“OK, I’ll try it,” I say, cheering up. “And I’ll let you know how it goes. Thanks, Suze.” I drain my smoothie and put my glass down with a flourish. “So.”
“So.” Suze meets my eyes. “Are you ready?”
“I think so.” I feel a squirm of nerves. “Let’s go!”
I pull the gender predictor box toward me along the counter and tug at the plastic wrapping, my hands trembling a little. In a matter of minutes I’ll know. This is almost as exciting as the birth itself!
I secretly think it’s a boy. Or maybe a girl.
“Hey, Bex, wait,” says Suze suddenly. “How will you fool Luke?”
“What do you mean?”
“When they deliver the baby! How will you convince him you didn’t know the sex beforehand?”
I stop ripping at the plastic. That’s a good point.
“I’ll just act surprised,” I say at last. “I’m really good at acting — look.” I put on my most astonished expression. “It’s a…boy!”
Suze pulls a face. “Bex, that was terrible!”
“I wasn’t ready,” I say hastily. “Let’s try again.” I concentrate for a moment, then gasp. “It’s a girl!”
Suze is shaking her head and wincing. “Totally fake! Bex, you need to get into your character. You need to use some Method.”
Oh no. Here we go. Suze went to drama school for a term before university, so she thinks she’s practically Judi Dench. (It wasn’t a real drama school, like RADA. It was a private one where your father pays and you do cooking in the afternoon. But we don’t mention that.)
“Stand up,” she instructs me. “Do some loosening-up exercises….” She rolls her head around and shakes out her arms. Reluctantly, I copy her. “Now, what’s your motivation?”
“Fooling Luke,” I remind her.
“No! Your interior motivation. Your character.” Suze closes her eyes for a moment, as if communing with the spirits. “You’re a new mother. You’re seeing your baby for the first time. You’re delighted…yet surprised…. The sex is not what you expected…. You’ve never been so amazed in your life…. Really feel it….”
“It’s…a boy!” I clutch at my chest. Suze is whirling her arms at me.
“More, Bex! Again, with passion!”
“It’s a boy! My God, it’s a BOY!!!” My voice resounds around the kitchen, and a spoon falls off the counter onto the floor.
“Hey, that was pretty good!” Suze looks impressed.
“Really?” I’m panting.
“Yes! You’ll definitely fool him. Let’s do the test.”
As I head to the sink for some water, Suze rips the box open and pulls out a syringe.
“Ooh, look,” she says cheerfully. “You have to have an injection.”
“An injection?” I look round in dismay.
“‘The blood test is quick and easy to perform,’” she reads aloud from the leaflet. “‘Simply ask a doctor, nurse, or other qualified person to take a vial of blood from a vein.’ Here’s the needle,” she adds, taking out a plastic box. “I’ll be the doctor.”
“Right.” I nod, trying to hide my qualms. “Er, Suze…have you ever actually done an injection before?”
“Oh, yes.” She nods confidently. “I’ve injected a sheep. Come on!” She’s fitting the needle to the syringe. “Roll up your sleeve!”
A sheep?
“So, what do we do with the vial of blood?” I ask, playing for time.
“We send it away to the lab,” says Suze, reaching for the leaflet. “‘Your results will be posted to you in anonymous, discreet packaging. Please expect them within’”—she turns the page—“‘approximately ten to twelve weeks.’”
What?
“Ten to twelve weeks?” I grab the leaflet from her. “What good is that? I’ll have had it by then.” I turn the pages over, trying to find some express delivery option, but there isn’t one. At last I give up and subside onto a bar stool in disappointment. “Twelve weeks. There’s no point even doing it!”
Suze sighs and sits down beside me. “Bex, didn’t you read any of the instructions before you bought this test? Didn’t you find out how it worked?”
“Well…no,” I admit. “I thought it would be like a pregnancy stick test. With a blue line and a pink line.”
Stupid rubbishy test. It cost me forty quid too. What a total rip-off. I mean, do they think pregnant women are that desperate to know what sex their baby is? It’s only a few months to wait, for goodness’ sake. And it’s not like it matters. As long as it’s a healthy baby, then really, what is the—
