When I walked into the community centre, I could tell right away that this, the baby group, was not my kind of thing. A group of men and women sat in a semicircle on plastic chairs, in a dingy hall with parquet flooring and high, dirty windows. There was a trestle table with some paper cups and a tea urn, a Tupperware container of professional-looking cupcakes, which someone had clearly brought with them. No one was talking, like people in a new and unsure social situation. I hung back, hands on my bump. Aaron indicated two free seats and I shuffled towards them, not making eye contact. A quick glance around told me there were two clearly not-pregnant women in the group, and I wondered why – gay couples? Hysterical pregnancy that everyone was too polite to mention?
‘Hello there,’ said another woman, brightly. She was forty or past it, wearing a lot of diamonds. Her voice was authoritative, as if she might be the group leader, but she was pregnant and seemed to be with the man beside her, a Riviera type in cream slacks, fingering what I hoped what his phone through his trouser pocket. ‘I’m Monica. We’re just waiting for the facilitator.’
‘Jax,’ I muttered, sitting down, or rather collapsing, which was what I did these days. Aaron, politer, shook hands, and there was some murmur about setting up an email group to keep in touch. I could see them register us, how young he was, how old I was, perhaps wondering briefly if I’d brought my grown-up son as my birth partner. But then, everyone had something. No one’s life was simple. I didn’t have to make any small talk, thank God, because the door opened then and the facilitator came in, clinking jewellery and swishing a long print skirt, and she was so slim and tanned and beautiful I immediately felt like a cow. She even had a toe ring. I hadn’t been able to reach my toes for months. Her eyes, bright blue, swept over us all. Her voice was husky, sexy.
‘I’m Nina. Welcome, everyone, to your exciting journey.’ Three seconds in and someone had already used the word journey in a non-transport sense. I was going to hate this.
It was amazing how different we all were. All we had in common was we lived in the same part of South-east London, Beckenham-Penge-Crystal Palace, and we were all having babies. Well. In a manner of speaking.
The youngest person there, even younger than Aaron, was Kelly, who was twenty-two. That seemed an almost indecently young age to be pregnant nowadays, but I reminded myself that was how old my mother had been when she’d had me, already married for a year. Did we just grow up more slowly these days? The oldest mum was Monica, the lady with the diamonds, resplendent in her flowered Boden smock. She was forty-four, she told me proudly. It wasn’t IVF, she was at pains to point out. All natural! ‘This is Ed, my beloved.’ Ed looked like a boiled ham that had wandered down Jermyn Street.
Then there was Cathy, who looked a few years younger than me, and Hazel, her partner. Wife, maybe. Hazel kept her hand on Cathy’s bump all the time, as if an alarm might go off were she to remove it. I wondered how they’d done it, wondered if they were thinking the same about me, if I’d needed IVF at my age, why Aaron was even with me when he was so young and so ridiculously handsome. There was Aisha, pretty underneath a headscarf, who I guessed was about thirty, with her handsome husband who wore what looked like a paramedic’s uniform. And then there was Anita.
Ah yes, Anita. Around forty, I guessed, and not obviously pregnant. She was sort of a faded version of Monica, rich but in a kind of hemp and tote-bag way, all nervy, darting little glances at our swollen bellies. It was so weird, this many pregnant women together. Like a milking parlour at a dairy farm. All those extra people who were in the room and yet not.
Nina, the leader, looked round at us, her eyes startling in her tanned face. Something a little piercing behind them. I was aware that I’d sat up straight, wanting her to like me. ‘So. Let’s all tell the stories of how we came to be here.’ I tried to catch Aaron’s eye – what did she want, positions? – but he was staring at her, determined to take it all in. Bless him. So worried he wouldn’t do the right thing, like whoever his parents had been.
I squeezed his hand, then realised everyone was staring at me. ‘Oh! I’m Jax, Jacqueline, and this is my partner Aaron, er . . . it’s our first.’
‘Both of you?’ asked Nina, and I flushed because I realised she meant I was so much older than him that I might already have kids. I could have kids in their twenties, really. ‘Yeah.’ I turned my eyes to Anita, willing Nina to move on.
‘Oh hello,’ Anita twittered. ‘I’m Anita, this is Jeremy.’ Jeremy was a rumpled tweedy type, with longish greying hair and a fashionable scarf. He appeared distracted and didn’t look up when she said his name. ‘Obviously we’re, I mean, I’m not pregnant – we’re using an adoption agency. In America.’
‘So . . . you won’t be around the baby till it’s born?’ This was Monica, hands on her own smug bump.
‘Um, no. They don’t encourage contact. They think it just . . . complicates the issue.’
‘Goodness,’ laughed Monica. ‘It’s taking a lot on trust, isn’t it? I’m not sure I could do it.’ I decided I might hate Monica.
Nina was taking notes; I wondered what she’d written about me. ‘How far along are you, Monica?’
Monica paused. ‘Isn’t it a group for people eight weeks off? I’m eight weeks off.’
‘Right.’
‘Although they can’t always tell for sure. Isn’t that right?’
‘Sometimes,’ was all Nina said.
Next was Cathy. Hazel spoke for them both, hand never moving from the bump, explaining that they’d used a donor from Denmark and conceived via home insemination. Nina: ‘Cathy, you’re also eight weeks off your due date?’
‘Um, yes.’
A short silence while Nina wrote that down. ‘In your situation of course, it’s quite certain when you conceived.’
‘Um . . . right.’
Nina made another note, then her gaze moved on to Kelly, who was sitting beside an empty seat. She mumbled that her partner Ryan had to work today, but was ‘dead excited about being a dad’. She looked so young, and I realised she could be my daughter at a push. How depressing. There was also Rahul and Aisha, and they looked unsure when called on and spoke over each other.
‘This is Ai—’
‘I’m Aisha – oh, sorry. You go.’
‘Sorry. I’m Rahul. It’s our first. Er. Yeah.’
Then there was Nina. I felt a surge when I looked at her, almost like when I’d met Aaron two years before. I knew I could either hate her or worship her. She could have been any age from twenty-five to forty-five. The toe rings. The artful curly hair, the tattoos on her taut brown arms. My own tattoos had begun to sag and discolour as I stretched, exactly as my mother had warned me they would. ‘So,’ Nina said, once we’d all introduced ourselves. Her eyes seemed to bore into mine, though it must have been an illusion. ‘Let’s begin.’
Six couples, twelve people in the room. Thirteen if you included the absent Ryan. Unlucky for some.
Monica was the kind of woman I sometimes wished I could be. She packed the Tupperware container of cupcakes – empty now of course, Aaron had eaten three – into a cotton tote printed with I Shop Local. ‘So lucky to have such a diverse group,’ she trilled to me. Monica had already told us several times that she was forty-four. Forty-four and pregnant. I’d thought I was getting on a bit. And yet she looked great. The rest of her was trim, her ankles unswollen, her face unpuffy, her breasts unsaggy, as far as I could see anyway without staring. I could tell she’d had her hair cut and coloured recently and her flashy rings still fitted her fingers. Aaron had half-heartedly proposed to me when I got pregnant, but I’d have felt too stupid standing in a big white dress next to my child-groom. Anyway, he couldn’t afford a ring. If I wanted diamonds, I’d have to buy them myself.