Love... And Sleepless Nights MAY 2012 (4 page)

‘Alright, but make sure you do it right,’ she breathes in a husky voice.

I do indeed
‘do it right’
in my defence.

I exhibit what at the time I believed to be
superhuman
levels of self control, and succeeded in not arriving at my destination until I’d successfully made Laura’s toes curl and pulled out.

She doesn’t have time to swing herself around before I shoot my load, but at least we now have a
very
good reason to get off our arses and buy another couch - given that this one is now heavily stained with my manly exuberance.

The problem is, that particular method of ad-hoc contraception isn’t good enough.

Pulling out early
doesn’t
mean you’re safe… even if you think you are.

The penis, being a stupid individual and one unable to control itself, can – and does – issue a certain amount of pre-ejaculate before the moment of orgasm.

A fact we had both conveniently chosen to forget until yesterday: April Fool’s Day.

***

What a crappy April
Fool’s
Day it had been for me already, before I even walked in the door at
6pm
.

I’d spent the entire day arguing with a sub-editor over advertising space at the rear of the paper.

I say
arguing
, it had mostly been a series of passive aggressive emails, culminating in a testy five minute ‘chat’ outside the reprographics department.

It was an argument I’d lost, so my mood was blacker than the soul of an adult Justin Bieber fan by the time I got home.

‘Evening baby,’ I say morosely to my wife when I see her stood in the kitchen.

‘
Evening
,’ she replies in a very small voice, after I administer my usual hello kiss.

Had my mood not been quite so bad I would have noticed the signs right there. As it was though, I pulled off my tie, ambled into the lounge and parked myself on the semen stained sofa cushion (turned upside down), intent on watching people less fortunate than myself on Sky News for half an hour or so.

I’m completely oblivious to the emotional state of my nervous, fidgety wife as she comes and sits next to me.

‘Good day?’ I ask her, hoping she’ll just say yes, and then ask me how mine went so I can launch into an epic diatribe on how much of a wanker Colin Forbes the sub-editor is.

‘Umm. Not… not so great, I suppose.’ She picks at one corner of a cushion.

‘Really? That sucks,’ I reply, eager to use this point in the conversation to steer it towards my own woes. ‘I can sympathise. I’ve had a ball-ache of a day. You know that twat Forbes? The one with the squinty eye? Yeah, well he’s been a right prick today. I had to get an extra half page spread for the Easter promo, but
oh no
… he says he needs it to run the rugby report. Bloody rugby report. Who cares about rugby, eh? Stupid sport. I tell you baby, sometimes this job does my head in. I really wish I could leave it, but I can’t be arsed to look for anything else at the moment. Going through all that interviewing rubbish makes my blood run -
oh shit.
’

My blood runs cold.

I’ve forgotten about Laura’s job interview…

A small mewl escapes my lips as I try to get my head around the utter catastrophe I’ve just brought on my own head.

I know that the next few minutes of my life are going to be
awful
. I also know I’m likely to be sleeping on the spunky couch tonight.

I begin to apologise… and stop. I simply cannot think of an adequate way to express my sheer, unbridled regret. There aren’t enough words to appease the wrath that I know is coming my way - like a dark harbinger of the Jamie Newman apocalypse.

If I thought hacking off one hand might do the trick, I’d do it. Hell, I’d gnaw the bloody thing off.

I look at Laura.

It’s even worse than I thought.

I was expecting a vicious scowl - a vision of pent up female fury, ready to be unleashed on my stupid, forgetful man face.

But no, this is far, far worse…

She just looks pale, upset and very, very confused.

Oh God!

The raging animal I can deal with. But Laura just looks deeply hurt by my oversight. This makes me feel a million times worse.

I haven’t made her angry, just sad.

I wish I could kill myself by choking on a sofa cushion.

‘I’m so sorry, honey,’ I say and take her hand. ‘Tell me how the job interview went.’ I look at her downcast face. ‘Did it go well?’

…which is about as silly as asking a Jewish person in 1939 if they’re going to vote for Hitler in the next election.

She looks at me with those glorious blue eyes, her mouth trembling.

I gird my loins and start mentally compiling a shopping list of Haagen Dazs ice cream, flowers - and possibly a brand new car.

Her hand squeezes mine. I take a deep breath and prepare myself for whatever she has to say.

‘I’m pregnant,’ she says.

‘Well, never mind,’ I begin. ‘I’m sure something else will come up, and this won’t - ’

Hmmm. Something’s wrong.

My brain is sure Laura just told me the interview didn’t go well, but my ears are insisting she said something completely different. Best to rewind the last few seconds and re-evaluate…

…nope, she definitely didn’t say anything about the job interview.

But what was the strange and alien sentence she
did
come out with? It sounded like ‘I’m pregnant’ …but that is of course
impossible
.

That is a sentence Laura must
never
utter, at least not for the next six or seven years, while we’re still building our careers.

It’s probably a good time to ask her to repeat herself so we can put to rest the silly idea that she said something about being pregnant.

‘Sorry? What did you say?’

‘I said I’m pregnant.’

Oh my...

My ears don’t appear to be functioning properly at all today. It still sounds like she’s saying she’s pregnant.

I’d better ask one more time just to get to the bottom of it once and for all. ‘What?’

‘I said I’m bloody pregnant Jamie. Are you deaf?’

I try to respond. ‘Blurben hurmen?’

It now looks like the speech centre of my brain has short circuited.

I am no longer able to form proper words, and will spend the rest of my days communicating in a way that only Mr Blobby and the people of
Sweden
will understand.

‘What?’ Laura says.

This time I can only produce a sound like a tyre deflating.

My mind is going a hundred miles a second - yet is inexplicably also frozen solid.

How can this be happening? How can today have started with me straining to release last night’s Thai (I really need to cut down on the unhealthy takeaways), continue with a terrible tuna fish sandwich at lunch, peak during an afternoon argument with Colin Forbes, and end with my wife telling me she’s pregnant?

How can this happen today? On the first day of Apri –

Aha! Now I get it!

It all becomes abundantly clear. It’s April first!

Laura – the little scamp that she is – is playing an April Fool’s joke on me. How very clever and funny my wife is!

‘Yeah… good one Laura!’ I exclaim happily.

I’m so pleased I’ve managed to work out the joke. She had the wool pulled over my eyes for a while there, but now I’ve seen the light!

‘What?!’

That’s funny…

She should be smiling now, happy in the knowledge that her little ruse has been discovered.

I jump out of my chair, releasing some of that pent up nervous tension. ‘I said good one! You really had me going there baby. You… pregnant!
Brilliant
!’

For some reason she still isn’t smiling. My feet, having a far better grasp on the reality of the situation that my mind, take me swiftly out into the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

Laura follows me. She stands and watches me banging cups and the kettle around for a moment before speaking. ‘Jamie, this isn’t an April Fool. I’m being serious. I’m pregnant!’

See, this is the problem with my wife…

She never knows when to let a joke go. It’s all about the timing and I’ve seen through her duplicity, so there’s no real reason to keep it up. ‘Come on baby, you can stop now. I know you’re mucking about.’

Her face like thunder, Laura stamps over to me and pulls the tea towel out of my hand.

She hits me with it. Twice.

‘I’m not bloody joking, you idiot!’ She hits me with the towel again to emphasise her point. ‘I’
whack!
‘AM’
whack!
‘PREGNANT!’
whack! whack! whack!

‘Please stop assaulting me with the bloody tea towel!’ I wail.

Her arm drops. I put the cup I’m holding back onto the counter with trembling fingers.

Silence… terrible, terrible silence descends.

I look at my wife’s exhausted face. ‘How?’ I ask.

The look of exhaustion turns to disgust. ‘It might have had something to do with you inserting your cock in me. That’s generally the way these things happen.’

‘But… but we’re
careful
.’

It will be a couple of hours before I remember the night of the frantic wank-search for condoms.

‘Not careful enough.’

I breathe in and out a few times.

I can’t think of anything to say, but I
must
say something. I can’t spend the rest of this marriage communicating via clicks and grunts.

Unable to utter anything more about the pregnancy, I give her a half hearted smile and say ‘So, how did the job interview go?’

She gives me a look of pure, unadulterated misery, her eyes welling with tears. ‘I was sick all over Christopher Biggins!’

‘Isn’t Christopher Biggins dead?’

Laura starts to cry in great hitching sobs and I throw my arms around her.

I have to as my legs are about to give out on me.

An hour later, I’ve consumed two beers from the fridge and am feeling a touch calmer.

Laura went to pour herself a glass of wine, but remembered the reason why she needed a glass of wine in the first place and put the bottle back.