Chapter 19
SHEENA
Dr Rose’s greeting was as cheery as always as she beckoned them into her treatment room at Glasgow Central Hospital. ‘Well, hello there, Sheena! Come on in and take a seat and… Oh. You’re not alone today then.’
‘No, this is my… my husband. Gregor.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Gregor said, with a polite nod and the air of a man who still couldn’t quite believe that he was here.
Sheena completely understood because she still couldn’t quite believe that she was here either.
Still, at least the colour had returned to his face.
When she’d delivered the news, he’d gone so pale she’d thought for a moment that she’d ended him.
‘But I’m also, erm, pregnant,’ she’d told him in the café that day.
‘You’re what?’
Despite giving it much thought, she hadn’t been able to think of a single reason that he could have misheard what she’d just said.
‘I’m pregnant, Gregor. I’m going to have a baby.’
‘My baby?’
‘Of course it’s your baby. How could it not be?’
‘Well, we agreed we could see other people…’
‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean I was straight on Tinder or waited for the next person to turn up at my door with a delivery and then randomly shagged them.’
‘I wasn’t suggesting that, but we haven’t had sex since…’ He’d stopped, and she’d seen the cogs of his mind whirring like washing on a line in a hurricane.
She’d sat back and shrugged off her jacket, clearly showing the extent of her advancing condition, as she’d finished the sentence for him. ‘Since five months ago. The night of our anniversary party.’
He’d stared at the blossoming shape of her body. ‘Fuck. You’re pregnant.’
‘Which is the message I’ve been trying to get across here.’ She’d said it gently, aware that she’d had a whole month to get used to the idea, and this was the equivalent of him discovering aliens were real and one of them had impregnated his estranged wife.
‘But all those years we tried…’
‘I know. Fertility Gods have a sense of humour.’
He’d sat back in his chair, flabbergasted.
‘I thought you’d summoned me to talk about selling the house.
But now… I mean… I… well, what does this mean?
’ He’d run his fingers through his hair as the words left him.
Sheena had wondered if she’d ever had a conversation with so many stilted pauses or changes of tack.
‘I don’t know. I think I’ve just been trying to find a way to come to terms with it all. Especially after last time. I’ve spent so many years trying to detach myself from my last pregnancy, and now, almost thirty years later, the memories are coming back and hitting me when I least expect them.’
A cloud had crossed his face as he’d taken that in. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll always be sorry, you know that. It was a mistake.’
‘I know. And if I’m being honest, I always thought that the fact I didn’t get pregnant again was some kind of karmic punishment. That’s why I accepted it, I think. Maybe I was punishing myself too.’
He’d stared down at the table for a moment, taking in her words, but saying nothing.
Somewhere back in the early years, they had stopped talking about it, as if it was the only way they could deal with the pain.
But now wasn’t the time to rehash it all and she’d seen that when he’d lifted his head, stared at her stomach again.
‘And now you’re pregnant,’ he’d said again, as if repeating it would make it sink in. ‘How are you? Are you okay? Do you feel okay? I mean, your age…’
He was starting to spiral and Sheena could feel the anxiety and shock oozing from his pores, so she had gone for calm reassurance. ‘Gregor, I’m fine. Everything is good and I’m perfectly healthy.’
‘I don’t know how to ask this, but what do you want to do this time? About the baby, I mean.’
She’d flinched, aware that perhaps she should have expected the question, but defensive because in her mind there had only ever been one answer.
‘I’m going to keep it, Gregor. I’m sorry if you think that should be a consultation, but it just isn’t.
If you don’t want that, I’ll understand and I won’t hold it against you or ask anything of you. This is a lot to take in.’
His head had dipped and she’d seen that he was doing some kind of deep breathing that he’d probably learned at Pilates, or reiki, or whatever fitness programme he was currently embracing.
‘It might take me a minute to get used to the idea of being a dad,’ he’d said and she’d respected his honesty.
‘I get that. It’s not exactly the kind of newsflash we expect at our age. Especially with where we are now. But, Gregor, I mean it when I say that I’m not asking anything of you here. You can be as involved or not involved as you want to be.’
‘Seriously? How could you think I wouldn’t want to be part of this? In fact, isn’t this a reason to give us and our marriage another try?’
Her hand had gone to her bump, as if shielding it from hearing its parents have a discussion about the future of the family it was about to come into.
She’d tried to reassure it by speaking in a calm, warm voice.
‘Gregor, you started off this conversation today by telling me that you now saw it was right for us to split.’ Her words hadn’t been a castigation, just a gentle reminder of fact.
‘And I still believe that too. Why don’t we start off by trying to do this as friends and see how we go? ’
In fairness to him, he’d honoured that since then. Friends. No rules. No expectations. They’d spoken several times over the last month, discussed the pregnancy, the baby, the preparations, and now here he was with her at her second antenatal meeting.
‘Let’s just run through a few things first, then, shall we?’ Dr Rose asked. ‘How have you been feeling since we last met?’
Sheena liked this woman. She had the kind of straight-talking, no-nonsense manner that reminded her of Chanel.
At her first antenatal meeting, the week after she’d discovered she was pregnant, she’d been advised that, due to her age, her antenatal care was being provided by a consultant obstetrician, instead of a midwife.
Sheena had been happy to accept whatever care the professionals felt most appropriate.
Dr Rose had talked her through the extra tests and monitoring that would be offered, and Sheena had accepted them all.
In fact. The only thing she’d resisted was…
‘And you still don’t want to know the gender of the baby?’ Dr Rose asked, as she ran the ultrasound probe over Sheena’s belly.
She shook her head. ‘No, I…’
‘Really?’ Gregor asked, and Sheena realised she hadn’t actually consulted with him on that either. Damn it.
‘Sorry, I made that decision before I told you I was pregnant.’
Ever the professional, Dr Rose didn’t even raise an eyebrow at that little nugget of information, and Gregor, she saw, had zoned out of the conversation altogether and was now staring at the screen in awe as the sound of a heartbeat filled the room.
‘That’s our baby,’ he managed to say, in a choked, strangled voice, and if it weren’t for the wires and the layer of gel on her stomach, Sheena would have reached over and hugged him.
When the scan was over, Dr Rose handed her a paper towel to remove the gel. ‘Okay, I’ll leave you to get sorted, and the nurse out at the desk will give you the date of your next appointment. Now you just take it easy and if you have any concerns or worries at all, you have my number.’
‘Thank you.’ Gregor spoke first and Sheena wondered if this all felt as bizarre to him as it did to her.
Since the conversation on the day she’d told him about the baby, there had been no more discussions about where they stood as a couple, other than the understanding that they were still separated.
It was all so unnatural. So strange. Ten years ago, there was nothing she’d wanted more than to have a baby with this man.
She’d thought they were forever. Happy ever after.
When had that changed? It had been such a gradual thing.
He’d started to grow in one direction, she’d gone in another, until she couldn’t even see him in the distance.
If he’d had an affair or embezzled all their savings, then at least there would be a definitive reason other than the reality that she just wasn’t in love with him anymore.
Or was she just not in love with her life and her marriage was the consequence?
Could this baby give them the common ground that they needed to find their way back to each other?
If only she knew a decent relationship counsellor that could help them figure this out.
At the moment she was still considering setting fire to her pile of qualifications and certificates and pursuing a different career because she was clearly hopeless at this marriage malarky.
She was still thinking the same thing a few hours later, when he picked her up for her first antenatal class of the nine-week block that was run by the hospital.
‘I don’t know if I’m excited or dreading this,’ she said, as they drove through the city streets, all of them illuminated by streetlights now that the clocks had gone back and the darker nights had come in.
Chanel and Martha had both volunteered to come with her, but Gregor had been insistent that he wanted to do it.
He’d even given up his weekly wild water swimming session to be here, so Sheena knew he was serious.
As they entered the room, Sheena immediately recognised a couple of things.
The class was busy, with maybe twenty people already there, and when she scanned the ladies sporting the pregnancy bumps, it was fairly obvious that she was probably the same age as some of these women’s mothers.
Her hand automatically went to her head, to brush back the lock of grey hair that was asserting dominance in her natural mass of red wavy curls.
‘Let’s sit up the back,’ she whispered to Gregor, who also looked completely out of place with all the younger guys.
Sheena doubted that he’d ever been in a social setting with so many New Balance, Nike Dunks or Adidas Samba trainers.
She only recognised them because Chanel kept her up to date with all the latest trends.
In the end, she found a quiet spot, in the back, between two women who probably added up to one of her if their ages were combined.
It was only when she’d committed to the spot that she realised Gregor was going to be the only male, but it was too late to change places without appearing rude, so he was just going to have to smile and be open to it.
She smiled at the girl nearest her, a pretty brunette with huge brown eyes, who was accompanied by an older lady. Her mum, Sheena assumed.
‘Hi, I’m Maddie,’ the young woman said with a wave.
Sheena took in the small but perfectly formed bump that was protruding between her short T-shirt and the top of her yoga pants and made a mental note to sort out her maternity wear.
Now that they’d moved back into winter, she’d been wearing a rotation of black leggings with big baggy jumpers that she already had in her wardrobe.
‘Sheena. Lovely to meet you. This is my husband, Gregor.’
‘And I’m Val,’ the older lady said. ‘I’m Maddie’s stunt stand-in because her wee one’s dad is currently travelling for work, so he couldn’t make it tonight.’
The way Maddie flushed as Val said that, made Sheena wonder if ‘travelling for work’ was a euphemism for being indisposed, unwilling, or in prison, but she didn’t ask.
She wasn’t exactly in a position to judge someone else’s relationship given her and Gregor’s own personal brand of disfunction at the moment.
The mum-to-be on the other side of Maddie was sitting cross-legged on the floor – a posture Sheena couldn’t master even before she was pregnant – but she joined the conversation too. ‘And I’m Orla. Hi.’
This woman was maybe late twenties, early thirties, and shared Sheena’s deep red hair, but hers obviously didn’t require dye to cover the grey.
If this was a session in her clinic, Sheena would immediately note the woman’s gaze, which kept darting to the door, and the way she chewed on her bottom lip, and the fingers that were tapping on her splayed knees.
The anxiety in her body language was almost palpable, but it suddenly flipped to something else, when a new arrival came through the door – a tall, handsome guy in cargo trousers and a polo shirt, with a construction company logo on the front.
He came quickly to Orla’s side, but there was something in their interaction that felt off.
Sheena immediately chided herself for noticing and judging.
The husband was here, just like Gregor. He seemed willing to participate, just like Gregor.
As Gregor cleared his throat next to her, Sheena’s last thought before the class started was that before she paid attention to anyone else’s marriage, perhaps she should sort out her own.