Page 41 of The Book Swap

I think that for the first time ever, I’m more equipped for this situation than Georgia is, and it feels...empowering. She’s out of her comfort zone, and that’s the zone I’ve been living in since the day I walked out of Traitor and into this new weird existence. It’s almost as though being out of my comfort zone is my new comfort zone.

I walk up to Reception and check Georgia in. She takes a seat on the first chair she sees, clutching her hands between her thighs. It reminds me of a photo we have of her when she was little and was waiting to hold me as a newborn baby. Nervous. Excited. Afraid to love.

I walk toward her, surveying my sister, and stop for a second, not sure why I have and then realizing all at once.

“Come with me a sec,” I say, leading her toward the sign for the toilets. She follows me, mute, which is how I know just how nervous she really is.

I pull her into the accessibility toilet and close the door.

“What was your plan with this?” I ask, signaling toward her outfit.

She looks down and back up.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, you look amazing. But it’s a full-length, skintight gray dress. For a scan. Were you just going to hoist it up to your boobs and lie there almost naked?”

Georgia raises a hand to her mouth. “I didn’t think. Fuck, I haven’t even shaved my legs. Or my vag. Surely they won’t need to see those bits?”

“Well, they won’t have much choice currently.”

Her lip starts to wobble, but I’m already pulling down my jeans and wriggling out of them. I hand them to her and pull my T-shirt and jumper off in one.

“That was impressively fast.”

Georgia takes her dress off, and hands it to me. She’s so nervous. I try not to think about the sweat patches I’m about to press against my own armpits. She’d do it for me, I think.

We walk back out, me feeling entirely unlike myself in this dress, and Georgia wearing a grimace which might have to do with the scan, or the outfit. A male nurse appears and gives a warm smile.

“Georgia?”

“Yes.”

He nods and we follow him around the glass railing, definitely enough to give me vertigo as it gives a clear visual right down to the ground floor. He takes us into a room, which has a bed and screens at the ready.

A female radiographer turns to stare at us from the computer.

“I’ll be doing your scan today and my colleague here will be assisting,” she says.

“We’re not a couple, she’s my sister,” Georgia blurts out, moving to sit on the bed. “There’s no dad. Or there is—obviously!—but he doesn’t know, and—”

“She’s nervous,” I interrupt. “I think if you do this as quickly as possible, it’ll be less painful for everyone involved.”

Georgia mouths a thank-you at me and sits there, mute.

Once she’s finally in position, jeans pulled down and T-shirt and jumper pulled up, the radiographer begins to scan Georgia’s flat, toned stomach.

I’ve heard people joke that you can’t see anything clearly on these scans. How it doesn’t look like a baby, just a blob—but the moment my niece or nephew comes into view on that screen, I see it. Gasping, I cover my mouth and look over to Georgia. She’s biting her lip, staring at the screen at the end of the bed.

“We have a heartbeat,” she says, looking toward us, smiling. “Now I just need to do a few standard checks, but so far, it’s all looking good.”

I move toward Georgia and grab her hand. It feels cold, and I grip it tighter, rubbing it to warm it.

“H-how big is it right now?” she asks.

“It’s about the size of a lime, more or less,” the radiographer replies, eyes fixed on the screen as she starts muttering sentences to the man who came to get us, and he dutifully types them into the computer.

“Haven’t you got an app?” I frown. “For the baby? All the ‘today it’s making its own eyelashes’ stuff? The girls at work used to live for them.”

Georgia shakes her head and I don’t say anything more. Finally, I understand what she’s been doing these past few weeks. She’s been living in denial. I think she’s only just realizing there is definitely an actual baby in there. Maybe there was a small part of her that was wondering if she’d got it all wrong. Maybe even hoping she had.

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