The Love of My Life(62)

In the kitchen I found a salad, my grandmother, and my daughter. My perfect girl. And, oh God, she was perfect; a tiny ornament, a plum, a goddess in miniature. I hadn’t named her yet, but I would, when things slowed down. There were baby clothes to buy, and I needed a breast pump, and I’d promised to help several women on the postnatal ward. A lot of them were really struggling.

‘You don’t know what fear is until you become a parent,’ a mother had said to me yesterday. She’d been in the bed next to mine on ward A300. ‘You really have no idea.’

I told her I understood but that it was important not to be scared, especially now, at the height of her feminine powers. I tried to talk about it again later, but she was asleep and didn’t wake up even when I got out of bed and poked her. I asked the midwives if she was alive and they said she was just exhausted because this was her fourth child.

I’d wanted her to know that nobody need be afraid: we were women, us mothers, we were warriors. Nothing could get in our way.

Granny was holding my little girl in the worn armchair she kept in the corner, in the place any sane person would put a dishwasher. She smiled at me, above my baby’s soft head.

I went and crouched in front of her. My daughter. She was a beautiful thing; downy and warm with small red hands and feathery eyelashes. She slept for two hours and then woke to feed, just like they told me she should; she latched on well and seldom cried. I couldn’t wait to take her out for a walk. Granny had said I should wait a while but Granny was being infuriatingly cautious at the moment. Her daughter had died shortly after giving birth to me, so I supposed it was old trauma. But Granny had always been so fearless!

‘I really think we should go for a walk,’ I said now. ‘The neighbours will want to meet her. And besides, we need to talk. I’m worried that you’re anxious, Granny, I want to help.’

‘Oh, I’m fine,’ she said. ‘But you mustn’t overstretch yourself. The Heath isn’t going anywhere and Charlie’s in no hurry.’

Charlie was Granny’s dog. She must have shut him in the garden, because I hadn’t seen him since we got back. He was raven-black like the sky outside.

‘Hey, by the way,’ I said. ‘The sky—’

I paused. The sky had returned to normal in the space of a few minutes.

‘Did you see the sky?’ I asked, sharply. Something did not feel right. Something did not feel right at all. The light outside was bright, now, but brassy, as if there was a nuclear cloud above us.

Granny craned round, trying not to wake my daughter. ‘Did I see the sky do what? It’s not going to rain, is it?’

‘No, it went dark. Well, black, actually, but now it’s . . .’

I stopped. People in authority took babies away from women who started saying crazy things. I’d nearly lost my girl to adoption; I wasn’t going to lose her to a bunch of hormones.

‘Obviously, I’m just being stupid,’ I said, and put the salad in the fridge. I didn’t have time to eat.

A wave of unspecified dread broke over me as I turned back to Granny, so I smiled. I’d been feeling euphoric, since my daughter had been born – all-conquering, glorious. I wasn’t ready for the emotional crash everyone said to expect.

Hormones. Just hormones: not everyone got the baby blues. Besides, it had been the weird midwife who’d warned me about this emotional dip, the one who sometimes used strange dialectical words I didn’t know. Almost like a code – as if she was testing to see if I was a member of her cult.

I crouched down again in front of my daughter and then stood up, forgetting to hold onto something, because the panic reappeared. I gasped at the pain in my abdomen. ‘I might go for a drive,’ I said. ‘If she’s still asleep?’

Granny frowned. Behind her, the radio played quietly. Exotic-sounding voices from across the Atlantic, maybe in Hawaii, or Malibu.

‘If she’s still asleep?!’ Granny said. ‘Oh, Emily, you need to rest. Why don’t you go and have a nap now? You can’t drive. Not for another five and a half weeks.’

I’d forgotten about the driving ban. But that was just for the really poorly mothers, whose C-section wounds got infected, or something like that. I was healthy and well. So incredibly well; my body was doing all the things a new mother’s body should with the most beautiful precision. I loved it.

The door!

I went too fast to answer it, and jarred my wound again. It was the midwife, wearing a strange uniform like a 1970s postman. I let her in, but the sight of her made me anxious. She acted as if we were old friends, but I’d never seen her before.

I answered her questions carefully. While we were talking, the same subterranean dread I’d had in the kitchen with Granny resurfaced, pulling me towards a crevasse. I talked my way through it.

The midwife asked some rather probing questions, and in the end I had to ask her what exactly her training was, which offended her less than I expected. My thoughts began to pick up speed. Who was she? When was she leaving? I wanted to dance. I needed to get a breast pump.

After a while we had a look at my little girl.

‘Oh, you’re a lovely boy,’ she said, undressing my daughter. ‘Look at you!’

‘She’s a girl,’ I said tightly. I didn’t have a good feeling about this woman.

The midwife stopped and looked over her shoulder at me. ‘Is there any chance of a cup of tea?’ she asked, after an extended pause.