People LIke Her(64)
“It is, Polly, it really is. But you have to know what this story will do to me—”
“I am really sorry, Emmy, but honestly, I don’t give a shit.”
She hung up.
My finger hovers over my phone for a moment as I wonder whether I should send a WhatsApp explaining what really happened, how I was backed into a corner, how my addled newborn-mum brain was not equipped to deal with the stress, and beg her to forgive me, convince her I’m still the same girl she’s known forever. But I’m not, and she’ll know that.
Then I remember justanothermother, and the damage screenshots can do.
THE INSTAMUM WHO STOLE MY DEAD BABIES: A FORMER FRIEND TELLS ALL.
That is the headline they run with.
Chapter Fifteen
“Emmy said it’s fine.” That was what Grace kept telling me. “She said she used to do it all the time with her little girl, Coco.” I would send her links, show her the official NHS advice, make suggestions about other things they might experiment with. Grace would say she had tried everything else and none of it worked. “Tell her, Jack,” she would say to him, and he would pull an apologetic face.
I used to kick myself for getting her that ticket. A birthday present, it was. Twenty-five pounds for the ticket. Plus forty-five for the Mamabare sweatshirt I bought to go with it (I have always hated giving someone just an envelope). I could not believe how much they were charging. Still, it all felt worth it when Grace’s birthday came around. She put that sweatshirt on straightaway and kept it on the whole afternoon. The ticket she stuck to the fridge door, and every day for the next two weeks, she told me that whenever she went to get some milk or a bit of butter she would see it there and get another little rush of excitement. An evening with Mamabare. Doors seven thirty. A talk and a Q&A session and a chance to meet other mamas. Free glass of sparkling wine provided. She got there at quarter to seven, found them still setting up, walked around the block twice, and ended up having a glass of wine at the pub on the corner. All that week, Emmy had been posting about how excited she was to be meeting her followers face-to-face like this. It was, she said, the first time she had ever been to Guildford.
The truth was, Grace deserved a proper night out. I don’t think she had really had one since Ailsa was born. I did keep offering to come around and babysit, to stay over, but her response was always the same: What was the point? Ailsa was an absolutely beautiful baby, very good-natured most of the time, and you could see they both completely doted on her, but the instant Grace tried to put her down she would start screaming. And I mean really screaming. Turning herself puce. Making the kind of noises that sounded like they were hurting her throat. Getting herself more and more and more worked up. It was okay when Jack was there. At least he could put the baby in the carrier and get her off to sleep for a bit that way, let Grace get a short nap too. Then she could catch up a little in the day on all the sleep she was missing at night. The trouble was, he couldn’t always be there. He had a job to do, and quite often that job took him right to the other end of the country. I could come over sometimes for a morning or an afternoon or an evening as my shifts allowed, but I couldn’t do that every weekend, let alone every night. And every night Grace was faced with the exact same problem: a baby who just would not be put down to sleep. Who would fall asleep in her mother’s arms if she was sitting watching TV, but who would instantly jerk awake and start howling the moment she tried to lower her into the cot next to the sofa. She would eventually drift off if Grace sat on the bed with her and rocked her and cooed to her in the dark for hours, but would immediately stiffen and wake if you made any attempt to get her into her crib. They bought one of those things you attach to the side of the bed, like a kind of sidecar, so the baby can sleep next to you safely. Ailsa lasted about five minutes in it. They tried swaddling. They bought all sorts of ceiling lights and window blinds and white noise boxes and special cushions and God knows what else. Nothing worked.
The first thing that Grace told me when she got in the door that night, when she arrived home, was that she had asked Emmy for her advice. Had asked Emmy whether she had found it difficult when Coco used to have trouble sleeping. Whether she had ever tried cosleeping and what she thought about it.
“Oh yeah?” I said.
I don’t think I really knew much about Mamabare at that stage, just the name, and that Grace thought she was funny and wise and wonderful and honest.
“And what did she tell you?” I asked her.
The whole exchange is still burned vividly into my memory. I can remember exactly where I was standing, in the hallway, and I can remember where Grace was standing, at the bottom of the stairs. She had just taken her coat off, was still standing there with it in her arms.
“She said she and Coco used to cosleep all the time in the beginning. That it was perfectly fine as long as you followed sensible precautions. That for centuries in most cultures around the world it has been the complete norm. She said that actually now that Coco sleeps in her own bedroom and they have the bed to themselves she sometimes misses her.”
“Hmm,” I said.
What I was thinking was: Who is this woman and what qualifies her to go around giving out advice? Was she someone with a background in this sort of thing, some kind of training? Was she a former midwife, something like that?
I was going to ask Grace, but just that moment Ailsa started crying again upstairs.