We walked in and headed to the ‘family planning’ area at the back of the store – walking past life-size posters of catalogue model babies in shiny nappies smiling creepily at us – and popped the tests in our baskets. I took them to the till. I find it strange that at times of such great personal uncertainty, the cashier knows more about the intimate details of someone’s life than their partner or anyone else close to them. Fanny rash? Pregnancy? Fungal infection? They scanned your life’s secrets. Beep. Bea went off to look for some mouthwash. The older woman serving me, with two long earrings in the shape of cacti, gave me a wink as she put them in the bag as if to say ‘good luck’, which was weird, because how could she possibly know what I wanted? Fine, I clearly looked of an age at which buying a pregnancy test was something totally normal and something I might be excited about, but still.
‘I’m not happy about this, you know,’ I said to the presumptuous cacti-earringed cashier, pointing to the pregnancy tests.
‘Er—’
‘Yeah, this purchase,’ I said, pointing at the offending item with my eyebrows, ‘is the opposite of exciting.’
‘Oh I see – OK! Well, then. Have a good day.’
Bea and I left the store, and I put one test in each pocket of my big coat. Where should we do them? This felt the same as buying cigarettes back in the day, needing to find a good hiding place to stash our new goodies and consume them privately.
That’s when we duck into the flagship Foyle’s bookshop on Charing Cross Road, because we knew they had some spacious toilets in there, next to the café on the fifth floor. Whilst everyone else was queuing up to buy their jacket potatoes with salad and coleslaw and skinny lattes, with shiny new hardback books stashed in their bags, we scurried off to the loos to see if our lives were going to change for ever.
When we entered the women’s loos on the fifth floor, a little boy – who couldn’t be older than two – popped out from behind the door. I let out a scream. Terrifying! Like something out of The Shining. He started crying and his mother appeared, with her wet soapy hands still dripping, rubbing them on her jeans. She huffed and puffed and tutted at me, checking her watch dramatically and swiping at his face with a wet wipe. He was inhaling quickly, still crying.
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. I literally screamed in the child’s face.
‘It’s OK,’ the mum replied abruptly. I stood there like an awkward lemon. This kid’s chubby little legs were stuffed into his tiny Converse shoes. I guess he was quite cute. My hand clamped around the pregnancy test box in my pocket.
Time ticked on frustratingly slowly. I waited for the purple line to become a little clearer. I brought the test up close to my face. My eyes crossed over and blurred. Why do seconds seem so stretched out when you are waiting for something important? Bea always told me to ‘zoom out’ when I became too overwhelmed with daily life. ‘Like you would do with your fingers on a photo online, Ol, just breathe and use your two fingers to adjust, in and out,’ she’d say. I often get so anxious that I can’t find a logical way out of my own muddled-up thoughts, like a spider spasming in its own cobweb. That’s why looking at the sky and out to the sea scientifically relaxes humans – because when we look into that deep, deep blue we realize we are insignificant specks. I sometimes found my brain racing around and around like a merry-go-round, and I felt like I was going to be sick but couldn’t find a way to jump off safely. Breathe. Zoom out. Switch to bird’s-eye view, Olive. Breathe. It’s OK, I told myself. This was a Sliding Doors moment, but whatever happened, it would be OK.
I heard Bea shuffle out from her cubicle, the door gently closing. When I eventually emerged myself, the door accidentally slammed loudly behind me. I looked over at Bea, who had red cheeks with mascara-stained tears streaking down them.
‘You OK?’ I asked.
‘It’s … negative,’ she said, sniffing.
Oh … shit. She actually wanted it to say she was pregnant? Were those tears of disappointment?
I looked down at my hands cupped around the pissy plastic container. ‘Me too. Negative,’ I said. I couldn’t help but sound relieved. I thought of Jacob then, and I tried to imagine what he’d say. If I told him.
Two women, one result, two totally different responses whirring around in our heads, I could feel them clashing in the air. I thought we were in this together, Bea and I; I thought we wanted the same thing. We always did. I felt my utter joy and relief deflate slightly. I was well and truly off the hook – not pregnant! Yes! We could carry on living our sweet, sweet lives. Wahoooo! But I couldn’t bounce up and down, I had to pretend to look sad. Also: Bea’s reaction had really knocked me for six. How did I not know she was trying for a baby? We knew absolutely everything about each other.
Pfft. This was ridiculous. We didn’t want kids. We were only in our early twenties. And I thought Jeremy was away all the time for work. She’d be really screwing herself over if she got pregnant now. We hadn’t even been out of university that long, and there was so much time stretched out ahead of us to do big crazy things before we settled down. We had parties to attend, careers to smash, hangovers to indulge in, impromptu cinema trips and dinner parties to throw. I had a work acquaintance who had just had a baby and she said that even a trip to the cinema cost her over £50 because they had to book a babysitter on top of the tickets, snacks and car parking. Was that really what we wanted, so soon? Our lives to be put on hold?
After a slow afternoon back at work we went to a small bar just off Soho Square – we both needed a drink after all of that lunch-time palaver. We ordered a bottle of rosé. Then another one. After that we ended up in a dingy basement club nearby, where the barman gave us a free bottle of champagne – I lied and said it was Bea’s birthday.
‘This is the silver lining eh, Bea – if you’d had a different result you wouldn’t be able to drink this delicious ch-champagne!’ I slurred, sloshing my glass around.
‘Oh sshhhh,’ she said, smashing her champagne flute into mine. Luckily they were plastic.
Part of me wanted to ask her about the test, her disappointment: why a baby now, Bea? And why couldn’t you tell me? But the bigger, more selfish part of me kept quiet.
So, there we were, marking a real milestone together. Me celebrating – Bea commiserating.
I drunkenly called Cecily on the way home, around 11 p.m., from the night bus. I got off a few stops early so I could get some fresh air. Cec always worked super-late, as a paralegal, so I knew she’d be up reading through a pile of documents that her boss couldn’t be bothered to read. Sirens seem to blast past me every ten minutes. Motorbike engines pierced my eardrums. I sat inside a bus shelter to get away from the noise and replayed the whole ordeal to her, my leather jacket perched on my shoulders, with a cigarette in my hand. I was a bit drunk and I realized too late into the conversation that I was being a bit bitchy.
‘I mean thank god my test was negative, Cec. And Bea being pregnant would be so weird, it’s too early! But she did look very gutted though,’ I said, exhaling smoke. I suddenly felt guilty, remembering the intense disappointment on Bea’s face.
‘Well, I think Bea and Jeremy have mentioned wanting kids one day, but yeah, I agree that it’s very early …’ Cec replied. It sounded echoey where she was; clearly her office was pretty empty as it was so late.