CHAPTER FIVE

       ‘I knew as soon as I set eyes on Mac that I was in big trouble. At fifty to my twenty-six, he was way too old. But he was so bloody sexy – a big hairy bear on wheels, how could I resist that? People stare when he’s pushing Layla down the street in his leathers and old enough to be her grandad but I don’t care. He’s not what I expected, but he’s a kitten. The most loving dad Layla could ever wish for.’

       Georgie, 27, Brighton

      I could tell Jim was secretly delighted by his own virility – by the fact that he shot and he scored. But I also knew, despite his usual optimism, that he was freaked out beyond belief.

      The days that followed were totally surreal.We were both – we still are – in a state of shock and took to calling each other sometimes three times a day with phone calls that went a bit this.

      Me: Hello

      Jim: Hello

      Long pause

      Jim: How are you feeling?

      Me: Weird. How are you feeling?

      Jim: Yeah, weird

      Long pause

      Jim: I’m going to be a dad, I can’t believe it

      Me: You can’t believe it!? Try being the one who’s got to carry the thing for nine months

      Jim: I thought I wouldn’t be able to have kids though, that I’d have killed all my strong swimmers with all the booze I’ve quaffed

      (See, I was so right about the virility thing)

      Me: Well you can and it’s true

      Jim: I know, I just can’t believe it though, it’s like it’s happening to someone else

      That particular line was not that encouraging. And I told him so.

      We’re on the fourth floor of Borders on Oxford Street in the Parenting section.

      I need to say that again.

      We’re on the fourth floor of Borders on Oxford Street in the Parenting section.

      Nope. Still sounds ridiculous.

      I lean against the bookshelf leafing through a book called Bundle of Joy: 101 Real Stories of Motherhood as if I do this every day, as if I do, actually, belong to this weird species, most of them mutant-shaped, milling around the shop floor, hand in hand: ‘The Expectants’.

      But I am not expectant. At no point did I ever expect this! When that positive test emerged it was categorically the most unexpected thing I have ever experienced in my life. Things like this don’t happen to me, they happen to the people I interview – everything happens to the people I interview, but not to me.

      My life has been one big cushy ride so far, which is why I’ve always blagged it when it comes to taking precautions against life’s eventualities. After all, the less stuff happens to you, the less you think it will, don’t you? I never did lie awake at night, dissecting my last session of oral sex and panicking that I hadn’t listened in Biology and it was perfectly feasible to get pregnant from a blow job after all. I rolled my eyes at Mrs Tucker our ‘personal health’ teacher – you can imagine what she got called – who said you could get pregnant by withdrawal – something that evoked all the risk of a banking transaction to me.

      Some would say I’m reckless (my mum would, but then my mother thinks caffeine after five p.m. is reckless). I would say I’ve always been relaxed, optimistic. OK, I admit it, veering towards winging it and hoping for the best. And yet, here I am, and the thing that’s caught me most off guard, aside from the stampede of hormones currently taking over my body like an occupying army, is that I’ve been caught out. My winging it wings are out of fuel, my Bank of Blag is cleared of funds, my cat’s nine lives are all used up. Game’s over Tess Jarvis. You’ve officially fucked up.

      It’s late afternoon, ten past five, and the sun is pouring in through the floor-length window, illuminating a column of dust particles which swirl to the ground, a reminder of the passing of time, of the seconds, minutes and days since my news. In the bookshop café to my right, there’s the clatter of tea cups and saucers, normal people getting on with their normal lives.

      Two aisles in front, I can just see Jim’s head of dark, overgrown hair buried in a book and I am immediately transported back to the day we met. He was stood like that then too, the first time I saw him, on the second floor of the John Rylands Library, head buried in the The Death of the Author, bathed in autumn sun.

      I remember thinking, just as I do now, he looked a bit vacant with those full lips hanging slightly open. But I liked his slim, defined face too, this guy with the hair that had its own mind.

      I squint to read the title of the book Jim’s reading: You’re Pregnant Too Mate! The Essential Guide for Expectant Fathers. And have a sudden inexplicable urge to blow out the brains of the author. He’s been reading it since we got here. Don’t ask me how we got here either, it wasn’t a conscious decision. One minute we were buying his mum a present for her birthday. (Already made the seamless transition from friend to mother-of-child, side-stepping girlfriend and wife as I go…) The next, we’d wandered in here, on auto-pilot really, me looking as shell shocked as if I’d just emerged from a national disaster, a look I’ve been sporting for more than a week now.

      I go back to my book – a cheery story of a woman whose morning sickness was so bad she would dry heave at Tesco’s cheese counter – but the words start to blur, I can’t concentrate. Everything in here is too loud, too bright.

      Ever since we decided we were definitely going ahead with this, the whole world has felt like this: like I’ve woken up in a different one.

      I go home, I watch TV with Gina, I go to Star’s and sip sweet Turkish tea and chat to Emete whilst she mends my trousers. I do everything I’ve always done, and yet it doesn’t feel like me doing it. It’s like someone has hijacked my body. Someone pregnant.

      ‘Hey, listen to this,’ says Jim, leaning over the bookshelf. ‘It says here that at six weeks pregnant,