Woman to Woman (6 page)

“It’s a fresh way of looking at products and, since we’re all so blase about lotions and potions, it would be marvelous to get readers to give their opinion about things,” Rhona said in a voice which required some sort of reaction.

“Er … I’ll include an advert for guinea pigs on the beauty page,

although I’ll have to drop something to fit it in.” Jostarted rooting through the piles of paper on her desk for the dummy or advance pages of the beauty section.

With only two days to go before printing, the July edition of Style was nearly totally finished and any changes had to be agreed and inserted within the next twenty-four hours.

Jo still had an entire piece to write about packing for your summer holidays and had managed to leave the ideas she’d jotted down for the article at home.

“D’you know, I haven’t been talking to you all week,” Rhona commented, picking up the tanning article and scanning it for mistakes.

“You look a little bit pale, Jo. Are you feeling all right?”

“Fine,” answered Jo as brightly as she could. She raked her dark curls with her fingers and wished she’d bothered with proper make-up on this of all mornings.

“I’ve had a lot of late nights recently,” she lied, ‘and I’m a little tired. Maybe that Elizabeth Arden magic stuff you keep in your desk could give my complexion a bit of a boost?”

Rhona looked at her shrewdly for a moment, taking in her deputy editor’s pale, freckled skin, tired brown eyes and un-lips ticked mouth.

Jo took her job as fashion editor very seriously and was nearly always dressed to kill in on-the-knee skirts which showed off her long legs and fitted jewel-coloured jackets which were just perfect for her Monroe-esque curves. She was usually better made-up than Ivana Trump.

Today, she was wearing a fawn-coloured linen ensemble which would have cost an arm and a leg if Jo didn’t have a fashion editor’s discount at every top shop in Dublin. Chic in the extreme, the effect of the outfit was ruined by the fact that she wasn’t wearing more make-up or jewellery and her normally wavy hair had flopped in the June heat. It was very unlike Jo, thought Rhona.

“Come on into my office and we’ll have a bitch.” She smiled at Jo, slid off the desk and walked into her tiny office.

It was compact and untidy, with clothes hangers dangling off every nail

and magazines, press releases and sticky layout pages covering every available surface. There wasn’t enough room to swing a cat in its ten-by-twelve confines.

Rhona’s office was, however, blissfully private and a haven for the nicotine-addicted who weren’t allowed to smoke anywhere else in the Georgian three-storey house which was home to both Style and a tiny secretarial agency.

Jo followed the editor into the untidy room and pushed a clump of plastic-covered dresses to one side of the dusty cream settee which took up at least half of one wall. She plonked herself down tiredly and leaned back into the soft cushions. She levered off her shoes and wondered if this sudden exhaustion was pregnancy or shock. “Is lover boy wearing you out at home?” Rhona teased,!

immediately lighting up a cigarette. I Despite herself, Jo blushed. She could feel her face redden!

and she could also see Rhona looking at her in amazement,!

cigarette suspended in mid-air as she stared at her deputy!!

with a dumbfounded expression.

How was she going to get out of this one? Jo groaned silently. The woman with whom she’d shared kiss-by-kiss accounts of various lovers over numerous bottles of red wine was not going to believe that just talking about sex with Richard would send her blushing to her roots. No way.

Rhona knew her much better than that. Which meant that she was going to have to spill the beans. Only how could she spill anything until she knew for sure?

“Did I say the wrong thing?” Rhona sat down heavily and looked anxiously at her deputy.

“Are you having problems?

You know you can always talk to me, Jo, don’t you? I don’t want to interfere, I just want to help.”

“I don’t think you can help me this time,” Jo replied with a small laugh. Here goes, she thought.

“Unless you’ve been secretly training as an obstetrician and haven’t told the rest of us!”

“You’re not pregnant, are you?” Rhona squealed.

“Stupid question. Congratulations, Jo! I shouldn’t be smoking, should

I?” She hastily stubbed out her barely touched Dunhill as though a baby was going to pop out any minute and wail if there was so much as a hint of nicotine in the air.

“Slow down, Rhona. I don’t know if I’m pregnant yet. I missed my period this month and it only really hit me this morning so I don’t know for sure.” It sounded even stranger actually saying it out loud.

“You haven’t done a test?” Rhona looked surprised. The new ones can tell you if you’re pregnant just a day after your period is due.”

“I know, I know.” Jo looked mildly exasperated.

“I was going to do it here, I just didn’t want Ms Nosey Parker out there to pick anything up with her radar ears.”

“Fair enough,” Rhona replied.

“I’ll send her out for fags and you can pee in privacy …”

Rhona stopped mid-sentence and looked Jo straight in the face.

“It is Richard’s, isn’t it?”

“Of course it bloody is!” Jo said, affronted.

“How many men do you think I’m seeing? One a day and two on Sunday!

Come on, Rhona.”

“Sorry, sorry. It’s just that you don’t seem pleased about it and I just thought, maybe it wasn’t his and … Forget I said that, please, Jo. I thought you’d be happy if it was Richard’s and you seem a little off, you know.”

She leaned over and put her arms around Jo’s now tense body, hugging her tightly.

“You know I’m here for you, no matter what happens.”

“Thanks.” Jo stood up, running a ring less hand over her stomach as though she’d be able to tell what lay beneath her linen waistcoat just by touching her belly. What would it be like to feel a baby growing inside her?

Would she feel totally at one with her unborn child, sensitive to every kick and wriggle? If she played her favourite music on the car stereo, would the baby be born liking the same tunes?

Then it came to her with piercing clarity: she wanted this child. She wanted it more than anything she’d ever wanted before, even if Richard

didn’t. That was the nub of the (problem. It was no use wasting time wondering whether he wanted their child, littering her brain with doubts when, all along, she knew what she wanted.

I’ She wanted a baby, maybe she had wanted one for years.

Trying to be the nineties career woman had meant keeping up the facade of a perfect life, complete with a handsome lover!

total independence and a job most women would kill for. I Career women didn’t long for babies and a man’s pyjamas permanently under the pillows, but suddenly, that’s just what Jo wanted.

For once she didn’t care if the magazine’s publisher demoted her to writing picture captions or gave her job to the horrible, sneaky Emma who was always angling to back stab her way up the career ladder. All she wanted was a beautiful, healthy baby.

“I’m pregnant,” she said aloud, suddenly grinning at Rhona with a smile which lit up her whole face.

“I’m pregnant! I just know it!”

“Well let’s send Brenda out for champagne then,” Rhona suggested before hugging Jo to her considerable bosom.

“And for something from the deli. I’m starved.”

“When were you ever not starved?” Jo got up with renewed energy and manoeuvred her feet into her brown suede court shoes.

“I’m going to do the test, to be sure to be sure, if you know what I mean. But I know already. Is that normal?” She looked at Rhona, the mother of three under-tens, for confirmation.

Absolutely,” answered Rhona.

“I knew I was pregnant the first time because I woke up one morning and couldn’t eat a thing, which is not like me, as you know. The day Lynne was born was the happiest day of my life, I always say, mainly because I’d been so sick all the time I was carrying her.”

“I feel fine,” interrupted Jo.

“Hungry actually. I think I need something nutritious to eat, like a Twix.”

“Or a poppy-seed baguette filled with sun-dried tomatoes, Parma ham and chunks of Gruyere washed down with an icy Diet Coke,” said Rhona, who

had not been a magazine restaurant reviewer for nothing.

“I’m supposed to be on a diet, but there are only so many things you can do with brown rice and green vegetables,” she added mournfully, thinking of the considerable difference between what she should be eating and what she wanted to eat.

Tall and big-boned, Rhona was always denying herself something in the hope that she’d miraculously turn into a carbon copy of her sleek, younger sister and, more importantly, fit into all the lovely clothes she’d bought for ‘when I get thin’.

Sadly, her predilection for all the wrong food meant that she was never going to be anything smaller than a size fourteen. Her ‘thin’ clothes were getting closer to the secondhand shop every day.

“Brenda,” called Rhona loudly, winking at Jo, ‘are you busy?

I want you to do something for me.”

Hastily cutting off her steamy conversation, Brenda hurried over to the editor’s office with the speed of one hoping to be promoted, while Jo grabbed her handbag and headed for the loo.

By the time she had peed into the tiny tester and put it back into its little plastic case, her heart was thumping along at advanced-aerobics-class level.

She rummaged around for some lipstick in her tiny make-up bag and thought about telling Richard.

She could bring him out to Fitzer’s, his favourite restaurant, and tell him the wonderful news over the clam linguini.

“Darling, we’re going to have a baby’.”

She could see it all in her mind. She would wear the Jasper Conran jacket she’d bought in a discount store in Belfast.

“My darling, that’s wonderful!” he’d cry before ordering champagne and toasting their baby. Then they’d go back to her place and plan their future together. A Georgian town house in Dalkey, she daydreamed, with plenty of room for Richard’s darkroom and a desk where she could write the novel she was always talking about.

Or maybe an artisan’s cottage in Enniskerry, a cross between Homes and Gardens and the Habitat catalogue. Of course, they’d have to get a new bed because Richard’s futon wouldn’t be suitable for the baby and her ancient double bed was sprouting springs faster than a dodgy biro. There were so many things to buy! She’d better get to Mothercare quickly and get started.

“She’s gone. Let me in,” shouted Rhona outside the door.

“Oh Rhona, it’s so exciting.” Jo smiled, opened the door and carried the tester into the editor’s office as if it was an unexploded bomb.

“I almost can’t believe it. Me, a mother!

Even saying it sounds strange. What if I’m no good at it,” she asked, suddenly anxious, ‘no good at being a mother. Does it just come naturally? I mean, it’s not as if I have any real experience of babies or anything. Oh, and what about work?

Is it really that hard being a working mother?”

Rhona burst out laughing.

“Don’t get me started, Jo. You’ll learn. I mean, it’s not exactly a doddle, I can tell you. First of all,” she started ticking imaginary points off on her fingers, ‘you’re exhausted and you wonder are you doing everything wrong from feeding to nappy-changing to winding them after their feed.”

Then, you go to work and leave your precious baby with some woman you’re convinced turns into an axe murderer every time you walk out the front door, and then, when your baby walks for the first time, you’re not there.

“Ms Axe Murderer is there. You, on the other hand, are listening to some po-faced advertiser telling you that they don’t want their anti-wrinkle cream on the opposite page to a feature on how to stop the ravages of time with plastic surgery.” She stopped with a sigh.

“Is there anything else you want to ask?”

“No, just give me a prescription for Prozac and I’ll be fine,” said Jo with wide eyes.

“I suppose I never really thought about how difficult it was before. You know me, Rho, I can’t walk out the front door without spending half an hour on my hair, throwing at least three outfits on the bed when I’m trying to figure out what look to go for that day and taking another

fifteen minutes to do my make-up. It’s that liquid eyeliner,” she

“It’s impossible to get it right.”

“Liquid eyeliner will be the least of your problems, darling, let me tell you. You’ll be lucky if you can actually brush your teeth in the morning if your little pet is anything like mine were. And as for leaving three outfits on the bed …! Forget it.

Five-year-old girls love wearing Mummy’s clothes and Mummy’s make-up, usually at the same time.

“Believe me, Jo, you won’t be long tidying everything you value away from sticky little fingers. It’s better now that Susie is finally at school,” she reflected.

“Although she has this thing about Liga biscuits. I still get embarrassed when I think about that time in the Conrad Hotel when I opened my cheque book and it was all glued together with molten Liga.”

“Oh yes, that was a howl and I didn’t have any money with me!” Jo started laughing at the memory, and, realising what was in front of her, laughed even harder.

“I can’t wait to see Richard when we’ve got a terrible two-year-old toddling around playing with his Nikons.”

Rhona didn’t smile. She’d known Richard from the two years he’d been going out with Jo. She had a rather different vision of his reaction and she didn’t find the picture at all amusing.

Without a doubt, Richard would commit murder if he saw any child messing around with any of his possessions. If he stayed around long enough for the child in question to reach the grand old age of two, that was.

“Does he know?” she asked quietly.

“Not yet,” Jo confessed.

“I didn’t want to tell him until I was sure. I just wanted it to be between us. But I’m so glad I told you.” She smiled fondly at the other woman.

“Give us a look at the tester then,” demanded Rhona.

Like a magician about to produce a rabbit from a hat, Jo whisked off the plastic lid and gave a whoop of joy.