The Baby Diaries

2 On three separate occasions, eating Thom’s portion of dinner when he was fifteen minutes late home

3 Crying uncontrollably during a debate with Thom about funding cuts hitting vulnerable women and children

4 Crying uncontrollably at an old Gilmore Girls episode

5 Crying uncontrollably at a bread advert on TV

6 Being sick in my mouth when Alice brought me coffee at work two mornings in a row, after which she stopped doing it

7 Suddenly finding none of my bras fit properly

8 Going off booze (I thought that was odd)

9 Only wanting oranges for breakfast for an entire week

10 Finding Mum even more annoying than usual

Yes, I may have been ignoring some major clues there. But in my defence: I’ve had other things on my mind. Dad’s officially recovered from his heart attack, but I still worry about him. He retired early and happily from a boring senior job at a law firm years ago, and became a Jewellery Making teacher at the local college, to our surprise, all in an attempt to slow his life down and keep himself well. But he was never in one of the high-risk groups before the heart attack, which makes it harder to predict how he’ll fare over the next five, ten or twenty years. I have to admit: every time the phone rings and it’s Mum, my hearts dips. Is something wrong? But it never is (if you discount the neighbour’s noisy driveway, Gillian from her old work’s daughter’s new house, plastic bags, the price of petrol, the shoes she only bought last summer but are already falling apart) and I should be returning to pre-heart attack levels of stress. But I’m not. Every time she reports Dad’s got a cold, headache, or – heaven forbid – episode of heartburn, my adrenaline levels go through the roof. And Mum seems worse than usual at the moment – panicking, worrying, even forgetful. So I’ve been distracted. But how were we going to tell them about this baby? Would they like it? Would they think it was too fast?

At work, before Tony did his Business Strategy Sabbatical Disappearing Act™ he’d been on my case about my new position, pushing me to bring in some money to Polka Dot with my own books. I know his mother Pamela is on my side, since she actually forced him to honour the promotion he’d offered me, but she’s barely around. And Jacki Jones, the actress/popstar whose bestselling wedding book originally got me the promotion, is busy going through a very painful divorce, but Tony had still been nagging me to find out if there’s a second book in her. She signed up for a two-book deal, as Tony obviously imagined there’d be babies soon enough, but the state she’s in at the moment, I can’t bring myself to ask. We still see each other regularly: once a month we pick a bar and spend an evening laughing at the terrible coverage her divorce is getting. Our favourite so far is the story that she’s divorcing her husband for Pedro, one of her best friends and horrific ego-ridden monster-slash-celebrity photographer who snapped our wedding at Jacki’s incredibly kind request (and God knows how much of her own money). He’s truly awful (to me, anyway, accusing me of being a social climber at Jacki’s cursed wedding), but he is just her friend, and I believe he cares about her. She laughs at these dreadful stories, and the headlines illustrated with pap-snaps of her looking ‘tired’, ‘drawn’ and ‘emotional’, but she’s so sad. The more I know Jacki, the more I love her, and it’s awful to see this funny, smart, ambitious person being crushed just a little more every day. So I don’t know where I’m going to get that money-spinner.

For now, I’ve got the Four Authors of the Apocalypse to be dealing with.

Hilary Taylor – producer of Aga sagas. I’ve had brief dealings with her before, when Tony was trying to poach her from her last publisher. He won her over with a glossy presentation and proposed rejackets for her back catalogue, but we all suspect this is going to be one of those terrible triumphs of sales figures over blind optimism: she hasn’t sold well for years, and no amount of extra laminate on the jacket is likely to change anything about that. Favourite fact: In our email correspondence, she was unbelievably bitter and rude about her then-current publisher. Can’t wait until we receive that treatment too.

Matthew Holt – a brand-new author, of truly dire Scandi-crime. I have a horrible suspicion that he’s been no nearer to north-eastern Europe than watching Eurovision, but the crowbarred-in geographical references are the least of my complaints. His book is really, truly, very bad, but my only hope is that people will assume they’re genuinely Scandinavian and blame the translator. Favourite fact: Matthew Holt believes that you can walk directly from Denmark to Norway.

Jennifer Luck – another brand-new name, this time of trashy, shopping-and-handsome-bosses fiction. Magically inspired by completely current cultural reference point Sex and the City, she’s given us four books, all of which we’ve signed up: Nude in New York, Filthy in Finland, Hot in Hong Kong, and my personal favourite, Bonking in Brazil. Favourite fact: These books make me wish I’d never learnt to read.

Stuart Winton – a complete unknown. The manuscript I have is a very ropy erotica novel set in the eighties, under the pseudonym Tara Towne. But I can’t find any details on our systems to even contact Stuart, nor can I find any evidence of the contract. Favourite fact: This may be an elaborate prank Carol is playing on the rest of the office. I can’t even begin to say how unlikely this is.

And all of these I’m responsible for making sure they’re insanely successful.

TO DO:

Find out if it’s possible to change my career before the baby is born

Also: Eat some fruit

Don’t take up horse-riding, cross-country skiing or trampolining

Stop looking up ‘dangerous pregnancy activities’ online

November 4th

Alice has been great over the last few months. She had to suffer my wedding ups and downs; then a week of Tony pacing the office, sweating profusely and muttering, ‘When is she back?’ like I’d just nipped out for the antidote to his snakebite, so desperate was he to go on his ridiculous sabbatical. And on my return from our brief Paris honeymoon, she had to witness slight hysteria on my part as I realised Tony’s five-minute meeting with me was the only handover I’d be getting before he vanished for who-knows-how-long.

Alice is also still having to live with her ‘boyfriend’ despite the fact that everyone besides her family knows she’s gay. She does the work of three people here (a normal situation for publishing) while always keeping a smile on her face. As I thought over and over about breaking the news to my colleagues, I wondered for the first time in ages how she actually is, so took her out for drinks this evening, at our favourite little bar round the corner.

Alice: What’s this for? What are you up to?

Me: I’m not up to anything!

Alice: Are you about to set me up with someone? Is there a beautiful woman just waiting to spend the evening being entertained by me somewhere in this bar?

Me: Only me, I’m afraid. What’s your poison?

Alice: No one actually says that. ‘What’s your poison?’ What are you up to?

Me: Alice! Fine: it’s my round.

Alice: [browsing the menu] I … will have … a Slutty Horse, please.

Me: One Slutty Horse coming up, Madam. [to the barman] One Slutty Horse, one … Elderflower Handshake, please.

Alice: Are you making me drink alone?

Me: Oh no, I’m so sorry – I’m on these antibiotics –

Alice: [mouth agape]

Me: What?

Alice: [whispering] You’ve been married three months.

Me: [nervous] What?

Alice: [shakes head]

Me: What?

Alice: Kiki, Kiki, Kiki …

Me: Alice!

Alice: Don’t make me say it, Kiki.

[silence]

Me: Alice, please don’t tell anyone. It wasn’t even supposed to happen – we didn’t even mean it – but we did mean it, but only for one night, and we were drunk, and it just – please, you please mustn’t tell anyone, [almost sobbing] please.

Alice: Kiki, does this face look like it tells secrets?

We talked for a long time. We talked about how I was feeling, and how Thom was feeling, and how Tony and Pamela might take it, and what the maternity package may or may not be at Polka Dot (for some reason we haven’t had anyone go on maternity leave while we’ve been there). And some more about how I was feeling. She also told me, after her fourth Slutty Horse, that everyone knowing about Norman and Carol’s office romance doesn’t seem to have quenched their passion – she caught them snogging in Carol’s office after work the other evening. At the end of the night, as we stumbled to the tube station and down to our platforms (Alice stumbling after taking on all the Slutty Horses, me stumbling after taking on Alice), I realised we still hadn’t talked about how Alice was. ‘Plus ça change, my darling,’ she smiled, as I put her on her train home. Is she OK?

TO DO:

Start carrying around a hipflask filled with apple juice, for when someone next needs to see me drinking