Baby Be Mine

that I had my twelve-week scan. I hadn’t told Christian I was pregnant, so I went alone to the hospital. Seeing that tiny grey and black jellybean shape on the monitor . . . its heartbeat . . . In the first three months, it hadn’t seemed real, but now there was my baby, right there on that screen. And it hit me there and then – with an impact as hard as a slap across the face – that the first person I wanted to tell was Johnny.
    If I hadn’t walked past the newsagent’s inside the hospital, maybe it would have all turned out differently. But I did, and there on the front of one of the tabloids was a picture of Johnny with his arm around a girl – a girl I knew. The headline read: ‘Going to put a ring on it’. I stopped dead in my tracks and snatched up the paper. It was a trashy story about Johnny finally falling in love, and the girl he was with was the same one he slept with in LA. She was the final straw for me back then. And here she was again. It was a message: my three months were up. He was moving on. I remember standing there, clutching my stomach as I read this stupidly speculative story – which turned out to be totally untrue because he never did settle down with her – and finally my breathing slowed and I calmly put the paper back where I found it. Then I went home and told Christian my news.
    I take a deep breath as the memory of all of this comes back to me now.
    ‘When’s he coming to stay again?’ Dad asks casually.
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘You should call him, invite him again. He can stay with us next time.’
    ‘Mmm, maybe.’
    My dad turns the music back up before I leave the room.
    My parents’ love affair with Johnny takes a nosedive a week later when there’s a picture of him looking wasted in one of the papers.
    ‘He’s looking a bit the worse for wear,’ my dad sniffs. ‘Who’s this lass, here?’ He points to Dana, who’s dressed all in black and is hanging off Johnny with her arm around his neck. Her dark eye make-up looks smudged – maybe the panda-bear look is fashionable these days.
    ‘Dana Reed,’ I explain unhappily. ‘She’s his girlfriend.’
    ‘I didn’t know he had a girlfriend,’ my mum says.
    ‘I did tell you about her,’ I say.
    ‘No, you didn’t,’ she bats back.
    ‘I’m sure I did.’
    ‘You didn’t,’ she insists. Oh, I give up. ‘Well, that’s a shame,’ she says, putting the paper back on the table with disgust. My dad picks it up again and brings it closer to his face to study it.
    ‘She’s quite a looker, isn’t she?’ he muses.
    My mum snatches the paper back. ‘Too much make-up,’ she decides.
    ‘I thought he wasn’t supposed to be drinking anymore?’ Dad chips in.
    ‘I’m not his keeper. I can’t force him not to drink,’ I say.
    ‘You managed to stop him when he was here,’ my dad says.
    ‘That was different.’
    ‘When’s he coming to stay again?’
    ‘I don’t know, Dad . . .’
    Two days later there’s another story about him. Another party, another picture of him looking wasted on the arm of Dana Reed. The press speculate it’s only a matter of time before he ends up back in rehab.
    ‘Have you spoken to him yet?’ Dad demands to know.
    ‘No,’ I say firmly.
    ‘I think you should call him, give him a revving.’
    ‘What he does with his life is his own business,’ I reply, trying to keep calm. The truth is, I’m feeling sick again.
    ‘He’s the father of your son,’ Dad barks crossly. ‘His life is your business, now.’
    ‘I don’t want to talk about this in front of Barney,’ I reply as an excuse. I take my son and go outside to the garden.
    Dad slaps a different newspaper in front of me at breakfast the following day. He jabs his finger at a small story in the gossip column. Tensing up, I scan the words and discover Johnny and Dana took an impromptu dip in a pool at an after-show party for a hot new band, and this was after doing seven shots of whisky in a row.
    ‘This sort of behaviour is not on.’ My mum pulls a face. ‘You should talk to him about it.’
    ‘You don’t know Johnny very well if you think I can do that,’ I reply wryly, trying to ignore my churning stomach.
    ‘Have you heard from him?’ Dad chips in.
    ‘Not since you last asked me about it,’ I reply, putting the paper back on the table.
    ‘I hope we’re not going to be greeted with a story like this every day,’ my mum says.
    ‘Don’t read the tabloids. That’s what I’ve learned to do.’