How Do You Like Me Now?

by Holly Bourne

  *

  ‘Have a great time with Dee, sweetheart.’ Tom kisses the top of my forehead as I leave. I think, that’s how adults kiss children, not lovers kiss lovers. But it’s still a kiss so I’m taking it.

  ‘What you up to tonight?’ I ask him, swinging my handbag onto my shoulder and hoping no one notices it doesn’t quite match my sandals.

  ‘I might just take a bath.’

  ‘In this weather?’ I am already mad at him because I know he’ll use my posh lotion as bubble bath, but I can’t remind him not to because he’ll say I’m nagging.

  ‘It’s never too hot for a bath.’ He kisses my forehead again. ‘Don’t eat too many dough balls now.’

  London in summer is hard. Everyone is out and about and loud and brash and drunk and sunburnt and noisy. People spill onto the pavements outside pubs and drink pink cider poured over pint glasses of ice. I take a shortcut through the park and it’s even more in your face. There are groups playing frisbee and football, and the thudding of tennis balls being hit around the court where long lines of people wait for their chance to play. I’m exhausted by the time I get to Brixton. And yet Brixton is more rammed and noisy and the heat feels even hotter here. I’m wilting and beyond dewy by the time I reach the cool air-conditioning of Pizza Express. It’s mostly empty. Nobody wants to tag themselves into a chain restaurant on a day like today – it is not the done thing.

  Dee surprises me by already being here. She smiles and waves as I fluster my way across the marble floor.

  ‘I’m sweating from places I didn’t even know it was scientifically possible to sweat from,’ I announce.

  She wrinkles her nose. ‘Like where?’

  ‘My knee-pits. And my vagina mainly. I’m scared my vagina is actually going to leave a sweat smudge on my skirt.’

  ‘It takes a lot to put me off the thought of dough balls,’ Dee says, ‘but somehow you’ve managed.’

  I slide my way onto the hard wooden chair and pick up the cardboard triangle announcing the summer specials. The waitress comes over and asks if I’d like a drink. ‘Yes. Wine! Wine?’ I ask over to Dee.

  She points to her bottle of sparkling mineral water. ‘I’m so dehydrated. I’ll stick to this for now.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. I turn to the waitress. ‘Umm, OK then. I’ll just have a large glass of, umm, rosé, please.’

  We’re left with our menus, which I don’t need to look at because I always order exactly the same thing – the less-than-five-hundred-calories vegetarian Leggera. But I wait while Dee pores over hers. She looks a bit different. She’s holding herself better, her skin is amazing. I’m about to ask her what cream she’s using but remember the answer is probably just: ‘I’m happy and in love and having loads of great sex.’ Unfortunately you can’t buy that and rub it on your face. Not even from Crème de la Mer.

  ‘What you getting?’ I ask. ‘Have I really put you off the dough balls?’

  ‘Of course I’m still getting dough balls.’

  The waitress returns with my wine and I try not to gulp it. Instead I take lots of tiny, frantic sips which still drains half the glass in a small amount of time. She asks if we’re ready and we say yes and order. Once she’s gone, I’m about to launch into today’s meeting when—

  ‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ Dee says. She is shaking. Her hands are wobbling her glass of carbonated water.

  ‘Rii-iight …’ I wrack my brains to think what it might be. I arrange my face in the most neutral half-smile I can in preparation. Oh God. I know what it is, actually. She’ll be moving in with Nigel. Of course she will be. And now I’m going to have to pretend it’s not too soon. ‘So …?’

  She tucks a strand of flaming hair behind her ear. ‘I’m pregnant, Tor.’

  …

  …

  …

  The dough balls are brought over. Arranged as a moat around the castle of garlic flavoured butter. The waitress, sensing something’s up, just plops them down and leaves. ‘Oh my God,’ I say. ‘Congratulations!’ Dee’s crying and I leap up and go and hug her. ‘What’s wrong? Are you OK?’

  She nods and lets me pat her and I hug her again and as I hug her I cannot believe it. I cannot believe. I cannot.

  ‘I’m good. Yes, I’m really happy. I mean, of course it was a surprise.’ She is talking and I have a smile so etched on my mouth I may as well have put it there with a scalpel. I can’t not smile. I cannot let her see what I’m feeling on the inside. Because what I’m feeling on the inside is a free fall into total despair. She is explaining about how the condom split at the wedding, and how she took the morning-after pill but obviously it didn’t work. Now she’s talking about how good her school is being about it, dropping in that she’s already ‘practically’ moved in with Nigel anyway, despite having a month left on her tenancy contract.

  It’s so obvious now. So, so obvious. Why we’ve always met for coffee, not wine. Why her frame has swollen, her rib cage already slightly expanded. Why her skin is looking this good. How could I not have noticed?

  ‘When are you due?’ I manage to ask. Because I know what questions to ask when your friends go to the other side of the wall. I have been here before. I know the lingo.

  ‘December,’ she admits sheepishly. And the sheepishness is because, when I do the maths, I figure out she’s three months gone. Three months. Three months and she’s not told me.

  ‘Sorry I’ve not told you,’ she says, reading my chaotic mind. She picks up a dough ball and splurges it into the bowl of butter. It oozes around the sides and I’m mesmerised by the sight of Dee eating a dough ball because now she is pregnant Dee eating a dough ball.

  Pregnant Dee.

  Dee is pregnant.

  She chews and swallows and blushes slightly. There is a gap between us now. A space that will grow and grow because Dee’s on the other side of the wall. She can still see me and talk to me and we can pretend the wall is not there, but it is. It’s been erected in only minutes. Rushed construction workers running out and putting it up while the dough balls were being arranged onto a plate in a circle.

  ‘Tor,’ she says. ‘I have to say, I’ve been bricking it about telling you.’

  ‘What?! Why?’ My mouth is open and my eyes are innocent.

  Her voice catches in her throat. ‘It’s just … what I love about our friendship is we’ve always been honest with each other, and I know how you feel about this sort of thing. I know things aren’t great with you and Tom …’

  There’s a pang of pain, like she’s just burnt me accidentally with the end of a lit cigarette. How dare she. How dare she mention Tom when her belly is swelling with socially-acceptable happiness. How dare she make that dig. Now.

  ‘Tom and I are fine,’ I find my voice saying. ‘We’re in a really good place actually. We talked everything through after the strip-club fiasco last month and it’s just what we needed.’

  The lie adds another layer of bricks to the wall.

  ‘Aww, that’s great to hear! You see! Maybe you’ll get pregnant too soon and then we can be bump buddies together.’

  Her lie adds a few more centimetres.

  ‘I don’t know about that. But I’m really happy for you, Dee, seriously. Shocked as hell, but happy for you.’

  She shakes her head, smiling. ‘I’m so stupid to think you wouldn’t be. Amy told me you’d be great about it.’

  I was in the process of trying a dough ball but it drops to my plate. ‘Amy knows?’ I ask it lightly, casually. I ask it with sugar in my spit. When I want to scream, ‘AMY KNOWS!?’ Amy was on our corridor in university and Dee and I supposedly hate her. We’ve ripped it out of her mercifully since she’s had two children. Amy updated everyone online about every single day of her pregnancy. Both of them. Like the second baby might grow a bit differently. You couldn’t even ignore her if you wanted to. She sent them to our group uni chat too. ‘Today my baby is the size of a pea.’ ‘Today my baby grew a lung.’ ‘Today my baby can wave its arm
around the womb.’

  Dee and I had our own private chat going. ‘Today I’m worried that Mummy will have no respect for my privacy when I’m born.’ ‘Today I’m worried Mummy will live-tweet my birth.’ ‘Today I’m struggling to socialise with other foetuses because I have an overinflated sense of self.’

  ‘She really has been great,’ Dee says, wiping away those memories, storing them in a locked box somewhere now her opinion of Amy has changed because she needs it to. ‘I had the worst morning sickness, Tor. And it’s so awful because you can’t tell anyone why you’re being so useless and exhausted. It killed me every time you asked me out for wine.’

  I sip at my wine subconsciously. This wine is all I have left. This is all I have over you now. The fact I can drink wine.

  ‘So, yes, it was really useful to have Amy to talk to about it. I mean, I know she’s sometimes … you know … but I’ve been so grateful to her, to be honest. Oh God, and Nigel and Nick get on so well. They came round for dinner last week and it was like instant bromance.’

  She had them round for dinner. She had them round for dinner. She told Amy she was pregnant and not me because I don’t have children and Amy does and she had them round for dinner.

  My smile is so wide I’m surprised it’s not ripping. ‘That’s great,’ I keep repeating. ‘That’s great.’

  Dee is buoyed by my response and wants to talk about all of it now she is finally able to and I’ve handled it OK and everything. ‘And, don’t worry …’ she reaches over and takes one of my dough balls as I’ve not touched them.

  I hope you get fat, I think, then I blink that horrible thought away, hating myself for thinking it.

  ‘… I’m not going to be pregnant like Amy. You will not be getting scans posted online.’ She smiles warmly. ‘I’m still me, Tor. And there is so much bullshit around being pregnant that you wouldn’t even believe. I need you here to listen to me whinge about it.’

  I can drink wine, and I am thinner than most of them. That’s two things. Two things that people can envy about me. I will not order dessert and I’ll really start on those sit-ups to get rid of Herman, and if I work hard for a month, I’ll still have August to go around in crop tops and make people realise I’m perfectly OK and I’m successful and in control of my life because I have abs.

  Dee launches into her whinging right away, like she’s been saving it all up. As she probably has. Moaning about how sick she was. About how scared she was to tell her headteacher. About how physically tiring it is. About how Nigel’s parents’ first response was, ‘that’s a bit soon’. About how she’s already been to a pregnancy yoga class and hated everyone there because they already had a birth plan. I nod and look annoyed when I’m supposed to, and sympathetic when I’m supposed to.

  The pizzas come. I only eat half of mine, and Dee finishes it greedily. A family comes in, dragging two overtired and hot children who smash their cutlery against the marble tables and scream ‘I DON’T LIKE PIZZA.’ Only months ago, Dee and I would’ve looked at one another and said, ‘I’m never having children.’ Now, she just watches them nervously.

  ‘Oh God, my kids won’t be like that will they, Tor?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I reassure her, even though they probably will be.

  However, it is Dee, and I do love her. Tiny granules of happiness for her manage to unleash inside me, giving me the strength to ask all the right questions. How is Nigel taking it? Oh, he’s thrilled. Especially as he’s almost forty. Is he being supportive? Oh, so supportive. He acted like my servant through the morning sickness, bringing me stacks of toast with marmite. Remember that for when it’s your turn, Tor. Marmite is God. Have you had your scan yet? Oh yes, yesterday. And she gets out the photo and I look at it and squeal even though I can’t make out a baby in the photo. Have you had any cravings? Nachos!? Wow that’s hilarious. Did you hear that Amy ate chalk? Have you thought about whether you want a boy or a girl? Oh yes, of course more than anything you just want it to be healthy. But yes, of course a girl. Because we’re girls. But boys are cute too, and they’re easier when they come to be teenagers. What sort of pregnant do you think you’ll get? A little bump? Fat all over? We laugh at all the options. We bring up Kim Kardashian’s pregnancy. Dee’s pudding is finished and she glows brighter.

  The bill comes and I’m saying I’ll pay because ‘CONGRATULATIONS!’ before she brings up my meeting. ‘Oh my God, so I’ve totally dominated,’ she says. ‘I’ve not even asked how you’re doing?’

  ‘Dude, you’re pregnant. You’ve won life-news top trumps today.’

  She laughs and pops a mint imperial into her mouth. ‘Yes, but as I told you, I don’t want to be one of those parents. I care about your life. What happened at this meeting?’

  It’s funny how she already thinks there are different types of people who have kids. I guess that’s the sort of thought you have when you’re on that side of the wall. Oh, I’m not ‘that’ kind of mum, I’m ‘this’ kind of mum. They find little subsections and pick the one that most makes them feel the best and therefore it’s fine, and they tell all their friends who don’t have children how different they are from the other mums. But, on my side of the wall, there are only two categories: people who have children and people who don’t. There aren’t any subsections for the people who do. They just do, and that’s everything to them and their life is changed forever and they’re not as much fun any more and won’t ever be again. Unless you cross the wall. Then they welcome you with open arms like Amy did. Oh we always knew you were one of us, they think.

  ‘It’s fine, I was just being dramatic. You know me,’ I say.

  Dee is not convinced. ‘Come on. What happened? Tor, please. I’m still me.’

  But I don’t want to tell her. I don’t want to accept weakness when I already feel so weak. I don’t want her to go home to Nigel and he’ll ask how dinner went and he’ll rub her slightly swollen stomach as she says, ‘Oh I do worry about Tor.’

  I wince as the children drop a knife on the floor behind us, sending a loud clang rippling through the restaurant. ‘They just want me to write my next book about turning thirty and all the shit that comes with it.’

  ‘But Tor, that’s a great idea. You’d make it hilarious! I would so want to read that book.’

  ‘Aww, thank you. I don’t know. Maybe the idea will grow on me.’

  She doesn’t push it and she doesn’t really ask for more information. That’s the only thing that’s different already. She didn’t see past my veneer of ‘it’s all OK’. When she probably would’ve done in the past. Like a homing missile, she would have followed me round and round, burrowing into me until I admitted all my fears and she could help me with them.

  But I guess she has more on now. She cannot be blamed. It’s not fair to set people tests and then get annoyed when they fail them.

  Brixton is thumping and sweaty when we walk back out into it. Dee explains how vulnerable you feel when you’re pregnant and you have to walk through crowds. I guess I’ve never thought about it before but it makes sense. I walk her to her bus stop, making sure no one bumps into her stomach. She beams at me for the gesture and hugs me so hard when her bus arrives. ‘We should totally do dinner soon, the four of us.’

  ‘That would be great.’

  Another hug, but the queue to get on the bus is moving along. It’s packed and I’m worried she won’t get a seat, but she reaches into her bag and removes a small ‘Baby on Board’ badge. She nervously attaches it to her dress. ‘I know,’ she says, seeing my expression. ‘The first time I put it on I had an existential crisis.’

  I watch her get on board and point to her badge and tell someone off until she gets a seat. She gives me a thumbs-up as the bus rumbles off in a fug of exhaust fumes and hissing brakes.

  I’m left in the throng of Brixton, alongside all the other people in London who are not ready for what Dee is doing and are instead outside being young and delaying all the thinking about that by tagging themselves into a
rtisan beer houses. I stand and watch the world go by. It’s always so chaotic here. The length of pavement from the tube station to the Ritzy cinema is, I swear, the busiest part of London. It’s impossible to walk from one to the other without your body accidentally brushing up against at least ten people you will never see again. It’s so busy and there are so many people here, drunk and happy from the sunshine and there really are so many of them.

  It’s a scientific impossibility surely, then … that I am capable of feeling this lonely?

  I walk back through the park, re-treading the way I came, and yet everything has changed since I was last here. I walk back to my life. My life with Tom. If Dee wasn’t pregnant we would’ve gone on to a wine bar, and then probably another one. I would’ve come back giddy and light and unburdened and fancy-free and Tom would’ve been glad to have the flat to himself for an evening. But Dee is pregnant, so I’m walking home at 8.30p.m. The London skyline glimmers in the distance as I reach the top of the hill and pass the tennis courts. The queue has died down and I stop a moment and watch people play. An aggressive male duo thwack the ball back and forth like they’re in Wimbledon, not allowing the one remaining couple in the queue to have a turn. I think about happiness and how it’s possible to be happy for someone even though their happiness makes you feel sad for yourself. I feel like we need a word for this feeling. There probably is, in Dutch or something. That’s a really good idea for my next fan page post actually, but I won’t be able to write it for a few days. I can’t have Dee thinking it’s about her. Even though it is.

  When I get in, the flat is quiet apart from the calm voices of Desert Island Discs echoing out of the bathroom. ‘I’m home!’ I call, as Cat greets my ankles. I make my way to the kitchen to decant the pint of milk I picked up from the corner shop. Cat weaves around my legs, almost tripping me, nagging me for food I know she doesn’t need. I lose it for a moment. ‘FUCK OFF!’ I yell at Cat, who ignores me, and continues to wind around my legs. I get an urge to kick her.