Chapter 27
The grainy black and white image was like a blizzard at night, snowflakes swirling, drifting and clustering in haphazard patterns against the blackness. And then it came into view, the tiny form of Tasha’s baby, wriggling like a jumping bean.
‘Oh,’ said Tasha, as if she hadn’t truly believed she was pregnant until that moment. She gaped at the screen, eyes almost as wide as her mouth.
‘Are you okay?’ Simone couldn’t tell if it was in wonder or terror.
‘Shit. She’s really there.’
Noting the word she, the woman pressing the wand to Tasha’s belly told her it wasn’t possible to be certain of the sex until the next scan. But Tasha wasn’t really listening.
‘How big is she?’ she asked.
The sonographer – one Donna Sanders according to her badge – wrinkled her nose. It wasn’t the first dismissive action Simone had picked up on since they’d arrived. At first, she’d assumed the staff’s perfunctory attitude was efficiency in disguise. Then she’d seen how the other expectant mums – the older ones there with their simpering partners – were treated far more warmly. Cooed over even. She felt strangely protective of Tasha in that moment, lying there as the weight of what she was getting herself into pressed down as heavily as the ultrasound wand. As if fate hadn’t dealt her a shitty enough hand, she didn’t need the silent judgment of this woman thrown into the mix too.
Donna huffed. ‘I’ll come to that.’
Simone searched for the answer on her phone, repeating the question out loud and side-eyeing Donna as she did so.
‘About the size of a plum,’ she said.
The girl’s eyes were noticeably glassy, even in the darkness of the room. Jasper was right; she wasn’t as tough as she’d originally assumed.
As Donna continued to prod, the machine clicking and beeping as she went, she recalled the time when she’d undergone an ultrasound examination. It was over ten years ago now, but she hadn’t been in the antenatal ward; the thing growing inside her abdomen had been a very different beast.
‘The foetus is measuring around twelve weeks old,’ said Donna. ‘Does that match with your dates?’
Tasha looked confused.
‘Do you know when you conceived?’ the woman asked impatiently.
Another dig. This clearly wasn’t planned.
‘No.’
‘Well, you can stop taking folic acid tablets now.’
‘Folic acid?’
Donna’s mouth took on the pinched characteristics of a cat’s bottom.
‘I didn’t know you needed to,’ Tasha said quickly.
Donna’s attention turned to Simone, as if perhaps she should have furnished the girl with this information.
‘Haven’t you seen a midwife yet?’ Simone asked.
Tasha shook her head. ‘Not yet. This appointment was made by a doctor.’
‘Well, it can’t be helped,’ said Donna. ‘The next scan will identify if there are any neural tube defects.’
Tasha really did look terrified now. Simone couldn’t get over the woman’s attitude. She had the bedside manner of a robot whose mode had been set to ‘tosspot’.
‘But that would be very rare, no?’ she prompted.
The woman checked Tasha’s notes. ‘You’re young,’ she said.
They waited, expecting her to add something more. She didn’t. Instead, she stridently pulled out a metre’s worth of blue tissue from the dispenser and tore it off with a flourish. She handed the wad to Tasha, who wiped the jelly off pristine porcelain skin that would be stretched thin in several short months.
‘When’s the next scan?’ asked Tasha.
‘You’ll get a letter in the post.’
‘Can I just check the address you have, only?—’
‘You can do that with reception.’
Their time was clearly up, and the moment Tasha climbed off the bed, Donna opened the door for them to leave.
‘Wait,’ said Tasha. ‘I forgot to get a photo.’
‘You can ask for a print-out at reception.’
Tasha nodded.
‘It’s eight pounds a copy,’ Donna added, a little too gleefully.
‘That’s fine,’ said Simone. ‘We’ll get a whole set.’
A wry smile passed Tasha’s lips.
As they made their way back to reception, Tasha thanked her for the offer, but told her she didn’t need to buy the image. They both agreed it sucked that you had to pay.
‘What next?’ mused Simone. ‘Get the contactless machine out halfway through the birth. That’ll be twenty pounds for gas and air, and fifty for the forceps.’
But they both understood the subtext. If Tasha couldn’t afford to pay eight pounds for a scan picture, how the hell was she going to afford to pay for all the other accoutrements that parenting required?
They requested the pictures and found a couple of seats in the busy reception to wait for them to be printed.
‘So dare I ask where the dad is in all this?’
‘Not really in a position to help.’
‘What about moral support?’
‘Especially not moral support.’
Regardless of how capable Tasha appeared to be, this whole thing was a disaster waiting to happen.
‘Do you think I need to worry about the folic acid thing?’ she asked.
Simone reassured her that young women got accidentally pregnant every day. If they weren’t taking precautions, they almost certainly weren’t taking prenatal vitamins, and the world was full of perfectly healthy unplanned children. That bit, at least, would be fine.
Tasha stroked her stomach. ‘Do you want kids?’
She was ready to trot out the lines she used whenever anyone asked her that.
‘There are only two things wrong with babies,’ she said.
‘Which are?’
‘Everything that comes out of their mouth, and everything that comes out of their arse.’
She sensed the disapproval of the woman two seats down.
‘It’s not like I have anything against kids particularly,’ she continued. ‘Some of my favourite clothes labels are manufactured by children.’
Tasha cocked her head to one side and waited for her to quit dicking about.
‘And they are brilliant at fitting up chimneys,’ Simone added.
‘I get it. You don’t like kids.’
The truth was she didn’t know if she liked them or not, at least not since becoming an adult. When she was much younger, her parents had taken in foster children to supplement her father’s meagre income. It seemed farcical now, given her mother’s indifference to motherhood, but a not uncommon way to earn extra money back then. Before she’d turned ten, she’d seen a succession of children come and go. Initially, she’d found the whole thing exciting. If they were old enough, they would attend her school, where she would offer them up as flesh-and-blood show-and-tells. But the novelty soon wore off and the reality set in. For every lost but loveable youngster she would come to adore like a sibling – like the gentle Taiwanese girl who had been forced to live in a shed for not being a boy – there were the feral ones, whose troubled backgrounds were never excuse enough for the breaking of her toys, the kicking of her shins, and the taking of her precious parental attention.
‘Natasha Davis?’
They approached the desk where the receptionist held out the payment terminal. Simone tapped her card and the woman handed over two tiny pictures on thin, waxy paper. Surely for sixteen pounds you should get an arty canvas? Tasha traced her fingers over their silky surface, her face set in grim determination. There were obviously some great kids out there – she was standing in front of one – but ever since the doctors had told her what they’d told her about her own reproductive capabilities, she’d taken great pains to remind herself only of the shitty ones.