Not just for CHRISTMAS
THE STORY SO FAR: Feeling under the weather, exhausted and tearful, mum of two teenagers Louisa is convinced she is going through the perimenopause. She discusses her symptoms with her friend Diane, who is dating Louisa’s brother Matthew. Diane tells Louisa’s sister Annabel that Louisa is pregnant. Louisa denies it, but her partner Ben encourages her to do a test. Louisa is reluctant and it ends in a row, after which Ben vanishes. However, a test does reveal Louisa is expecting. But has she lost Ben? She is also worried that everyone has forgotten her 45th birthday on Christmas Eve. Ben turns up on her doorstep after he learns about the baby from Diane. He is thrilled and makes Louisa beans on toast. Maybe, unlike her ex-husband Joe, who left her for a woman she calls the Usurper, Ben is going to stick by her.
Ben’s delighted and supportive response to the news of the baby gives me momentary, glimmering hope that being a 45-year-old, single mum of three, with two fathers, is going to be OK.
Wrong. I’m not out of the woods yet. Ben books an appointment with the midwife because he wants to know we’re both OK before we break the news to everyone. Personally, I’d wait the full 40 weeks and just say I’m eating too many mince pies.
‘You need to face your future,’ Ben says (by