Page 39 of One Day at a Time

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 leastthere 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 onlyrecognised 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.

20

MADDIE

‘How was all that deep breathing and puff-out-loud stuff last night then?’ Jessie asked Maddie, as she lowered herself onto a chair in the café. It was 9a.m., so the café was open and a few of the tables were already taken, one of them by the group of mums and dads that came in once a week with their little ones before they went along to the baby yoga class at the community centre. Actually, there were eleven mums and only one dad, so he was slightly outnumbered, but he didn’t seem to mind.

The salon didn’t open until 9.30a.m., so there was plenty of time for Jessie and Maddie to have a pre-work cuppa.

‘It was great, thanks. Strange but great. Val chatted to everyone, so that took the pressure off me a little. It’s pretty intimidating, so I was glad she came, and I met a couple of nice women there too. One of them is a marriage counsellor and one is a nurse at Glasgow Central. We swapped numbers and said we should meet up for a coffee, but that might just have been one of those things that you say and then nobody does anything about it.’

Jessie was stirring the first of her three sugars into her tea. Miraculously, she still had her own teeth.