Countless(15)

'Right then,' he says, as though we've just had a long conversation. 'I'll be off.'

I blink a couple of times and it isn't until he's almost out of my flat that I manage to say, 'Hang on! I mean  …  do you want a cup of tea or something?'

'No, thanks. You take it steady.'

'Thank you,' I call after him.



I replay the conversation with Mum several times over dinner (more chicken). I'm with her on most points really. It's true  –  I am selfish. I don't know whether the selfish part is Nia or me or if that's even a distinction worth making. I feel the urge to cry welling up yet again, which is ridiculous. I don't do crying, haven't for ages. It's a talent of mine, to switch everything off  –  at least, it usually is. Maybe all the tears are some sort of pregnancy-related weirdness.

After I've forced my dinner down, I feel little rhythmic twitches coming above my hip bone: hiccups. Perhaps the baby likes chicken. Someone has to, surely. Then I start to wonder if the flavour crosses into the amniotic fluid and if the baby literally can taste it, which sets off a whole train of thoughts centred on bits of chicken fat congealing inside me, sticking there and never quite coming out. I think about my stomach getting bigger and bigger, blowing up, the rest of me following suit, and it fills me with horror.

Suddenly, I want this baby gone. I want Nia back. I want a world of white. Safe, silent, clean.

But it's too late now.

I take a while to calm down, but once I do, I give Mary the midwife a call.



       
         
       
        

'I want to know more about adoption,' I say.





Crap Things about the Unit, Number Six:

the Other Patients



OK, so this one is sort of tricky. It's hard to explain what it was like, the relationships you develop with the people in there with you. The way you need them and sort of hate them. The way you really love them. The drama and intensity of it all as a handful of society's truly messed-up squeeze themselves into this artificial space and bond, like in that film One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, but on teenage hormones. How we were all so innocent. Sad, yeah, but innocent too. And then, all of a sudden, we weren't any more.





Chapter 9


12 WEEKS TO GO


I'm at the doctor's, waiting for my appointment with midwife Mary and a social worker I've not met before. I'm twenty-eight weeks pregnant today and it's definitely starting to show. I spend half my day sideways in front of the mirror, trying to suck it all in and make my stomach concave, like it should be, but it doesn't work. So, I put on the baggiest clothes I can find and try not to think about the chart in the kitchen where I mark off each meal.

252 to go. The number makes me go hot inside and I have to count my breaths to calm myself down. Tonight I'm planning the same thing I've had every night. It feels safer that way. Although I'm really, really starting to hate chicken. More than usual.

Mary put me right at the end of clinic hours so we'd have more time, but the waiting room still has at least three other pregnant women, all clutching their set of notes. I've remembered mine, as I'm trying to be non-selfish and adult and all that, but I've taken them out of their silly little folder and squashed them down in a rucksack. With my hoodie pulled over my stomach, I don't really look like I belong with the others. I hope.

I flick through a magazine, the type that puts big red circles around cellulite snapped from a mile away on the front cover. Next to a story about some B-list celeb's 'worrying' weight loss is an ad featuring a woman in a bikini with clean sliced hip bones and washboard abs pushing a buggy. I consider tearing the picture out, to rip into a million shreds or fold away for thinspiration, I'm not sure which.

To distract myself, I listen as two of the others strike up a conversation. The usual stuff I assume pregnant women talk about.

'When are you due?'

'February sixth.'

'Ah, not long to go.'

'Hope so. Can't wait. I'm having the largest glass of wine imaginable. In fact, I've told my partner he can bring a cool bag to the birthing centre.' 

My ears prick up at that.

The wine lover is somewhere in her mid to late thirties at a guess, with a roundish face that has that outdoors look to it and acres of curls. The other woman almost reels back in shock, her mouth pinched tight, one hand clutched protectively over her, frankly, hippo-like bump.

'But what about the breastfeeding? Alcohol crosses over into breast milk, you know.' Her voice changes from judgemental to booming. 'Mica! Put that down!' She clicks her tongue. 'Heaven knows where it's been.'

I follow her gaze to where a toddler with a snotty nose is chewing on a board book. I have to admit, I'm sort of with judgy woman on this; it doesn't look hugely clean.