Daisy was ready. Well, as ready as she was ever going to be. She’d taken the afternoon off work in order to better emotionally prepare. She’d had a bath, preoccupying herself with her most extravagant beauty routine, almost as if she was headed to a hot date, instead of the absolute opposite. She listened to her most empowering Spotify playlist and slicked on her happiest lipstick, a bright orange-toned red that shouldn’t work with her colouring but somehow did. She took an Uber to the bar rather than have to worry about struggling there on the tube, and timed it so that she was a perfectly acceptable six minutes late.
Darren was there and waiting – he’d always been quite punctual. The bar was low-ceilinged and even lower-lit, but still Daisy saw so clearly how his face brightened when he saw her arrive in the doorway. She felt her resolve hitch up, tighten somewhere behind her heart. She was about to smash apart his entire reality as he knew it. She’d picked the venue to be closer to his flat than hers, a place that had good memories, where they had spent many evenings sat, elbows on the table tops, faces close, twirling the others fingers against their own. Daisy remembered how – when they were first together – they’d spent hours on the little bistro tables outside on the patio, people watching, sharing a bottle of wine and feeling the residual summer heat from the pavements rising into the night.
She must have hesitated in the entrance a moment too long. Darren looked slightly concerned and waved awkwardly, like she might not have recognised him, gesturing at the table which already sported a large glass of wine in front of her empty chair. Daisy swallowed down the hitch and nervously smoothed her coat and dress over her abdomen. She was only thirteen weeks gone and the girls swore up and down she wasn’t showing yet, and lord knows she’d had a bit of tummy padding to play with anyway, but she felt obvious and huge already nevertheless.
Darren stood up as she approached the little table-for-two, reaching out for her elbow and holding her as he kissed her cheek in a way that felt entirely un-Darren. He smelled like he’d recently shaved, and faintly of cloves, like he’d just recently brushed his teeth. He was as nervous as she was. Daisy smiled genuinely as she shrugged her heavy winter coat off over her shoulders and down her arms before slinging it over the back of the chair.
“It’s so good to see you,” Darren said, simply, taking his seat and leaning across the table as if he needed to be even closer to her. “How have you been? I’ve missed you. You look great!”
Daisy laughed at the mile-a-minute introduction to the conversation. “Thank you. You look good too.” He’d definitely made an effort. By the end of their six-month courtship standards had slipped. Daisy remembered one specific example where he’d worn the same ratty tee with a hole in one armpit for three days running. Of course, her meticulous leg-shaving and matching underwear-wearing had also petered out around the same time, so she couldn’t really point fingers. But tonight Darren was wearing a nice stiff-collared shirt, dark jeans and shoes that appeared to not be dirty Converses. With a jolt of guilt Daisy thought back to how carefully she’d applied her eyeliner that evening, how she’d agonised standing in front of her open wardrobe. It wasn’t the same. She hadn’t come here tonight hoping for a reconciliation. It had just seemed important to her that Darren thought she looked pretty, a little girl’s power game that felt stupid now.
Not for the first time, Daisy wished there was an emotional switch inside of her that she could flick on. Or she wished she was the type of person who could be happy to settle. Darren was a perfectly great guy and now, poor thing, he was going to be the father of her child, tied to her forever and ever. How perfect if she could love him. She knew she never would.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you out for a drink,” she said hurriedly. She’d been intentionally vague in her Facebook message; she hadn’t wanted to ring any alarm bells. Looking back now though, it was clear she may have accidentally given the impression that she might be open to rekindling their relationship – understandable, particularly with the holidays fast approaching.
Darren just smiled at her. “It’s just good to see you,” he repeated. His eyes flicked to her untouched glass of wine. “Did I get the right kind?” he asked, concerned.
Daisy felt panic start to crowd her throat. She forced herself to breathe through it. Ripping off a band-aid. She had made all these grand plans to ease into it, be super conversational: ask him how work was going, if his parents were doing fine, but she knew that if she didn’t do it now, somehow it would be last orders and she still wouldn’t have forced the words from her throat. She slid her hands down from the table, cupped them in her lap, pictured the little life the two of them had inadvertently created resting somewhere beyond, and gathered her strength. “Darren, I’m pregnant.”
He didn’t react right away. In fact, he even took a drink from his pint before responding, his Adam’s apple bobbing deeply as he swallowed for long, silent moments.
Just when Daisy felt like she was about to scream “say something!” Darren placed his pint back down on the table and looked at her searchingly.
“Is it mine?” he asked, voice oddly hoarse despite the fact that he’d just been drinking.
Daisy felt the indignation jolt and burn all the way down to the soles of her feet. “Of course it’s yours!” she snapped. “For crying out loud!”
“Well, we broke up in October,” Darren blustered, moving to pick up his glass again but deciding at the last minute to leave it where it was.
“Yes. And I fell pregnant in September.”
Darren ran the heels of his hands over his temples and across his hair.
“And before you insult me further by asking, yes, you are the only person I was sleeping with in September. I haven’t slept with anyone since we broke up.” Daisy gestured wildly, palms open, feeling slightly hysterical already. “Face it, it’s yours.”
“Face it,” Darren echoed, incredulous. “Give me a minute here. You’ve had weeks to take this in.” He paused. “How many months pregnant are you then?”
“They measure it in weeks, rather than months,” Daisy informed him, snippily. “I’m thirteen weeks.”
“You’ve known about this for thirteen weeks and you’re just telling me now?”
Daisy felt the outrage bite again. “No, I haven’t known for thirteen weeks. I’ve only just found out. I’m still ‘taking it in’ myself, I assure you.”
“Sorry, I’m sorry, it’s just.” Darren didn’t so much tail off as just stop dead. “Wow. This is insane. I – I don’t know what to say. Is everything… okay?”
Daisy nodded. “Everything’s fine. I went for a scan as soon as I found out. Here, I’ve got the pictures.” She grabbed her handbag up from under the table and fished around inside her planner for the scan pictures, passing them across to Darren, feeling oddly shy. He studied them closely, angling each small square so as to catch the best light to see by. He went through the small stack three times before lowering his hands.
“It looks so human already,” he said quietly, his voice full of marvel. “I can see the nose and the chin.”
Daisy nodded enthusiastically. “I know. I know. And it was moving around so much during the scan. You could see fingers. And feet.”
Darren swallowed, looking down at the monochrome photos still in his hand. “Do you have another scan soon? I’d like to come. If that’s okay.”
“Of course that’s okay. It’s more than okay. I don’t have another scan until twenty weeks, but, you know, we can pay for a private one before that, if you’d like.”
Darren nodded slowly. “I would like that. And can I get some copies of these? To, you know, show to my mum and stuff?”
“Of course. I’ll send them across to you tomorrow.”
“This is mad. Mad.” Darren gave a throaty laugh. “Do you know, I thought you might be meeting up because you wanted to get back together.” He looked up. “I guess you don’t…”
Daisy shook her head. “No. But I do want to do this together, as far as we can…”
“Yeah. Thank you.”
Daisy shifted in her seat, uncomfortable. “Don’t thank me. This is your baby.”
“Our baby,” Darren corrected her. “Wow. We’re having a baby. Do you know, I wondered once or twice, if you were the one, if we’d end up having kids together.” There was still a slight bruising behind his eyes as he said the words. “I mean, obviously, this isn’t exactly how I planned it…” He laughed, but there was no real bitterness to it. “But this is great, Daise. We might not have been meant to be, but – maybe this baby was?”
Daisy felt the emotion swell, warm and fulsome, and she was on her feet and hugging a still half-sitting Darren before she realised what she was doing.
“I think so too,” she murmured against his profile. “I think so too.”