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    Anyway, I look at myself from all the angles in the mirrors, ring the
bell and wait. Then, during the wait, I lose heart. My joie de vivre evaporates, and I become suffused with a mixture of shame and anxiety that
gives way to foreboding. Standing half-clothed in a cubicle, under a merciless
white light, makes me feel like the victim of something nameless and medical.
This feeling gets such a grip on me that by the time the assistant comes in,
I’m sure she’s going to tell me I’ve got six months to
live.
    The sales floor is full of lovely, satiny, lacy things, in marvellous
colours, but all the ones she’s brought are utilitarian and devoid of
flounce – like how you’d imagine a government bra designed for
prisons. Is it because I’m pregnant, or because I look as if I’ve
had too much fun in my life? Does she think I need taking down a peg or two? I
feel suddenly very small and vulnerable, like a refugee about to be
deloused.
    ‘You won’t be able to wear that.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘You can’t wear underwired when you’re
pregnant.’ Why? Does the wire transmit subversive messages to the fetus?
There’s a conspiracy here to make me be ugly, I know it.
    ‘As you get bigger, it compresses the top of your
tummy.’
    ‘Oh.’ My tummy’s not going to be up HERE! (It is, of
course.) I put on one of the others. She stares at me, and with the expression
surveyors adopt when confronted by subsidence, sinks into a morose silence.
Eventually she says: ‘How’s that for you?’ in the tone a
hangman might use about his rope. Two more, Amish-type bras are tried on.
    ‘And when do I get the – nursing one?’
    ‘Well, obviously not now!’
    ‘No, of course.’ How stupid.
    ‘You have to come back – when you’re
bigger.’
    ‘Right. Right.’ How soon can I get out of here? I attempt to
hide the scrotum under my bag, but she spots it and, like a health inspector,
pronounces it condemned.
    ‘Well, that one’s totally gone.’
    ‘Oh, I know!’ Why do I want her approval ?
    ‘Do you handwash your bras? You should, you know.’
    ‘Yes, yes, of course, I will, I promise,’ I babble,
desperate to return to a society where I am no longer a number in a cubicle but
a free woman. Somehow, I manage to display a bit of spine and take, along with
the bra for offenders, one in black shiny satin. It’s in the sports
range, but I fearlessly break the rules and demand they take my £21.
    I tell Peter: ‘I’m never going into another cubicle,
I’ll tell you that.’
    ‘How are you going to vote?’ (It is May 1997.)
    ‘Do pregnant women have the vote?’
    ‘And anyway, won’t you have to go back again when your tits
get really huge?’
    ‘Well! As you weren’t there to support me, you have to come
and do the next stage.’
    ‘Er …’
    Things have improved hugely since, but not that many years ago maternity
clothes were still like punishments devised by some extreme seventeenth-century
sect. They seemed to symbolize the loss of not only your figure but your whole
adult identity, managing to make you look like both a baby and an old maid at
the same time, the sort of woman whose elderly parents still choose her
clothes.
    The main style on offer is a kind of Midwestern Vernacular: huge smocks,
drawstring skirts like shower curtains, and trousers with expanding panels in
the front. Everything is checked . You can have white with blue checks,
or blue with white checks. I haven’t worn any kind of pinafore since
primary school, and they don’t bring back great memories. All I need to
complete the ambience would be a bottle of scent made from disinfectant,
overcooked cabbage and off milk. If I was going to play Anne of Green Gables on
children’s television in Romania, I might, just might, wear this. But
what’s this? All-in-one playsuits ? I’m having a baby, not
trying to dress like one.
    A few yards away Peter is making sicky faces.
    ‘ Dungarees – yeuch!