We Own the Sky(18)

Anna raised her eyebrows. “You’re not funny, you know.”

“Not even a little bit,” I said, touching her back and tickling her arm.

“Don’t, please don’t,” she said, giggling. “It hurts when I laugh, with all this extra weight.”

“So what is it then, EBM?”

“Expressed breast milk.”

“Aha,” I said, turning away from her, surreptitiously checking the West Ham score on my phone.

“There’s this woman,” Anna said, “I think she might be one of the admins.

She constantly shares all her craft ideas, all the a-maa-zing things she does with her kids. Today she posted, asking where she could find polystyrene beads because she needed to fill her handmade breastfeeding pillow. That led to a discussion about whether the chemicals in the polystyrene could infuse her breast milk.”

“What was the conclusion?”

“Lentils and dried beans. Cheaper and safer.”

“Of course.”

Anna looked down mournfully and stroked her bump with the tips of her

fingers. There was a line of moisture on her top lip and brow.

I put my glass down, inching closer to her on the bathroom floor. “Shall I do your back?”

“You might have to.” She leaned forward, and I watched little drops of water scurry down her back. Her skin felt hot and smooth, like a wet waterslide in the sun.

Anna got out of the bath and walked back into the bedroom. She waddled a

little: tiny, slow penguin steps, as if she was walking over pebbles. She didn’t have the careless confidence of other pregnant women. When she slept, she would only lie on her side. If she bumped her bump, she would agonize about it for days.

I understood why. Because even now, a few weeks until he was due, I felt like we were living on borrowed time. I expected his heart to stop beating. A black hole on a scan. An evacuation. We didn’t like to talk about names.

I sat next to Anna on the bed. Without warning, she started to cry and nuzzled her head into my chest.

“Are you okay, sweetheart?” I said, stroking her hair.

“Yes,” she said, wiping her eyes and sniffing a little. “I think I’m just a little hormonal. That stupid Facebook group got me all worked up.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m just worried I won’t be good enough. Be a good enough mother, I mean.

Because I’m just not like these women, and I don’t want to be like these

women.”

I touched her arm, and she angled her body toward me.

“But then,” she said, “I suppose it’s nice to worry about that, instead of what we usually worry about.”

We lay next to each other in bed, her lips inches from mine, staring into each other’s eyes. That was what always drew me in. Her eyes. The soft pump of her pupils; her eyelids, as thin as sugar paper, fluttering with each beat of her heart.

“I can’t wait,” I said, my voice cracking. “I just wish Dad was here to see it.”

Anna pulled me closer and stroked the back of my neck. “I know. It’s just so unfair. He would have been so proud.”

Dad died of a heart attack two days after we told him the news. Little Steve, who had a spare key, found him in bed, as always sleeping on Mom’s side. Next to him, on the bedside table, was the ultrasound photo we had given him.

I didn’t thank him enough. All those night shifts he did in the taxi to buy me a computer so I could learn to code. All those wonderful afternoons at West Ham.

All the times he stayed up late, nodding off in the living room, making sure I came safely home. All the love.

Anna looked at me, her eyes still a little damp. “I can’t wait,” she said. “To see his little face.”

“Me too.”

“I can’t believe that it’s real,” she said. “When you want something so badly, when you wait so long, and then finally—finally—it’s actually happening, I just...” She couldn’t speak, her words trailing off into tears.

  *

I was outside in the garden, experimenting with my remote-control helicopters.

My toys, Anna called them, although they were anything but. I had a new one, a trainer flyer, with coaxial blades, and I had welded a little digital camera to the underside. I managed to get the helicopter up in the air, but the camera added too much weight and it crashed into the rose trellis.

I listened, thinking I might have heard a shout. Any day now, any day. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Anna was upstairs, resting on the bed. She was a week overdue now and, as we had been told, the waiting was the worst part.

I picked up the helicopter and tried one more time after the wind had died down. It took off and I managed to keep it steady, hovering alongside the French windows, but then a gust of wind smashed it into the glass, snapping off one of the rotors.

“Rob,” I heard Anna shouting, just as I walked back into the living room.

“Yeah?”

“Can you come up?”

I ran upstairs and found her sitting, with her legs apart, on the end of the bed.

“Shit, are you okay?”

“I think I’ve had contractions.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she said, steadying herself by putting her hands on her knees. “I timed it. And it’s definitely unlike anything I’ve felt before.” She checked her watch, a chunky Casio that she praised for its night-light and accuracy.