Just Between Friends: Page-turning fiction to curl up with in winter 2020

by Rosie Nixon

  To pass the time, Maggie asked Jason an innocent question about whether he was planning to take any paternity leave, but he didn’t seem to hear her – he was looking at his phone.

  ‘Any plans to take paternity leave?’ she asked again, more loudly and slightly irritated this time.

  I kicked his foot.

  Jason coughed into life, but his voice came out sounding hoarse. I suspected he’d been smoking this week. Although he claimed to have stopped the habit when I got pregnant, I recognized that gravelly cough and had noticed the faint smell of tobacco on his coat.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said eventually, pushing his phone into his coat pocket. ‘What was the question?’ Six pairs of eyes looked at him.

  ‘Paternity leave. Your fatherly right?’ Maggie repeated, unamused. ‘I was just wondering if you’re planning to…’

  ‘Use it? Oh right, yes, of course,’ he stammered. ‘I’d – we’d – be mad not to. Free holiday! We can’t wait.’ He squeezed my hand.

  ‘Free. Holiday.’ Maggie repeated the words slowly under her breath, a wry smile dancing on her lips. ‘Let’s see about that. Do feel free to take your coat off, Jason, you look like you’re about to go somewhere.’ It was obvious she hadn’t particularly warmed to him, especially after his disappearing act last week.

  I glanced across at the rest of the group, clocking that Ian seemed to find Jason’s response amusing. Maggie noticed this too and folded her arms; she had a strong matron game going on this evening.

  ‘On the subject of paternity leave – I hope you’ve told your employers? Remember, guys, you should have told your work place if you intend to take a week or two of paternity leave – or shared maternity leave,’ she added, glancing at Susie and Lin. ‘I hope you’ve all got this in place. How many weeks along are you now?’ Maggie continued, looking at Jason, who turned to me, searchingly. If this was an exam, he had failed miserably.

  ‘Thirty-eight weeks and six days,’ I answered on his behalf, feeling annoyed. ‘It’s okay, Jason let his work know a while ago.’

  ‘The guys never remember the weeks, do they!’ Maggie chuckled, slightly pityingly, trying to make light of something that was important – and should have been important to Jason, considering I was this close to full term.

  ‘Well, it’s hard to remember yourself half the time,’ I added, defending Jason, despite this being a complete lie.

  Lin coughed loudly, suggesting she had never forgotten a single day during Susie’s pregnancy.

  I had never lost track of my dates and I’d bet the other pregnant women in this room hadn’t either. The whole of my pregnancy had been punctuated by important dates and significant numbers: dates of doctor and hospital appointments, numbers of weeks plus days, heart rates, blood pressure, my increasing weight, the circumference of my belly and, of course, the all-important due date.

  Susie and Lin smiled at me in sync. I wasn’t sure if they were smiling in solidarity or with sympathy because they could see I was flustered that Jason and I weren’t exactly gelling this evening.

  Once Will and Christian had arrived, Maggie muttered, ‘Still waiting on Lucy and Oscar,’ and pulled out her phone from the Eighties-style corduroy jacket on the back of her chair.

  ‘A-ha,’ she said reading a message. ‘Lucy won’t be joining us unfortunately; she’s not feeling up to it. Hopefully she’s okay. Not a problem folks, let’s get started.’ She rubbed her hands together.

  I felt a little disappointed. I’d miss Lucy this evening. We’d become good friends. I sent her a quick message:

  Me: Hey, Maggie said you’re not feeling great. Hope everything’s ok?

  I waited for a minute but she didn’t reply.

  Maggie got up and began wheeling an ancient TV set and VHS cassette player out from behind her.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Jason whispered to me, ‘they’re almost as old as her! I better give her a hand.’ He jumped up, suddenly seeming brighter, more engaged. Maybe Maggie’s scolding had shown him he needed to up his game. ‘Here, let me help,’ he insisted, and manoeuvred the TV into place in front of us all.

  ‘It might look like a museum piece,’ Maggie acknowledged, wiping a little sweat from her brow. ‘But I’m reliably informed it works. Modern technology isn’t everything, you know.’

  After a few minutes of awkward clicking and nothing happening she finally managed to turn the system on and prevent the VHS tape from being repeatedly ejected by the machine.

  Suddenly we were all confronted by a close-up of a vagina, covered in a lot of very fuzzy black pubic hair. There was a great deal of moisture around it, and the top of a baby’s head poking out.

  When I say a lot of very fuzzy hair, I mean a staggering amount of curly black pubes forming a large fluffy afro atop the woman’s private parts. I had never seen a vagina look so well dressed. There was a halo of light around the edges of the fuzz as bright hospital lights shone down on this most intimate of moments.

  My immediate reaction was to laugh hysterically, and I let out a bellowing guffaw, which Maggie pretended not to hear.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ I squealed, covering my mouth with my hand. ‘It was just a surprise!’ As I sank back into my chair feeling like a naughty schoolgirl, desperately trying to contain my full-scale laughter, I wished Lucy was there, because she would certainly be doing the same.

  Jason was also trying not to laugh. He nudged me with his elbow, but I didn’t dare look at him, for fear I would explode.

  I looked to my left to see if anyone else found this amusing. Helen’s cheeks had turned red with embarrassment, and Ian was tittering slightly. To his right, Will and Christian were shifting uncomfortably in their seats. Next to them, Susie and Lin didn’t seem too fazed.

  I tried to stop my shoulders from shaking uncontrollably, eyes watering as I desperately stifled my giggles. The longer the image stayed paused on screen, despite Maggie pressing a series of buttons, the worse my hysterics seemed to get.

  ‘Tsk, some naughty person forgot to rewind it to the beginning, and now it seems to be stuck,’ Maggie said, stony-faced.

  When Jason put a hand on my leg to try to calm me, it only made it worse and I waved him off. I couldn’t wait to tell Tara about this. And Lucy.

  Finally, after she had pulled out the plug from the wall and restarted both the TV and video recorder, the film finally rewound. We were all at least now prepared for the vintage birth moment featuring a lovely couple called Janet (she with the large bush) and Peter, who bore an impressive handlebar moustache and brown flares. It was all very late Seventies.

  The birth was natural and fairly straightforward (if you call straightforward watching Janet look like she was about to explode from pushing) and in a relatively short space of time they were in their Cortina driving little Eric back to their pebble-dashed semi in Essex. It might have offered me some comfort, if I hadn’t found it so funny.

  I noticed that Susie seemed quiet, and also slightly uncomfortable this evening, holding onto her bump and wincing slightly through the video. I wondered if she was getting sympathy contractions.

  ‘Jeez,’ she muttered at one point. ‘To think I was considering foregoing the pain relief. I think I’ve just changed my mind.’

  After we had finished discussing the film, Maggie started to explain what the partners could do in the immediate days ahead of the due date. I was relieved to see Jason taking the pad and pen from my lap and making notes, following Will and Christian’s lead. They were both scribbling away.

  I peeked across to see what pearls of wisdom Jason had written down:

  ‘Things for Jason to do/think about’ – he had scrawled as a section head, underlining it. Underneath was a series of bullet points, many of which made me smile:

  Identify Aisha’s favourite foods/dinners

  Order frozen meals, and set up online shopping. Don’t forget savoy cabbage (for boobs)

  Get biscuits and coffee for visitors. Limit visitors in early days

 
Remember Aisha’s favourite pillows when going to hospital – important

  Buy a sling, learn how to use it

  I felt relieved that Jason was finally engaging today. This was, at least, a step in the right direction. A couple of times, I caught Helen looking at him. I noticed her pass Ian a pen, but he just fiddled with it.

  Maggie held up a small white plastic instrument with a digital screen and a button halfway down. ‘Does anyone know what this is?’ she asked enthusiastically.

  Will’s hand shot up. ‘Is it a kazoo?’ he asked.

  This time it was Maggie’s turn to giggle. ‘Oh heavens, no dear, some of us have a lot to learn. This is a baby thermometer.’

  Sometimes I got the impression Maggie despaired of this class.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lucy

  I lay in bed feeling anxious and burnt-out. At one point, I had had to make a sudden dash to the toilet, thinking I might be sick. I had looked in the bathroom mirror and seen that my face was pale and sweat was beading on my forehead.

  I focused on breathing slowly; I didn’t want to alarm Oscar. He came into the bedroom to start packing for a trip to Paris the following morning – his final client foray before he went on baby lockdown. He pottered around the bedroom collecting things for his suitcase. I knew that case well – I had travelled halfway around the world with it on work trips when we were first seeing each other. I had even hurriedly packed it one morning when he feared his PA was on her way to our hotel room in Milan to give him some important documents and he bolted out of there as fast as possible to meet her from the cab. It wasn’t professional to be shagging the new account manager. The memory offered me a momentary reprieve from more pressing thoughts.

  ‘How are you feeling my love?’ he asked, shooting me a look.

  ‘Okay, mostly tired,’ I replied. ‘It was the right decision to miss The Baby Group today.’

  ‘Yes, it was probably for the best. You need to conserve your energy now.’

  I propped myself up in bed with pillows. ‘What if something is wrong with the baby?’ I said, filling a moment of quiet, as Oscar stood in the en suite gathering his toiletries. The subject had been on my mind, on and off, throughout the pregnancy, but until now I’d kept this distressing thought strictly inside my head, wanting to focus on the positives.

  ‘Darling, what made you think that?’ he said, dropping his wash kit into his open case. He sat down on the side of the bed.

  ‘I was just thinking about being older,’ I replied. ‘It wasn’t covered in the textbooks – or by Maggie.’

  ‘How can she even begin to cover that?’ he said gently. ‘But you mustn’t worry – all your scans have been perfectly normal, the doctors and technology are so good these days, they can tell pretty much everything. You would have been told if there was any cause for concern.’

  ‘But if anything does go wrong – how will I cope?’ I placed my hand on my stomach.

  ‘We,’ he took my hand and held it. ‘We will cope. You’re not on your own. I’m here for you.’

  ‘Really?’

  He crouched down now, to my level, so he could look me straight in the eyes. He took my other hand in his and held them tightly. ‘Lucy, I know this pregnancy journey hasn’t been easy for you, but things have changed these past months. You have blossomed – no, rather we have blossomed, into a proper couple. I know I let you down before, but I’m committed to the baby. I love you.’

  The tender moment was broken momentarily by the sound of a text appearing on my phone. I wriggled one hand out of his and reached for it on the bedside table. I read the message slowly. Although my heart was hammering in my chest, I tried to keep my face neutral. I would reply later.

  ‘I love hearing you say that,’ I said, calmly laying the phone back down, overturned on the table, and taking his hand again. Oscar seemed keen to reassure me that he wasn’t going to freak out and desert me when the baby arrived. I should have welcomed this moment, but I was barely able to concentrate.

  ‘I mean it,’ he said earnestly.

  I thought back to when we officially got back together.

  Oscar had asked if he could come over one evening after work. It was the first day of my second trimester and I had decided to treat myself to a pizza takeaway for dinner. At least I could relax a little, now I’d passed the three month mark, although I still hadn’t told anyone at work my news. I couldn’t face all of the questions that would come with it.

  Arriving at my door, Oscar looked jittery.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  He stared at me. His eyes twinkled. ‘You.’

  ‘Me? What have I done?’ I asked, slightly amused. We had been spending an increasing amount of time together recently but I still sometimes found Oscar hard to read.

  ‘I’ve got you on the brain. Can I come in?’

  I invited him into my flat. Sometimes I felt a little embarrassed when he came here. My Brixton pad in no way matched up to his swanky crash pad in Marylebone. But it was great that he finally wanted to talk about the ‘us’ that had so far been off the table.

  ‘I’ve been struggling to fathom a life without you in it,’ he said, holding my hand tightly.

  ‘If you’ll have me back, I’d really love for us to give it a go. I want to bring up this baby with you, Lucy,’ he said.

  We talked for hours that evening about how it would work, and Oscar convinced me he was ready – ready to be a father and a committed partner again. It was butterfly-inducing.

  I melted into his arms and inhaled him several times. But as he hugged me, stray tears silently fell from my eyes onto his cashmere jumper. Happiness, it seemed, could be bittersweet.

  Now officially back together, and with my three-month scan in the bag, I at last felt able to let my bump blossom. That’s why, when the news finally came out at work, people naturally assumed he was the father. The situation suited us both and I convinced myself that I felt happy and settled. Yet a fear that maybe Oscar didn’t really want any more children sometimes crept back into my mind, when I thought how home life would change for us once the baby arrived. No more spontaneous mid-week meals out to Michelin-starred restaurants, or sexy European minibreaks. Life would come with cots, nappies and prams for the foreseeable. I hoped that Oscar had got his head around it.

  A couple of months after we had rekindled our relationship, Oscar asked if I fancied bringing up the baby in a bigger home – a joint home, rather than my small flat – and I was happy to agree; it was my suggestion that we rent a house together in Clapham – close to the ‘Nappy Valley’ area of London. We found the perfect house and moved in a few weeks later.

  From there, with the secret still swirling inside me, I had an idea and decided to join a local Baby Group.

  Thursday 13th May

  The next morning, I saw Oscar off on his trip with a long, passionate kiss and promise of an X-rated FaceTime call. There was still eleven days until my C-section on 24th May, unless anything happened earlier. While I was feeling excited about meeting my little man, the feeling of anxiety followed me around like a gradually swelling dark rain cloud.

  I was making my morning decaf when my phone lit up with a message on the Baby Group thread:

  Lin: Fuck! Susie’s got contractions. It’s so fucking painful!!

  This was it. I had to get my head around it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Aisha

  Saturday 15th May

  I was lying in the bath when the first contraction came. I gripped the sides of the tub, my knuckles turning white as the sudden tightening pain ripped through my insides. When it passed and my breathing returned to normal, I managed to cry out for Jason.

  ‘Baby! I mean, Jason! I think the baby is coming early!’

  He managed to help me out and wrapped a towel around my dripping wet body. He looked at me, his face pale with fear, mirroring my own. My mind buzzed with what we should be doing at this moment, and I tried to picture the notes I’
d made in The Baby Group.

  ‘Your phone – where is it?’ I asked frantically. ‘Aren’t we meant to be timing this?’

  Where was his phone? Why wasn’t he springing into action? He was just standing there.

  ‘I’ll find it in a sec, try to stay calm, Aish,’ he urged. ‘It’s going to be okay. Shit! It’s happening early! Where did I put my phone?’ He grabbed another towel to absorb the drips of water falling off my hair. ‘There we go. Oh my God, Aisha, can you believe it’s happening? Do you feel okay? Try to stay calm. If that’s the first contraction we could be here for a while, right?’

  He had verbal diarrhoea.

  ‘Me stay calm? I am calm! Anyway, you’re meant to be the calm one!’

  I got dressed into my new pyjamas – bought from & Other Stories especially for this moment. I’m not sure why I bought something new, and now I had them on, they felt ridiculous and not nearly as comfortable as my old clothes. The buttons barely did up, and it wasn’t easy to move around, so I waddled back to the wardrobe, took them off and tried to locate my cosy, very old, oversized grey pair. They weren’t there. I yelled for Jason again. Thankfully he found them drying on the airer that currently resided in the nursery, which had been doubling as a launderette for a while. I don’t know what I’d have done if he hadn’t. All of a sudden, it felt essential to get the smallest things right. Everything needed to be perfect and all I wanted around me right now were home comforts.

  ‘Slippers!’ I commanded. ‘Where are my slippers? Oh shit, another contraction’s coming and it’s stronger!’

  Once the second contraction had passed, I felt a pang for Mum, wishing she was here. I longed to hear her walk up the hallway, to see her enter my bedroom and put her arms tightly around me, drawing me into her chest as she told me it was going to be okay. She’d been through labour too; she would understand this pain. Did she go into labour early with me? Had she been frightened? Surely it was impossible not to be. I wondered about her caesarean again, and whether it was an emergency C-section; and whether this was why she’d stopped at one child. Would the same thing happen to me? I could hear her voice in my head – always so comforting and soothing, telling me that everything would be okay. For a moment I could almost feel her touch on my skin. I could smell her. Feel her breath and the brush of her hair on my cheek as she embraced me. I felt tears begin to well. But I wouldn’t let them get far; there was too much to think about – like what was Jason doing right now? I looked at the bed and noticed he hadn’t even gathered up my pillows or duvet ready to take to hospital. I thought he was on top of this?