Having Your Jelly Baby

5: Wutdafuq

The thing that freaked me out the most was how quickly one casual meet up had been penned into an article. A terribly written article, at that, considering the fact that I’d read two paragraphs, and they were each a whole sentence long.

I shuddered and pushed it all to the back of my mind, wishing my curiosity hadn’t gotten the better of me and that I hadn’t read the awful article in the first place. I didn’t even want to think about what the comments were like.

Lying back down, I stared up at the ceiling.

Drew Turner was going to be my downfall, and there was nothing I could do about it.

*

I’d always hated shopping.

There was something about the feeling of walking up and down aisles and the sound of clothes hangers scraping against metal racks as people pushed them aside roughly that made my ears hurt and my chest and stomach quiver uneasily.

And there was also the fact that shopping as a child had been an almost painful experience. My mum had always wanted to buy me pretty pink dresses and dress me up, but I had preferred to hang around in comfy, almost tomboyish but I suppose sloppy clothes. In the beginning she had tried to force me into the flowery skirts and ballet pumps, and I had let her, but Mia could see I was uncomfortable and piped up for me.

It hadn’t really mattered anyway, because fast forward to a few years later I eventually grew out of the boyish clothes phase, and since I had to wear smart dresses for work they just became a part of what I wore every day.

Anyway, Mia and Mum would always go out shopping and do all these girly things, and the few times that I went along I felt awkward and almost like a third wheel, so eventually I just stopped going with them. I would see other girls with their mums too, holding hands and bright eyed as they excitedly went from shop to shop.

Things like that didn’t change even now, over a decade later. Mums and their very young daughters still littered the shopping centre, and so did little clusters of teenagers who I could have sworn were meant to be at school.

For some reason I felt like a truanting teenager myself, feeling as if I had a huge sign emblazoned on my chest that screamed PREGNANT! at everyone who looked my way, and that made me feel almost guilty, despite pregnancies and having children outside of marriage being pretty much fully accepted in society today.

One thing for definite though, was that I sure as hell didn’t have the money after the whole redundancy shamble, but it was all a bit of a vicious cycle whichever way I looked at it. I needed a job but I couldn’t go to interviews in clothes that were quickly becoming tight fitted. Uncertainty still clouded my mind and made it become hazy every time I tried to think about whether I was keeping the baby or not.

It still hadn’t hit me that there was a little person growing inside me. (I can’t believe I just used that phrase. God, it makes me cringe, but seriously, how else can you word it?)

‘Ahh, Mummy, look! Look, Mummy! Quick, quick! Dora, Mummy! It’s Dora!’ The sound of a little girl’s voice pulled me out of my reverie, and my head turned to look at her waddling along and the mother beside her whose attention she was so excitedly calling for.

The mum looked to be in her early thirties, laughing along with her little daughter, her eyes crinkling at the corners as she scooped her daughter up into her arms and onto her hip. ‘Yes sweetheart, it’s Dora.’

A huge Dora the Explorer doll was in the shop window and the little girl’s eyes were wide and bright, happiness pouring out of her in the way it seemed to from young children as she tucked her head into the crook of her mum’s neck, quickly tired after the excitement of seeing Dora.