‘She’s beautiful,’ he says and then he smiles and I start wondering if I imagined the look or if it’s the drugs talking.
It’s a bit awkward introducing him to Mum and Dad, seeing as they’ve never met him before, but he soon has Dad engrossed in a discussion about cricket, of all things. At least Mum realised straight away that Robin can’t be the father, given the baby’s so pale, so I don’t have to have some sort of whispered conversation with her about it.
I turn back to the baby.
‘I really think she needs a name,’ Mum says.
‘What about Rose?’ Tammy says, looking at the flowers.
I sound it in my head. It seems to fit.
‘Rose,’ I say.
* * *
In the middle of the night, Rose’s cries wake me up. I struggle to latch her on to my boob, but she still won’t feed and the midwife is concerned. I’m in tears with exhaustion and shock and a million other feelings, but most of all, I just want to sleep. Rose keeps crying, and I get a flash of ugly irritation.
‘Shall I take her away for a bit and give her a bottle?’ the midwife says. ‘You need to rest.’
I know when to admit defeat. I nod.
I lie back, relieved, while the midwife scoops Rose up and the crying recedes.
I sleep for a little while, but then wake up, wondering where I am.
Then I remember.
Rose.
And Nia.
Rose.
Nia.
Nia.
A familiar presence fills the ward, floating on the ceiling, watching me. Calm now, like she knows her time has almost come.
I feel her, a shape-shifter shimmering into something solid.
She’s back.
Chapter 16
DAY 2
The following morning, a midwife brings Rose back. I cuddle her for a bit, and if my arms are too full for breakfast, well, I’ll get something later.
Nia flaps her wings in approval.
‘We’ll be looking to discharge you later on today,’ the midwife says.
‘You’re sure?’ I ask.
What I want to do is clutch at her and say, ‘Really? You’re really letting me walk out of here with her?’ And also: ‘Don’t let me walk out of here with her. I don’t know what I’m doing.’
Rose is so small. I never knew small could feel bad before, but it does.
Mum went out shopping and bought a few bits and pieces – some tiny baby vests and babygrows, nappies, blankets. Because, of course, I don’t have any of that stuff and it seems the maternity unit expect you to bring your own nappies. Also, your own pads. No one tells you how much you bleed after you give birth. It’s earthy and gross and makes my stomach heave.
Rose goes back to sleep and I watch her for a while. Then my curtains are pulled back, and Joanna is standing there in yet another patterned tunic top, holding a big file.
She peers into the tub. ‘So, this is Rose,’ she says.
‘Yep.’
Joanna sits in the chair at the side of my bed. ‘And how are you getting on?’
‘OK, I think, considering. She’s having some problems feeding.’
Joanna flicks through the file, and then looks at me.
I scoop Rose out of the tub and put my mouth down so it meets the soft hair on her head. Her fontanelle, the little bit where her skull hasn’t closed over yet, pulses steadily. I’m reminded of Alien again. This creature in my arms, she doesn’t seem real, doesn’t feel like she was inside me.
‘We need to discuss your plans,’ Joanna says.
‘I’m keeping her,’ I say to the top of Rose’s head.
It was a foregone conclusion the second the midwife put her on me. She’s mine.
Joanna takes a long breath. ‘And where –’
‘I’m going home with Mum,’ I say. I might know Rose is mine, but that doesn’t mean I’m sure I can look after her on my own. And Mum has been pretty insistent. It’s nice to let her take charge for once. For now, anyway.
‘Permanently?’
‘I don’t know yet, OK?’ I give Joanna a long look, a look that asks a question and gets a provisional answer.
‘We’ll need to monitor things very closely,’ is all she says and I know I’m on the tightest of probations. That if Joanna had her way, Rose would already be leaving, going to proper parents. But for now, she simply arranges to visit me in a few days for a check-up.
The clouds have cleared and there’s sharp, yellow light glinting off the rows of cars in the car park. Dad had to buy a new car seat and he spends ages fiddling with straps and frowning while I stand and hold Rose and try not to sway. I’m smarting from the stare a couple of old ladies gave us in the lift on the way down, and I also ache pretty badly in places you really don’t want to ache. When she checked me over after the birth, the midwife said it all looked ‘in excellent shape’, but it doesn’t seem like that to me. It feels like I got kicked by a horse.
Mum senses I’m tired and says sharply, ‘Peter! Hurry up, for heaven’s sake.’ Then: ‘I’ll take her.’ Her voice is possessive, but I really feel like I might faint at any moment – the old dot to dot swarms my vision – and so I pass Rose to her. Mum takes her and I get into the car extremely carefully, desperate to sit down, but unable to find a comfy position. Mum half turns away and whispers something to Rose, which I don’t catch because she nudges the door shut with her hip. I watch them both through the glass.
The drive back is not much fun. Dad’s doing about fifteen miles an hour, but he still seems to hit every road bump wrong and I grit my teeth against the pain. I feel like asking Mum, ‘Why did no one tell me about this?’, but I can imagine the long-suffering sigh, her eyes rolling to the ceiling as she says, ‘Well, what on earth did you expect, for heaven’s sake?’
What did I expect, exactly?
I don’t know.
I didn’t expect the way I felt when I was giving birth, how the pain took over every molecule so I wasn’t even there.
I didn’t expect that when I look at Rose, for long moments nothing else exists, nothing matters except her.
Not even Nia.
* * *
I insist on carrying Rose through the front door myself, but I can sense Mum hovering, her arms itching to hold her. We put the car seat on the living-room floor, Rose fast asleep, and I wonder, What now?
‘You should try and get some sleep when she does. I told your father to make up the spare room,’ Mum says.
This room was, in fact, my room until a few months ago, but in the meantime Mum’s clearly bought up half of Laura Ashley. Floral wallpaper covers the marks left behind by posters of kittens and ballet dancers from before Nia started. I never put up new posters after the first time I got out, a bit before my thirteenth birthday. After that, this room began to feel more like a holding pen anyway. Temporary. When I spot the matching floral curtains, comforter and cushions on the armchair Mum’s installed in the corner, I start to have second thoughts about Rose’s name. Perhaps I was still high on the drugs when I agreed to it. In the back of my mind, I quite fancied a unisex name, or something with an edge to it, solid and sharp. Less feminine. Then I look at her skin, soft as a petal, and think about the fact that roses are pretty tough too, what with all the thorns. Anyway, Rose is Rose now. It’s too late to go back.
To keep Mum happy, I lie down on the bed and drift into a half-sleep, but I’m sucked out of a dream by high-pitched cries coming from downstairs. I really, really don’t want to wake up, but the cries sound frantic and some instinct makes me lurch out of bed and stagger downstairs.
Mum and Dad are holding a hissed conversation in the kitchen.
‘You need to test it on the back of your hand,’ Mum says. ‘Come on, for goodness’ sake.’
I peer round Mum and see Dad holding a bottle of formula. He passes it to Mum, who’s rocking Rose in her arms. Rose is screaming her head off.
‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ I go to take Rose and, for a mome
nt, there’s resistance, then Mum lets her go.
I walk into the living room and Mum follows, holding the bottle.
‘Why don’t you let me feed her?’ she says. ‘You need to rest.’
Dad hovers behind her with a tea towel in his hand.
‘No thanks,’ I say in as firm a voice as I can muster.
I pull down my top. Dad coughs and starts inspecting the door frame. I turn back to Rose and try to guide her on, but she’s so hungry and frantic, she thrashes around, managing to smack herself in the face with one flailing fist. This shocks her so much she stops crying for a moment. Stops breathing, it seems. This probably lasts about ten seconds, but in that time I can hear the slow thud-thud-pause of my heartbeat. Then Rose opens her mouth the widest I’ve seen it yet and lets rip.
I jiggle her about, try to shush her, but she keeps on screaming, high-pitched yells which seem to come out even on the in breath.
What now?
Mum is waving the bottle about. ‘I really think –’
‘Give me a minute!’ I shout, which startles Rose. The crying feels like it’s been going on forever. I can feel panic rising, hot and choking, and guilt for scaring Rose.
Nia watches from the corner, amused.
Mum thrusts the bottle into my hand, but I drop it on the floor. She goes red and I can see the interior struggle as she battles between needing to get a cloth and clean the carpet immediately and wanting to stay and make me give the baby a bottle.
She opens her mouth, but I say loudly, ‘I can do it! Just leave me alone for a minute, will you?’
Dad has melted away, muttering about tea, and Mum leaves to get a cloth. I do a couple of circuits with Rose and sing the only nursery rhyme I can remember in her ear, ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’, but I can’t think of all the words, so then I hum, but she’s having none of it.
I rock her, but that makes her cry more.
‘Sh-sh-sh … please, just … shh!’ The last one comes out much louder than I intended and of course it’s at that moment that Mum comes back into the room.
‘That’s enough,’ Mum says firmly, and she reaches down and pulls Rose up and out of my arms.
A moment later, she’s plugged the bottle into Rose’s mouth and the room quietens until all you can hear is Rose chugging the bottle down at a million miles an hour.
Mum looks up at me and her voice is cold. ‘I will not let you starve this child.’
She turns back to Rose, leaving me open-mouthed and breathless.
I go to the bottom of the back garden, to get away from the smell of Dad cooking one of his ‘specials’, which involves vomit-inducing fried eggs, chips, beans and ham. Apparently, it was my favourite when I was little, not that I have any recollection of this. And also to get away from the sound of Rose’s grunts as she began necking the rest of the bottle.
I stare up into the sky for ages, but when I go back inside I can’t even remember if it was sunny or not outside, only that Nia was watching me from the branches of a tree, like she’s waiting.
Mum is kneeling by a shiny pink changing mat in the living room doing Rose’s nappy. Another first outside of hospital I’ve failed to do myself. She snaps the poppers closed on Rose’s babygrow and puts her down in a Moses basket I didn’t even notice before in the corner.
‘There, all done,’ she says.
Rose is sleeping peacefully. I stand over the basket and watch the light shining down on her smooth cheek, her tiny clenched fists disappearing into the sleeves of the babygrow. She doesn’t look much like me. She doesn’t look much like she belongs to anyone, except herself, like she’s on loan.
‘I wonder if she knows what she’s let herself in for, picking me,’ I mutter.
‘Pardon?’ Mum says.
‘Nothing.’
Chapter 17
DAY 4
Rose was born four days, a lifetime, ago.
Everything seems to blur into an endless cycle: cry, feed, change, cry, feed, change.
On day four, I wake up feeling like the flowers in the wallpaper have gone 3D and are reaching out to strangle me. Rose is next to my bed in her Moses basket, asleep after a long night where I tried and tried to get her to settle.
Nothing is going right. I can’t even feed her myself. After that first bottle, she screams if I try and breastfeed her, so formula it is.
I’m crying before she even wakes.
I haven’t showered since I got back from hospital. Dad braved my flat to get me some things, though I’d have rather he hadn’t gone in there, seen my charts and meal plans. I heard him updating Mum in a hushed voice that stopped when I walked into the kitchen with Rose.
Mum is in a cooking frenzy, the smell of it curling under my door and making my stomach twist. I’m eating some of it. Sort of. The healthy stuff anyway.
At night when Rose wakes, I’m desperate for sleep, but when she drifts off again I can’t follow her there. I keep one hand dangling in the Moses basket, like if I move too far away from her she might stop breathing. Or disappear, like a mirage. So I scroll on my phone, reading about how to get babies to sleep. Not much agreement there. And, once or twice, I have a look at the Ana woman’s videos, see how fast she lost after the birth. One night, trying to navigate to another page, the phone slips out of my grasp and smacks Rose on the hand. She wakes, yells, and when I’ve finally got her back to sleep, I lie there for the longest time, shaking.
‘Mnargh.’ A little bleat tells me Rose is stirring, winding up to crying.
I sit in bed, carefully, as everything is still painful, and realise the whole front of me is wet. It takes an age to work out the sharp, stale smell is milk. I run to the bathroom and throw up, silently, then chuck the T-shirt in the bin and get back into bed.
Mum knocks on my door a while later.
Rose has gone back to sleep, and I’m crying.
Mum stands over me, and then says, ‘Baby blues.’
‘What?’
‘It’s the baby blues. Everyone gets them. You’ll feel better in a day or two, but for now, you should have a shower. The midwife is coming at ten.’
I let her carry Rose downstairs and take a shower, flinching away when it hits my chest, which is sore and swollen. For the first time in ages, I can see the bottom of my stomach. It’s hideous. Baggy, like a balloon that’s started to shrink, scored with livid red stretch marks. I look further down and see my thighs, and have to hold on to the wall to stop myself falling.
Fat bitch, Nia says from the top of the shower curtain.
I jump and nearly slip over, then turn quickly to face the other way and concentrate on letting the hot water sting my chest.
I drag myself out of the shower and dress in the loosest clothes I can find, but they make me look even bigger. A pair of pre-pregnancy jeans are in the bottom of the bag Dad’s brought, but I can’t get the button done up. I bite my lip, but it’s no good: I can’t stop crying.
‘Hedda! Mary is here,’ Mum calls up the stairs.
I don’t even bother to wipe the tears away as Mary says, ‘Congratulations.’ She weighs Rose and says she’s put on weight and is doing well. Mary gives me a once-over too, and presses pretty hard on my stomach to make sure everything is going down like it should. Apparently, it is. Not fast enough for me though. The tears are still coming, the drops chasing each other down my cheeks and falling off my chin.
‘It’s your hormones,’ Mary says.
This does not make me feel better.
An hour after Mary goes, it’s Joanna’s turn. I’ve made a supreme effort and have managed to stop crying, brush my hair and put some make-up on, but I’m pretty sure I still look like death.
‘How are you doing?’ Joanna says.
‘Fine.’
Joanna makes a note. ‘And what are your plans?’
I look at her, blank.
‘Will you be staying here?’ she prompts.
‘Yes, they will,’ Mum says. As I say, ‘I guess so.’
; We both stop and look at each other.
‘For now,’ I say.
Mum’s neck goes pink.
Joanna asks a load more questions, says she’s liaising with Mary and then asks Mum if she can have a word. They retreat to the kitchen and I have to work really hard not to throw a glass against the wall. Rose is asleep on my lap, and her mouth curves up into a little smile. I watch, entranced, until I remember reading that it probably means she’s just done a wee.
Mum looks more flushed when they come back, but Joanna simply arranges to visit the next week.
Mum won’t say what they talked about.
In her sleep, Rose smiles again.
DAY 6
Once there was a girl on the unit who basically stopped sleeping. They tried giving her pills, but even they wouldn’t knock her out. We could hear her at all hours, pacing, arguing with the night staff, refusing to get back into bed. After a few days of this, she flipped out and the last I saw of her she was being taken off to a secure unit.
I think of this girl at three in the morning, when Rose wakes for the fourth time that night. There’s a continuous buzzing in my ears. I make her up a bottle, pretend I can’t hear her slurps and grunts. I put her back in her basket, but she yells and squirms, pulling her legs up to her chest and kicking them back down. I try patting her with my hand, struggling to keep my eyes from closing, but that’s not working either.
I hear Mum get up and hover outside my door, then hold a hissed conversation with Tammy, who’s complaining that she’s been woken up. Again.
‘Can’t she just make her sleep?’ Tammy says in a sleepy whine.
To my surprise, Mum gives a strange sort of laugh, then says, ‘Babies don’t work like that.’
‘Well, can’t you take her?’
‘No, I can’t. And you need to be more supportive of your sister.’
‘But –’
‘I mean it,’ Mum hisses louder. ‘Now go back to bed.’
Eventually, I bring Rose into bed and feed her again, trying to knock her out with milk.
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