Not What They Were Expecting (6 page)

‘I said no! You’re not listening!’

‘You had such a good time you’ve been reduced to tears, is that it?’

‘Look, I’m fine.’

‘Clearly.’

Rebecca’s eyes narrowed and she started to say something but thought better of it. James put his hands behind his head and huffed slightly.

‘It just wasn’t what I expected, that’s all,’ Rebecca said, breaking the silence.

‘And I just want to make sure it goes all right for you. That you don’t get too stressed out.’

‘Yeah. Well.’

James walked across and tried to give his wife a hug, but she was too low down and ensconced in the corner of the bulky sofa. He settled for a kiss on the top of her head.

‘Let’s have a beer, eh?’ he said, massaging her shoulder gently. Her head leaned into his hand.

‘I shouldn’t, really…’

‘Even your mad midwife said it was all right. Come on, I’ve got a weekly email from Babycentre we can look at, see what that creature is up to now, whether he’s planning on keeping that tail.’

‘We need a better name than “That Creature”,’ Rebecca shouted as James headed for the fridge.

‘You’re right,’ said James, handing over a Heineken. ‘Jeff?’

‘Jeff? What if it’s a girl?’

‘It’s not their real name. I don’t think we’ll be planning on calling a boy Jeff either, it’s not going to come out aged fifty-three and ready to join your dad at the golf club.’

‘It might stick though, and we’d end up taking Jeffrina to her ballet classes. Try again.’

‘The Thing?’ he suggested, ‘Fifi Foetus?’

Rebecca rubbed her hand over her belly again while she was pondering, trying to feel a difference.

‘We could go for one of the classics and just call it the bump?’ she said. ‘Will be one soon.’

‘Who put the bump in the bump-a-lump-a-bump? It was the man with a rama-lama ding dong,’ sang James. ‘I think I could live with that.’

‘But we’d have to live with your singing. Bompalomp’s cute though…’

‘What do you think, Creature?’ asked James as he sat on the couch and rested his head in Rebeca’s lap. ‘Would you rather be Bumpalump?’

‘Bompalomp. I don’t need to be associated with being a lump, thank you.’

‘Bompalomp then. What do you think, give your tail one swish for yes, two swishes for no. I think that’s confirmed it. It’s christened.’

Rebecca smiled down at her husband with his ear pressed against her tummy, and gave his neck a pinch.

‘Spoken to your mum yet?’ he asked.

‘She called earlier. Apparently I had it easy. In her day it was creepy pervy doctors and ferocious uncaring nurses. Turns out I was carried to term in a
Carry On
movie.’

‘And how’s your dad?’ James asked cautiously.

‘Getting on with his projects, usual self. Like it’s gone away.’

‘Maybe it will.’

Rebecca sighed and massaged James’s head.

‘Now what can I and Loyd Grossman get you for dinner?’ he asked, ‘Thai? Indian? Italian? The world is your oyster in a range of delicious sauces.’

‘Thai curry I think. Would be nice with the beer. And I’ll have some crisps as an appetiser.’

‘Salt ’n’ vinegar?’

‘Thanks, love.’

James propelled himself to his feet with a thump, and headed back to the kitchen, loudly singing a range of half-remembered doo-wop songs from adverts. Rebecca sipped her beer and pulled a face as a metallic taste flooded her mouth. She’d been dying for just a regular end-of-a-long-day drink for weeks, and now it tasted like licking a battery. What a shitty day. Sometimes James just wasn’t the person to talk to about something difficult. Maybe it was her because she couldn’t explain herself properly. The midwife had been quite funny really when she thought about it. But it had seemed scary at the time, and she didn’t know why she’d been apologising for freaking out a bit. She wasn’t sorry.

And
of course
it just
had
to have been more difficult for Mum.

She sipped the beer again, but she was going to have to give up on it. She was tired and it had been a big afternoon, she had to get over herself and this ‘no one ever listens to me moaning’ nonsense. Maybe a nice tea and another early night would help.

‘And here’s your hand-crafted chicken rogan josh and delicately microwaved naan, as requested,’ said James as he came into the living room. ‘Now what shall we watch on the telly?’

Coming back from a layout meeting on the paper, Ben Smalling hadn’t been surprised to see the note to call Howard Collins on his desk. Although it had been happening less frequently since he’d left the council, still there was the occasional demand from the old Tory toad that coverage remain fair and impartial, or rather, more partial to his views. He knew already how the conversation would go. Howard would be rather chummy and jolly but there’d usually be some reference to dinner with a big-advertising local estate agency and serious concerns about the effect on house prices. That was a best case. Ben hoped it wasn’t a call proposing some sort of ghastly middle-class dinner party to celebrate their offsprings’ fertility. A feast for the foetus. Guess Who’s Come Before Dinner? Abigail’s Partum?

It didn’t sound like a social call, he supposed. Howard’s message was just that he wanted to speak to Ben about a grave injustice that he thought would be of interest to his readers, and probably right up his street too. Probably some ‘PC gone mad’ rant to do with his business. Well, if it was important he’d call back, Ben decided, doodling a few more dinner party puns along the margins of the copy for this week’s restaurant review.

Chapter 7

‘I’ll have an ESB and a bag of crisps, I’ve just got to make this call,’ said Kam.

James turned back slightly from his position at the bar, and glanced at his friend and colleague while keeping one eye out to make sure the harried barman didn’t miss him.

‘ESB? On a school night?’ he asked.

‘Been a long day,’ said Kam bouncing on his heels. ‘Hey gorgeous, it’s me… Don’t ask – I’ll tell you later. Is she having her dinner? Yeah, great, pop her on.’

James raised a finger, but the barman, partially obscured by gleaming pipes for the beer taps, was ambushed at the other end of the long wooden bar.

‘Jimmy, I’m just going to take this outside… Hello, Hannah-Banana, are you being a good girl for mummy…?’

By the time Kam got back James had finally got served, and found a small wobbly table with two tiny stools at the back of the pub near the gents. It wasn’t ideal, but for a Holborn pub at six o’clock on a Thursday it wasn’t bad – although the proximity to the toilets did mean there was a good chance they’d have to be polite to every other sod from the office who was in there. Still, it was gloomy enough back there to be private, gave them both the chance to clock what was going on across a large section of the bar, and didn’t feel as seedy as lurking by the one-armed bandit by the Ladies.

‘Sorry about that. Ended up having a quick fag with one of the guys. Miserable bastard makes me seem like Olly Murs.’

Kam slouched down into his seat and tore into his packet of crisps, ripping the bag apart down the seam and smoothing the packet flat against the table, before repeatedly jabbing at the contents.

‘Rough day?’ James asked.

‘First week back from holiday and just all about the merger, corralling two IT teams into one vision of an integrated networked backbone at the core of our shared goal of being the best little medium-sized accountancy in the country. I don’t know if I’m supposed to get everybody to cheer and high-five after setting out that utopian vision. There was one chap with tears in his eyes, but that’s because the room we were in had a window and he’s unaccustomed to daylight. And there was some whooping, but that was this other guy’s condition which we’ve been told we have to accommodate, but also never mention. I’m supposed to be inspiring and organising this new team, and I’ve got two dozen people arguing about who’s got the worst company-issue keyboard.’

Kam paused in his rant to down a quick third of his pint of strong bitter.

‘So anything new with you?’ he asked with a soft belch.

‘Oh, you know, nothing much, still fairly quiet. Leonard is being an arse, all aloof with his additional power. Got the new Sherlock box set you’ll have to borrow when we’re done.’

‘Cool. The winner was the guy who had had all the letters worn off, by the way. With the keyboards. He has to find the Q by trial and error and mentally works out everything else from there.’

‘Sounds like an IT Jedi exercise,’ said James, before casually adding, ‘and I might need to put in for a bit of paternity leave for late August.’

Kam picked up the significance of what James said with a pint halfway to his crisp-stuffed mouth.

‘Eh? Congratulations, mate! You’re finally coming over to our side! Brilliant. Go straight home now and start storing up some sleep.’

‘Rebecca’s sleeping enough for three. She just texted she was going to stay up late and catch the end of
EastEnders
but then hit the hay.’

‘What is she, about ten weeks?’

‘Eleven.’

‘That’ll happen. So how come I’m only just finding out now?’

‘You know, early days, Rebecca didn’t want to jinx anything. It’s still on the QT, so you can’t start gossiping about it yet.’

‘Had the scan?’

‘That’s Monday week.’

‘That’s brilliant, you’ll love it. Won’t have a clue which way is up on the pictures. I remember with Hannah what I’d been telling everyone were her tiny little tootsies were actually kidneys, but you kinda see what you want to see. So you kept this all a bit quiet, when did you start?’

‘Not long ago really. You know we’d been talking about it for years, but it was around Guy Fawkes we thought we’d give it a proper try.’

‘Fireworks eh? Quick work. So I suppose it was our good example that inspired you, was it? My joyous exterior and blissful demeanour made it look like something to aspire to?’

‘Right, that’ll be it,’ said James. ‘Your two must have loved Christmas, did they?’

‘First year Hannah’s really got what’s going on. Bossing me around to make sure I’m following the correct etiquette to hold up our side of the bargain with Santa and the reindeer. Checking for his spies everywhere to make sure we’re not caught being naughty. Will’s still mostly oblivious, but we’ve got this great picture of him looking absolutely terrified of this weird-looking stranger in red he’s been abandoned with at the grotto in Debenhams.’

‘Was he OK?’ James asked, trying out his voice of fatherly concern.

‘Ah, he was fine. He’s terrified of his own shadow half the time, and fearlessly trying to hitch a ride on the back of the neighbour’s nasty dog the rest of the time,’ said Kam, his voice a mixture of insouciance and pride. ‘Horrible animal. Nice to everyone else, but always growls at me. I think he’s prejudiced.’

Kam knocked back the end of his beer. ‘Pint?’ he asked glancing quickly at his watch.

‘Sure.’

‘Good man.’

While his friend went to the bar, James sat agitatedly playing with his beer mat, worrying away at an edge damp and sticky with spilt lager. He looked up when a rowdy bunch of young lads, trainee somethings still not at home in their workwear suits, gave out a large camp ‘oooh!’ as two of their gang headed towards the Gents at the same time. As they came out again they were playing along with the joke, the first dabbing the corners of his mouth as if he’d swallowed something tasty, and the second walking as if doing so was causing him a degree of discomfort. By the time Kam got back with their pints, the beer mat was in tiny pieces on top of the empty crisp packet.

‘I didn’t tell you,’ said Kam sitting down, ‘there was this other guy with a keyboard that had a small little plant growing in the dirt and hair and dead skin collected underneath his Escape key. Claimed it was from a seed on a roll he’d eaten at this desk, but there was a suggestion he’d fixed it and brought one in he’d been working on at home. I would’ve believed it was genuine though, grubby bastard that one.’

James went quiet for a bit, and sipped on his beer and nibbled crisps for a while.

‘Did you ever have any trouble with your parents because of you and Kate?’ he finally asked, ‘Y’know cultural differences? Prompting a family crisis?’

‘Nah. Kate was a smart girl anyway, got gran on her side early on, and that cut out any “I don’t mind, it’s just what poor old nana-ji thinks” bollocks that anyone else could come up with. Anyway, we’re Hindus, which is like the C of E of Indian religions, anything goes most of the time.’

‘Kate’s parents were OK with it too?’

‘Pff,’ exhaled Kam leaning back on his stool, ‘I reckon they were horrified but too embarrassed to say so.’

‘And with the kids coming along no fall-outs there?’

‘Happy families, mate. All happy families. It’s like we’re colour-blind and living in one of Michael Jackson’s songs.’

‘So you’ve not had any major falling outs with parents or in-laws at all in the past ten years? That’s no help at all.’

‘Now I didn’t say we hadn’t had our tiffs. I was only talking about the racialist stuff.’

‘Oh really?’ James said perking up a little.

‘Kate and her mum have blazing rows. Totally out of nowhere they can just explode in front of everyone, one’s all “you never thought I was good enough”, the other’s all “you always try and push me away”. One thing I’ve learned is you don’t try and get in the middle of them when it kicks off though.’

‘And these rows, they can fester and linger after the event?’ asked James hopefully. ‘Loads of tension that’s never acknowledged?’

‘Nah. After about half an hour the blubbing really kicks in and they’re all huggy and kissy and telling each other “I love you”. Why you’d need to do that with people in your own family I’ll never know, but that’s their way. When the whole thing starts me and Dave usually just go into another room and watch football without talking much.’

‘Oh,’ sighed James, disappointed.

‘Family problems huh? Whose side?’

‘Well, it’s like this. It’s Rebecca’s dad.’

Pausing only briefly halfway through to get more drinks, James told Kam about Christmas Day, and the news about Howard’s arrest. He explained how she’d been upset about it, but didn’t usually want to talk about it much, but then got angry when her parents were acting like nothing had happened. He told Kam how Rebecca was pissed off because she was pregnant and everything should be about that right now, but there was this thing spoiling it a bit. And how he felt kind of the same way.