March 9: Meet and Greet

It was a strange sort of evening. FTB (fresh in from an Antwerp beer-festival stag-do, lucky for some) arrived at my house late in preparation for the next-day's early morning scan. I was already in bed, one ear cocked on red-alert, listening for the purr of his car sneaking down my street.
He bought me a present - Belgium chocolates. A good start. Chocolate always goes down well, even when it's pretend-posh-proper chocolate with violent shades of colour in the centre. He gave me a hug (another good start, there was a time when that was deemed inappropriate, as if he could re-impregnate me through touch). He asked how I was. Goodness.
We went to bed... kissed, had wild passionate sex just like we did all those months ago, and all was forgiven.
THE END
I jest.
Him, firmly in the spare room, on the futon, a lingering lick of paint fumes but it couldn't be helped. Me, in my own bed (normally I'd give it up for visitors but this time, I couldn't be bothered).
At 4am, I was awake; hungry, my stomach sore and in need of calming tea. I crept downstairs but he heard me and followed. It was very surreal, sat at my kitchen table in the cold, in our pyjamas, listening to the milk-float clink bottles on my neighbour's doorsteps, and flicking through the weekend magazines that I'd discarded unread.
I spied an aubergine cheesecake recipe that looks better than it sounds.
'Ottolenghi,' I said, shivering in my bare feet. 'Is he any good?'
'Great.'

Bright and breezy, we hit the road, over the soft peppermint-green Severn Bridge, back to my 'home hospital'.
From a chair, FTB watched while a midwife squirted gel on my stomach, brought Bump into view in his black-and-white world, and began measuring. It was the first time FTB had seen Bump since the eight-week 'cyst' scan, when he said the sight of the baby made him want to vomit. This time, he just looked at the monitor, no emotional reaction to seeing his child, now in near-full form, its little hand up by its face as if ready for a boxing match. He just looked.

Then in to see the consultant. Bump's measurements are nearly, but not quite, off the scale - but not in a good 'world-record celebration' way. Just a niggling, worrying way. S/he is small.
'Why are they small? I ask. 'Did the cyst steal all the room?'
Nope, not that, it seems. Guess again.
'My diet? My bottle-a-day Vodka habit? Stress (surely not)?
The consultant is vague - or maybe I'm not listening properly. It seems some babies can just be small. Or there may be something wrong with the tubes that feed him.
'Will this mean he's small all his life?' Nope, wrong again. There's no genetic correlation to that. It is much more about the 'mother' at this stage of pregnancy. Groan. How did I know it would be my fault.
And the outcome? Yet more scans. This time, weekly. They might as well just hook me to the monitor, sign Bump up to a YouTube channel called 'Floating Fetus', and leave me strapped to the table.

***

There is a cafe, a few miles from my home-turf hospital that has become a regular post-appointment, post tumour-diagnosis staple. It does strong coffee, and a 'light lunch' of bacon, poached eggs with hollandaise sauce on two English muffins. It's gob-smackingly good. And there's a boutique toy shop over the road in which to pop into afterwards and marvel at the £30 jigsaws.
I took FTB. I'm exhausted from our midnight tea-drinking session, and upset about Bump being small. I think, 'God, not another thing.' So far, this pregnancy has comprised: a football-sized cyst; a major operation; enough Morphine to kill an elephant (or three); a potential bit of cancer; a very hostile FTB; clashes with the in-laws who may or may not want to honour-kill me and their 'bastard' grandchild. And now what, a nearly-off-the-chart once-weekly-scan small baby. Can't I just have a few weeks off for good behaviour?

He updates me on the 'Indian' situation. Things are bad. His sister has been informed of the 'dreadful' news and has put the cat among the pigeons. She is now saying what all the others probably wanted to say all along but didn't quite have the heart - or the malice - to, whichever way you want to look at it.
In no uncertain terms, she has told FTB that - regardless of whether he and I get back together or not - she is never, ever seeing this baby.
She is never, ever meeting me (thank God for that, I think).
Without shouting or screaming, she has cooly and calmly told FTB that he has disgraced his family.
The only solution - she dictates - is for him to cut all contact with me and this child and keep this a secret from the rest of their relations and wider community forever.
She, lovely she - pregnant too with her first child as well (no empathy there then) -has also compared the respective merits of the two cousins, who will be born just months apart and never meet.
In her eyes, there is no contest. Her child was planned, conceived within a marriage of love (if also convenient and established through an 'Indian find-a-suitable right cast, right creed, right colour, right tax bracket, right car, right dress-sense, right location dating site') It was done the 'proper' way, the traditional way. It will grow up knowing its Indian heritage, and be brought up by both of its parents - one a dentist, one a soliticitor. It is a much-loved planned-for perfect baby.
Mine, on the other hand, in her eyes, is something to be ashamed of, a dirty little secret, conceived out of her brother's complete stupidity (I think she thinks I ensnared him and deliberately ruined his life).
God, how I hate her. The sanctimonious, righteous, judgemental, narrow-minded, evil little cow (what I actually called her was much worse).
But any reasoned outlook that may - or may not - have been coming out of FTB's parent's mouths over the last few months has now been overshadowed by her venom.
In stipulating to her elder brother that he should have nothing to do with Bump or I, she is 'protecting' the family name.
She is determined to keep this a secret come hell or high-water.
As for me, well, in her view, FTB told me to get an abortion. He repeatedly told me and I refused. So I knew what I was letting myself in for, didn't I - a life as a single mother, raising a child on my own. He owes me - and this baby - nada. A view that is apparently supported by FTB's mother. No solidarity among women then.
Good grief.

But in all this, one thing has become clearer, he says. There is absolutely no point in trying to make a relationship between the two of us work. This would only have been possible with his family on-board, welcoming me and little Bump into the fold. It is not the case. Officially dumped then. Fait Accompli. Decree Nisi signed, sealed and delivered. If I hadn't got the message already.
Another thing, he tells me. His sister's extreme reaction is more than likely representative of the wider family and community view.
'If this does get out,' he said, 'the grief we've had so far will look like nothing. It will be 1 percent of what will subsequently come our way. It is not worth it.'

But what about cutting off me and Bump?
'Are you going to do it? I ask, staring into my coffee. 'Are you going to do what they want and pretend we don't exist?'
He says he isn't. Despite the ramifications, despite his sister, despite the cultural pressure, despite everything, he says he will not cut us off.
And that is something, for now, I'm immensely grateful for.