Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [154]
The GP, whom she called immediately, fingers shaking as she dialed, exclaimed with joy. She didn’t think doctors were supposed to do that—register an emotional reaction to an outcome. But this was the GP they’d seen, ages ago, and who’d referred them for tests…of course she assumed the news was good. Four lines, she’d laughed, meant she almost certainly was pregnant. It wasn’t that unusual, she said. Unexplained infertility did sometimes resolve itself without intervention or explanation. It was just one of those things. Had they been on holiday? Sometimes a change of scene or a distraction was all that was needed. Couples had been known to become too focused on getting pregnant, and sometimes, when they took a step back, it just fixed itself, and it worked. She was thrilled for them, she said, and suggested that Jennifer come and see her in a couple of weeks, and they’d work out some dates and fix a scan.
And that was it. She was pregnant. They were pregnant.
One part of Jennifer’s brain wondered whether it was too soon. The other part registered that it was extraordinary to have gone so quickly from questions about if to questions about when. The bigger part just went yippee.
The world was full of babies. It was full of babies when you wanted to get pregnant, and it wasn’t happening. It was full of babies when you weren’t sure you wanted to get pregnant, and everyone else wanted it to happen. And it was still full of babies when you were pregnant at last. The babies all looked the same, but you looked at them completely differently. Jennifer didn’t think she could have gotten pregnant in France. Maybe April. She’d missed two periods. Maybe earlier. If she was already about two months pregnant, then her baby would be born around Christmastime. Noelle. Holly. Christopher. Wenceslas. She remembered Jake, the Christmas baby, and hugged herself. This time it was going to be her.
SHE’D MEANT TO TELL STEPHEN IN A SPECIAL WAY. MAKE A STORY that could be told and retold. She bought sea bass. Decided that cooking sea bass was definitely going to make her sick. Put the sea bass in the freezer, in the belief and hope that morning sickness could not last for the whole nine months. She took a bottle of champagne out of the coat cupboard in the hall where they kept the bottle rack, but then remembered she wouldn’t be able to drink any and put it back. She rehearsed ways to say it.
He was late. Traffic was terrible on the M1. He called on the mobile from the car and told her he wasn’t sure when he’d be back. She tried to watch television, but there was nothing on interesting enough to hold her attention. She tidied the apartment, remembering what she had once heard about women nesting. She stood for ages on the threshold of their second bedroom, imagining where they might put a cot, a changing table. What color they might paint it. She felt, standing there, like she’d instantly changed, in the very moment she’d found out. She remembered something Mum had written in the journal and wished she knew. She’d be so pleased. She couldn’t imagine Stephen granting her admittance to the labor ward, like the diary had said, but she’d have been pleased enough, maybe, to wait outside.
She’d been almost asleep, feet up on the sofa, when he’d finally come home. All her grandiose schemes for breaking the news evaporated when she saw him. The burden of carrying the news alone for two days was finally too much. All he said, smiling at her from the doorway and starting to come toward her, was “How are you?”
“Pregnant.”
“You’re what?”
“I’m pregnant, Stephen. I’m pregnant.”
That was a few weeks ago. The scan had confirmed it last week. She’d lain there, jelly-bellied, and he’d sat behind her, holding her hand raised over her head just like in films and on television. And when the coffee bean baby