Reading Hello!

Hello! again

The contractions have eased, and the monitor, a flat plastic disc which
has been strapped to H-J's belly for about half-an-hour, has recorded
the slightly alarming fact that there is insufficient variability in
the baby's heartbeat.

'Either baby's sleeping,' Bern pronounces, dropping the definite
article as is common in infantspeak, 'or the placenta's not working
properly.'

Her Caledonian tones are clipped and diffident. 'The risk of a mature
placenta,' she continues, and now I am visualising a creamy wedge of
farmhouse cheddar that will go nicely with the shiny Bramley, 'is that
baby can become distressed.'

H-J goes into another contraction, standing by the bed in Room Three,
the smallest (and only vacant) room on the labour ward. She tilts her
head back, closes her eyes and blows softly and deliberatively. Her
knees are slightly bent and she sways rhythmically on her hips. She
looks like a tribal dancer. Tranced, transported away to a world of her
own. I feel pride that she is coping.

The contraction passed, she returns to the Hello! open before her on
the mattress, which she had started flicking through in the waiting
room. She is putting on such a brave face. She seems to be reducing the
pain to no more than an irritating interlude in her concentrated snoop
into the lives of celebrities and minor Royals.

'It's amazing what make-up artists can do to actors,' she says
casually, her attention fixed now on a picture sequence of an actress
called Olivia Hussey, who is being transformed by the hands of a
celebrity face artist into Mother Teresa. Hussey, 50, will portray the
late nun in a movie, H-J explains.

We decide to play a game of Scrabble.

But only manage two clues...