change a nappy and sing a nursery rhyme, you’ll be fine!”
I can’t change a nappy. And I don’t know any nursery rhymes.
God, I’m in trouble.
It’s another twenty minutes before Suze finishes feeding Clementine and hands her over to Tarquin.
“Right!” She closes the door behind him and turns with sparkling eyes. “No one’s about. Give me your wedding ring. I just need some string or something….”
“Here.” I rummage in my dressing table for an old Christian Dior gift-wrap ribbon. “Will this do?”
“Should do.” Suze is stringing the ribbon through the ring. “Now, Becky. Are you sure you want to know?”
I feel a flicker of doubt. Maybe Luke’s right. Maybe we should wait for the magical surprise. But then — how will I know what color pram to get?
“I want to know,” I say with resolution. “Let’s do it.”
“Sit back, then.” Suze knots the ribbon, meets my eye, and grins. “This is exciting!”
Suze is the best. I knew she’d have some way to find out. She dangles the ring above my stomach and we both stare at it, transfixed.
“It’s not moving,” I say in a whisper.
“It will in a minute,” Suze murmurs back.
This is so spooky. I feel like we’re at a seance and all of a sudden the ring will spell out the name of a dead person while a window bangs shut and a vase crashes to the floor.
“It’s going!” hisses Suze as the ring begins to sway on its ribbon. “Look!”
“Oh my God!” My voice is a muffled squeak. “What does it say?”
“It’s going round in circles! It’s a girl!”
I gasp. “Are you sure?”
“Yes! You’re having a daughter! Congratulations!” Suze flings her arms round me.
It’s a girl. I feel quite shaky. I’m having a daughter! I knew it. I’ve been having girl vibes all along.
“Becky?” The door opens and Mum is standing there, resplendent in purple sequins and matching lurid lipstick. “People will be here soon.” Her eyes shoot from Suze to me. “Is everything all right, love?”
“Mum, I’m having a girl!” I blurt it out before I can stop myself. “Suze did the ring test! It went in a circle!”
“A girl!” Mum’s whole face lights up. “I thought it looked like a girl! Oh, Becky, love!”
“Isn’t it great?” says Suze. “You’re going to have a granddaughter!”
“I can get out your old doll’s house, Becky!” Mum is suffused with delight. “And I’ll have the spare room painted pink….” She comes close and examines my bump. “Yes, look at the way you’re carrying it, love. It’s definitely a girl.”
“And watch the ring!” says Suze. She lifts the ribbon above my stomach again and steadies it. There’s utter stillness — then the ring starts moving back and forth. For a moment no one speaks.
“I thought you said a circle,” says Mum at last, puzzled.
“I did! Suze, what’s happening? Why’s it going back and forth?”
“I dunno!” She peers at the ring, her brow wrinkled. “Maybe it’s a boy after all.”
We’re all staring at my stomach as though we’re expecting it to start talking to us.
“You are carrying high,” says Mum eventually. “It could be a boy.”
A minute ago she said it looked like a girl. Oh, for God’s sake. The thing about old wives’ tales is, they’re actually total crap.
“Let’s go down anyway, loves,” Mum says, as music suddenly blasts from downstairs. “Keith from the Fox and Grapes has arrived. He’s making all sorts of fancy cocktails.”
“Excellent!” says Suze, reaching for her sponge bag. “We’ll be down in a sec.”
Mum leaves the room, and Suze starts applying makeup at speed while I watch in astonishment.
“Bloody hell, Suze! Are you training for the makeup Olympics?”
“You wait,” says Suze, brushing sparkly shadow onto her eyelids. “You’ll be able to do your makeup in three seconds flat too.” She unscrews her lipstick and slashes it on. “Done!” She grabs her elegant green satin dress and steps into it, then takes a jeweled hair clasp from her bag and twists her blond hair into a knot.
“That’s nice!” I say, admiring the clasp.
“Thanks.” She hesitates. “Lulu gave it to me.”
“Oh, right.” Now that I look at it again, it isn’t that nice. “So…how is Lulu?” I force myself to say politely.
“She’s fine!” Suze’s face is lowered as she wrenches her hair into place. “She’s written a book, actually.”
“A book?” Lulu never struck me as the book type.
“On cooking for your children.”
“Really?” I say in surprise. “Well, maybe I should read that. Is it good?”
“I haven’t read it yet,” says Suze after a pause. “But obviously she’s the expert, with four of them….”
There’s a kind of tension in her voice that I can’t place. But then Suze looks up — and her hair is such a terrible mess, we both burst out laughing.
“Let me do it.” I grab the clasp, take it out of the knotted hair, brush it all out, and twist it up again, pulling little tendrils out at the front.
“Fab.” Suze gives me a hug. “Thanks, Bex. And now I’m dying for a cosmo. Come on!”
She practically gallops out of the room, and I follow her down the stairs with slightly less enthusiasm. I guess mine will be a Virgin Fruity Bland Something.
I mean, obviously I don’t mind. I’m creating a beautiful new human being and all that. But still. If I were God, I’d make it OK for pregnant women to have cocktails. In fact, I’d make it healthy to have cocktails. And your arms wouldn’t swell up. And there wouldn’t be any morning sickness. And labor wouldn’t exist….
Thinking about it, I’d pretty much have a whole different system altogether.
Even on virgin cocktails, it’s a fabulous party. By midnight the marquee is full, and we’ve all had a delicious dinner. Dad has made a speech about how wonderful Mum is, as a wife and as a mother and now as a prospective grandmother. And Martin, our next-door neighbor, has performed his magic show, which was really excellent! Apart from the bit when he tried to cut Janice in half and she freaked out when he turned on the chain saw and started crying “Don’t kill me, Martin!” while he kept revving it up like some horror film maniac.
It was all right in the end. Martin took off his mask and Janice was fine after she had some brandy.
And now the band is playing and we’re all on the dance floor. Mum and Dad are grooving away, all rosy- cheeked and beaming at each other, the lights sparkling on Mum’s sequins. Suze is dancing with one arm round Tarquin’s neck and the other round Clementine, who woke up and wouldn’t go back to sleep. Tom and Jess are standing at the edge of the dance floor, talking and occasionally doing a kind of awkward shuffle together. Tom looks pretty good in black tie, I noticed — and Jess’s black embroidered skirt is fantastic! (I was totally sure it was Dries van Noten. But apparently it was made by a women’s collective in Guatemala and cost about 30p. Typical.)
And I’m wearing my new pink dress with the handkerchief hem, and dancing (as best I can, given the bump) with Luke. Mum and Dad dance by and wave at us, and I smile back, trying not to cringe in horror. I know this is their party and everything. But my parents really don’t know how to dance. Mum’s wiggling her hips, completely out of time, and Dad’s kind of punching the air like he’s fighting three invisible men at once.
Why can’t parents dance? Is it some universal law of physics or something?
Suddenly a terrifying thought hits me. We’re going to be parents! In twenty years’ time, our child will be cringing at us.
No. I can’t let it happen.
“Luke!” I say urgently over the music. “We have to be able to do cool dancing so we don’t embarrass our child!”
