And Baby Makes Two - Dyan Sheldon [33]
That’s why I thought that when Les started talking about his summer holiday he meant we were going away together. To somewhere romantic with room service where we could make love for hours instead of minutes just in case the Spiggs came home unexpectedly.
We even looked through the brochures together: Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Spain… To be honest, they all looked pretty much the same – a blue blob of water, a blob of sand dotted with bodies, and a hotel – but I didn’t care where we went. I knew wherever we went, we’d find a private lagoon with a palm tree and water the same blue as my good maternity dress.
Then one night Les turned up with a bottle of fizzy wine.
“What’s the occasion?” I asked as he unscrewed the top.
“You won’t believe it, but I’ve been sort of promoted. They’re transferring me to Finsbury Park.” He puffed out his chest. “Manager.” He laughed. “That makes me the youngest manager in the company.”
I forced a happy smile on to my face. This was good news. Les was a manager at only twenty-one. He’d be a director or something by thirty. We’d live in the suburbs and I’d have a four-wheel drive with tinted windows and lots of kids and dogs in the back. But I couldn’t be that happy about it now. It meant I could never just drop by the shop any more. It meant he had further to come.
“But that’s not all.” Les grinned. “They finally agreed my holiday time. I booked my package this morning.”
I didn’t hear “my”. I heard “our”.
“Really?” I couldn’t exactly bounce with excitement (not without knocking something over), but there was excitement in my voice. “Where are we going? When?”
Les stopped pouring.
“We?”
“I’m going with you, aren’t I?” I thought he was joking. “Remember we looked at the brochures?”
He thought I was joking.
He laughed. “Get real, Lana. I can’t take you to Greece. You know that.”
Did I?
“Do I?”
He rolled his eyes the way Charley does when Hilary can’t find her keys and has to take everything out of her handbag again.
“Of course you do. I’ve only got two weeks, you know.” His eyes moved from my face to my tummy, looming in the space between us like a giant balloon. “You can’t fly with a bun in the oven. Not when you’re as far gone as you are. Everybody knows that.” He laughed again. “And there’s no way I’m taking a bus to Greece.”
I laughed along, as though I really had been joking. I didn’t know about not being able to fly at the end of your pregnancy, but now that he said it, it sort of made sense. But it would never have occurred to me that Les would book his holiday for when I couldn’t go. If anything, I thought he’d have waited till after the baby was born and we could give him to my nan to look after while we went away. She had nothing else to do.
If Charley told Hilary he was going on holiday without her she’d have gone ballistic. She’d’ve made his life hell and never shut up till he gave in. But I wasn’t like her. I was understanding and tolerant. I knew that a man needs outside interests and friends of his own. I was tolerant of his need for space. I sucked back some tears.
“Oh,” I said. “Well, Greece sounds like it should be fun.”
“It sure as hell should be,” said Les. He took a large gulp of his wine. “I can’t wait.”
I took a tiny sip from my glass. I could tell by the smell that it was going to give me indigestion.
“So,” I said brightly. “When are you going?”
“End of August. That way I get an extra day with the bank holiday.”
But not enough extra to go by bus, obviously.
“End of August,” I echoed. The end of August was when the baby was due. I touched my glass to his. “Well, I hope you have a good time.”
Wrenching My Guts Out,
Wish You Were Here
I had an appointment at the clinic four days before I reckoned the baby would be born. I put on my cool maternity outfit, but the only shoes that were really comfortable were my trainers, which kind of ruined the effect. I put on my make-up and tied my hair back,