Page 31 of The Three of Us
‘I didn’t say a word!’
‘You didn’t need to.’
‘Look, Mol. Can we start again? Try and put all this animosity behind us? I have no problem with you eating. And I have never for one moment thought you had to worry about watching your weight, before or since you got yourself pregnant.’
‘Got myself pregnant?’
He holds his hands up in surrender. ‘Sorry, sorry, bad choice of words! I know I had a hand in it too. Well, more than a hand.’
They look at each other in silence, and then Molly laughs. She puts her fork down and reaches for his hand across the table, her face suddenly serious again. ‘Can you love this baby, do you think?’
‘I won’t know until I try, will I?’
‘And you’re willing to do that? To try?’
‘If it pops out looking like you, I won’t be able to help myself, will I?’
‘If it’s a girl, fine, but a boy that looks like me? Let’s hope not.’
‘With long blonde hair and boobs to die for? Maybe not!’
She stands up and fetches her handbag, digging into a side pocket and pulling out the little black-and-white picture they gave her at the hospital, the one taken from the scan. ‘I can’t actually see any hair or boobs just yet, but do you want to meet our baby?’ She sits back down, smiles encouragingly and hands him the picture. He stares at it for a long time. No, he can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl, who it looks like, even which bit is supposed to be which. But this is their child, and it’s real. Just as real as the last time. More so. Because there was no picture then, no guessing the sex, no plans to be made. Except to be rid of it as soon as humanly possible.
This time will be different. It has to be.
They lie side by side in bed later, and he runs his fingers over her skin, tracing little circles over her breasts and her belly. Already, her body feels different, as if it’s getting tighter, before stretching to accommodate what’s going on inside. She gives a little moan and he takes his hand lower.
‘Jack…’ she says, wriggling into position, closer, trying to slither underneath him.
‘Should we?’ He wants to. Of course he does, but something is holding him back. He has never made love to a pregnant woman before. Not knowingly anyway. ‘What if it hurts the baby? You know, the pressure, the movement, the weight of me…’
‘Just be gentle then. Or I can go on top. We don’t have to go into full-on heavy bonking mode, do we? We can take it slowly. But it’s been a long time, Jack, and I’ve missed you, missed this.’ She slides her good hand around him and guides him towards her. His hand is still between her legs, and she is soft, damp, eager.
‘Something about it doesn’t feel right. I can’t explain it.’ He pulls away. It’s dark in the bedroom and he can’t see her face very well, but he hears her sigh.
‘You don’t want to? That’s a first. What’s wrong, Jack? Don’t fancy me now that I’m pregnant? What is it? My size? My shape? Or is it still about there being a baby at all? That you can’t forgive me for being pregnant in the first place? You said you were willing to try to love the baby. I hadn’t realised whether or not you loved me was in question too.’
‘It’s not. I do. You know I do. But it feels odd, weird, I don’t know, poking about inside you when there’s someone else in there.’
‘Poking about? Oh, Jack, you are such an idiot.’ She laughs, but he can tell she’s not really amused, just exasperated. She edges away, her head close to his on the pillow, but her body distant again. ‘Yes, there’s someone else in there, but we put her there. Or him. This baby is part of us. What do you think’s going to happen? That the baby is going to be disgusted with us, be traumatised for life because her parents had sex?’
‘Well, no, not when you put it like that.’
They lie silently for a while and then he feels her hand slide back onto him and start to move, rhythmically, up and down.
‘Is this okay? Less dangerous? Less weird? Or is this banned too?’
A great swell of need rises up in him. What the hell is going on in his head? He has no idea, but he knows what’s going on in his body.
‘This is very okay.’
He snuggles closer and touches her, in all the places he knows she likes to be touched, until her body shudders in that old familiar way that makes him feel wanted, needed, that he’s finally doing something right. And then he lets her do the same to him. Touch, pull, caress, release. No penetration, no knocking his penis against some unseen fig or lemon or whatever fruit it’s supposed to be by now, this growing thing that is going to one day be his child.
And, for now, as he lies there on his back in the dampness of the sheets, waiting for his breathing to recover its normal rhythm, with his wife beside him, his life feels a little more normal too.
‘Do you have any preference?’ she says, sleepily, pulling the duvet up around their necks, her warm feet slipping between his own as he rolls to face her. ‘For a boy or a girl?’
‘I hadn’t thought really.’ And he hasn’t, because he hasn’t wanted to, hasn’t dared to. ‘Just the old cliché, I suppose. Not minding, so long as it’s healthy.’ He runs his fingers through her tousled hair. He can smell her on his hands. ‘You?’