Bombay Mixx

Bombay Mixx - Chapter Seven - Part Two

Maternity leave would have been perfect if I could just relax and concentrate on changing the flat from a bachelorette pad to a perfect baby haven, but my family had other plans.

Although Amelia had moved into her own apartment just a few streets away and Gabrielle had moved into John’s semi detached house on the outskirts of North London, I still had to contend with seeing my overbearing mother every day, giving me her ‘thoughts’ on what I needed for each stage of the baby’s development.

‘Neets, how about this breast pump?’ she eagerly asked as she shoved the catalogue under my nose as I assessed my dad’s handy work with trying to put the cot together and blaming the tools on why it wasn’t coming together.

The only break I got from the overbearing ‘Mary Poppins’ and the not so ‘Handy Andy’ was when Renesh would come round to give regular updates on his situation and for me to check that he wasn’t going into a deep depression.

It was difficult for us all to know how to treat Renesh after the engagement party.

Of course, we wanted to support him through this hard time, as he was our brother who we loved dearly but then I remembered that he caused so much pain to his pregnant, and now estranged wife and my mum and dad.

After the engagement party, Renesh fell into a deep depression and started to drink a lot. Shilpa left him and although he was no longer thinking in a sane manner, he was still able to reject the constant bombardment of phone calls and texts and attempts to visit him from Manisha and Shampa.

Mum and dad were a great support but it still couldn’t erase the memories and after a stint in rehab, he moved back in with them for his own safety. ‘Hey bro, you’re looking a lot better today,’ I complimented him as he came through the door.

Dressed in a crumpled black hooded top and off white jogging bottoms, he was unrecognisable from the man I knew a few months ago.

The stench of whisky filled the air, and it was left to mum to confront him.

‘Can I smell alcohol on your breath? I thought you were going to sober up for the babies, if not for yourself,’ my mother preached as my father emerged from the baby’s bedroom with a face like thunder.

Renesh threw himself on the sofa and held his head in his hands. ‘She said she is divorcing me and there’s nothing I can do about it,’ he responded as he passed his mobile phone to me to prove the request with a text by Shilpa visible on the screen.

We always knew it was a long shot for Shilpa to give him another chance but we all hoped and prayed that for the sake of the baby she was carrying, she would but this was the final scene and she was adamant that she was over him when she arranged for her cousins to go to their flat and remove all of her items three weeks later.

With Gabrielle enjoying martial bliss with John and trying to get his family to understand we are not an insane family, Amelia’s career going from strength to strength and accepting a promotion which would have her leading their department in Paris and Anya re-designing every aspect of Dolph’s apartment, things were going well for everyone. It wasn’t only until Anya screamed at me, ‘you’ve pissed on my designer rug,’ that we knew baby Patel was on his or her way.

Amelia grabbed my phone and called Yatin, Gabrielle called mum and dad and after Anya tried to scrub the stain out of her rug, she managed to think about the pain I was going through and helped me down the stairs with the others

‘Breathe Neets, breathe,’ Gabrielle shouted as she tried to demonstrate what I should be doing, based on all the films she had watched about childbirth (all of which were Hollywood movies).

After everyone laughed at her, including the taxi driver, who found it funny until he saw a little more of my predicament than he wanted to; he never looked back after that moment, he sped through traffic like driver possessed. We were at the hospital in 10 minutes.