could smell it on you.’ (I always sink to Jim’s level eventually.)
‘No, I was gentlemanly and paid for her coffee actually and anyway she fell for my northern charm and quick wit.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Yeah, whatever. The point is, I thought you hated Laurence?’
‘What makes you think it’s Laurence?! I know it’s hard to believe but I have had other boyfriends, you know.’
‘Not ones you’d call your “sexy” ex, you haven’t.’
I protest but Jim’s right. I would not call any of my other exes my sexy ex. Not because they weren’t sexy at all (I like to think I have upheld some standards in my life) but because Laurence was THE sexy ex. The One. Or as near as damned as I’ve ever been to it.
‘Anyway,’ I continue, feeling ever so slightly triumphant, that Jim has even thought about my past relationships enough to even make this observation, ‘I never said I hated him.’ Did I? He broke my heart; I was gutted for a while. OK, maybe I hated his guts for a while but I never actually hated him. ‘We were young, I expected too much. That was like, seven thousand years ago now anyway. Give the guy a break.’
‘I’ve got nothing against Laurence,’ protests Jim. ‘It was you that he upset, or have you forgotten the night you got back from travelling and demanded I come round, having drunk a bottle of wine in about half an hour feeling practically suicidal? What makes you think he’s changed is all I’m saying.’
‘Jesus Jim, it’s just a date, he didn’t ask me to marry him.’
‘OK. Well that’s OK then,’ says Jim, cheerily now. ‘Have a good time and make sure you give old Cane a damn good seeing to.’
I hang up, walk back to work smiling to myself. Jim really is weird sometimes.
I text Gina ‘how’s the evil hangover?’ And look at my watch: 1.53 p.m. There’s seven minutes till lunch officially ends. Still, a lot can happen in seven whole minutes. I go to the Ladies and then, I don’t know why, perhaps it’s women’s instinct that draws my attention just then, to something in my bag. Shimmering among the bus tickets and leaflets about cultural events I know I will never get round to attending, the blue wrapper containing the other pregnancy test from the pack of two I bought glints at me from the bottom of my bag. I’m not pregnant, I can’t be, I had a negative test. (Shelley Newcombe told me back in Year 9 that you can never have a positive after a negative.) But it cost me fifteen pounds and I really don’t like waste. And so I go into a cubicle and I get it out. It’s less of a conscious decision, more of a cleaning-up exercise, just as you might eat the one leftover stick of Kit-Kat that was making your desk look untidy. I wee on the little stick and balance it on top of the toilet roll holder, not thinking, just doing. Then I set the timer on my watch for two minutes.
1.50
This is ridiculous, I’ve even got PMT: sore boobs, knackered, short fuse, the Works
1.30
No period though and that’s a fact, I’m a week late; I’m never a week late
1.00
I am stressed though, that’s also a fact and I bet two seconds after doing this negative test, I’ll come on (ruining my best knickers it’s always the way)
0.45
I glance at the test, yep, just as I thought
0.30
Two lines emerging, God, I hate wasting money, especially due to paranoia
0.25
Misplaced, neurotic, paranoia
0.14
I pick up the test and tear off some toilet roll – I’m wrapping it up now, to throw in the bin
0.10
But then the light catches it – the breath catches in my throat
0.08
It can’t be, can it? can it? oh my God! tell me it can’t!
0.06
I feel like I might throw up, I swallow, take a deep breath, exhale slowly, then look at it again
0.04
But it’s still there
it’s still there…
a cross, a bright blue fuck-off cross! I’M PREGNANT! I’M FUCKING PREGNANT!! and I can hardly breathe, I can’t get my breath – help me! – my lungs won’t expand, and all I’m aware of, apart from this sensation, is a great surging, flooding of blood to my head…
If it wasn’t suddenly rush hour in the toilets, I might be making much more noise by now. But I can hear someone in the cubicle next to me, blowing their nose, and I know – she even does that in her own special way – that it’s Anne-Marie, so I don’t, I don’t make a sound. I just stay where I am, hand clasped over my mouth, my world having just shifted on its axis, and me hanging off the side by one fingernail.
My first concern (which points towards promising maternal impulses at least) is that I must have pickled whatever is there, if it really is there, by the alcohol consumed last night, the sambucas at Greg’s birthday drinks, the drugs. Shit, the drugs! I had a spliff with Gina last night and I am overcome with a murderous guilt, a guilt I am wholly and completely unprepared for. And then comes the shock, it hits me like a wall. Shock, guilt, shock, what the hell do I feel? The emotions seem to thrash over me, like merciless ice cold waves, pinning me to the back of the toilet door and stealing my breath.
There’s the sound of flushing next door, the taps running, the pad-pad of Anne-Marie’s hemp boots and the creak of the door as it shuts behind her. I’m feeling a whole kaleidoscope of emotions now but what are they? Am I happy? Is this elation I’m feeling? Or is it horror? I don’t know. I can’t think.
I hold the test in my hand, my breathing shaky, my palms moist, and suddenly I’m very angry. Angry that the other test lied to me, even angrier for doing this – getting pregnant in the first place, and now I’m angry at myself for handling this so badly.
Then it occurs to me. This cannot be right. No, it must be the alcohol from the weekend, turning the test positive. Like litmus paper. But I’m clutching at straws of course; I don’t really believe that. Plus, something instinctive tells me I am pregnant. I feel different. In that moment, the whole toilet cubicle in which I am standing seems to spin and to distort, as if everything I have ever known, ever experienced as my life, the feeling of just being me, is annihilated and I feel utterly disoriented.
I have to speak to Jim. Now. But I can’t face seeing someone I know, so I don’t take the lift down I take the stairs, two at a time.
Outside, everything looks different, as if I’m looking at it for the first time. It’s raining, pelting it down, and so I run, clutching my phone, to the doorway of a recruitment company at the end of the road. My hands are shaking as I find Jim’s number. I’m pregnant, I’m fucking pregnant!
It rings and rings and then he finally picks up.
‘Hello.’
His voice sounds muffled, sleepy almost.
‘Jim it’s me again.’
‘I know. Listen, can I ring you back?’ he whispers. I hear a woman cough.
Oh brilliant, Annalisa’s there. I am phoning him to tell him I’m carrying his child, and his Italian F.B. is in his bed on one of her impromptu visits to London, almost definitely naked. I met her once, his gnocchi nookie, on one of her ‘romantic’ breaks to East Dulwich.
‘You should get togezzer with Tess, she is adorable!’ she apparently said to Jim afterwards. ‘You’re an English lost boy,’ she always says to him. (She means loser, but she never quite gets it right, and ‘lost boy’ sums him up so much better I always