Dinner for Two Read Online Free PDF

just enough neuroses for it not to feel superior to its peers. Together we will give it a love of the written word, a sense of humour and a pretty good dress sense. What’s left: the rest of the child can be made up of various parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and maybe a little bit of the unknown thrown in for good luck. That’s what a pair of dungarees is making me think about in the time that I hold them in my hands, they make me think that anything and everything is possible.
    Ten minutes later my phone rings again and I think it must be Izzy calling to tell me she’s in a cab and will be with me soon but it isn’t. It’s a woman from the photographic studio in Kentish Town where Izzy has been all afternoon. She tells me that Izzy has been taken to hospital with stomach pains. She says I should get there as soon as I can. I leave the shop and start running.

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    It’s nearly seven o’clock by the time I arrive at the obstetrics unit in the Whittington Hospital. I tell a nurse my name and she asks me to take a seat while she finds a doctor to come and speak to me. I don’t sit, I remain rooted to the spot, my eyes fixed on the door through which she has just left. In the cab on the way over I played out the worst-case scenario in my head several times. I told myself that if I anticipated the worst it couldn’t possibly happen.
    The nurse returns with a doctor at her side. He is tall and young, younger than me, and I tell myself that this is good: everything he’s learned will be fresh in his mind. I tell myself that this is a man I can trust. This is a man who won’t fail me. The doctor says hello, shakes my hand and takes me to one side. He explains that Izzy is fine but that she has had a miscarriage. He tells me that miscarriages are relatively common during the early stages of pregnancy, that they happen for any number of reasons, that it shouldn’t stop us trying again in a little while. I ask him if I can see Izzy yet, but he says she’s waiting to see a consultant. His pager goes off and he apologises: he is needed somewhere else in the hospital. I thank him for his time, then watch him walk away. I’m sure he did his best, I tell myself, because he looks like a man who would.
    I know I should call people, Izzy’s mum and my parents especially, but I can’t bring myself to tell them that after all this time and all this soul-searching, everything has been for nothing. The names Izzy and I have dreamed, the hopes we’d had for our child’s future, the love that has filled our hearts – all wasted. It is this that I hate most of all: the loss of potential – the thousands of things that will never take place now because of what has happened. I can find nothing to take comfort from. No matter what happens in the future this child will never be.
    Impatient for further news of Izzy I pace the waiting room. I buy myself some coffee from a drinks machine then let it go cold. I buy a Mars bar from the machine next to it, open the wrapper and throw it away, then finally spot a diversion: a wall display of hospital literature. I scan the dozens of leaflets for one that might help me. There it is. I take it down from the display and then, leaning against the wall, begin to read.
    As I digest the contents I can’t help but think about the person who wrote it. Was he or she a journalist, like me and Izzy? Did they make their living writing hospital pamphlets just as I make mine writing about music? I try to picture them sitting at their computer with a list of ailments and diseases that have to be translated into digestible chunks of normal-speak. Did this person ever imagine who their audience might be? Or did they just sit at their computer, working their way from A to Z of the things that can go wrong with the human body? When I finish reading I screw up the leaflet and throw it into the bin next to me, which is already overflowing with empty drinks cans and polystyrene coffee cups. Of the many