Читать книгу The Baby Diaries - Sam Binnie - Страница 34

Seven months pregnant, Lucie Martel has defied her weeping doctor’s advice to fly over for some pre-publicity stuff, and to meet with all of us. For that alone, I suppose, I have to respect her. I’m already feeling slightly nervous just being away from my bed, but Thom says that’s a latent tendency that’s purely been verbalised with the pregnancy. Rude.

I met Lucie over breakfast at the Charlotte Street Hotel, where she ordered a decaf espresso. I must have been staring at her a little, because she laughed and said, ‘Pathetic, isn’t it? Like ordering a meat-free steak. But it helps to cling to these little things somehow.’ She seemed nice, by which I mean normal, by which I mean she acknowledged that pregnancy seems to be just a desperate battle to cling on to life as it was beforehand.

Since Tony had already negotiated her contract earlier this year, we were free to talk about her publicity, any marketing we might offer, the bookshop deals we were looking at and how long she’d be over in the UK after the baby’s birth.

Lucie: I’m afraid I can only offer you four days for any publicity.

Me: Oh, OK. We thought you were over here for a month …?

Lucie: Well, three weeks, but I don’t think it’s fair to be working all that time when the baby is so young.

Me: No, OK, that’s great! So the baby will definitely be with you?

Lucie: [shocked] Absolutely. He’ll only be five weeks old when you publish over here, and I don’t think Bill will be ready to deal with his son for, what, eighteen to twenty years?

Me: [laughing] Of course, you know it’s a boy. That’s nice.

Lucie: Yes, Bill insisted on all the scans – we have a beautiful 4D scan of little Bill Jnr, that some nights I just watch over and over again. Do you have children?

Me: [choking slightly on my tea] Nope, no, no children. No children.

Lucie: Tick tock tick tock, you know! I see you’ve got a ring at least – how long have you been married?

Me: [gritting teeth] A few months.

Lucie: Well, don’t leave it too long. Do you know, Bill Jnr has already cost us almost $500,000? That’s because we were ‘waiting for the right time’. And that’s not including redeveloping his nursery, costs for the nanny, and any of his education.

Me: Jesus, I’d be hoping he comes out covered in gold for that money.

We both clearly had a mental image of exactly what I was suggesting and got very quiet. I suddenly thought, ‘If she walks out and refuses to do anything for us again, how I am going to tell Tony that I scared off my new author by encouraging her to push a metallic infant through her birth canal?’

Lucie shook her head and blinked, and said, ‘OK! What kind of publicity do you guys have in mind?’ I ran through the options we were chasing, women’s glossies and the weekend supplements, gave her the latest jacket options we were looking at and asked her to think about any pieces she might be writing for the US that we could use over here. Then I got the bill and got out of there, before I offered to cut her umbilical cord with my butter knife, or something.

And oh. Came home tonight to find a beautiful letterpress card from Eve, saying how pleased she and Mike are for us, with a tiny lobster holding hands with two huge lobsters on the front. Oh, Eve. I will really stop thinking the worst of you one day, really.

TO DO:

Consider whether I’m actually safe company for any antenatal group if I keep saying my grotesque birthing nightmares out loud