” She nods. “And I meant to say, I can get you a changing table on loan. There’s a women’s student cooperative which lends out baby equipment and toys. I’ve brought the number.”
“Right!” I quickly kick the door of the nursery shut before she spots my Circus Tent changing station with integrated puppet show, which arrived yesterday from Funky Baba. “I’ll…bear that in mind. Come and have a drink.”
“Have you made the baby wipes yet?” Jess follows me into the kitchen.
Not the baby wipes again. I can’t tell her I threw all the rags away at Mum’s house.
“Er, not yet…” I hastily cast around. “But I’ve done some other stuff.” I grab a striped tea towel from the rack and tie a knot in the end. “This is a homemade organic toy,” I say casually, turning round. “It’s called Knotty.”
“That’s great.” Jess examines it. “What a simple concept. Far better than any manufactured rubbish.”
“And I’m planning to…paint this spoon with nontoxic natural paint.” Feeling emboldened, I take a wooden spoon from the drawer. “I’ll give it a face and call it Spoony.”
God, I’m good at this eco-recycling lark. Maybe I’ll start my own newsletter!
“Anyway, let me get you a drink.” I pour Jess a glass of wine and plonk down opposite her. “So. What’s going on? I couldn’t believe it when Janice said you were going out with Tom!”
“I know,” says Jess. “I’m sorry, I should have told you. But it’s been so…” She breaks off.
“What?” I say, agog. Jess is staring into her glass without drinking.
“It’s not really working out,” she says at last.
“Why not?”
Jess is silent again. She hasn’t really cracked this whole talking-about-boyfriends thing, has she?
“Go on,” I cajole. “Everything you say is totally safe with me. I mean…you do like him, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. But…” She exhales. “It’s just…”
“Becky?” Luke puts his head round the door. “Oh, hi, Jess. I don’t want to break things up, but we should be going soon….”
“You have plans,” says Jess, stiffening. “I’ll go.”
“No!” I put a hand on her arm. The one time Jess ever drops in on me and asks my advice, I’m not sending her away. This is exactly
what I imagined us doing when I first met her. Two sisters, popping round to each other’s places, talking about boys….
“Luke.” I make a snap decision. “Why don’t you go on ahead and I’ll join you at the bar?”
“Well, if you’re sure.” Luke kisses me. “Good to see you, Jess!”
He heads out of the kitchen and as I hear the front door close I rip open a mini-packet of Pringles. “So. You like him….”
“He’s great.” Jess is fiddling with the rough skin on one of her fingers. “He’s bright, and interesting; he has sound views…and he’s good-looking. I mean, that goes without saying.”
“Absolutely!” I say after a pause.
To be honest, Tom has never done it for me. (Despite Janice and Martin’s conviction that I’ve been hopelessly in love with him my whole life.) But to each their own.
“So the problem is…” I circle my hands, prompting her.
“He’s so needy. He calls me about ten times a day; he sends cards covered with kisses….” Jess looks up with a disparaging expression and I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for poor old Tom. “Last week he tried to get my name tattooed on his arm. He phoned me to tell me he was doing it, and I got so angry, he stopped after J.”
“He’s got a J on his arm?” I can’t help giggling.
“Up near his elbow.” She rolls her eyes. “It looks ridiculous.”
“Well, maybe he was trying to look cool,” I suggest. “You know, Lucy wanted him to get a tattoo but he wouldn’t. He probably just wanted to impress you.”
“Well, I’m not impressed. And as for Janice…” Jess thrusts her fingers through her cropped hair. “She rings me up nearly every day on some pretense or other. Have I had any thoughts about Tom’s Christmas present? Do I want to join them on a wine-tasting weekend to France? I’ve really had enough of it. So I’m thinking of ending it.”
I look up in dismay. Ending it? But what about the baby being a ring-bearer?
“You can’t give up just because of a few little details!” I protest. “I mean, apart from the tattoo, are you getting on OK? Do you ever argue?”
“We had a pretty big argument the other day.” Jess nods as she says it.
“About what?”
“Social policy.”
Oh, this just proves it. They’re made for each other!
“Jess, talk to Tom,” I say on impulse. “I bet you can work things out. Just for the sake of a tattoo…”
“It’s not just that.” Jess wraps her arms round her knees. “There’s…something else.”
“What is it?”
With an intake of breath, it hits me. She’s pregnant too. It has to be. God, how cool! We’ll have babies together and they’ll be cousins and we’ll take cute pictures of them playing in the grass together….
“I’ve been offered a two-year research project in Chile.” Jess’s voice pricks my bubble.
“Chile?” My mouth drops open in dismay. “But that’s…miles away.”
“Seven thousand,” she says, nodding.
“So…are you going to go?”
“I haven’t decided. But it’s a fantastic opportunity. It’s a team I’ve wanted to join for years.”
“Right,” I say after a short silence. “Well, then…you should go.”
I have to be supportive. This is Jess’s career. But I can’t help feeling a bit doleful. I’ve only just got to know my long-lost sister, and now she’s disappearing off to the other side of the world?
“I’ve pretty much decided that I will.” She raises her head and I find myself looking right into her speckly hazel eyes. I’ve always thought Jess had pretty eyes.
Maybe the baby will have speckly hazel eyes just like that.
“You’ll have to send me lots of pictures of my niece or nephew,” says Jess, as though reading my mind. “So I can see it grow up.”
“Of course! Every week.” I bite my lip, trying to digest all this. “So…what about Tom?”
“I haven’t told him yet.” She hunches her shoulders. “But it’ll mean the end for us.”
“Not necessarily! You could have a long-distance relationship…. There’s always e-mail….”
“For two years ?”
“Well…” I trail off. Maybe she’s right. They met only a few weeks ago. And two years is a pretty long time.
“I can’t give up a chance like this for some…man.” She sounds like she’s arguing with herself. Maybe she’s more torn than she’s letting on. Maybe, underneath it all, she really has fallen for Tom.
But even I can see it. Jess’s work has been her life. She can’t just abandon it now.
“You have to go to Chile,” I say firmly. “It’ll be amazing for you. And it’ll work out with Tom. Somehow.”
The Pringles seem to have disappeared, so I get up and head for the cupboard. I open the door and survey the shelves dubiously. “We’re out of chips…. I’m not supposed to eat nuts…. We’ve got some old Ritz crackers….”
“Actually, I brought some popcorn,” says Jess, looking a bit pink about the face. “Toffee flavored.”
“You what?” I gape at her.
“It’s in my rucksack.”
Jess brought toffee flavored popcorn? But…that’s not organic. Or nutritious. Or made from farm-cooperative potatoes.
I stare in astonishment as she reaches inside her rucksack for the packet. A DVD comes out too, all shiny in its cellophane, and she stuffs it back, her cheeks reddening further.
Hang on a moment.
“What’s that?” I grab it. “Nine Months? Jess, that’s not your kind of film!”
Jess looks totally caught out.
“I thought it might be your kind of film,” she says at last. “Especially now.”
“You brought this for us to watch together?” I say incredulously, and after a moment she nods.
“I just thought…” She clears her throat. “If you were at a loose end…”
I cannot believe how touched I feel. The first time we ever spent an evening together I tried to get Jess to watch Pretty Woman, and believe me, it was not a success. But now here she is with popcorn and a Hugh Grant film. And telling me about her boyfriend. Just like I imagined having a sister would be like.
“But you have to go out.” Jess is shoving the DVD back into the rucksack. “In fact, you should get going….”
I feel a rush of affection for her—and all of a sudden I don’t want to go anywhere. Why would I spend the evening in some crowded bar, talking to a lot of snobby Cambridge graduates I don’t even know, when I could be spending time with my sister? I can meet Venetia’s Mr. Wonderful some other time. Luke won’t mind.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say firmly, and tear open the popcorn. “Let’s stay in and have fun.”
We have the best evening. We watch Nine Months—Jess does Sudoku puzzles at the same time, but that’s OK because I’m reading Hello! magazine—and we conference-call Suze to ask her advice on Tom, and then we order pizza. And Jess doesn’t even tell me how we could have made our own for 30p.
She leaves around eleven, saying that I must be tired, and I go to bed, wondering how late Luke will be. He must be having a good time too, to be out this long. When at last a stripe of light from the doorway lands on my face and makes me blink, I realize I must have fallen asleep, because I could have sworn I was receiving an Oscar from the Queen.
“Hi!” I sit up sleepily. “What time is it?”
“Just gone one,” whispers Luke. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“It’s OK.” I reach for the bedside light and switch it on. “So, how was it?”
“It was good!” There’s an enthusiasm in Luke’s voice that I wasn’t expecting. I rub my bleary eyes and focus on him. His face is glowing and he has a kind of lightness and animation about him which I haven’t seen in weeks, if not months. He strips off his tie and throws it on a chair. “I’d forgotten how much I had in common with all these old friends,” he says. “We talked about
things I haven’t even thought about for years. Politics…the arts…My old friend Matthew runs a gallery now. He invited us to an exhibition. We should go!”
“Wow!” I can’t help smiling at Luke’s eagerness. “How fantastic!”
“It was great, just taking a break from business.” He shakes his head wonderingly. “I should do it more. Get things in perspective. Relax a bit.” He starts unbuttoning his shirt. “So, how was your evening with Jess?”
“It was fab! We watched a movie and ate pizza. And I have to tell you her news….” I suddenly yawn. “Maybe tomorrow.” I snuggle back down into the pillows and watch Luke get undressed. “So, what’s Venetia’s famous boyfriend like? Is he as boring as he looks in the picture?”
“He wasn’t there,” Luke says, hanging up his suit trousers.
I stop comfortably snuggling and turn my head in surprise. Venetia’s boyfriend wasn’t there? But I thought the whole point of the evening was to introduce us to Justin the wonder-boy financier.
“Oh, right. How come?”
“They’ve split up.”
“They’ve split up ?” I haul myself to a sitting position in bed. “But…I thought she loved Justin more than anyone else. I thought she moved halfway across the world to be with him and they were the happiest couple in the whole universe.”
“She did.” Luke shrugs. “They were. Until three days ago. She was pretty upset about it.”
“Right,” I say after a pause. “I see.”
Suddenly the evening has taken on a totally different slant. It wasn’t Luke being introduced to Venetia’s long-term boyfriend. It was a newly single Venetia crying on Luke’s shoulder.
“So…did Venetia break it off?” I ask casually. “Or did he?”
“I’m not sure which of them ended it.” Luke heads into the bathroom. “Apparently he’s gone back to his wife now.”
“His wife ?” My voice shoots up like a rocket. “What do you mean, ‘his wife’?”
“Venetia thought they were separated in all but name.” Luke turns on the taps and I can barely hear him. “She’s had a tough time, romantically, poor old Ven. She always seems to fall for married men and get into complicated situations.”
I’m trying to stay calm here. Shallow breaths. Do not overreact.