"That's great," he said, sounding all excited. "Kate's beautiful. Please bring her."

"Okay then," I said, a little taken aback at his enthusiasm, and we made an arrangement to meet in town the following day.

I went back into Mum.

"Who was that?" she asked, looking at my flushed, happy face.

I opened my mouth to tell her and I'm afraid to tell you that I stalled at the final hurdle.

I just couldn't tell her.

I really didn't know why.

Or maybe I did.

Maybe because it was no longer innocent.

Maybe it never was.

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sixteen

The following day brought it home to me good and proper, not that I had failed to notice already, how my life had been altered forever by my having given birth to Kate.

Especially one of the most important areas of my life.

I speak, of course, of the shopping area of my life.

My old shopping life, like the morning dew in the midday sun, gone forever.

No more running into a clothes shop, picking thirty or so garments up off the racks and then spending a leisurely six hours or more in the changing room admiring myself.

No sir!

You'd be amazed the difference having a child strapped to your front makes. Ease of movement greatly hampered. Not to mention the terrible fear I had that someone was going to bump into Kate and hurt her.

Or worse still, wake her.

It hadn't been too bad that day in the supermarket where civilized serene mothers glided through the roomy aisles. I trusted them not to jostle and bump Kate.

But this was Saturday afternoon, in clothes shops, for God's sake!

These girl shoppers were surely mercenaries who had been given the afternoon off from causing bloodshed and mayhem somewhere like the former Yugoslavia.

Vicious, I'm telling you.

Crazed.

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I couldn't relax and just look for something to wear.

I stood at the door of one shop, a little bit dazed, swerving and ducking the passing shoppers as I wondered if I was a jeans and sweatshirt girl, or if I was an ankle-length skirt and cropped sweater kind of woman.

I mean, what was I now?

It was so long since I'd bought regular clothes.

Ones that weren't jeans, I mean.

Or ones that didn't have expanding adjustable Velcro waists. Or acres and acres of fabric. In fact, it was only a week since I'd started wearing normal underwear again.

Let me explain.

Maybe you don't know it, but you don't return to normal living--and, more important, normal clothes--the moment you give birth.

It's a long time before certain bodily processes stop. I don't want to sound unnecessarily gory here but can I just say that I could have given Lady Macbeth a run for her money.

Don't talk to me about blood being everywhere, missus!

And because of that I'd had to wear these funny mesh paper-type under- pants.

They were horrible and they were huge.

Armpit huggers.

But I'm happy to announce that the previous week normal underwear had been restored. That's right, I repeat, normal underwear had been re- stored.

What about the rest of my clothes?

I was no longer a pregnant woman.

I was just a woman.

So what was I going to wear?

I had so little to define me now.

I wouldn't be going back to work for ages, so I didn't have to buy clothes for that.

So I didn't even have that to give me form.

I was just shopping for me.

Whoever she was.

I picked up a couple of little dresses from a rack and

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pushed through the hordes of people to get to the changing room, practic- ally bent double over Kate to protect her.

A further shock awaited me at the changing room.

Where on earth was I going to put Kate?

She wasn't exactly like a gym bag that you just fling on the floor.

A quick U-turn and back the way I came, easing my way through the throng, with my head lowered and thrust forward so that I looked a bit like a bull. I bought a lot of things anyway, even though I hadn't tried them on. I had to buy something.

After all, I had a reputation to uphold.

There was a time when my name was legendary among Women Who Shop. A time when there was no such thing as choosing between the black pair and the green pair. No such thing as standing, agonizing, my index finger pressed to my face, my brow furrowed in girlish consternation.

No siree, I bought both of them.

And quite apart from upholding my reputation, I hadn't a stitch to wear. And I had a man to impress.

I paid for everything with the credit card.

Or, I suppose I should say that James did.

I was quite amazed that alarm bells didn't go off when the assistant passed the bags over the counter to me and vanloads of policemen and German Shepherd dogs didn't rush into the shop and drag me off.

Because I was sure that I had spent miles over the limit.

After my halfhearted, yet nonetheless prolific purchasing, I went off to meet Adam, who was, after all, my real reason for coming into town.

If I'm perfectly honest, the shopping was just a ruse.

A cunning ploy.

I fought my way up the street, arms protectively around Kate.

Wave after wave of shoppers came toward me.

Touch my child and I'll kill you, I thought fiercely, looking angrily at passersby.

Who, in their innocence, looked very startled and afraid.

Apart from the anxiety about Kate's getting hurt, I became aware of an- other funny feeling in my stomach.

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Indigestion?

With a curious little shock I realized that the funny feeling was butterflies.

Butterflies that were dancing jigs in my intestines. They had obviously pushed back the tables and chairs in my stomach and were going for it in a big way. Linking arms and swinging each other around and high-kicking and whooping and changing partners and generally having a wild old time for themselves.

Oh dear, I thought, realization dawning, so it's official.

I have a crush on Adam.

Or should I say I HAVE A CRUSH ON ADAM!!!!!

Should celestial trumpets have blown? Should I have suddenly seen the world with pink fuzzy edging? Should I have walked, or indeed run, the rest of the way to meet him in slow motion? And be swung slowly into his arms, twirling around and around, both of us smiling like joyful idiots?

But no, being me, I had to go straight into worry mode. I reluctantly dragged my feet the rest of the way to meet him, my head working at high speed.