The Antenatal Group Read online

  For Sonny and Audrey, my sprogs.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Leo, almost inaudibly. ‘But I can’t have this baby.’

  Leo was, at least, polite when breaking up with Mel. There was nothing sordid for her to deal with. She didn’t have to find a blonde bombshell in bed with her fiancé, long, slim legs wrapped around his torso, a silk thong wedged down the side of the sofa or an explicit text message not meant for her eyes. There was no unseemly catfight or slapped faces to contend with. No, it was Leo’s timing that was just the tiniest bit off kilter. Standing on the stone steps outside Birth & Baby, a centre for antenatal classes in Brighton, Mel was nearly eight months pregnant with their first baby when Leo decided now would be a good moment to split.

  ‘I just can’t go through with it,’ he muttered to the back of Mel’s head.

  Leo was standing behind Mel while she fished around in her enormous tote bag, searching for something she’d lost. He watched and waited while she lifted out a bruised banana, knitting needles, balls of wool, a make-up bag, a water bottle, a battered copy of The Rough Guide to Pregnancy, a half-eaten bar of chocolate and a book of baby names, before repeating himself with more volume.

  ‘What?’ Mel said, frowning down into the depths of her bag and screwing up her nose, having not heard a word. ‘I can’t see my pregnancy notes. I definitely put them in here, I’m sure I did. Do you think they fell out on the bus? You have to take them everywhere with you. The midwife is going to think I’m completely hopeless—’

  Mel sifted through the bag again, gave up with a frustrated sigh then began to unbutton her coat – a bulky maternity one she hated – and, struggling with the sleeves, knocked into a pregnant woman carrying a yoga mat.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said to the woman, pulling a panicked face. ‘I’ve no spatial awareness these days.’

  The woman smiled forgivingly, in a sisterly manner, and Mel smiled in return, once again warmed by how nice pregnant women were to one another, then continued to extract her body from her voluminous maternity coat. For mid-February, it was a ridiculously warm morning. The sky was the brightest blue and people were walking around in T-shirt sleeves, while she was overheating in her outfit, made worse by her sturdy maternity underwear and leopard-print maternity tights. The tights had felt like a good idea at the time, when she was only a few weeks pregnant and on a hormonal spending frenzy in Top Shop, but now they stretched over her bump in inky blue splodges and cut into her skin just under her hammock of a bra, making her feel like a melon squeezed into a sausage skin. She breathed out and glanced around the busy car park, at a queue of cars waiting to find spaces. Seagulls screeched noisily above and Mel began to wish she lived in a tiny village in the Swiss Alps, where she could gaze out over glacial valleys and listen to the gentle tinkle of cowbells instead.

  ‘What were you saying, Leo?’ she asked, pushing her fringe back and wiping sweat from her forehead. ‘I didn’t hear you for all this noise. Do I look red in the face again? I didn’t know it was possible to emit this much heat. I could stand in elderly people’s homes as a cheaper option to fuel. What do you think?’

  Leo closed his eyes for a moment, then looked nervously towards the busy main road, where a police car edged its way through traffic and off into Brighton somewhere, siren blazing. He sighed deeply and rested his hand on Mel’s arm in an odd, almost sympathetic way.

  ‘Mel,’ he said, even more clearly this time, looking at her pink, glowing face, which was framed by a black, angular bob. ‘I’m really sorry. I know what kind of bloke this makes me, but I can’t do this. I just can’t come to this antenatal group.’

  Mel leaned against the handrail and took the weight from her left foot, which was constantly swollen all the way past her ankle. Her ballet pump had given up trying to be a shoe and barely covered her toes. She’d definitely gone up a shoe size. The days when Mel wore heels felt like decades ago. Out the corner of her eye she glimpsed a very pregnant-but-slim-everywhere-else woman with oodles of blonde curls and watched her happily link arms with her partner as they walked towards the steps. He had her pregnancy notes tucked under his arm like a newspaper. Both were grinning from ear to ear. Leo, on the other hand, was looking deadly serious. Mel gave him a hard stare, but felt her stomach flip nervously.

  ‘What do you mean, you can’t come in?’ she asked crossly. ‘Didn’t you get the morning off work?’

  Leo, dark-haired but pale-skinned, a long, thin scar running along his chin, was dressed in dark-grey trousers, a black jumper and a sheepskin coat with a tartan scarf knotted around his neck. He suited the winter. Mel had met him in December, two years ago, at a friend’s house party in Hove. They’d both nipped outside the basement flat to smoke roll-ups in the courtyard garden and Mel had been struck by how good-looking he was, in his dark jumper and with a beanie hat pulled low over his ears. Curls of smoke lingered around his pink lips as if reluctant to leave his mouth. Someone in a neighbouring house had let off fireworks, and Mel and Leo had ‘ooh’ed and ‘aah’ed at them together like small children, hesitantly finding each other’s hands, then mouths. Now, on the steps, waiting for him to answer, she felt nostalgic for that first kiss, when her heart had exploded like a firecracker in her chest.

  ‘No,’ he said, leaving a long pause. ‘It’s not that. I’m sorry, but I’ve been thinking about this for weeks, but been trying to do the right thing. I can’t have a baby, I don’t want my life to be over already when I’m barely twenty-seven years old and my career has only just got off the ground and—’

  ‘You can’t have a baby?’ interrupted Mel, her eyes wide open. She pointed at her belly. ‘Leo, I’m thirty-five weeks pregnant. There’s only five weeks to go.’

  For some reason, all Mel could think about was the tiny pair of baby booties Leo had bought for their unborn baby when she had been only nine weeks pregnant. They’d had a row about leaving the lid off the butter and he’d gone out and returned with the white booties from Baby Gap, holding them on outstretched palms as a peace offering. Mel had gasped with a mixture of joy and terror. How could anything with feet so tiny be her responsibility? Mel – untidy, disorganized, impulsive Mel – taking care of a tiny, mewling baby who could do nothing for itself and would be completely dependent on her for years. Could she do it? Could she be a good mother? Could she raise her baby to be confident and energetic, compassionate and wise? The question seemed bigger than her. She had clung on to Leo that evening as if her life depended on it. He would help: calm, dependable, capable Leo would be a good dad. There was no need to
panic. The boots were in her top drawer, still wrapped in tissue paper, though she often took them out, to sit and stare and dream of what was to come. Now, she raised her eyes to Leo, trying to fathom if he was serious, but he lifted his hands in the air, as if asking for mercy. He shook his head.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But, Mel, you never even asked me if I wanted all this.’

  ‘Never asked you?’ she asked, incredulous. ‘Leo, we both got pregnant, not just me. Isn’t it a bit late to be backtracking like this?’

  ‘Yes, of course it is, but I didn’t want a baby, still don’t,’ he garbled. ‘You bulldozed me into thinking I did, but now that it’s a reality, I just don’t know. It’s complicated. Look, we shouldn’t do this here. Let’s go. Let’s go and get a coffee and talk.’

  Bulldozed? Mel was so shocked she stopped breathing. She swallowed. In her head, she begged: Please don’t be saying this, Leo. She watched his mouth move a little more but couldn’t make sense of what was coming out. It was as if he was talking another language entirely. The baby kicked hard inside her and she gasped. Don’t leave me, Leo. Don’t leave us. She forced herself to speak.

  ‘I don’t drink coffee’ was all she could think to say, her scalp prickling and her throat burning with the need to cry. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to the antenatal class. Come with me. You’re just nervous. It happens.’

  Mel held out her hand towards Leo and smiled bravely, blinking away the moisture in her eyes. But Leo shook his head sadly and jammed his hands under his armpits as if he didn’t trust himself not to take her hand, not to do the right thing after all. He looked again towards the road and Mel wondered with a sickening shudder if there was someone – some other woman – waiting for him in her car with the engine running, wearing red lipstick and leather driving gloves and revving the accelerator, ready to steal him away. With her heart bumping, she followed his gaze but saw only random strangers making their way to work, snaking across the streets as if this were a perfectly ordinary day.

  ‘You’re having an affair,’ she said flatly, losing grip of the bag handle, so her bottle of water rolled on to the steps. ‘Are you in love with someone who isn’t me?’

  Leo picked up the bottle, looked at her with a lack of comprehension, pushed the bottle angrily into her bag and shook his head emphatically. He moved closer to her and put his hands on her shoulders, fixing her with a troubled stare. Mel saw that his eyes were filling with tears, and this made her stomach sink more than anything he’d actually said. She’d only ever seen him cry once before.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘I swear there’s no one else. This is about me. About whether I can be a decent father to the baby and partner to you. I don’t think I can. I’m not the right person. I have my reasons. Don’t hate me, Mel. I wouldn’t do this unless I had to.’

  Mel felt all the energy and fight seep out of her. She thought back over the last few days and weeks. Had she missed something? There had been no clue that this was going to happen. Nothing at all. Was it her fault? Had she been too moody and hormonal? Yes, probably. When had they last had sex? Two weeks ago. He’d seemed content afterwards. Quiet, maybe. Had she been too obsessive about her pregnancy? Maybe. She’d been incredibly excitable at times, and grumpy at others, especially about the profound tiredness she felt, as if she’d been hit over the head with a frying pan. She was a subscriber to babycentre.co.uk and checked in most days to chat online with other mums due in March, but she rarely recounted the conversations unless it was about something really important, like whether she could have one or two tins of dolphin-friendly tuna per week. She knew how boring some of her friends had been about their pregnancies and didn’t want to fall into that trap. Bewildered, Mel shook her head. Feeling that the steps were melting under her feet, she eased herself down on to the edge of one, clutching the handles of her bag, suddenly feeling terribly cold.

  ‘Don’t hate me, Mel,’ he said again, quietly.

  But I don’t hate you, she thought, I love you. Loved you. Still love you. You don’t snap your fingers and hate someone, especially when you’re having a child together. Not when you’ve mapped out a future together. She had the unhinged urge to laugh and so held one hand over her face. This was something she had done in childhood – giggled intensely and uncontrollably at completely inappropriate times, like when her mum broke the news that her dad was not coming back from hospital. Mel had thought her mum might slap her for laughing, but instead she had understood, pulling Mel into her chest and holding her there as tightly as you can hold a person, unconditionally loving her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Leo said, choked. ‘Sorry. I’ll call you later. I’ll stay with Nick for a while. Good luck with the class.’

  ‘Good luck with the class’ sounded to Mel like Have a nice life then. Byeee! Then, without even looking back at her, Leo paced across the car park, leaving Mel sitting on the steps, an overwhelming surge of nausea swimming through her, worse than any morning sickness she’d known. Feeling utterly numb, she watched his figure grow distant until he seemed to evaporate, her urge to laugh replaced by the urge to scream at the top of her lungs. She stared into her bag again and saw her notes, pressed up against the side, her twelve-week-scan picture of the baby, black and white and swirly, poking out of the folder. Her eyes filled with tears. There was no way she could go to an antenatal group now. She would just go home. Call her boss and take the afternoon off work. Call her mum. Think. All at once overcome with overpowering tiredness, she wondered if there was anywhere she could lie down and close her eyes.

  ‘Are you all right sitting out here on the steps?’ came a well-spoken voice from behind her. ‘Are you here for the antenatal class?’

  Mel looked up to see the curly-haired blonde woman she’d seen earlier smiling down at her. Mel nodded but didn’t speak, pushing her fingers to the corners of her eyes to wipe at the tears.

  ‘Let me help you up,’ said the woman, offering Mel her hand. ‘I’m Katy. My husband, Alan, is just inside, finding out where we need to go. Was that your partner? Couldn’t he stay?’

  Mel took Katy’s outstretched hand and lifted herself to standing, a rush of blood from her head making fizzy dots appear in front of her eyes. She shook her head, muttered something about Leo ‘having an important meeting at work’ and followed Katy in through the revolving doors, a burning sensation in her throat. It was hot inside, really hot. She started to tremble and sweat at the same time, recognizing the need to throw up.

  ‘Oh no, I’m . . . I—’ Mel gasped to Katy, dropping her bag and coat in the reception area and rapidly pushing open the door of the Ladies’ toilet. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

  Chapter Two

  Poor woman, thought Katy, watching the dark-haired girl wearing a pink flower in her hair and leopard-print tights rush into the Ladies’, apparently to be sick. She looked awful. Katy had heard that some women suffered morning sickness even this far into pregnancy. How horrible. She’d never had morning sickness, hardly ever felt nauseous. Thank God. In fact, her entire pregnancy had been plain sailing, right from the word go, when she’d got pregnant the first time she and Alan had tried. Well, she sighed inwardly, opening a small Tupperware pot containing neatly sliced carrot, cucumber and celery sticks to nibble on, unless she counted the effect it had had on her relationship with her business partner, Anita.

  Nightmare, mused Katy, thinking of Anita, who was probably sticking pins in a Katy doll right this minute, as Katy bit into a carrot stick, ambient rainforest music softly playing from speakers above her seat in reception. Pushing Anita from her thoughts, she ran her eyes over the rust-coloured walls, strung with tasteful abstract images of pregnant women’s bodies, sensuous and lovely. Someone had designed this place perfectly, like a womb. Tucking her blonde hair behind her ears, she thought of her own body and how radically it had changed in pregnancy. Her breasts had grown from an A to a D cup, her belly protruded in a neat bump and a dark line ran from her belly button to her
pubic bone. By eating carefully, she hadn’t put on any unnecessary weight. Pushing the lid back on the Tupperware pot of vegetable crudités, Katy brushed her fingers over a hardback book on a side table entitled Positive Birthing: Water Babies. It was one of many pregnancy and birth books she had at home and had read cover to cover. What was that Guides’ motto she’d had shoved down her throat when she was a child? Be prepared. It was part of Katy’s DNA.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ she muttered as her phone beeped with a text message from Anita. She read the capitalized message: I need you in the office!

  Straightening herself in the chair, Katy felt a stress headache gripping her. She massaged the back of her neck with one hand, rested her mobile on her knee with the other and took a deep breath. Perhaps Anita was right, maybe I shouldn’t have come to antenatal group. Maybe I should be at work, she thought, panicked. They were almost drowning in work. They’d never had so many requests for filming and events locations before, and it was Katy’s job to find suitable places, be it the grounds of a stately home or an art deco house on the beach, with swimming pool. Images of her office flashed into her mind: emails mounting, missed calls, Anita’s Post-it notes all over her desk, covered with red-ink scrawl as if she’d written them in blood.

  ‘Katy,’ her husband Alan said from beside the water cooler. He grinned at her and pressed a plastic cup under the tap. ‘Do you want water? It’s good and cold, angel.’

  A little startled, Katy looked up at him appreciatively. He was dapper, Alan, with his salt-and-pepper hair and multi-striped Paul Smith shirt. Only he could call her angel and get away with it. He seemed a little out of place against this nurturing and holistic backdrop. He better suited French antique interior design and looked great reclining on the Louis XV-style chaise longue in his office. He worked in the fine-food business and had fine tastes himself: drank only the best grape, loved oysters, wore a gold vintage Rolex and drove a midnight-blue BMW. It was only his Antipodean accent that gave him away as anything other than the English gent he looked to be.