Dear Thing Read Online Free Page B

was the same way, she noticed, whenever women with young children got together. The conversation revolved around little sacrifices or disasters, about mishaps and made-up worries, but its function wasn’t to communicate information: it was to establish relationship. To mark out common ground.
    We are mothers. We do battle with nappies and Calpol. Look upon our offspring, ye mighty, and despair.
    The truth was, she would give up anything to be like the women in this room. She was tired of feeling the sharp stab of pain every time she passed a playground. That raw ache of yearning at Christmas. She was tired of feeling like a failure, once a month, like clockwork.
    But that didn’t mean she wanted to talk about it. Or to be pitied.
    And now she didn’t have to be.
    ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘it’s fine. I’m really happy.’
    Georgette widened her eyes. ‘Oh my God, has something happened? Are you …?’
    ‘I think Lacey’s going to open her gifts,’ Claire said, and Georgette transferred her attention to the main business of the afternoon.
    Claire thought back to the warm moments in bed with Ben this morning before he’d woken up, imagining a little one cuddled up with them. She could picture Ben’s expression as he watched her feeding their child from her body. Warm and sweet. That would make up for any blip in their sex life. Or the several blips over the years as they’d adjusted from thinking of sex as something fun, to thinking of it as something that was supposed to make babies but didn’t.
    They’d talked about names a long time ago, when they thought it would be easy to have children. Back when they’d been actively trying not to have children – she’d gone on the pill before they’d started having sex, and at first she’d made him wear a condom as well. Ben called it ‘double bagging’. They’d lain in bed together in his single bed at university, or still later, in their first real double bed as a married couple,and planned their family. A boy first, named Oliver. A girl called Sophie. Or perhaps a girl called Olivia and a boy named Sid. The names had seemed so new and yet traditional, then; now, with the passing of years, they were too popular.
    They hadn’t talked about names for a while now. It seemed such an innocent thing to do, but it was too much like tempting fate. They’d have to talk about it again soon. She liked her father’s name, Mark, if it were a boy. Or Lucille, if it were a girl, after Ben’s grandmother. Old-fashioned names, with a connection to family.
    Or maybe they could go for something totally left field, like Fairybelle. Thumbelina. Bathsheba. Excalibur, for a boy. Excalibur Hercules Lawrence.
    Claire smiled. Maybe it was even safe to joke about it.
    ‘Oh, lovely!’ cried Lacey, opening a box of Babygros. Her mother cooed and passed around a plate of biscuits. Claire felt a twinge in her abdomen, down near her bladder. Too much mineral water.
    ‘What did you give her?’ whispered Georgette.
    ‘A photograph album. Excuse me.’ She got up and slipped out.
    The bathroom was through the bedroom. There was already a Moses basket set up on a stand next to the bed, lined with fluffy blue blankets. A mobile made of orange fish hung from the ceiling, low, where the baby would be able to see it. It swayed gently with the breeze of her entering the room.
    The twinge became a drag, and then a pain. She put her hand low down on her stomach, where the pain was. She’d been told not to panic if she felt the odd twinge or pang. There was a lot going on inside her body, but everything was in the right place. Her baby was nestled safely within her, fedby her blood, swimming in fluid. Claire breathed deeply, breathed smoothly, as she’d learned in her Yoga for Fertility class, and watched the toy fish dancing.
    The pain twisted and sharpened. It sank its grip deeper, into her lower back. A moan escaped Claire, mid-breath, and she put both of her hands on her belly now.
    She