Fiona Gibson 3 Book Bundle. Fiona Gibson

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      Chapter Thirty

      Rob knew he’d been expecting too much for Eddy to keep Nadine’s pregnancy secret. There was no big announcement, no collective gasp: just the office grapevine yacking away, triggering the odd bemused ‘congratulations’, plus a sense, Rob notes, that he has finally been accepted by the new team. As if he’s not the stuffy old duffer after all, and that being a cheat and a liar and making a girl half his age pregnant has somehow made him more … interesting. He’s aware of Ava throwing him a bemused look as she stuffs her ‘Chocotastic’ Pop Tart into the office toaster, and Frank and Eddy halting their murmured discussion as he saunters past. Meanwhile, Nadine has acquired a dreamy demeanour. In fact, she seems to have given up working at all in favour of aligning her pots of pens with their various neon rubbers and fluffy gonks on their ends.

      Although he tries not to stare openly, occasionally Rob sees her take a brush from her red patent bag and actually groom a gonk’s hair. I’m going out with a girl who collects novelty pens, he muses, although ‘going out’ doesn’t really describe it. For one thing, on the nights he stays over at her place, they rarely venture out. They still don’t have a great deal to talk about, he realises. But they’ve watched a few movies, and she has taken to cooking strange meals – not triggered by any particular cravings but because, as far as he can gather, she’s never actually cooked much before. Last night she made some kind of Mexican beany starter, leaving an explosion of vegetable choppings and little puddles of bean juice in her wake. ‘I love cooking for you,’ she announced, reaching across the table to squeeze his hand as his eyes watered from all the chilli.

      Then they went to bed. Rob has felt so wretched these past two months, it’s been a relief to lose himself with a sweet, young girl with a beautiful, delicate little body who seems, amazingly, to want him. What will happen, though, when the Bethnal Green house sale goes through? Although she seems to expect it, the thought of living at her place full-time makes him uneasy to say the least.

      It takes an enormous amount of willpower for Rob to switch his attention back towards the half-written feature on the screen. His intro reads: ‘It’s Spring – get a six-pack in the time it takes to scoff a burger.’ Despite the gaudy Christmas lights winking outside, the issue they’re working on now is all ‘spring clean your body’ and ‘put the spring back into your love life’. (Eddy, ever fond of a cliché, has gone overboard for the ‘reinvent yourself’ angle.) Two issues containing Rob’s sex columns have already been on sale. To Eddy’s delight – ‘see, I said you’d be a natural, Robster!’ – they’ve provoked a flurry of emailed questions from readers, some of such a technical nature that Rob is flummoxed as to how to respond.

      By 6 p.m. he’s almost finished the feature. It’s Thursday – late night shopping – and Nadine, who’s looking impatient now, wants to start checking out buggies and cots. It takes another half hour before he makes his way over to her desk.

      ‘Sorry about that,’ he says.

      ‘That’s okay.’ She smiles prettily, having reapplied her cherry-red lipstick (how does she always get it so immaculate? he wonders) and customary eyeliner flicks in preparation for the shops. As they head for the lift, Rob can’t resist taking Nadine’s small hand in his. God, this is weird, he thinks, a thought that darts across his brain without warning several times a day. Here we are, virtually a couple now, having a baby. A couple who, less than an hour later, have taken possession not just of a buggy but a car seat, cot, bouncy chair, play mat and wall hanging featuring hand-appliqued gambolling bunnies, all to be delivered within the next five working days.

      ‘Oh, look at that!’ she cries. He’d been trying to casually manoeuvre her out of the baby department of the store before his credit card melts in the machine.

      ‘We don’t need that, do we?’ He eyes the cripplingly expensive quilt.

      ‘Well, I suppose it’s not essential, but we don’t want our baby sleeping under a tatty old blanket, do we?’

      ‘No, of course not, but I’m sure there are cheaper—’ He stops abruptly as she picks up the quilt. The bags he’s clutching already contain a changing mat, several fleecy rompers in gender-unspecific lemon and mint, plus a knitted toy mouse in a scratchy red coat which doesn’t look terribly baby-friendly to Rob (but hey, what does he know?). And now Nadine СКАЧАТЬ