Decisively I said to Luke, ‘We need a doula.’
‘A what-a?’
‘A woman. I don’t know, she advocates for us, for me. In the hospital. Say if they wanted to do a C-section, well, she’d say no.’
‘But what if you needed one?’ Luke looked alarmed. Quickly, he changed tack. ‘Sorry, no, hey, I get it, you’re the one who’ll be doing all the work, you get to decide.’ But he couldn’t help himself. ‘Rachel, what if something goes wrong?’ He looked slightly sweaty and I felt relieved. While Luke and I had been ‘trying’， I’d paid lip service to the idea of a natural birth. But now that I was actually pregnant, I was afraid. Pain panicked me. Other women, more evolved than I was, could meet it – ‘dance with it’ as they’d probably say, and good luck to them and all, the weirdos – but as soon as I touched up against it, I’d be yelping for pain relief.
I blurted, ‘I’m so happy to be pregnant, but, Luke, I’m scared of the pain.’
‘Babe!’
‘I want all the epidurals and painkillers and everything but I’m scared I’ll be judged.’
‘You will have all the epidurals and painkillers and everything! Anything you want, habibti, anything. And fuck anyone who judges. Remember,’ he said, with a twinkle, ‘other people’s opinions of you are none of your business.’
‘Haha!’ It was funny when he repeated Recovery slogans back to me.
‘So should I say, “We’re pregnant”？’ Luke mused. ‘Or, “My wife is pregnant”？ “My wife is pregnant” makes us sound like boomers. But “We’re pregnant” makes me sound like an asshole with a man-bun.’
I gathered up his silky hair and held it in my hands at the back of his head. ‘You’d be gorgeous with a man-bun.’
‘Not my look, babe.’ He was brusque.
Indeed. Luke was so not a metrosexual. He regarded wearing SPF as a namby-pamby indulgence and he used the cheapest, most depressing shampoo to wash his hair – and even so, it was always glossy and gorgeous.
‘You could say, “I’m about to vastly increase my carbon footprint”？’ I offered. ‘Or how about, “I’m going to be a daddy”？’
‘This should be about you. “My dutiful wife is carrying my first-born child and heir.”’
‘First-born? You’re planning on more than one?’
‘Oh yeah. Six, at least.’
42
‘Dennis? How are you?’
It was Thursday morning, he’d had three days reeling from the revelations from Juliet, Joya and Maudie and it was time to press him. His eyes, as they focused on me now, were like windows in a ransacked house. ‘Jez, Rachel, now you’re asking …’
‘It was a fairly thorough going-over they gave you,’ Bronte said gently.
‘’Twas,’ Dennis agreed. ‘’Tis hard to take it all in …’
Poor Dennis, there was so much to freak out about: his wife and daughters knowing about his girlfriend; Juliet saying she wanted a divorce; Joya openly despising him. And the one huge fact that anchored all the others – the likelihood he really was an alcoholic and would have to stop drinking.
‘Do you think she meant it?’ Dennis asked the room. ‘Joya? About me being a terrible father?’ He was watching his old friend, Ella, hoping for support. But after yesterday’s visit from Jonah and Naaz, Ella was off in her own mini-hell. ‘Do you think she meant it?’
‘Yeh, but do you, like?’ Chalkie asked.
‘I did everything for those girls.’ Dennis produced a burst of defensive ire. ‘Anything they asked for, they got. Tickets to Lizzo, Jacquemus handbags, leggings that cost more than my suit!’
In the silence that followed, he asked, ‘D’you know what’s tearing me asunder? Joya seeing me and thinking I was dead. Doing that to a child is a desperate thing. That used to happen with my own oul’ fella. I was forever finding him out cold. Every single time I thought he was a goner.’
‘What age were you?’ Giles asked.
‘He kicked the bucket when I was fourteen, but it had gone on since I was in me pram.’
‘So, you were young when you used to find him?’ I said. ‘That must have been very frightening.’
‘’Twas.’ His lip shook.
‘How were you when he died?’
He stared at his knees, fighting to hold off crying. ‘I was heartbroke. But I swore that if I was ever a father, I’d be the opposite to him.’