It allowed Paige a few moments to ponder. What would her child be like? She'd hope that either him or her would not be considered “angelic.” Paige never was. She was “stubborn” and “dogmatic.” She was once a “terrorist” and more recently a “fundamentalist.” But never, ever, ever was she “angelic.”
It just wasn't in her DNA, or her upbringing. The same environment she would raise her child.
“Miss Simmons,” a voice shouted and Paige, absorbed in her imaginations of her likely newborn, had her attention jerked to the present.
She looked up to see Leah standing next to her. “I'm sorry,” she said with a wry smile. “Our tests show that your child is a Tory. We recommend …”
“Sit down!” Paige snapped, seeing the looks of disapproval from the receptionist. “You'll get us noticed!”
“Cunning plan,” the librarian replied and took two pairs of sunglasses from her bag.
“We'll look like spies or Michael Jackson,” Paige moaned as she slipped the glasses over her eyes. “And I can't see a bloody thing!”
Leah took the dark shades from her friend. “Ahh well. Thought they might make us blend in!” She hesitated for a few moments. “I got your text last night. I did loads of reading in my lunchbreak around pregnancy and abortion. Put the willies up Micky.” She giggled as Paige glanced at her.
“Oh, your date at the Lewisham Theatre.”
“Yeah, a couple of weeks ago. We saw this great environmental play about climate change denial and we ended up back at his, and we had … condom trouble. So then when he sees me reading pregnancy books in my lunchtime he freaks out. Quite funny actually. He even offered to leave his girlfriend for me.” Paige smiled. Leah held her friend's hand and rubbed the skin with her thumb. “I guess you haven't told Jack this morning.”
“No.”
“Ahh well, there's plenty of time,” Leah airily muttered.
“Yeah. That's what I thought.”
“And are you definitely keepin' it?”
Paige shrugged. “Dunno!”
“Ahh well, there's plenty of time for that too.”
“Miss Simmons.” The voice from behind them; the experienced nurse smiled. Her expression was warm and her demeanour welcoming.
“Yes,” Paige answered and got up. Leah didn't move. “Come on!”
“Oh you want me too!”
“Of course,” Paige demanded and Leah joined her friend in the small room. The bubbly nurse closed the door behind her patient and sat at the white, clinical desk, looking over Paige's medical file.
“Sit down,” she offered, patting the bed. “Just a dating scan?” Leah sat in the chair beside the equipment.
Paige muttered. The experienced woman smiled and chatted to her patient; she made no reference to her fame or her career, and just asked simple questions about her health and her thoughts. The cold transparent gel landed on her belly, causing Paige to squeal, and the technician turned her monitor for the young musician to watch as the ultrasound device scanned her womb.
“There it is!” Leah cried loudly. “Your baby!”
The picture froze and the nurse put her mouse over the large bean shaped object. “51 days it reckons. A shade over seven weeks.”
Paige did some sums in her head. “So that's a due date in June?”
Leah screwed up her face as she thought. “Was that the weekend when we went to Redhill.”
Paige blushed. “Yes.”
“Ahhh … so is that how he forgave you? While I was getting banged up by the cops while you were getting …”
“Probably,” Paige interrupted, raising her eyebrows at her excited friend.
The ultrasound technician spoke. “May 24th.”
“That's ages away,” Leah mused.
“Well you have another four weeks and five days if you wanted a termination,” the technician advised her patient.
Paige nodded but said nothing as she stared at the screen, looking at the large kidney bean growing inside her womb.
“But here's a leaflet, explaining everything. Obviously we advise mothers-to-be to avoid alcohol, tobacco, drugs and to eat healthily. And to avoid stress, but your obstetrician will go through all that.” She passed Paige a small leaflet and printed a picture of the foetus.
“Avoid stress!” Paige laughed. “The other four are easy; stress is damn near impossible!”
Leah looked up from the monitor. “Is it a boy bean or a girl bean?”
“Twenty weeks,” the ultrasound technician advised. “At the next scan. We can't tell now.”
There was a pause as Paige wiped her belly free of the clear gunk and returned a smile. “Thanks.”
Leah helped Paige from the bed and the nurse gave Paige a handful of leaflets. “They'll explain everything.”
Leah drove them to her small flat on the outskirts of Croydon in silence. Her dad had bought the property when he had separated from Leah's mother when their daughter was two. Although she rarely saw her father, she was the sole beneficiary of his will and inherited a two-bedroom house in a side street of the violent South London suburb of Fairfield.
Paige had offered to help Leah financially if she wanted to move but the free-spirited librarian refused to countenance the idea.
Paige slumped in a chair in the dining room, throwing the swathes of paperwork onto the table. “So, what are you thinking?” Leah asked, watching as Paige wiped a tear away from her eye.
“I'm thinking what the fuck do I do?” Paige admitted and watched as Leah poured a brightly coloured fruit juice from a bottle into two glasses. “I always thought that it would easy decision to make. If I got pregnant then I'd bring them up, with or without assistance, or I'd get an abortion. But now, it's just scary.”
“Hey, if Jack gives you any grief …”
“It's not that. Well it's partly that. He still hasn't forgiven me for Redhill and I am not telling him about this as it will change everythin'. I am not having him stay with me or be with me because I'm carrying his child.”
“So what? An abortion?”
“I don't know,” Paige admitted. “Nothing feels normal at the moment. If he forgives me then we can have a chat. If he continues to be cold with me, I ain't bringing a child into that environment.
“If you need someone to talk to and stay with then you are more than welcome to stay here.”
Paige smiled and thanked her before taking a sip of the dragonfruit and plum smoothie. “What are those boxes?” She asked, eager to change the subject. She pointed at four large cardboard boxes leaning against the wall.
“Ahhh, yes. I was about to open them when I had to rush to the hospital. Take a look at these.”
“At what?” Paige asked, crossing the room to be beside the boxes. Leah tore open the largest box to pull out a massage table.
“I am getting close to finishing my course and I saw this on eBay. A salon was closing and they were selling off all their waxing gear in a job lot. I was the highest bidder.”
“So this is all to do with your private waxing business?” Paige asked, grateful to have the attention away from her pregnancy. She watched as Leah opened the second and third boxes, unpacking endless amounts of waxing paraphernalia and equipment.
They carried it into Leah's spare bedroom; recently redecorated with fake tiles on the floor and real white clinical tiles on the wall. “They were doing the toilets at the library and they over-ordered. The foreman said I could have the spares.” Paige raised an eyebrow at her friend; that was certainly not the end of the story but she didn't ask and Leah didn't elaborate. What payment Leah had made didn't need to be discussed.
It felt a little cold, and not in keeping with the floral and bright decoration of the rest of Leah's house. Paige helped her friend assemble the large massage table, stands, and then watched her friend site the wax warmer on the table. A glass container of honey-coloured wax blocks was placed next to the equipment. “Go have a shower,” Leah ordered. “I want to try this on someone.”
>
“Why me?” Paige moaned, and ran her hands over her pubic hair.
“What would PaigeWatch say?” Leah teased. “Public hair at almost half-an-inch long and spiders legs on …”
“Don't care what that stalker says!” Paige snarled. “And I never had you down as a sadist!” Leah pouted. “Oh all right. Only because you came with me to the hospital!”
Paige washed her body in Leah's weak shower and wrapped her body in a large beach towel. Leah had changed into a white apron and Paige instinctively laughed when she saw the pink flower in her hair had changed to white one to match the professional apparel around her body.
“Lie on the bed,” Leah commanded and rubbed a pale liquid over her legs.
“What's that?”
“Pre-waxing treatment,” Leah replied without looking up. She dipped a stick into the hot wax and began to run strips of viscous substance onto Paige's thighs, before pressing a fabric strip over the pale brown syrup.
Paige watched as her friend patted the strip, held the skin taught and then flicked the strip away from Paige's body. She squeaked in shock rather than pain. “That hardly hurt at all.”
Leah smiled. “Waxing doesn't really. Unless you want it to. And I'm not a sadist.”
“No,” Paige squealed as another strip of wax was ripped from her skin.
“Now pregnancy … I'm told that hurts a lot.”
Chapter XXXI
Hazel
The three band members sat in Andre's plush offices. Incredible Talents had come a long way in the three years since Andre had joined the company and a management buyout from his uncle had given him sole control of the talent agency.
Their big break might have been The Bare Necessities, but the twenty employees now managed hundreds of musicians, celebrities and footballers.
B!g R!ot were going to be their next project. They had been spotted by one of his key talent “spotters” performing at a festival in Wiltshire in the Summer. Hazel had tracked them, watched them and then made them an offer to represent and manage them as they made their first album.
Andre had enrolled an old friend who would produce their album and refine their sound. They were talented, and smart, but raw and it would take some effort to polish them into the diamond he wanted them to be.
A couple of recording companies were very interested in giving them a recording contract and under Andre’s tutelage and guidance, he was certain they would blossom and flourish.
Hazel, his assistant and deputy, looked out over the river; offices with such a view were expensive and she never understood why so many people hid the delights of London behind closed blinds. “Beautiful day,” she mused as her three charges surveyed the contract she had helped put together.
They smiled at each other, taking it in turns to sign their names underneath the promise to give 20% of their earnings to Andre and his money-making agency.
Andre glanced towards the lawyer, sat at the end of the desk and signed two pieces of paper with a flourish, before passing them to the independent witness, and legal representative.
Hazel completed the paperwork; Andre led the three nineteen year olds out of his private room and into the main office where a large bottle of champagne and two dozen glasses waited for them.
The CEO uncorked the wine gently; he had once let a new client do it and they had acted as if they were Lewis Hamilton, covering the expensive offices in expensive champagne that had come with a very expensive cleaning bill. He poured the four glasses and passed full champagne flutes to the young musicians, keeping one for himself.
An office worker snapped the moment; the three teenagers stood alongside a beaming Andre and underneath a giant Incredible Talents banner as she took the photograph. Hazel joined them, pouring out the rest of the champagne and sharing it around all of their employees in the office.
The band loved the attention; one photograph was posted online and the rest filed away for their first official autobiography if that moment ever came.
The new band were exuberant and noisy, and excitedly left the office an hour later, still holding onto their copy of the contract. Andre retreated into his office with the latest gossip magazines. These were essential subscriptions to his company.
“I see you're in here,” he said, turning to the wedding of his employee to one of his star clients. “And Paige.”
“I saw her on Monday.”
“How is she?” Andre asked.
“Naked.”
“She's always naked.”
“She's calmer when she's naked. It brings out the inner Dalai Lama in her.” Andre thought back to the late-night conversations at police stations when the militant naturist had upset locals and hummed. “She is sometimes a little bit calmer when she is naked!” He conceded.
Andre smiled. He surveyed the pictures. “I'm there. And there. And … there's Claire.” His finger traced the outline of his ex-fiancée on the page. “She was there. But we never spoke.” He took a deep breath and rubbed his nose. “Apparently the Sunday papers are going to print the inside story about Claire and I splitting up. Well, the story of me.”
“Oh.”
“They came to me for a comment. What do I tell them?”
“Why are you asking me? I'm not a PR person.”
He gulped. “I am asking for advice as a friend, not as a media professional, although you’ve shown you know your way around Fleet Street! I was stupid. I know I was. I was abroad, with the group and we'd had a long, long week. And we went to a massage parlour place just to unwind. That was how it started but one thing led to another and it just happened. A ‘lady-boy’ and girl. I barely remember paying for it. I think the boys did. I barely remember what happened after the massage.”
Hazel stood motionless, listening to her distraught boss's voice quivering as he spoke.
“And I knew it was wrong. I'd never been with a guy before and never been to a prostitute. It was just so normal at the time, we were all there. And I agonised over telling her. I knew she'd be so upset with me, but that night she just lost it. I'd never seen anyone so angry.”
“I'd be angry,” Hazel replied coolly. “I'd never be able to trust Ricky again if he did it to me. Not the act but the breach of trust.”
He gulped. “Ricky and Jason went back to the hotel. I should have gone with them. Ben and Jay were at the massage parlour. A few roadies too. Last night on their Farewell Tour and I got so drunk. But I know that’s no excuse. When I got home I was honest with her as soon as I could, and I begged for forgiveness. But she lost it, shouting at me. All those things she said to me; she just set out to hurt me.”
“Did you tell her everything?”
“I never got the chance. I told her that I'd gone to a massage parlour and I’d had more than a massage. That was all I said. She exploded with anger, and that was one of the last things I ever said to her. I moved to our old London flat the next day and she got the house.” He took a deep breath. “So glad we’d not got around to selling it.”
“So … what are they going to write?”
“I don't know. But what do I say? Do I admit to past indiscretions? I've sort of said that us splitting up was a private matter and I'd welcome discretion at this difficult time.”
“OK. That's good. I guess.”
“But they are going to publish it. It's private so there’s no story but it’s a cheap tabloid and Claire is still a big name. What happened to me and Claire doesn't need raking over. It won't do me any good and it won't do Claire any good.”
“Well if Claire doesn't know, warn her first,” Hazel suggested. “Tell her everything and tell her that this story is coming.”
“She'll kill me.”
“Well you asked my advice. I think it’s only fair.”
Chapter XXXII
Paige
In the few days since her appointment at the hospital, Jack and Paige had barely talked. Their relationship, which was once built on understanding and constant tolerance of their contra
sting personalities, had moved into frostiness and was heading towards the deep freeze.
Paige had tearfully asked him for forgiveness, but the aloof man had given mild platitudes, walked to the spare room and closed the door, leaving the young woman in tears.
Her mind was made up; she couldn't bring a child into that environment. She wouldn't bring Jack's child into a household where their father hated their mother. It was irresponsible and unfair on everyone.
She made an appointment with the South London abortion clinic; clandestinely ringing from her mobile in the garden, although Jack scarcely cared what activities his partner was undertaking.
The following day, she travelled in silence; her anonymous hoodie hiding her identity once again. She was just like so many other South London youths, eagerly shielding themselves from someone or something.
Her guilt came in waves. She believed in pro-choice: she was a passionate advocate in womens' rights to have abortions but she was feeling guilty. Should she have told Jack? Should she have consulted with him? What if he wanted her to keep it and she wanted an abortion? Would he ever forgive her if he found out she was pregnant and terminated their child?
Her media profile made it all the more likely he would find out; celebrities couldn’t have secrets. There were hundreds of journalists and paparazzi, eager to unveil her private matters to the world – and her partner.
She tried to ignore the feelings of dread inside her and listened to the gentle patter of rain falling on the train window. She wiped her eyes free of mist and tried to concentrate on London whipping past her carriage but the shapes of the rain on the window merged into a bean-like droplet. The advert on the train was formed like a seed. Everywhere she was reminded of the foetus inside of her.
The clinician had told her the baby was the size of a grape or a blueberry. Tiny. Defenceless, against what Paige was planning to do.
Bare Necessities 2 (The Bare Necessities) Page 14
