Surprise Me

I’m hyperventilating. I’ve gone from a mother of two girls, keeping her head above water, to a submerged mother of six, with her bedraggled hair in a scrunchie and flip-flops on her pregnancy-ruined feet and a look of meek exhaustion …

Wait. I need the bathroom.

I creep out of bed, tiptoe into the bathroom without waking Dan and immediately realize: I’m not pregnant. Very much not pregnant.

Which is, oh God, such a relief. I sink down on the loo and allow myself to sag, head in hands. I feel as though I’ve skidded to a halt just before hurtling over the precipice. I’m happy just as we are. The four of us. Perfect.

But what will Dan say? What about the duckling sleepsuit and the dinky little socks and ‘That’s how we make sense of our life’? What if he wants six children, he just never told me before?

For a while, I sit there, trying to work out how I’m going to break it to him that not only are we not having this baby, we’re not having any more babies.

‘Sylvie?’ he calls out from the bedroom. ‘You OK?’

‘Oh, hi! You woke up!’ My voice is high and a bit strained. ‘I’m just … um …’

I head back into the bedroom, avoiding Dan’s eye.

‘So … I’m not pregnant,’ I say to the floor.

‘Oh.’ He clears his throat. ‘Right. Well, that’s …’

He breaks off into an almighty pause. My breath is on hold. I feel like I’m in an episode of Deal or No Deal. How exactly is he going to finish that sentence?

‘That’s … a shame,’ he says at last.

I make a sound which could sound like agreement, although is in fact totally the opposite. My stomach is gnarling up a little. Is this going to turn into the massive deal-breaker of our marriage? Even more than the green velvet sofa? (Total saga. We compromised on grey in the end. But the green would have looked so much better.)

‘We can try again next month,’ Dan says at length.

‘Yes.’ I swallow hard, thinking: Shit, shit, shit, he does want six children …

‘You should probably get some … whatsit,’ he adds. ‘Folic acid.’

No. This is going too fast. Folic bloody acid? Shall I buy some newborn nappies while I’m at it?

‘Right.’ I gaze at the chest of drawers. ‘I mean, yes. I could do that.’

I’m going to have to break it to him. It’s like jumping into a swimming pool. Take a deep breath and go.

‘Dan, I’m sorry, but I just don’t want any more children,’ I say in a burst. ‘I know we got all sentimental about socks, but at the end of the day, they’re just socks, whereas a baby is a massive life-changing commitment, and I’ve just got my life sorted, and we’d probably have to have a fourth, which might mean six, and we just don’t have room in our life for six children! I mean, do we?’

As I run out of steam, I realize that Dan is also talking, just as urgently, straight across me, as though he’s jumped into a swimming pool too.

‘… look at the finances,’ he’s saying. ‘I mean, what about university fees? What about the extra bedroom? What about the car?’

Hang on a minute.

‘What are you saying?’ I peer at him, puzzled.

‘I’m sorry, Sylvie.’ He looks at me tensely. ‘I know we got carried away last night. And maybe you want a bigger family, which is something we’ll have to talk through, and I’ll always respect your views, but I’m just saying—’

‘I don’t want a bigger family!’ I cut across him. ‘You’re the one that wants six children!’

‘Six?’ He gapes at me. ‘Are you nuts? We had one unprotected shag. Where did “six children” come from?’

Honestly. Can’t he see? It’s so obvious!

‘We have another one and then we go for a fourth, so the baby has a friend, and get landed with triplets,’ I explain. ‘It happens. That family in Stoke Newington,’ I remind him.

At the word ‘triplets’, Dan looks utterly aghast. His eyes meet mine, and I can see the truth in them: he doesn’t want triplets. He doesn’t want a people carrier. He doesn’t want any of this.

‘I think another baby is a red herring,’ he says at last. ‘It’s not the answer to anything.’

‘I think we were both quite pissed last night.’ I bite my lip. ‘We really shouldn’t be in charge of our own reproductive systems.’

I cast my mind back to the little duckling sleepsuit. Last night I felt so broody. I desperately wanted a brand-new baby inside it. Now I want to fold it up and put it away. How can I have changed my mind like that?

‘What about the duckling sleepsuit?’ I press Dan, just to make sure he’s not concealing some deep, buried desire, which he’ll then reveal in some torrent of resentment when it’s all too late and we’re a faded, elderly couple staying by a lake in Italy, wondering where our lives went wrong. (We just did an Anita Brookner novel in our book club.)

‘It’s a sleepsuit.’ He shrugs. ‘End of.’

‘And what about the next sixty-eight years?’ I remind him. ‘What about the empty interminable decades ahead of us?’

There’s silence – then Dan looks up at me with a wry smile.

‘Well, like the doctor said … There are always box sets.’

Box sets. I think we can do better than bloody box sets.

As I arrive at the Bell for the quiz that evening, I feel fired up on all cylinders. I’m pumping with adrenaline; almost seething. Which, to be fair, is due to all sorts of things, not just dealing with how to be married to Dan forever (and then some).

Mostly, it’s my day at work which has got me agitated. I don’t know what’s happened at Willoughby House. No, scratch that, I know exactly what’s happened: the evil nephew has happened. I suppose what I mean is: I don’t know what he’s said to Mrs Kendrick, because she’s transformed overnight, and not for the better.

Mrs Kendrick used to be the standard-bearer. She was the fixed measure for what was Right, according to her. She just knew. She had her Way, and she never doubted it, ever, and we all abided by it.

But now her iron rod is wavering. She seems jumpy and nervy. Unsure of all her principles. For about half an hour this morning, she went wandering around the office as though seeing it through fresh eyes. She picked up the Box and looked at it, as though suddenly dissatisfied with it. She put some old editions of Country Life in recycling. (She got them back out again later; I saw her.) She gazed longingly at the fax machine for a bit. Then she turned away, approached the computer and said in hopeful tones, ‘A computer is very like a fax machine, isn’t it, Sylvie?’

I reassured her that yes, a computer was in many ways like a fax machine, in that it was a great way to communicate with people. But that was a huge mistake, because she sat down and said, ‘I think I’ll do some emails,’ with an air of bravado, and tried to swipe the screen like an iPad.

So I broke off what I was doing and went to help her. And after a few minutes, when Mrs Kendrick tetchily said, ‘Sylvie, dear, you’re not making any sense,’ Clarissa joined in too.

Oh my God. It eventually turned out – after a lot of frustration and bewilderment on everyone’s part – that Mrs Kendrick had been under the impression that the subject line was the email. I had to explain that you open each email up and read the contents. Whereupon she gazed in astonishment and said, ‘Oh, I see.’ Then when I closed each email down she gasped and said, ‘Where’s it gone?’