Page 15 of Fast Forward

Where are you? Am waiting and starving! I’m eating for two remember. Diora.

Oh good, I can narrow down my search to only pregnant-looking, twenty-something women. Hopefully there wasn’t a baby boom going on or anything. But what if she’s only a couple of months along and wasn’t showing yet? Hang on, if she was pregnant, then that meant I was going to be… a grandmother. No way!

This couldn’t be happening. Real grandmas knitted and had short curly mauve hair and stored tissues up their sleeves, didn’t they? I was too young for this. Two children and a grandchild-to-be all in one day? I needed Valium. Preferably intravenously. Damn! I should have asked the doctor for a prescription.

I trudged onwards and came to the densely populated food court, where noisy kids ate greasy hot chips and drank cola while their mothers yelled at them to sit still and eat quietly.

Squish. I looked down to find a mangled chip stuck to my shoe, courtesy of the rosy-cheeked kid I’d just passed whose hot chips were spilling out of their container onto the table and floor. Shaking it off, I continued my trek, past a table of overweight teenagers sharing a pizza, one of them burping even louder than Ryan had this morning. Charming.

At another table, a woman with an exposed pregnant belly bursting forth from her skimpy singlet top, pulled out a cigarette and lit it. A security guard instructed her to put it out. She spat in his face and he promptly escorted her from the food court. Hopefully that wasn’t Diora.

A cleaner frantically scrubbed one of the tables with some sort of electric cleaning brush, clearly unable to keep up with the demand, as patrons got up and left without taking their scraps to the rubbish bin. Disgusting. I was used to eating in fancy restaurants and hip tapas bars, but was now forced to endure what can only be described as… squalor.

I glanced around the crowd, eyeing the stomachs of young women like some weirdo. There was another pregnant woman, but her skin was too dark to be my daughter. A few other women sat by themselves, but I couldn’t see their stomachs below the tables.

Diora, Diora, where are you? I know. I’ll call her! Like a pro, I opened the contacts screen on my e-pad and found her name. Diora Bellows. She must be married, or at least had the good sense to change her unforgiving surname. Diora McSnelly would be like fine wine served with baked beans. I pressed call and waited.

“The person you are calling is on another call. Please call back later.”

Oh, why now? Which one are you, Diora? My eyes continued searching. And then I overheard an interesting conversation…

“No, I specifically ordered a deluxe pram, not a budget pram. What kind of mother do you think I am? As if I’d trust the safety of my unborn child to a budget pram, are you crazy?” The voice came from somewhere to my right. “Plus, they look awful. Why in the name of Dior anyone would want to buy an olive-green pram is beyond me. Or did the designers think it would go well with baby poo? Anyway, I expect your delivery driver to return to my house immediately to collect the mistaken item and deliver the correct pram. My husband will be there, I’ll let him know to expect you. Goodbye.”

I turned my head to the source of the confident voice; a beautiful young woman with glossy black hair, tied back into a sleek ponytail. Hoop earrings dangled at her cheeks and she shook her head, assumingly at the injustice of the budget pram incident. Understandably. Budget just meant crappy quality. Everyone knew that.

As I walked nearer, I could see a large mound at her front. She fiddled with her e-pad and spoke again. “Honey, I just called them. It’s all sorted. They’re going to deliver the correct pram within the next hour, so don’t go anywhere, okay? Huh? No, she’s not here yet. I’m bloody starving… okay, love you too. Bye.”

Yep. Gotta be Diora. Either that or my long lost identical twin. Minus the large abdomen of course. Actually, mine wasn’t far off the mark.

“Mum, you’re here, finally!” She tried to stand, but failed. “Come here, will you?” She gestured with her hands.

I leaned in and she kissed me on the cheek. It felt all tingly and weird and for a moment my legs became like jelly.

“Happy birthday! I hear you’ve had a bit of an adventure this morning?”

“I guess I have, after my freak-out, followed by the doctors and…”

“Wait, you went to the doctors? Are you all right? Is it your indigestion again? Or your hormones?”

Oh, so she meant the bungy jumping. I thought she was using the word adventure as a nicer alternative to mid-life-crisis. “I’m fine, just a little anxiety.”

“So how was it… the bungy jumping?” Diora didn’t wait for a response. “I can’t believe you actually did it! My mum, leaping off the edge with no fear in the world! You’re so brave. I’d chicken out for sure. Not that they’d let an eight-and-a-half-month pregnant woman do it anyway. Wouldn’t want the baby coming out the wrong end!”

By the sounds of it she didn’t need to bungy jump, words spewed from her mouth like she’d done three jumps in a row. I now understood what Ryan meant when he said she’d talk my ears off.

“I’m still a little jittery, but I survived, so that’s the main thing,” I said.

She nodded, then rubbed her stomach. “Well, if I don’t eat soon I’ll get grumpy and start telling people off for parting their hair the wrong way or having overgrown eyebrows. Let’s eat, shall we?”

Yep. My very own mini-me. “You stay here. I’ll get us something. What would you like?” I asked.

“Hot chocolate and a slice of chocolate mud cake. With chocolate ice cream on the side. And chocolate sprinkles.”

Okay, the resemblance ends there. No way would I eat that amount of chocolate in one month let alone one day. Although at the mention of the word chocolate, my stomach grumbled and my previously dry mouth salivated. Chocolate cake would be nice, just this once. It was my birthday and this technically wasn’t my real body. Besides, it’s beyond help anyway, might as well indulge.

Within five minutes of bringing a tray of chocolate goodness to our table, Diora had wolfed down her cake and ice cream and worked her way through the hot chocolate. All while interrogating me for the details of this morning’s adventures.

“Well, the adventures don’t end there. The day’s only just begun and you’ve got plenty more ahead of you,” she said. “I can’t wait for tonight. It’s going to be so much fun!”

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