The Two Lives of Lydia Bird(77)
‘I look at you standing here today, Freddie, and my heart … well, I wonder how it can hold so many things inside it without bursting its seams.’ I raise his hand and lay it over my heart. ‘It’s full of wishes and one days and if onlys. It’s full of our yesterdays, all of them gathered here in one place for safekeeping. It’s full of our tomorrows too. The faces of our children, all the places we’d go, our triumphs and our hardships.’ I lay my hand on his chest now; his heartbeat beneath my palm, mine beneath his. ‘My life has been meshed with yours since I was fourteen years old.’ He stares into my eyes, and we are connected. I feel him profoundly, in every atom of my body, in every version of our world revolving around every version of the sun. ‘Time changes everything in the end, Freddie, and I’ve realized now that that’s okay, because what we have is more than just here, or just now. You and me, we’re all the time, and we’re always, and we’re everywhere. If I live a million lifetimes, I’ll find you in all of them, Freddie Hunter.’
I look at him, and he looks at me, and we cry. Not great heaving sobs that make everyone uncomfortable, but small silent streams that become rivers and then seas. I want to remember us this way always.
The celebrant is about to declare us husband and wife, and I can’t wait to hear the words spoken aloud, to declare us married, and the bells are ringing and ringing and ringing, louder and ever more insistent. I’m shaking, physically shaking with the sudden, herculean effort of just staying here. I can’t keep a limb still. The bell doesn’t sound like a wedding bell any more, and however hard I try and however much I don’t want to, I’m splicing away from them, spiralling through darkness, and my pyjamas are damp with sweat from the effort. How can I be wearing my pyjamas? I can still hear the wedding bells. But then I realize it isn’t bells. It’s my mobile, blaring and fractious on my bedside table, beckoning to me from one world into the next. I can’t bear the noise nor the feelings of absolute, savage distress as I grope for it, still half asleep. Maybe I can go back. Maybe, if I can just hang on to the vestiges of sleep, I can tumble through the barn door again before it closes. Even as I cling to these thoughts, I see the neon-blue name on my phone screen through my lashes. Elle. I barrel awake, terrified.
‘Lyds, I’m on my own.’ My sister’s voice is so pain-twisted I barely recognize it. ‘The baby … Help.’
Saturday 20 July
I’m there before the ambulance arrives, still in my PJs. I dialled 999 from my landline, all the while talking to Elle on my mobile. ‘Hold on,’ I told her, panicking because I couldn’t find my car keys, shoving my feet into my boots as I stumbled out on to the pavement. ‘They’re coming, I’m coming, blink and I’ll be there,’ I said.
From what she’s managed to tell me in short, jerky gasps, I know the baby is coming, David is away with work and she doesn’t know why it’s so bad so fast. I don’t either; my only experience of childbirth to date has been the pregnant fairground goldfish I won when we were kids. We called her Ariel, for obvious reasons, and watched in fascinated horror when she delivered a snowstorm of eggs several days later, disinterestedly puffing them out behind her like a fake snow machine in need of new batteries. I’ve got that and a few episodes of Call the Midwife under my belt; neither of those things have even slightly qualified me to be the only person around when my sister goes into labour.
All of this flashes through my mind as I screech to a halt in her street five minutes away, feeling through my keys for the one to her front door as I dash up the garden path. I have her key and my mum’s; another thing they insisted on after the accident.
‘I’m here, Elle, I’m here,’ I bend to shout through the letter box, finding the right key at last and jabbing it at the lock. I leave the door on the latch for the ambulance crew before I dash upstairs; something from Call the Midwife must have sunk in after all.
She’s sitting on the edge of her bed, at the end, her arms gripped around the wooden bedpost as if she’s on a sinking ship. Her dark hair is plastered to her head with sweat and her face is a study of panic and relief rolled into one when I kneel in front of her and put my hands on her knees.
‘It’s too early, Lyds,’ she whispers, staring at me wide-eyed. She’s shaking hard enough to make her teeth rattle. ‘Three weeks.’
‘That’s okay,’ I tell her, because the ambulance dispatcher assured me it should be when I asked a few minutes ago. ‘Babies are born safely this early all the time.’
Elle doesn’t answer; she can’t because her body is gripped by what must be another contraction, twisting her up with pain, making her moan like a wounded animal. It subsides slowly and I move to sit beside her, my arm around her shoulders as she slumps against me.
‘How long between contractions?’ I ask, even though I don’t really know what the answer should be. ‘Roughly?’
‘Not enough,’ she breathes when she can. ‘Nowhere near enough.’
‘Okay,’ I say, rubbing her back. There’s blood on her legs, but I don’t say anything. ‘Shall we do some breathing exercises?’
Jesus, I hope she knows what to do because it’s a sure-fire fact I don’t. I wish I had taken more interest when she told me about the NCT classes she’d been to. That I hadn’t been so bloody self-absorbed. Thankfully, Elle nods and breathes in more deeply than she has since I arrived, exhaling on a long hiss.