Babies in Waiting Read Online Free Page A

There’ll be blood and screaming.’
    ‘There’ll be no screaming! You’re made of tougher stuff than that. You can maybe purse your lips a little bit.’
    ‘Well, let’s both learn a bit more about the whole thing, and then we’ll decide. To be honest, I don’t know the first thing about babies, or giving birth or pregnancy for that matter.’
    ‘Really?’ said Simon, ‘I thought at your age . . .’
    ‘Thanks a lot. You thought I’d have lots of friends having babies?’
    ‘Well, I suppose so.’
    ‘I’m sure women my age are popping them out all the time, but not my friends. Actually, most of my friends are men anyway, and the ones who do have children don’t really talk about them a lot. I’m a working woman, Si, not a member of some yummy-mummy Surrey set.’
    ‘Oh Lord,’ Simon said suddenly.
    ‘Oh Lord what?’
    ‘Speaking of Surrey yummy mummies, or not mummies as the case may be . . .’
    ‘Rachel,’ Louise said soberly.
    Rachel was the youngest of the Holmes siblings. She’d studied Media at university and worked for a short time in marketing for an investment bank, before marrying the richest, handsomest banker on the trading floor. She’d then immediately given up work and stayed at home in Richard’s Surrey pile, waiting to fall pregnant with the first of the three perfect blond children that she would spend her life raising. She filled her days with charity work and volunteered as a classroom assistant at the local nursery . . . all things she could drop at a moment’s notice as soon as she conceived. Unfortunately, ten years later, there was no sign of the blond children. Rachel had undergone every test under the sun. Richard had been shunted off to have his sperm count checked. There was nothing physically wrong, yet Rachel could not get pregnant.
    Both Simon and Louise didn’t have much to say to asibling who had never really worked. She had no idea of the day-to-day realities of earning a living, having to save for something you wanted, or being too busy at work to listen to a twenty-minute-long description of something a cute child in the nursery she worked at did today. Rachel was quite clever enough to know they found her boring. She also knew Simon and Louise were very close and she was horribly jealous of their easy and intimate relationship. She wooed Simon constantly, playing on the fact that he lived so close to her, and she patronised Louise whenever they spoke, not so subtly implying that Louise was well on her way to becoming a dried-up spinster, or a hairy-legged, feminist ball-breaker.
    And now, this had happened. Louise had achieved the one thing Rachel couldn’t do without even trying. Not only that, but Simon was closely involved. There was no doubt about it. Rachel was going to be devastated.
    ‘Yes, Rachel,’ Simon said. ‘I didn’t tell you this before, because, frankly, we’ve had one or two other things to discuss. But she heard you were coming down to see me, so we’re expected for lunch on Sunday.’
    ‘Bugger.’
    ‘Exactly. Do we tell her?’
    ‘And have her go on at me for the whole meal? No thank you.’
    ‘Or she could find out later, and work out that we knew when we were there for lunch and didn’t tell her?’
    ‘Would she care?’
    ‘Would she? She’s got nothing else to think about.
    Babies, fashion, gossip and family drama. Even if there wasn’t drama in this situation, she’d make some.’
    ‘So what’s your suggestion?’
    ‘Tell her. Tell her everything with the minimum of fuss and give her lots of details. It’ll keep her busy for a while. If you like, you can pretend I don’t know and you’re confiding in her first.’
    ‘She’d never buy that.’
    ‘No, you’re right. You two have never been joined at the hip.’
    ‘I’m sure I can make it sound like I need her help too, though.’
    ‘Good call.’
    Louise laughed suddenly and clutched Simon’s arm. ‘Good God. I don’t believe I have to go to lunch with