Chapter 32
32
A PAIR OF JEANS AND A NICE TOP
‘It’s not the menopause,’ Niamh says.
‘How do you know that for certain?’ I ask.
‘Because I know what being pregnant feels like. And I know I’m ridiculously fertile. And I know that certain risky behaviour was carried out.’
‘You know that menopause can mimic the symptoms of pregnancy, Niamh,’ I say, feeling increasingly exasperated.
‘It’s not the menopause,’ she says and there’s a borderline aggressive tone to her voice. I raise my hands in mock surrender. If she wants to die on this hill I shall let her – although she might regret her passing if the pregnancy test comes back negative.
‘Maybe,’ I say with a shrug. ‘Who am I to judge? It’s so long ago since I was pregnant I can barely remember what it felt like. And I only did it once, but with two babies, so my experience maybe wasn’t typical.’
‘Well it’s only seven years since I did it,’ Niamh says. ‘And I remember every last detail. I’m not a stupid woman. I know my body and I’ll prove it.’ She grabs the two pregnancy testing kits from on top of my bed and informs me she’s going to do the tests right here and right now. ‘I want to do two tests so do you have a cup or something I can pee in so I can dip both sticks in?’
‘You want to pee in one of my good cups?’ I ask.
‘Good cup. Bad cup. I don’t care. As long as it can hold a fairly decent amount of wee, we’re good. I drank half a litre of Fanta on the way over. Which, you know, is also a sign because when I was expecting Cal I was obsessed with Fanta,’ she says.
‘You’re always obsessed with Fanta,’ I remind her. It was her go-to hangover cure throughout our teen years and early twenties. A can of full fat Fanta, a Mars Bar and a bag of beef flavoured McCoy crisps. Even now she’s often seen swigging from a bottle.
She rolls her eyes. ‘Cup, Becca? Or I’ll grab your favourite Michael Bublé mug and sully it forever!’
‘You wouldn’t dare!’ I say, but not really trusting that she wouldn’t, in fact, dare. ‘Look in the tall cupboard by the fridge. There are some of those red disposable cups the boys used at their birthday party. You know, like the ones you see in movies.’
‘Those are a bit too big. I don’t think all that Fanta has gone through me that fast,’ Niamh says. ‘But thanks. You’re a life-saver.’ With that she disappears off down the stairs and I’m left trying to assess just how much pain I’m in. I lift my phone and google ‘Can you break your arse?’ Visions of some sort of full body cast contraption fill my head. I wonder momentarily whether this is where the expression ‘handing your arse to you in a sling’ came from. I also wonder whether they will bandage me up in some intricate way or make me lie face down in a bed in some sort of arse-repairing traction if I go to hospital. Like Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July . Not that his problem was a broken arse. It was a bit more serious than that, but…
I hear the toilet flush. It’s been a good five minutes and there has been not one peep from the bathroom. The flushing of the toilet would seem to indicate the deed has been done, and the recycled Fanta disposed of.
The bathroom door creaks open and I hear footsteps across the landing. My heart quickens. What result do I want for Niamh? Surely as she doesn’t want any more children and we are both hoping to start living the lives we once dreamt of, I should hope it’s a negative. But the part of me that feels a little dried up and less womanly really wants to convince myself we’re still in our fertile years. And a baby… I do love babies.
I read somewhere that you never know when the last time will be. That there will be a last time you lift your child into your arms. A last time you tie their shoelaces. A last time you rock them to sleep. And you don’t tend to know when that will be. Time moves on until you realise one day that something has changed. Your baby doesn’t reach for a dummy any more. They start pronouncing their words correctly instead of in the endearing way you’ve grown to love. Saul used to confuse his v and f sounds with bs. I miss him asking if he got an ‘inbitation’ to the party. Adam called grated cheese ‘spiky cheese’ – something I still do but they have long forgotten.
If I sit very still in a very quiet room, I can close my eyes and in those moments conjure the sights, sounds and smells of them when they were young and they needed me in that all-encompassing way small children need their mothers. I can imagine the imprint they used to leave as they lay on my chest and yes, I wish I could feel it for real. Just for five minutes. Being a mother was such a huge part of my full-time identity for so long, I’m not sure who I am without it. So yes, a part of me would love it if she walks into the room and waves a positive test in my direction. Sure, it won’t be my baby, but it will be a baby for me to cuddle and coo at, to smell and care for.
And yeah, hand back at the end of the day.
Because, I also realise, I am ready to move on from that stage of life. I’m ready to live a little for me, even if I don’t know how to do that just yet. Even if I have no idea what that looks like or feels like, because there’s a whole other set of last times no one warns you about either.
Just like I never knew when it was the last time I’d walk down the street with my child’s hand in my own, I also never knew when it was the last time I’d dance to ‘Boom! Shake the Room’ in Squires, or the last time I’d hold Niamh’s hair back as she puked neon alcopop everywhere. I didn’t know when it was last time I’d have a chips and Mexican beef special in Abrakebabra on the way home, or suffer severe chipulary burns. I didn’t acknowledge what would be my last after-work drinks with the girls, or the last Saturday afternoon I’d spend trailing the shops for a nice top to wear with jeans that night. I had no power to stop any of it, of course. Time cha cha slides on, whether we like it or not. But what I do have the power to do, two decades later, is claim a little bit of it back.
Another column idea comes to mind. Ten Ways to Figure Out Who You Are in Your Forties.
Niamh’s face gives nothing away as she walks back into the room. Her expression is completely blank. This could mean she’s in shock at what she has just discovered and is processing the news. I just don’t know if that news is good or bad, or what even constitutes good or bad. She doesn’t want another baby – she says – but she refused to consider all probable explanations for her missed period. Was that just a case of the lady protesting too much?
‘Well?’ I say, starting to feel a little woozy thanks to the extra strength co-codamol now weaving its way through my blood stream. She hands me the sticks and I try to not think about the fact she has just dipped them in her pee. The first has just one blue line – a negative result. The second – the fancy digital one – says ‘Not Pregnant’.
I look up at her. ‘So you’re not pregnant. This is good, isn’t it?’
‘Just because it’s negative doesn’t mean it’s actually negative,’ she says, sitting down on the bed beside me and taking the two tests from my hand. She holds them to the light and squints at them. ‘I think there might be a very, very faint line on this one,’ she says, handing the non-digital stick back to me. There is very clearly no line – faint or otherwise.
‘It’s a negative, pet,’ I say. ‘You’re home free!’
‘But maybe it’s just too early?’ she says and by the look on her face I’m starting to wonder if she’s upset there isn’t a screaming positive line in front of her.
‘Niamh,’ I say gently, ‘you said you were two weeks late. If you were two weeks late, a bun in the oven would show up on a pregnancy test.’ I have to play this one carefully. Yes, there might be a part of me that wants to shout, ‘I told you so!’ or ‘IT’S THE FECKING MENOPAUSE, WOMAN!’, but I can see that Niamh is not in the place for ribbing or teasing or even being given a stern talking to.
‘So I’m probably not pregnant,’ she says, blinking tears up at me.
I shake my head, which makes me more than a little dizzy due to the co-codamol. ‘Probably not,’ I say.
‘That’s a good thing,’ she says with a nod and an uneven smile. ‘Having a baby at my age would be ridiculous and disastrous.’
‘It wouldn’t be easy,’ I say as softly as I can.
‘It’s probably the menopause,’ she says, as if this thought is really just registering with her for the first time.
‘It probably is. We can go and get you a hormone test done. I could do with one myself so why don’t we both make appointments?’ I say.
‘When we said we wanted to start living more adventurous lives I didn’t think we meant chasing HRT together,’ she says with a weak laugh.
‘We sure didn’t,’ I tell her. ‘The sixteen-year-old us never really took that into consideration, did they?’
‘Nope. Can’t say it was on my list of hopes and dreams for life,’ she says.
‘At least we have each other to do it with. I’ve been kind of in denial that I need HRT but I really think it could help. Between the hot flushes and the mood swings, my dry skin and sudden almost overnight aged appearance, I think it’s pretty obvious my oestrogen levels are through the floor.’
Niamh nods. ‘I’m not sure I’m ready to be old enough for the menopause yet.’
‘Perimenopause can start in your thirties,’ I tell her. ‘We’ve done well to get this far.’
‘No, I know I’m biologically old enough for it. I don’t think I’m emotionally ready for it.’ She doesn’t look at me while she speaks, instead keeping her head cast down as if she’s embarrassed to be voicing these altogether understandable feelings. ‘I didn’t… don’t… want another baby but there’s something different about it being my decision not to have more babies than Mother Nature taking that decision out of my hands. I don’t feel in control of my life right now. And God, we’re ageing, Becca. I looked through the Facebook pages of our school friends and I wondered who all those proper adults were staring back at me. Did you know that Marie Barr is a granny now? Twice over? And she looks like a granny. She looks how I remember my granny looking, except with less dootsy hair and she doesn’t wear a pinny all the time. I can’t help but wonder, do I look that old? I mean, I know we’re heading towards fifty but…’
She seems genuinely quite upset and I understand it. The cognitive dissonance between knowing I’m forty-six and realising I look forty-six is quite big, but there’s not a lot I can do about it apart from sticking to the new skincare routine Gabby designed for me at Sonas, and drinking more water. Even then there are definite limits to what that can achieve. I’m never going to be mistaken for being in my twenties again.
‘I feel as if I’m staring my mortality in the face, you know. Bits of me aren’t working as well as they used to. My eyesight has gone to shit for one. If I want to drop a couple of pounds I have to literally starve myself. I wake up stiff and sore now and can’t get out of bed without making some inhuman noise. I know people joke about that kind of thing, but honestly, there are times I feel as if my body is already starting to decay and I just wonder what the point of it all is.’
That’s when Niamh – bouncy, funny, takes-no-shit Niamh bursts into tears.
Today is proving to be the gift that keeps on giving.