‘Shall we have another coffee?’ she suggests, even though I haven’t actually had a coffee yet, just watched her drink the one she had already. ‘You could even risk one with actual caffeine!’ Rachel smiles, taps her leopard-spotted bump. I can’t work out whether she is making fun of me or not. She seems to believe the babies only exist in abstract, that adhering to the health guidelines is entirely a matter of personal taste. ‘Actually, could I just have an orange juice?’
She looks amused. ‘OK. Sure! I’ll go up and order – quicker than waiting for these jokers.’
She says this loudly, causing a passing waiter to look up, dumbfounded. Rachel ignores him, strides into the cafe.
When I see she is safely inside, I can’t resist peering into her shopping bags. Furtively, I lower my hand, separate the top of the bag with my thumb and forefinger and root around to feel the fabrics. Disappointingly, though, I find there are no baby clothes in the first bag at all. All I can see is a scruffy old jumper, dirty around the cuffs, and what looks like a pair of old leggings. A few clothes tags, an empty sunglasses case.
‘Oh, shit!’
I look up sharply. For a second, I’m sure Rachel has spotted me looking into her bags: she’s looking straight at me.
‘He’s given me a coffee instead of orange juice. What an idiot, Helen. Will you be OK drinking it or shall I go back?’
‘Of course,’ I tell her, trying to disguise my relief. ‘One won’t hurt.’
Maybe I can get away with abandoning it, I think, as she sits back down. Like I did the glass of wine.
Then without warning, Rachel has reached over, and her hands are on my belly.
‘So weird, isn’t it?’ she muses. ‘Being pregnant. Where do you reckon the baby’s head is?’
The contact is made before I can voice any objection. I can’t help but flinch. The suddenness of pale hands, cool against my stomach, the tips of her chewed purple nails brushing over my thin cotton top.
‘I … I don’t know,’ I stutter. Rachel doesn’t seem to notice my stunned reaction to her touch. She continues to stroke, back and forth, setting off nerve endings in my stretched skin.
‘It’s easy to tell,’ she continues, staring at my belly. ‘You just feel for the neck. I’ll show you.’
Rachel spreads her knees to face me head-on, and starts to probe with a finger and thumb, down at the bottom of my pelvis, as if trying to pinch the sides of the baby’s head.
‘Rachel, you’re pressing quite hard,’ I gasp. ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’
‘Of course!’ She presses harder still. ‘There it is,’ she says triumphantly. ‘There’s his head.’
I gasp again and recoil, my spine pushing against the back of the chair. In my mind’s eye I see my baby floating in utero, Rachel’s alien hand pressing through the red, glowing walls of his universe.
26 WEEKS
HELEN
Daniel and I are at the antenatal clinic, the lights down low. I have stripped from the waist down, cold jelly smeared on my belly over the red scratches of my stretch marks. I wince at the temperature. The sonographer tells me the probe is coming, that it is going to be cold. Daniel looks at me. I love you, he mouths. He squeezes my hand, and I squeeze back.
I try to be soothed by the feel of Daniel’s slim fingers in mine, try not to clench as it slides into me, this hard, alien object. We sit in silence, the low hum of the machines filling the room. There is a smell of bleach. My heart feels full of blood.
Even though I am big enough, now, to feel the baby move – a daily confirmation that he is still there, still alive – I can’t help but remember how so many of these scans have ended for us. The ripped blue squares of NHS tissue pressed into my hands to wipe my sobbing face, a sonographer wiping ultrasound gel from between my legs as I beg them in vain to check, just one more time.
But soon the room is filled with the watery thump of a heartbeat noise and a wiggly blue line darts across the screen. Daniel doesn’t say anything, but I see his chest deflate in a way that tells me he had been holding his breath. When the sonographer turns to us, I can see from the wrinkles around her eyes that she is smiling, even though a mask covers her nose and mouth.
‘Heartbeat sounds good. Baby is strong.’
It feels as if someone has opened a window. All the muscles in my body relax.
She starts to move the probe around, telling us what the pictures mean. She tells me not to lift my hips and I try not to. When she is happy, she pulls out the probe and starts to move the external ultrasound over my bump.