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Ben shook his head. ‘Advertising is down again, and I’m losing more editorial control. I try and fight, but these owners hold job cuts over my head. I won’t give up but they wield a lot of influence these media conglomerates.’
You’d think he was working for News International, not the local rag, thought James. He regarded his dad’s job as presenting a constant threat of self-righteous, dull diatribes about the freedom of the press and power of local communities, but at least it saw his father get animated about something. Ben’s work on the newspaper had also caused in-law tension for years, since both dads discovered they’d crossed swords before when Howard had been fairly senior in the borough council covered by the paper.
A few years before Rebecca and James had met, Howard had been Something Secretary or Deputy Chairman of the local Conservative Party, and the Tories had complained about media bias from the then politics editor, Ben (who was also the paper’s deputy editor, communities editor, and just-about-everything editor, apart from sport). This had caused an earlier storm over advertising and editorial independence, and seen a change in the scope and tone of the local politics reporting to something ‘more upbeat and positive’. It had emerged amid the volleys between both sides that many of the local advertisers were ‘coincidentally’ concerned that the paper was becoming too radical, and had threatened to pull all their advertising, which would effectively shut the Harrow Focus down. The Harrow Focus, thankfully for Ben, didn’t close down. The Harrow Focus was still going strong, or limping along depending on how you saw it, and still covered all the local news for Harrow and the district.
All the news.
‘And how’s the skyscraping temple of Mammon?’ asked Ben.
‘Good, good. I managed to reduce thousands of people to a number on a spreadsheet last week, so should be due a promotion. Listen, you still have that crime desk column?’
‘For what it is,’ sighed Ben. ‘It could be a powerful vehicle for tackling injustice, a spotlight on persecution, but apparently that doesn’t sell ad space to local plumbers, so it’s all about drug addicts robbing the elderly. What people want to read, it seems.’
‘Sex and scandal, that kind of thing, huh?’
‘Exploitation of poverty-induced misery, and prurient snooping into the lives of others. But I’ve managed to expand the arts section, and we’re making progress in covering more cultural events. Thanks to sponsorship from the local diversity-killing multinational supermarket ironically enough.’
‘Still, subvert from within eh?’ said James. ‘And the crime column. I’d been thinking about it the other day, just generally really, is it still picking up, say, the goings-on at the train station’s gents? Just, y’know, for example.’
‘Urgh, that’s reared its head again. We’d had a local police policy that was dragged into the mid-twentieth century a few years ago, with the revolutionary idea that what consenting people do between themselves was their business. Then a fifteen-year-old boy was propositioned outside his school and suddenly there’s moral outrage and the police are cracking down like Thatcher was still Führer. Of course fifteen-year old girls get propositioned all the time, but that isn’t a threat to public safety apparently.’
‘So all the gory details are making it to page seven are they?’ James asked nervously.
‘Two columns on page four and five now, next to the regular advertising for Debenhams.’
‘Right, I see. No reason. I was just wondering,’ said James, although there’d been no indication from Ben that he’d been about to ask why he wanted to know.
‘And we don’t need to ruin the holidays with work worries when we go back inside again do we?’ James continued as Ben, roll-up lit at last, drifted off into his own world again, and started work on his crossword.
Chapter 5
Rebecca had spent the morning in a frenzy of cleaning, in case the midwife making her home visit took one look at their place and immediately called social services.
As she sat on her knees scrubbing out the bottom of the crockery cupboard she was aware that the midwife was unlikely to conduct a full kitchen inspection, and probably wouldn’t make judgements on whether their unborn child should be put on a wait list for fostering based on the condition of the cutlery drawer, but she couldn’t help it. Housework wasn’t really her thing, and James usually did a lot of it. But really he was a tidier, not a cleaner. As long as everything looked to be in place that was enough for him, he didn’t seem to notice the dust and grease and dirt. She did, but that didn’t mean she got around to doing something about it, except when they had people coming.
During the Christmas and New Year limbo period she’d had more than a week of sitting around and doing nothing in their little terraced house in Neasden. She could’ve gone at the place with a vengeance then, but it had just seemed too early to start on this nesting business, and she was pining for work. Not that she was exactly passionate about her job as a senior associate at a Harrow law firm, it was more that she loved the office on those in-between days at Christmas when the phone never rang and she could watch seasonally appropriate old movies on the computer and eat mince pies all day. But her office now closed down at this time of year, so that was the end of that lovely tradition. And now she’d had to take an extra day to be at home for this; it was a demanding little squirt already.
Waiting for this appointment had added another element to the floaty, on-hold, feel of the week as they were still not yet properly in the system – the pregnancy was not yet official. She’d gone to the doctors before Christmas, but that hadn’t really got the ball rolling, nothing was written down. Despite three, no four, tests – two on the day they found out, one the next day, just to be sure, and one taken a few days later because she was bored, and it was there – the nurse at the GPs had taken yet another one, told her the same result she’d had the four other times, and then sent her away with a number to ring for someone to come around for a booking appointment. The lady on the phone had been very cheerful, as though it was a lovely surprise that someone was calling her up to tell her they were pregnant, rather than something she must hear dozens of times a week. However the first slot she’d had available was after the holidays due to staff shortages, with priority going to those ‘about to pop’, as she’d put it. Rebecca figured she’d be over ten weeks gone; a quarter of the way through her pregnancy without any medical intervention at all. It almost felt Victorian – she’d be having the baby on a factory floor if it carried on at this rate.
She realised she was getting distracted from the task at hand and that time was running out and she hadn’t even bleached the draining board yet, or dusted the high shelves. She had a vision of the midwife putting on a soft white leather glove and running her finger along surfaces for evidence of unseen filth that was somehow harmful to foetuses. Then she thought if the midwife did need to put on gloves, it’d be those rubbery plasticky ones, and it wouldn’t be the mantelpiece she’d be fingering. Sticking out of the cupboards beneath the sink, her bottom wriggled uneasily.
Rebecca banged her head on the underside of the cupboard shelf as the doorbell rang. She stood up and swept the cleaning products under the sink. Glancing around the suspiciously clean-smelling kitchen, she wished they’d had a proper drinks cabinet. The over-full wine rack topped with spirits wasn’t a great look, but too late now. She tried throwing a tea towel over it, but that just looked messy. Worst came to the worst she’d have to say that she never touched the stuff and James was an alcoholic.
As she reached the door, Rebecca wondered if her mental image of a midwife looking like the scary big-boned blonde woman that used to do the house cleaning show was going to be accurate. She wondered if she was really going to be fierce, with a heart of gold, or just fierce. Here we go, she thought as, for the first time since she’d got pregnant, she absently stroked her tummy.
With the door open she’d adjusted her eye level a good eight inches down as she found the less-imposing-than-expected figure behind the door. False alarm, it was a schoolgirl collecting sponsorship pledges for a new school building.
‘Hellooo! I’m Suzanne? The midwife?’
Either nurses are getting younger, or the local sixth form’s work experience programme is getting more ambitious, Rebecca thought.
‘Hello. Do come in,’ Rebecca said with a sweep of her arm along the corridor past James’s neatly wall-mounted mountain bike.
‘Ooh, thanks!’ said Suzanne, a spasm causing her elbow to twitch out. As they headed into the living room Rebecca wondered to herself what was happening to her; she’d never said something like ‘do come in’ before in her life. Today the nerves were expressing themselves as a traditional housewife. And nothing brought out her nerves in social situations more than someone who was even more nervous than she was. The two women stood by the old fireplace looking at each other expectantly for a few seconds.
‘Would you care for a cup… Sorry, would you like a tea or coffee?’
‘You wouldn’t have a gin would you?’ asked Suzanne before hurriedly adding, ‘Sorry, sorry, a joke, not appropriate. Humour can be welcomed but in a neutral non-threatening tone, on non-contentious topics, and in an environment where it can be reassuring for the mum-to-be.’
Rebecca began to think the midwife might have forgotten she was in the room, until she stopped looking up at a point on the ceiling and mumbling, composed herself, and smiled apologetically.
‘I am sorry. Obviously I didn’t mean that. It was inappropriate and unprofessional. Unless you’re having one.’ Suzanne winced, and slumped down into an armchair.
‘Maybe now would be a time for me to go over with you the government health recommendations, which are that pregnant woman should refrain from alcohol entirely during pregnancy. The lack of evidence that one or two units a week does any harm at all apparently outweighing the potential for worry and guilt a responsible woman will inflict on herself for the occasional glass of sauv blanc in contravention of the official line.’
The room fell silent again.
‘Maybe I’ll just have a glass of water,’ said Suzanne.
Rebecca headed into the kitchen to get the water for Suzanne. She’s clearly mad, she thought. The job is so stressful she’s just flipped. Or maybe she’s a nut who goes door to door impersonating a midwife, like one of those people that rocks up to hospitals pretending to be doctors and that are only found out when they’re halfway through performing an appendectomy and making buzzing noises like they’re playing Operation. But what are the chances of her knocking on the right door at the right time? She’s nervous, she’s just nervous. I should go back in and help her relax.
As Rebecca walked into the living room, Suzanne was standing again, facing the wall and bending sideways from the waist so her head was almost at a right angle to the floor.
‘Your water?’ said Rebecca, causing the midwife to spring up straight and her elbow to flip out again.
‘Sorry, force of habit. Checking out the DVD collection. I always do that at parties. Who’s the Sam Raimi fan? Love a bit of guts and gore, me, probably why I like this job.’ Suzanne’s face scrunched up again, her eyes closed as if she was trying not to be there. ‘Not that… Birth is a beautiful natural thing, and I’m here to allay any worries you might have about the journey you are on, and the process of giving birth to your baby.’
‘So, busy day so far?’ asked Rebecca.
Suzanne took the water and dropped back into the chair.
‘I’m not supposed to tell you, but it’s my first day working alone. I’ve been shadowing Maureen for the last few weeks. We have different ways of looking at things. She’d have you believe I haven’t a clue what I’m talking about.’
‘Oh no, not at all,’ said Rebecca, somehow refraining from adding ‘my dear madam’ to the end of the sentence. She hoped the midwife wasn’t going to start crying.
‘Maureen’s a bit of a stickler for the rules and guidelines and client choice. She’s into choice as long as the mum-to-be has been properly educated to know the best choices out there, which just happen to be identical to Maureen’s choices from her Good Pregnancy leaflets. This morning I met my ten o’clock appointment on the steps outside her house on a fag break. She’s got four kids already – three of them boys, all but the eldest under five – and I’m supposed to discuss an enlightened approach to enjoying her pregnancy, and push the benefits of healthy eating and birthing pools? Tell her what’s happening in her body at this exciting but natural time? After two minutes she excused herself and went to have a nap while I was there to keep an eye on the kids. I ended up doing ironing and telling a three-year-old about the lovely opportunity to share experiences at the pregnancy yoga classes at the community centre.’
Rebecca wasn’t really sure what to say. She settled on ‘That sounds jolly difficult for a first day.’
‘Ah, not too bad when you think about it. I didn’t have much chance to screw it up with her, she knew what she was doing. Except on the smoking thing. Difficult to quit, I know. Lord I know. But still, they show us the pictures? What can happen if things go wrong? You don’t want to know, I tell you. But basically that’s it, boom, the next thirty years of your life accounted for. Same with the alcohol to be honest, but you have to really work at overdoing it. Jesus, what am I saying? You don’t have a history of alcoholism do you?’
Both Rebecca’s hands went to her stomach. ‘No.’
‘Smoke?’
‘No.’
‘Thank God. I’m sorry I’m being massively tactless again. One extreme or the other with me, but you’re a very good listener!’ Suzanne jerked upright in her seat and lunged into her briefcase.
‘Now,’ she said, her head obscured by the case lid, ‘we need to get you booked in.’
Suzanne and Rebecca ran through the basic vital statistics covering age, height, weight (Rebecca used her normal weight before all the Christmas goings-on as that was probably the truest real figure for that), date of her last period, contact details for her and James, that kind of thing. While she attached and set up a futuristic-looking blood-pressure test, the midwife then reached what she called the box ticking section of the process.
‘We’ll whiz through these, we’ve covered most of it. Smoking, no. Drinking, no. I won’t tell if you don’t… Intravenous drug use, no? No. Domestic violence, no. Got all the leaflets? Yes.’
As her upper arm was squeezed by the digital pump, Rebecca felt like she should intervene at this stage – she wasn’t a junkie or being knocked about but felt like she should at least be given the option. The Velcro of the armband was unstrapped and the midwife jotted down a couple of numbers. Rebecca could see Suzanne running through a checklist in her head, almost counting things off on her fingers.
‘I told you about the yoga. Maureen gets upset if you don’t mention the yoga. The hospital will be in touch for the scan…you’ve got the phone numbers…checked you’re happy with everything…’
Rebecca watched as Suzanne took a survey of the room peering around her to look through the knocked-through dining area out towards the kitchen and giving a big tick. The cleaning had been worth it.
‘Done, done, done. Now are there any questions you’d like to ask me?’ Suzanne asked.
Rebecca paused as if she was thinking about whether she had any questions, while she was actually just thinking about how long she had to leave it before saying no to make it look like she’d given the subject due consideration.
‘Sex!’ Suzanne jumped in before Rebecca even had time to finish her fake thinking. ‘You’ll want to know about it but be afraid to ask. Go for it, fill your boots is the short answer. Too late to do any more harm now anyway. Can’t do anything to hurt the baby, and if your husband – sorry, supposed to say partner – is worried he can bump the baby in some way he’s either delusional, or should be making a fortune in mucky movies.’
Rebecca admitted to herself she had been wondering about that sort of thing, but hadn’t planned to mention it. It hadn’t been the fear of James taking the baby’s eye out though. More just she was worried about her own physical reactions, the idea that while whatever it is in there had such a tenuous hold on life, any hormones or bodily chemicals she set off down there could cause disruption. Crazy she knew, but so was the way she was tensing her muscles in the region all the time as if making sure nothing fell out, and she couldn’t stop that either. She noticed that Suzanne had started putting the paperwork and the piles of leaflets scattered about her chair back in her bag, and everything seemed to be moving a bit quickly.
‘Don’t you need to…examine me, or something?’ she asked.
‘God, no!’ said Suzanne. ‘I mean, no offence, not that you’re repulsive to the idea of touching or anything, you shouldn’t feel like that. At least not at this early stage, that usually comes later. No, just there’s nothing to look at really.’
‘Oh.’ After all the nerves and excitement, the experience was becoming a bit of an anti-climax for Rebecca.
‘Tell you what, I could try the Doppler. Would you like to hear the baby’s heartbeat?’
Rebecca’s own heart rate quickened at the idea.
‘Can you do that already?’
‘With your dates? It’s early days, so tricky, but I can usually do it. This is the one piece of kit I was near the top of my class for. Not that I was really bad at anything – promise I’m fully qualified and did learn how to use everything. Eventually. Just I was a whiz with this. Now pop open your jeans and lie back on the sofa.’
Rebecca wondered if she should draw the living room curtains, but decided the back of the sofa was under the window so it was only somebody snooping in the front garden that would spot her being tended to by a frizzy-haired health professional.
‘You’ll love this,’ said Suzanne, ‘it’s like real evidence there’s something going on in there. All the worries that it’s not really happening? That something’s gone wrong and you just don’t know about it? Gone. Awful when that happens though, even at this early stage – the state some women get into, horrible to see. You have to feel for them.’
With a clatter of plastic Suzanne removed what looked like an electronic oversized stethoscope from her case and switched it on, sparking a howl of feedback as the microphone grazed against the small speaker.
‘After this we could try some karaoke,’ she said, adjusting the volume and giving the microphone a rub to take the chill off. She put the Doppler unit on Rebecca’s abdomen, gently pushing under her belly button. So this was what she had coming to her, thought Rebecca, strange people prodding me with strange devices in areas I’m a bit sensitive about. There was a rolling pulsating growl as Suzanne turned up the speaker.
‘Heavy lunch was it?’
Rebecca smiled and blushed slightly at the sound of the internal fart. Her belly quietened a little, and the midwife continued her probing; pausing, listening and moving on when getting nothing more than a background throb of Rebecca’s own raised heartbeat, and the occasional gastrointestinal bubble.
Suzanne looked at Rebecca with an awkward smile. ‘They like to play hide and seek sometimes. Let’s try the other side.’
More pops and gurgling followed, and Rebecca stiffened slightly as the midwife pushed the device a bit harder into her belly. Suzanne tutted irritably and tried another angle.
‘Nope, nothing,’ said Suzanne, snapping the Doppler off, and standing up with a click of the knees. ‘You win some, you lose some. Me that is, you’re fine, there’s nothing to worry about. It’s normal.’
Rebecca lay there, looking up at the midwife now looming over her.
‘It would happen like that a lot wouldn’t it? Nothing there at this stage?’ Rebecca asked nervously.
‘You’d know, and I’d know if there was something up. It doesn’t mean anything at all – don’t worry about it. Unless you get some bleeding more than spotting. And that’s just what we say anyway. You knew that. Nothing’s going wrong. The scan will be brilliant. Don’t worry, watch one of those movies and forget all about it. Maybe not Alien though.’
Suzanne held a hand out to pull Rebecca up to a sitting position, where she kept numbly looking up at a mole on the midwife’s chin.
‘Right, I’d best be going. Two more to do before home time,’ Suzanne said.
‘Of course, you must be very busy,’ said Rebecca distractedly, getting to her feet.
‘Thanks for being a great appointment,’ the midwife said, flicking her hair out of the back of her coat collar. ‘I’m sorry, mad week, bit frazzled, but I’ll calm down. See you in a few weeks, and you’ve got my number if there’s anything you want to ask. It’s going to be fun. And seriously, I may joke but check out the yoga at the community centre, it’s supposed to be brilliant.’
‘Mind how you go now,’ Rebecca inexplicably said as she opened the door to let Suzanne out. The midwife gave her a big wave, jumped as the neighbour’s cat leapt from the front yard, and then again as the metal gate banged shut behind her.
Rebecca gave a cheery wave back, shut the door, and burst into tears.
Chapter 6
‘She’s mad. It’s much too early. You haven’t even had The Quickening yet,’ said James as he sat on the arm of the couch and stroked Rebecca’s hair.
When he’d got home Rebecca had seemed fine, although the house did smell alarmingly of bleach and furniture polish. She was sitting, feet tucked up under her, on her place on the couch for watching the telly. Then he realised the television was switched off.
‘Hey darling, how’d it go?’ he’d asked softly and the tears had started again.
The Quickening – the first fluttering feeling of the presence in your womb. When they’d first read about it on a pregnancy website James had said it sounded like the name of a horror movie, and it did feel a bit like that to Rebecca, a sign that something overwhelming was about to happen. Since then whenever she had hiccupped, or her stomach had rumbled, he’d say in a hammy voiceover voice ‘Was it gas? Or was it…THE QUICKENING?!’ and walk around stiff-legged and arms out like a zombie. This time he didn’t do the all-out production, deciding it might not quite be the time, but it raised a smile.
‘Der-derr-derrrrrr,’ managed Rebecca, blowing her nose.
This is what he’d worried about. James had wanted to be there for the first appointment but had been persuaded it wasn’t too big a deal and there’d be other times they’d need to take leave for things he couldn’t miss. He hadn’t minded too much, seeing the sense in that, but did a little bit feel like this was the precursor to years of missed school concerts and sports days. And now his wife had been sitting by herself for hours on end dealing with the stupid things this moron of a midwife had done, leaving her thinking she’d had a miscarriage or something.
‘I’m sorry. I’m just overreacting. It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with the baby,’ Rebecca said. ‘It’s just she was…I feel like I’m going to be doing this on my own and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’
‘I’m calling her boss now, and getting someone else to come around.’
‘Don’t. Don’t. You can’t. She’s all right, she’s just learning…’
‘I don’t want our baby used for a practice session.’
‘It’s not like that. And it’s not like I want that either. Do you think I’d let that happen?’
‘There must be a patient charter somewhere we can just quote and they’ll have to send someone more experienced. I’ll do it, you won’t have to speak to her again or anything.’