‘I promise to let you wear leggings to school,’ I whispered.
Ned’s phone made a vibrating sound. He looked at the screen, then up at me.
‘I’ve just got to . . . go outside. I’ll be right back, I just—’ He gesticulated with his hands and left the room.
I sighed. He’d been so excited at the scan I’d assumed he’d be just as excited by the actual arrival. But he seemed terrified and detached. Joe pulled over a threadbare chair and sat down. Baby Girl lay in my arms, quiet and perfect. I adored her with a passion I never expected.
‘Thank you,’ I said, looking up at Joe. ‘I don’t think I could’ve done it without you.’ I rolled my eyes at the emptiness of the statement. ‘Of course I would have done it without you. Obviously she couldn’t have lived in there till she was twenty-one. I just mean, well, having you there made me feel . . . OK, like I was going to be OK . . .’ I shrugged with the awkwardness of my blabbering.
Joe moved his chair closer to the bed and leant over to look at my sleeping baby. ‘I’d be anywhere you wanted me to.’
I searched his face for any kind of double meaning but saw only exhaustion. ‘Joe?’
A knock at the door stopped me from saying something incredibly stupid. Who the hell tries to pick up a man less than an hour after they’ve given birth? Clearly the same kind of person who lustily launches themselves at hot guys they work with while pregnant with another man’s baby. Me. One of high hopes and low morals.
Ned poked his head round the door.
‘Ah, can . . . can Sophie come in?’ he said with a cautious glance at Joe. ‘She’s been waiting outside and . . . she really wants to see you.’
I studied him. He hadn’t even viewed his daughter from a distance of less than six feet and now he wanted his girlfriend to come in. Exhausted and unable to trust my own decisions, I deferred to Joe, who nodded.
‘OK, I guess.’
Ned scuttled out of the room and returned with Sophie, her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. My good mood weakened at the sight of my old friend. I hadn’t laid eyes on her since the day I saw her kissing Ned outside the hospital. (In that fucking Fiesta.) She looked exactly the same, from her cropped pixie haircut to her slubby Rolling Stones t-shirt tucked into a brown maxi skirt with her pink Converse peeping out. Except her face was different. It was wretched. She stood at the end of the bed, Ned’s hand protectively at the small of her back, twisting the suede tassels from her satchel bag round her fingers. Her eyes flitted from me to the baby, a woeful expression on her face. She wiped at her nose with a soggy tissue.
‘I’ll go and get you some tea.’ Joe rose from his chair.
He tapped Ned on the shoulder and motioned for them to leave us to it. Ned blinked like it hadn’t occurred to him. He checked that Sophie was OK and asked if she would like tea. What kind? Would she feel better with something in her stomach? A muffin, maybe? She’d had blueberry in the morning so perhaps she’d prefer something savoury? He thought the canteen had sausage rolls. Was she still thinking about doing meatless Mondays? All things I would have found incredibly sweet had they not been my ex-best friend and ex-boyfriend and they were not doing it at the end of the bed where I held my 45-minute-old baby girl who was co-created with said ex-boyfriend. Eventually, with detailed muffin and tea directives, he exited the room leaving Sophie snivelling at the end of my bed. She shuffled forward uncertainly, sniffing and hiccuping, and peeked at Baby Girl.
‘So beautiful,’ she said in a tiny voice. She stepped back to the safety of the end of the bed, gave me a harrowing look and burst into tears. ‘I thought you were . . . going to . . . die,’ she said between sobs.
I watched, my natural instincts wanting to quell the gushing tears but my heart unwilling to forget the past few months of Parisian crêpe-eating and ice-cream-manufacturing she’d had with the father of my child.
‘I’m fine.’
‘But the cord . . . and the heart rate?’
‘All fine,’ I said, looking away.
A baby cried in the next room. I felt Sophie’s teary gaze on my face.
‘It wasn’t meant to happen like this, Emma, I swear,’ she appealed. ‘Ned and me. It was an accident.’
I looked back, wanting and not wanting to hear more. How did she ‘accidentally’ start a relationship with Ned? Trip and land on his face, then decide to stay there for the next few months? Sophie rubbed at her nose with the disintegrating tissue.
‘It wasn’t meant to happen at all, really.’ A tear ran down her face. ‘I didn’t plan it. I mean, I wasn’t waiting for you guys to break up, like some double-crossing hussy or anything. I just, well, I was sad after your nan’s funeral and went to that party. It was a dumb party, you’d have hated it, they had a rumba. And I saw Ned, and he was so funny.’ She paused to blow her nose. ‘And he was so sweet and then we realised that we both liked ice cream, I mean, who doesn’t like ice cream? But we both really liked it. But we didn’t have genital sex. Not then. Just, like, a kiss and other stuff but no genital sex.’
My skin crawled.
‘But there was you . . .’ She indicated me with her fist of mucus and tissue. ‘And you were gonna have the . . .’ She moved her snotty fist towards the baby. ‘And I thought it was just the one-night thing and, well, also the fact I’d been doing shots of chartreuse (which I thought was actually good for you because it’s made by monks but it turns your vomit green). We didn’t have genital sex then, either.’
‘Please stop saying genital.’
‘What? Oh, right. Sorry. Anyway, and then there was the fondue barbecue and Mum did the thing with the lobster salad and Aunt Patty taught him to crochet and, well, you can see how it happened.’
I couldn’t, actually, what with that utterly ridiculous explanation. Crochet? Lobster salad? Rumba? And (ew!) genital sex? I tried hard to keep my expression detached and unemotional but her misery was threatening my fortitude. She sniffed back a sob and pressed her lips together.
‘And now,’ her voice got high and squeaky, ‘you hate me.’
I watched Sophie, the pathetically wretched, colour-blind, punk fairy quivering miserably at the foot of the bed.
We’d survived and supported each other through the hell that is dealing with Y-list celebrities. I’d spent fourteen hours a day with her every week for almost the past five years. She’d played many a Stab Victim and Injured Protestor when I’d forgotten extras, and I in turn had been there when she needed Mangled Cyclist or a Drug Addled Whore. And on the odd occasion we got a full weekend off, we’d book a cottage in the country but be so exhausted we’d sleep the whole time while Helen said ‘fuck ya, then’ and went to the pub on her own. We’d sat together through midwinter night shoots, being the only two people in a deserted, freezing office, talking boys and life plans and ordering midnight pizza on the Production account. We’d partied, we’d worked, we’d stressed, we’d drunk and we’d laughed till we’d nearly wet ourselves. Sophie had seen me at my best and at my worst. My happiest and my most vulnerable.
And I her.
‘I don’t hate you,’ I said, mildly annoyed at my lack of resolve.
I was planning on giving Ned and Sophie the ‘freeze-out’ for at least the next decade but somehow that seemed less important now that I had a baby. And Sophie was just plain miserable. I looked down at my daughter. If Sophie was going to be a part of Ned’s life, then she was going to be a part of my baby’s life as well. And I didn’t want my daughter to think of me as some bitter old lady. God knows, it was going to be fun at ‘Dad and Sophie’s’ what with all that free ice cream. And it was organic. I fiddled with the stiffly starched bedsheets. Sophie blew her nose.
‘Do you love him?’ I said, my voice quiet.
Sophie paused, trying to deduce whether it was a trick question, then nodded, her eyes filling with tears again. I watched her trying to suppress her sobs. Her entire existence seemed sodden.
‘Then God help you.’ I held out a hand.
She
rushed forward and grasped it with, thankfully, the hand without the tissue. Her nails were bitten down to the skin and bore the last few chips of a sparkly blue polish.
‘It will take a bit of time . . .’
Sophie nodded vehemently.
‘But,’ I hesitated, ‘we will be friends again.’
Sophie’s petite shoulders heaved in time with her sobs.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Joe and Ned, an unlikely pair, returned with cups of tea and muffins so stale I could have biffed them through the wall and knocked out a new mother three rooms down. Joe had evidently asked about the ice cream and Ned was animated once more, regaling him with the thrill of flavour-balancing with a real spark in his eye.
Soon after, a chaotic dialogue reverberating down the ward let me know my family and friends had been let in.
‘I had to rush out. I don’t think Amanda got all the Vaseline off. My cheeks are slippery when I walk.’ (Mum.)
‘Diana, must you?’ (Uncle Mike – long-suffering.)
‘It’s a natural thing.’ (Mum.)
‘A tube up your arse is natural?’ (Sinead – grossed out.)
‘Up your arse?’ (Helen.)
An uncomfortable cough. (Douglas.)
‘Mum, can you please not talk about your colonic in public?’ (Alex.)
And then she appeared in the doorway.
‘Oh my god!’ She rushed over to us. ‘I can’t believe I missed it!’
My tangle of visitors traipsed in and cheered, making Baby Girl do a weird four-limbed jolt.
‘Tell me everything,’ Alex said from prime position by my shoulder. ‘I want a no-holds-barred account.’
‘A what?’ Alice said, standing at the foot of the bed holding a grotesque Bratz doll.
‘No holds barred,’ Joe said. ‘It’s a wrestling term.’
‘I thought it was no holes barred,’ Helen said.
‘You would,’ Douglas said with a sniff.
For the next hour my family and friends demanded extra chairs, visited the vending machine, fought over who got to hold the baby, competitively compared stories about labour (Mum and Sinead) and generally pissed off all the nurses that came in and asked for quiet. Baby Girl got introduced to Charlie, who was speaking at a biodegradable plastics convention in Frankfurt, via a facetime call. It was so thrilling for her she slept through the entire thing. Douglas had an in-depth debate with Archie about the incongruities within the zombie storyline. Jess was sporting her mohican and practising her latest fixation, Capoeira. It wasn’t best suited to a small and crowded hospital room, especially when she was about as coordinated as a duck on skis. Alice sat cross-legged on the end of my bed dressing a tiny-waisted doll and Archie perched on a stool against the wall perusing another storyboard. Apparently he’d been asked to audition for a regular part in a kids’ show for the BBC. Uncle Mike had agreed but only after quizzing the producer about the level of bloodshed and how much nudity was involved. Considering it was a CBeebies production I can only imagine how confused the producer would have been. Sinead sat with Millie on her lap, who was ejecting a glutinous mess of rusk and saliva down her front, and Uncle Mike stood wherever it was safe from Jess’s inadequately executed leg and arm flails. Ned and Sophie huddled together amid the fray, seemingly nervous about how my family might receive them, but no one appeared to care. Although it was more likely Alex had given them a strict code of conduct.
My baby had been passed from person to person, all except Ned, who glued his arms to his sides if she ever came near him, and everyone stood, sat or leant around the room sipping mediocre NHS tea from disintegrating paper cups. Joe drooped low in his chair in the corner, face unshaven, surveying my animated family and friends with drowsy interest.
‘Aren’t you just the cutest little lapse in judgement I ever did see,’ Mum cooed, cradling my daughter in her arms.
‘You can’t call her that.’ Alex stood so close to Mum’s shoulder she was practically in her handbag. ‘And are you going to let anyone else have a hold ever?’
‘That’s true,’ Mum said, ignoring Alex’s plea. She fixed me with a look. ‘What are you going to call her?’
‘Oh.’ I glanced at Ned. ‘I’m not sure.’
Again, the fact that I had no inkling of what to name her reinforced the notion that I’d not fully believed nine months of pregnancy would end in a newly created person. One that would be linked to me for the rest of my days. I would never again make a decision that did not involve this individual. We were two, where there used to be one. And I had found one rather challenging.
‘Any ideas?’
A cacophony of high-volume opinions erupted.
‘How about Ophelia, from Hamlet?’ Douglas said.
‘Or Ivy, after your grandmother?’ Uncle Mike said, redirecting a roundhouse kick from the testicular region.
‘Or Elsa from Frozen?’ said Alice.
‘Or Alex? After me!’ Alex grinned persuasively. She held out her arms, vying for another hold. ‘Now give!’
‘She looks like a Mabel,’ Mum said, handing her to Alex.
Helen peered at the pink-faced baby. ‘She looks like an internal organ.’
‘Helen,’ Douglas chided.
More names came forth in multiple broadcasts. I looked at the baby in Alex’s arms and wondered how she could be right next to me, made of me and from me, but be nobody. I considered how strange it was that you were no one till you were labelled.
‘How . . . how about Dixie?’ Ned spoke over the competing babble.
‘Why should she have your last name?’ I said. ‘Did a stranger with rubber gloves stick his hand up your vagina and measure your cervix?’
Ned, Uncle Mike and Douglas gave a synchronised wince. Archie glanced up briefly from his storyboard.
‘Did you spend fifteen hours in pain so unspeakable you wanted to climb out of your own body and shred the curtains with your teeth? Did someone rearrange your insides like a jigsaw puzzle? I don’t think so.’
‘I meant,’ Ned said, paling, ‘what about both of our last names? We could—’
‘No double-barrelled names,’ I said. ‘We do not live in a horse-orientated novel.’ I motioned for Alex to return my daughter.
‘No, what I mean—’ He gulped under Mum’s impatient glower. ‘What – what I mean is—’
Mum sighed audibly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, Dixie as her first name. And . . . and George as her last name?’ He gave a dejected shrug. ‘That’s both our names . . .’ He trailed off in the growing silence.
I considered Ned, then looked down. Our baby lay in my arms, divine and placid. Calm as a summer lake. One that didn’t have any kite surfers. Or old men fishing. Before the summertime revellers arrived with their picnic baskets and their slippery sunscreen-ed children. A very early-in-the-morning summer lake. Back to the baby.
Dixie . . .
I looked up. ‘I love it,’ I said.
Ned blinked his surprise.
‘Lovely idea, Ned,’ Mum said, bestowing upon him a magnanimous nod.
Ned’s lower jaw dropped. ‘Ah, thanks Mrs George.’
‘Well you were due,’ she said, haughtiness restored.
‘Dixie.’ I tested the sound.
Peace settled across the room as we ran the name through our respective minds and Dixie established herself as the newest person in our lives.
‘We got you a gift,’ Sophie said, breaking the quiet. She nudged Ned with an elbow.
‘Oh yes.’ Ned dug in his back pocket, retrieved his phone and padded his finger over the screen for what felt like an age and two thirds.
Just as the kids started to fidget and Joe nodded his final exhausted nod and crumpled to sleep in the shape of the letter G in his chair in the corner, Ned located what he was looking for.
‘Look.’ He stepped forward, offering his phone.
He’d done that to me a few years ago. I’d looked at the screen and seen a close-up of his ball sacs.
This time it was a Lloyds account.
‘What’s going on?’ I said, my heart beating a little faster.
‘That’s what I owe you,’ Ned said with a shy grin.
Sophie beamed like a caffeine-wired sprite. Mum and Alex exchanged glances. Jess fell over.
‘But . . .’ I shook my head, looking back at the amount on the screen. There was more money in the account than he had taken. Quite a bit more.
‘It’s all the money I borrowed, and,’ he glanced to Sophie, ‘your share of the business. We’re partners!’ he exclaimed, raising his arms in a self-conscious ‘hooray’ motion, still wary of Mum’s scrutiny.
‘What?’ I said.
‘I told you ice cream was a good idea.’ His face broke into a wide smile. ‘You, me and Sophie.’ He took hold of Sophie’s hand. She was nodding so fast I was briefly concerned it might actually be some kind of fit. ‘Equal thirds partners.’
‘Let me see.’ Mum took the phone from my hand, studied the screen then raised her eyebrows.
Alex snatched it off her, said a bad word and showed it to the rest of the room.
‘Holy shite,’ Helen said, shoving a pirouetting Jess out of the way.
‘Well done, young man.’ Uncle Mike gripped Ned’s narrow shoulder.
Ned, shy but chuffed, acknowledged the praise with a smile. Alex passed me back the phone. I checked the balance again then turned to Ned. He waited for my response, his face expectant and unconcerned. He’d been the one that looked to the future with an innocent faith that all would be well while I’d worried about bills, the housing market, my career, getting enough sleep and bowel cancer.
‘But . . . why partners?’ I said. ‘You didn’t have to.’
‘You’ve always believed in me,’ he said.
Shame sunk in my stomach like a block of granite. No, I hadn’t.
‘I know you were under pressure to get the money back,’ he shot a quick look at Mum. ‘But you gave me a chance. You gave me lots of chances. I’d failed before. Loads of times. The scissors? The disposable ladder? The Jesus boots?’
How Not to Fall in Love, Actually Page 35