---

Long blonde hair and endless legs: Lucy turned the head of every man they passed on their journey towards the bar. Strangely, they didn’t seem as interested in the human cannonball waddling behind her. Jenny tried not to mind.

The bar was very young and very bright. There weren’t many places Jenny didn’t know in the area, but this one had only opened two weeks ago and, as they weren’t serving Gaviscon cocktails, she hadn’t yet been in. Lucy, however, was already on cheek-kissing terms with most of the barmen. Once she had made it abundantly clear that she knew absolutely everyone in there, the two of them looked for somewhere to sit.

Instead of tables and chairs of normal height, there were high, red leather bar stools around tall tables you could only fit a couple of cocktail glasses on. Jenny glanced around to see if there were any comfortable sofas more suitable for a pregnant woman. There were none. And it wasn’t as if she could ask Lucy to help. Show no weakness.

Lucy had hopped up onto her stool effortlessly and seemed unaware of Jenny’s dilemma.

‘I’m so sorry that I’ve taken your job like this.’ As opening statements go, this wasn’t the most tactful, accompanied as it was with the kind of smile beloved by toothpaste adverts.

Jenny cracked a huge fake smile. ‘Please don’t apologise. I was happy to give it to you.’

They both knew where they stood.

Then Lucy noticed that Jenny was still standing. ‘Don’t you want a seat? I thought pregnant women had to sit down all the time. Don’t your ankles swell up or something?’ She glanced down at Jenny’s feet, as if expecting to see that she had grown hooves.

There was nothing else for it: Jenny was going to have get up on that stool.

Circus elephants sat on chairs with more grace. A sideways approach – left cheek first – didn’t get her posterior high enough. Right side first? Same result. There was no choice but to back into it, bending forwards and then flopping her backside on at the last minute. How humiliating.

‘Comfortable?’

‘Perfectly. Thanks.’ In the time her manoeuvres had taken, their drinks had arrived. Jenny picked up her mocktail as nonchalantly as she could manage. ‘So, what can I help you with?’

Why had Lucy asked to meet off-site to discuss the column? Maybe she thought Jenny would be less likely to cry and tear at her clothes if they were in a public place. Clearly, she’d never seen her on a big night out.

‘Eva thought it would be good for us to get together. Have a bit of a handover. She seems to think there might be some bad feeling between us.’ Lucy paused, as if waiting for Jenny to reply. Jenny continued to drink. ‘But I assured her that we were professional women. We don’t bring our private lives to work.’

Jenny knew exactly which element of her private life Lucy was referring to. Mark McLinley. Ex-‘View from the Boys’ columnist and time-wasting pig. He’d left Flair around the same time as he’d left Jenny – so he could start working his way around the single females at his new magazine. There had been a rumour about him and Lucy spending a lot of time together recently. Jenny wasn’t about to warn her what a mistake that would be. Let her find out for herself.

Instead, Jenny focused on work. ‘I’m not sure that there’s much I can tell you that you can’t learn from reading the column.’ And there certainly wasn’t much that she’d be willing to help her with, anyway – professional woman or not.

‘Well, that’s what I thought. It’s not rocket science, is it?’

Obviously Lucy was baiting her, but current hormone levels made it impossible not to bite. ‘I wouldn’t say that. There’s quite a lot of background work. Networking, building your contacts, being the first to hear about somewhere new. Takes time, you know.’

Lucy didn’t look impressed. ‘Well, I’ve only known I’m going to be doing this for a month and I seem to have a good handle on things.’ She blew a kiss at a passing waiter.

Jenny sucked up the last of her sickly sweet concoction, making a louder noise than was polite: soft drinks never lasted long. Lucy had known for a month? But Eva had only told Jenny this week.

‘Another drink?’

‘No, I’m fine.’ The other problem with soft drinks: they were too boring to drink more than one. ‘I’ve got a lot to finish before I leave today. If we’re done playing nicely for Eva’s benefit, I’ll get back to it.’

‘Sorry. No can do.’ Lucy flicked her hair. ‘Eva said she would meet us here to firm up on the last few details of the handover. She’ll be here shortly.’

Jenny groaned. She was stuck. ‘I’ll have an orange juice, then.’ If she had to stay for another soft drink, she may as well get the benefit of its laxative properties.

Lucy gave their order to a young waitress, who she treated like her best friend in the whole world. Maybe she was going to be good at this networking lark. She continued to smile broadly when she turned back to Jenny.

‘This might make you laugh. There’s a rumour going around that you’re going to write a column about being a mother.’

Word travelled fast. Jenny folded her arms. ‘Actually, that’s true.’ Lucy’s smug smile was unbearable. ‘Of course, it requires an experienced journalist to take the mundane and make it interesting.’

Lucy nodded. ‘Of course. Of course. But babies? Will you have enough to write about to keep a column going? Don’t they just lie there doing nothing?’

Jenny had had much the same thought herself at the antenatal class. But she didn’t need to have enough to keep the column going for very long; just long enough to prove to Eva that she could carry on writing after she’d had the baby. As soon as she was ready, she would swoop back in and take back ‘Girl About Town’ from under Lucy’s pert little nose.

‘Oh, yes. You’d be surprised.’

Lucy lifted her gaze over Jenny’s shoulder and towards the door. ‘Speaking of surprises…’

‘Jenny!!!!’ They all came in together: Brian, Maureen, even Eva. One of the girls from advertising was almost completely obscured by helium balloons emblazoned with nappy pins and storks.

‘Did you know about this?’ Jenny hissed under her breath at Lucy.

‘Of course! You didn’t think I actually needed your help, did you?’ Lucy leaned back on her stool as if she were getting ready to enjoy the show.

---

In bed that night, Dan was moaning about going back to the antenatal class. ‘After last week, you said it was a waste of time. You promised we didn’t have to go back.’

Jenny stopped fighting with her maternity pillow and turned on him. ‘That was before my lunch with Lucy. I need something juicy to get this blog going, and I haven’t got a clue where else to get it.’

She didn’t say that she was starting to worry that there was no such thing as juicy material in the maternity sphere. There had to be an angle. Ruth’s story about peeing on her shoes whilst taking a pregnancy test was mildly amusing, but it wasn’t going to have Eva begging for Jenny’s return.

Dan got out of bed and helped her to fit the long, sausage-shaped pillow under her bump. ‘Haven’t we got to watch a video of a birth tomorrow? I am not looking forward to that.’ He pulled the quilt over her.

Now that she was wrapped around the pillow, she wouldn’t be moving again any time soon. ‘Well, you’ll have the live performance to deal with soon, so you’d better get used to the idea.’ Actually, Jenny wasn’t desperate to watch it, either; she’d never even made it through an episode of Casualty with her eyes open – and that blood was fake.

‘What did you think of the other couples?’

Dan shrugged. ‘They seemed all right.’

‘Didn’t you think the women were all rather…’ She searched for the word. ‘Mum-ish?’

Dan laughed. ‘What did you expect? You’re one of them now, Jen, don’t forget. Can we go to sleep? I need at least eight hours if you’re forcing me to watch one human being emerging from another tomorrow.’ He gave her a goodnight peck on the lips and turned over with a long sigh.

One of them? Did he think she was going to change into some kind of matronly stereotype the minute she gave birth?

The more Jenny thought about writing the blog, the more she realised what a good idea she’d had. She’d show everyone how you could have a baby and a life.

Now she was still, the baby began its nightly exercises. She felt a small bump move across her abdomen. Was that a hand or a foot? It still filled her with wonder that there was a tiny human being in there. She wrapped her arms around her stomach. ‘Hello, baby,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll show them all, won’t we?’

Closing her eyes, she tried not to think about the birth film. If only someone could invent Ruth’s idea, and they could beam the baby out of her, Star Trek style. Up until then, she’d managed to avoid thinking about the actual birth, but tomorrow she was going to have to face it in full colour.