by Amy Bratley
‘You need to feed your baby,’ said a stern midwife, suddenly sweeping back the curtain and leaving a bundle of menus on the bed. ‘Before she dehydrates.’
When Mrs Lelani and Rebecca visited later, Leo held his bandaged broken finger up in the air for the women to inspect.
‘I can’t get over that,’ Mrs Lelani croaked when she’d finished creasing up at the sight of Leo’s finger. ‘I’ve never known anyone to break their partner’s finger during labour. That’s hysterical.’
Leo managed a smile, but obviously wasn’t sharing Mrs Lelani’s hysteria. Mel smiled. Anyone could say anything, and still she would smile. In her overtired, floaty, relieved, exhausted mind-set, she couldn’t have been more serene – apart from the feeding. That hurt like mad. It was only after five minutes of pain that she could cope with it, then her head and heart seemed to fill with stars and feathers and flowers.
‘Are you taking any medication?’ asked Mrs Lelani, concerned. ‘You seem a little spaced out.’
‘No wonder,’ said Bella, protectively. ‘She’s only just given birth. Can’t you remember what that feels like?’
‘Not really,’ Mrs Lelani said. ‘It was about one hundred years ago when I gave birth. I think I blocked it out the moment I’d done it. So, you’re fine then, are you, lovey? What a gorgeous baby you have.’
Mel nodded and beamed. Leo sat on a low armchair, his head level with hers. Occasionally, because Mel’s arms were holding Mabel up as she fed, he swept her hair out of her eyes when it fell. It wasn’t altogether necessary, but Mel was happy he felt needed.
‘So, I bought you green-cabbage leaves,’ said Mrs Lelani, pulling out the head-shaped leaves from her carrier bag and laying them on the bottom of the bed. ‘Put them in your bra in between feeds and they’ll keep your bosoms cool.’
‘That’s right,’ said Bella, putting a bunch of Sweet Williams Rebecca had brought into a vase. ‘They do actually work.’
‘I tried them,’ said Rebecca, who was sitting at the foot of the bed smiling. ‘And I can vouch for them, too.’
Mel asked Leo to pop another chocolate into her mouth. She smiled at her visitors, her mouth full of chocolate while Leo then poured everyone a glass of champagne and handed them around, again pleased that he had a job. He held his glass in the air.
‘I’d like to raise a toast,’ he said. ‘To my wonderful Mel and my beautiful new daughter, who I already love so much it hurts. I promise to love you and look after you both. And I’m sorry, Mel, for everything I’ve put you through.’
His eyes filled with tears, which made everyone else well up. He kissed Mel. Tears rolled down Mel’s cheeks, and Bella wiped them away with a tissue. Everyone sat smiling at one another.
‘I feel like the Queen of Sheba,’ Mel said. ‘Or some kind of empress. I just seem to sit here, and lovely people in smocks bring me food, then my lovely friends bring me gifts.’
‘And cabbage leaves,’ said Mrs Lelani. ‘Don’t forget those.’
‘Yes,’ said Mel. ‘And cabbage leaves. Actually, Ginny did mention them.’
‘I’ve no idea who Ginny is,’ said Mrs Lelani. ‘But I like the sound of her.’
Half an hour later, with Mabel asleep in the hospital cot, her head turned at a weirdly sharp ninety-degree angle which meant that side of her face was completely concealed against the sheet, her arms up above her head as if she were silently cheering she was so happy to have been born, Mel pulled the sheet over her bare legs and up to her waist. Despite the pain from the small tear she had, she felt great.
‘What are those cabbage leaves for again?’ Leo asked, looking puzzled, as Mrs Lelani stood to leave.
‘They’re to help with soreness,’ Mel replied.
‘For the split?’ he asked.
‘It’s called a tear!’ Mel said, exasperated. ‘For God’s sake, Leo! And, no, they’re for breastfeeding pain, to go in my bra.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘This is all just a bit new to me.’
‘Not that new,’ Mrs Lelani muttered into her handbag. Mel stared at her, widening her eyes. Leo blushed crimson red and gulped down another glass of champagne.
‘Yes, well,’ said Leo, ‘we can’t all be perfect.’
‘Oh, Leo,’ said Mrs Lelani affectionately, ‘I’m far from perfect. You should see how much money I owe to Ladbrokes.’
‘Mrs Lelani,’ Mel said, her sides aching with laughing, ‘you are something else.’
Chapter Twenty-nine
Lexi opened the text message: Lexi, I’m near your house, can I pop in? I’m with Rufus. Ax
Alan. She hadn’t expected this. Not a home visit.
‘Oh, Christ!’ she exclaimed. ‘This is just what I don’t need.’
In her flat, sitting at the kitchen table eating toast and dropping crumbs on Poppy, she took a deep breath. She narrowed her eyes, trying, through her sleep-deprived haze, to think straight. What shall I do? Ignore him? Answer him but pretend to be out? He might try to meet me somewhere. She found herself typing, quickly replying, ‘Yep’, then stuffed her fist into her mouth and bit down on her knuckles. Shit. What did I do that for? Lexi looked about the kitchen, her eyes frantically sweeping the cluttered kitchen surfaces. She muttered instructions at herself to tidy up. Glancing down at her outfit, she took a sharp intake of breath. Am I still wearing these maternity trousers? Am I still wearing that black nursing top with stains all over the shoulders? How long have my breasts been flapping around outside my top like this?
‘Gross,’ she said, popping them back inside her bra. ‘Have I even changed clothes since you were born, Poppy?’
It was as if she were facing an inspection from Alan. She feared he might come over with his clipboard and mark her out of ten on how she was doing on her own. Devotion to breastfeeding: 9. Nappy changing: 8. Personal hygiene: 4. Domestic ability: 0. She stood up, holding Poppy, wondering where to begin.
‘Why’s he coming anyway?’ she asked Poppy, who answered with a shriek.
Perhaps he wanted to remind himself of what Lexi was like. He’d probably thought he’d never see her again. Moving into her bedroom, the duvet was hanging off the bed, left over from Lexi having literally rolled out of bed during the night to crawl across the room to tend to Poppy, too tired to stand. She stood by her dressing table and looked at her reflection. Almost grey with tiredness, her skin and eyelids were drooping. She opened her eyes wide and smiled at herself, trying to inject energy into her features. Propping Poppy up on a pillow on the bed, she located her make-up bag and unzipped it, staring at the now unfamiliar objects inside. Make-up seemed a thing of the past, relegated to those days when there was time to care about superficial matters such as her appearance. So not a priority any more. Squirting a blob of Touche Éclat on to her fingers, she smeared a little around her panda eyes but was interrupted by Poppy crying before she could blend it in properly.
‘Oh Poppy,’ she said, wiping her fingers on her top, then picking her up. ‘What’s wrong, baby girl?’
Having forgotten about her make-up, once Poppy was calm she rested her on the bed again and pulled off her dirty black top to change into a clean one. Pulling open a drawer and retrieving a white nursing top from a pile of crumpled clothes, she was sitting in her bra when she glanced up at the door to see Alan standing there, his hand raised, as if he were about to knock. Though she registered it was him, she let out a scream, which made Poppy scream, too. Alan started furiously shaking his head, flapping his hands around and lifting his finger to his lips to silence her. She clapped her hand over her mouth.
‘What the hell?’ she said. ‘Alan, for God’s sake! Normal people use the doorbell.’
Lexi lifted a towel from the floor and clutched it against her half-dressed self, then picked up Poppy, too.
‘I’m sorry, I’ve just got Rufus to sleep,’ he shout-whispered, holding his hands over his eyes. ‘The door was open, and I didn’t want to ring the bell or knock because he wakes up if I even breathe too loud. I t
exted you to tell you I was outside. Did you get it? Sorry if I shocked you. I thought you’d be able to hear me walking across the floorboards. Lexi, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
Yes, she thought. A ghost! That’s exactly how it felt having him in her bedroom again. Like seeing a ghost. She silently shooed him away towards the living room, then quickly pulled on the clean top and, carrying Poppy, followed him into the living room, where he was sitting on an armchair. He was wearing a black jumper that fitted perfectly over his broad shoulders and dark jeans that clung to his thighs, and his jacket was casually strewn over the back of the chair. There was just something overtly male about Alan.
‘Sorry, Lexi,’ he said again, leaning forward on to his knees. ‘Didn’t mean to frighten you.’
Lexi had a flashback to the last time he had been in the flat. Once through the door, they’d been at one another like wild beasts. Now, Lexi felt awkward and uncomfortably self-aware. No one wants to see their significant ex when they look like a pile of crap.
‘You have something white around your eyes,’ said Alan, frowning. ‘I’m not sure what it is.’
Lexi rubbed at the make-up and reddened. Here we go. First box on the clipboard form completed. Appearance: 0.
‘Ok,’ said Lexi, slightly aggressively. ‘So what’s up? Why are you here?’
Alan rubbed his forehead. He sighed and shook his head a little. For a moment, his eyes seemed to glass over. Lexi thought of Katy. ‘How’s it going with Rufus?’ she said, more gently.
Alan smiled. ‘I love Rufus,’ he said. ‘When I hold him in my arms, the world feels right. I knew I wanted children and I couldn’t be happier with him. It’s Katy I’m worried about. She’s my world, but something is happening to her. I’m with her all the time, but she’s not the Katy I married right now and – you know what? I really miss her.’
Right, thought Lexi, her heart sinking. So that’s why you’re here. You need to talk to me about Katy. This is because, when we met, those years ago, you saw me as someone who would listen to you all night long – the 24/7 social worker, ever the listener, ever the sympathizer. Lexi sat down opposite Alan, still holding Poppy, and suddenly didn’t care what she looked like. Alan didn’t care, so why should she? Alan was looking right through her, his thoughts clearly on Katy. But why wouldn’t they be? She was his wife. But Lexi had thought that, just maybe, he would be coming over to say that seeing her again had made him feel something – anything. Ha. What a joke. Blushing, she saw with absolute clarity that her crush on Alan was exactly that, a pure case of unrequited love. She had deluded herself into thinking that something special had passed between them, but it hadn’t. Just as she’d lived in a fantasy world to escape reality as a child, she’d done the same as an adult. Her childhood fantasies of what life should be like had regularly crumbled around her ears. There was a theme developing here. Fantasy was easier than real life.
‘Is Katy unwell?’ she asked, concealing the confused emotions tumbling around in her heart.
Alan looked out of the window for a moment, his expression grave. He linked his fingers together behind his head, which opened up his chest wide enough to beat on, then dropped them down again, his torso deflating like bagpipes.
‘I just don’t know what’s going on,’ he said. ‘She won’t talk to me about it, but I feel like she’s shut down. I feel that she’s wary of Rufus, almost scared of him, and she’s become obsessive about hygiene. One day she’s saying she wants to go to work, another day she stays in bed all day.’
Lexi wondered why she played this role in so many people’s lives. Why did people turn to her? Why had Alan turned to her? Was it because she posed no threat? Or was it her own fault? Had she spent her life getting private information from people in order to get close to them, in order to justify her role in their life? Or maybe it was practice. An image of her as a young girl sitting on the edge of her mother’s bed trying to say something useful while her mother sobbed and complained about her life popped into her head.
‘Do you mind me talking to you like this?’ Alan asked, as if reading her mind. ‘It’s just you’re so easy to talk to. You’re such a nice person.’
Aha! thought Lexi. I’m a nice person. Damned by faint praise!
‘Of course I don’t mind,’ Lexi said. ‘Katy’s probably completely exhausted. I know I’ve never known tiredness like this ever before. I think it twists your brain, you know? The crying, the sleepless nights, the realization that your life has changed beyond recognition. If I don’t nap when Poppy does, I often suddenly burst out crying for no specific reason. I think we all feel a little out of control right now and, if I’m right in saying Katy likes being in control, I can imagine she finds this hard, too. As well as being really happy to have Rufus, of course.’
Alan nodded, but he still looked miserable. He leaned back in his chair and his eyelids looked heavy. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But it seems like more than that. I know you work in health, and I was wondering whether it might be postnatal depression. Do you think it could be?’
Poor Alan, his eyes all big and sad. Lexi felt sorry for him.
‘I think it’s too early to say at the moment,’ she said. ‘Rufus is only a few weeks old. Give Katy time. We’re all struggling in one way or another, and perhaps she needs more support than she lets on.’
Poppy had started to cry and, deftly, Lexi attached her to her breast, not making eye contact with Alan. Years ago, her breasts had taken a very different role in this flat. How times change.
‘She’s usually so in control,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen her like this. I feel like, though she’s in the room and going through the motions with Rufus, she’s not really there. It’s not really how I imagined it to be. I don’t know why, but I let myself think we’d be taking trips to the beach, smiling a lot and cuddling Rufus together—’
His eyes misted over. He swallowed and exhaled. ‘Sorry, Lexi,’ he said, lifting up his hand by way of apology. ‘Last thing you need is this, but the first person I wanted to talk to about this was you. You’re about the only person I’ve ever spoken to about anything personal.’
He looked at her and their eyes locked. Lexi’s cheeks burned.
‘That night we spent together,’ he said, ‘it was so long ago, but I still remember all our conversations. I had never been so frank with anyone before that night. All that stuff I told you about my brother, I’d not told anyone.’
Lexi nodded, remembering the sad story. His brother had run away from the family when he was fifteen because, he wrote in his letters, he couldn’t stand being in Alan’s shadow any longer. He had never come home. Alan had hired private detectives to find him and, eight months later, they did, working on a farm, fruit picking. He’d refused to be reunited with his family, refused money from Alan and even refused to read a letter Alan had written explaining that he had never, ever, intentionally tried to put him in the shade. The experience was painful for Alan because he had been unaware of Ben’s suffering and, when his brother left, had felt guilty on a multitude of layers. That was part of the reason he had emigrated: he had wanted to give Ben the opportunity to go home.
‘You haven’t heard from him since, have you?’ she said.
‘No,’ Alan said. ‘Though my mother has seen him once, which is a great thing. Anyway, listen, I shouldn’t be round here, dumping all this on your shoulders, when you’re all on your own, dealing with a newborn.’
All on your own. The words made Lexi flinch.
‘How are you doing?’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’
Lexi nodded and smiled, but said nothing. She wasn’t even going to begin trying to explain how she felt: the heart-racing tiredness, the unending joy, the fear that she loved Poppy too much, the darkness of the bedroom walls at night. There were no words, really.
‘I admire you, Lexi,’ he said. ‘I hardly know you but, from what I get from you, you’re incredibly strong. A bit like Katy, really – different, but the same. Look, it’s b
een great to talk. Thanks for listening. I’d better get back before Rufus wakes up and wants a feed. I’ve come out without the formula.’
He put down his cup on the table, stood up. They smiled at one another, and there was a sudden spark between them. Her heart beat wildly in her chest. Poppy had fallen asleep at the breast, so Lexi detached her and lay her in the Moses basket. She stood up and folded her arms across herself.
‘I think you should speak to the health visitor about Katy,’ she suggested. ‘They’re usually really helpful. If she seems worse, then make an appointment with the GP. In the meantime, maybe me and the antenatal-group girls can arrange to meet up and support her more.’
They moved towards the front door, and Lexi focused on Rufus, whose little lips were making sucking motions in his sleep.
‘He’s adorable,’ said Lexi, stroking his hand.
Alan put his hand around Lexi’s shoulder and squeezed. She didn’t look up because, if she had done, his mouth would have been too close to hers. She laughed, not really knowing what to do, blood rushing in her ears. Alan kissed the top of her head and then let go of her, briefly rubbing the top of her back. She tensed her shoulders.
‘Thank you, Lexi,’ he said. ‘I appreciate that. You’re a good friend. It’s strange how we met again like this. Out of all people, I’m in your antenatal class.’
‘Yes, it’s weird,’ she said, the words burning on her lips. ‘Alan, listen, I just need to know something. I’ve always wanted to know what you felt after that night—’
She paused to find her words, Alan’s eyes burning into her face. Lexi shook her head, thoroughly confused. What was it she wanted to ask him? What did it matter how he felt? She reminded herself of the reason Alan had come over. She reminded herself of their situations. Cocking her head, she heard Poppy wake up again and begin crying in the living room.