Playing Nice

by Delaney, JP

  I looked at him, surprised. “Are you still in touch with Bronagh?”

  “Well, we’re both members of the fundraising group.” He saw my expression. “It’s a Facebook page, Mads,” he said patiently. “It’s not like we’re meeting up for coffee.”

  “I hadn’t realized you missed your nursie groupies so much.” Even as I said it, I wondered at the venom in my voice. What was happening to me?

  “Anyway, the dads are thinking of cycling all the way from Edinburgh to London,” Pete went on after a moment. “It’s an opportunity to show our appreciation to the hospital for saving our kids, and do something practical for them at the same time.”

  Put like that, how could I refuse? “What about work? I thought you’d used up all your holiday.”

  “They’ve offered to convert the time we spent in the hospital to compassionate leave. They’re right behind this. The editor’s already pledged two hundred quid, so everyone else should chip in at least twenty. I’ve been doing some calculations and I reckon I could raise over a grand.”

  “Well, that sounds like it’s sorted, then,” I said bitterly. Which was stupid of me, I knew. I could feel myself turning into one of those people who seize any opportunity to make a barbed remark, even when it meant forgoing the chance to tell my partner what I really felt.

  So instead of I don’t think I can cope without you, I just said, “Send me a postcard from Scotland, won’t you?”

  * * *

  —

  PETE THREW HIMSELF INTO preparing for the ride. He assembled a bike from parts he hunted down on eBay. He and the other dads met up for several practice rides, all of which seemed to end with them in the pub, slapping one another on the back and telling one another how much their calf muscles ached and how heroic they were.

  I was jealous. I didn’t have a group like that, or any group for that matter. The prenatal classes I’d booked started three months before my due date, so of course I’d missed those. There was a support group for mothers of preemies, run by people who’d been through it themselves, but I was still burying my head in the sand and the thought of getting together with other NICU veterans and endlessly rehashing the experience repelled me. I wasn’t dwelling on the past like them! I was looking forward! Before Theo, my social life had revolved around my job—the hardworking, hard-partying world of advertising. Going on shoots meant long hours on location, often abroad—it wasn’t unusual for the call time to be five A.M. or even earlier, but I always had enough energy for drinks in the hotel bar at the end of the day, and the wrap parties after the last day of filming were legendary. I’d made some deep, even intense friendships, but no one in that world really had time for a chat or a coffee with a new mum—they might say they did, and schedule something, but there was always some crisis or other that meant it had to be postponed. And it was an iron rule of advertising that a lunch or coffee rescheduled more than once was never going to happen. After that, it made you look desperate to pursue it. People said it took a village to raise a child, but I didn’t even have a cul-de-sac.

  Pete set a goal of twelve hundred pounds on JustGiving and started emailing colleagues. Within a week he’d reached two thousand pounds. He read me some of the comments people left with their donations, and every so often he’d have to stop. “Keep going Pete and Maddie and little Theo, we’re all thinking of you,” “You’ll come through this stronger than ever,” or even just “Such a great thing you’re doing,” all reduced him to tears, or at least to manly silence. It had been one of the things I’d first liked about him—that he wasn’t afraid to cry in front of me—but since Theo’s birth, his emotions seemed to have become a gushing tap, while mine had gone in the other direction.

  When I looked through the donations later, I noticed there was a pledge of ten pounds from Bronagh. Still doing the great work I see Pete! she’d written. He hadn’t read that one out.

  Sometimes, feeding Theo in the middle of the night, I’d Skype my parents. It was strange to see them having lunch on the sun terrace while I was shut up in a dark bedroom in London, the streetlights turning the curtains sickly yellow. On one occasion, I put Theo down in his cot before I called them, only for him to start wailing a few minutes later. “Hang on,” I said to my mother wearily. “I’ll just go and get him.”

  Then I heard my father’s voice, off camera. “She’s spoiling that baby. Tell her, Carol. You have to let them cry, or they never learn not to.”

  I waited for her to say something, to explain that it wasn’t like that these days, but she didn’t. I stopped Skyping them after that.

  I was getting hardly any sleep. “Sleep when the baby sleeps,” people said. But what if I couldn’t sleep? I felt compelled to be Theo’s monitor, to check on him every few minutes. When I lay down, my brain raced; when I got up, the fog descended again and I could barely function.

  Pete left for Scotland at the end of July. It was a cool, settled summer—perfect cycling weather. And although cycling from Edinburgh to London sounded arduous, I knew it wasn’t, not really. The route followed car-free cycle paths and old railway lines most of the way, and the group had a coach with a trailer that met them every afternoon and took them and the bikes to a hotel. They were planning to cycle about five hours a day, with every fourth day off. I didn’t blame them for making it as pleasant as possible, but I did get annoyed by the endless self-congratulatory updates on social media. After all, if you could stop to take a group selfie with a whole gang of other grinning young men in cycle helmets and Lycra every time you came to a nice view, you weren’t exactly doing the Tour de France. So pretty soon I stopped attending to what they were up to and retreated into my own private hell.

  I felt as though I had to be doing something every moment. Sterilizing bottles. Washing babygrows. Cleaning the house. Checking the baby. Did I turn on the sterilizer? Did I turn off the washing machine? Was Theo breathing? I was shaking and fighting nausea, a captive animal pacing up and down, full of unfocused dread. Without Pete, there was no one to make me eat, no one to interrupt my inner monologue. The stream of thoughts in my head got louder and shoutier. What had begun as my own internal voice became an intrusive, deafening authority figure. I even gave it a name: the doctor. What if you let the baby get dirty? the doctor yelled at me. What if you let the baby suffocate? What if you drop the baby on the floor and smash open his head? I was too afraid to go for walks in case a car hit Theo’s stroller. I became obsessed with watching him, but I stopped touching him in case I did something bad to him. My heart raced constantly and I was short of breath. When the health visitor came, I demanded to know if she thought Theo’s eyes were crossed, and if so, whether that meant he had brain damage. She looked at me strangely and I heard her thoughts as clearly as if she’d spoken them out loud. This woman is a useless mother. After that, the health visitor joined the doctors in the chorus of voices all shouting at me that I was doing a terrible job.

  And that’s when the doctors started spying on me.

  Later, the psychiatrist spent a lot of time trying to unpick whether I’d been experiencing actual hallucinations, or simply delusions. It mattered for the treatment, apparently. Had I actually seen the doctors on the TV or the screen of my phone, telling me, Not like that, you’re doing it all wrong, or had I merely believed they were in there? Both, I decided. Why else would I have hurled one of Theo’s full nappies at the TV to shut it up? Why else would I have flung my iPhone at the wall? In any case, it was a relief not to have to worry about Pete’s increasingly concerned texts—U still angry with me? Pls call—but then the bits from the broken phone must have gotten inside the wall because the doctors started using it as a big screen to project their messages on instead. I worked out that if I turned the microwave on to the maximum setting, the radio waves spun out by the revolving turntable would block the messages and give me some relief, and they did.

  And then Pete came back.<
br />
  He’d abandoned the ride in York and boarded a train to London. He found me curled up on the kitchen floor, lying on sheets of tinfoil to protect myself from the doctors’ messages. Theo was on his back a few feet away, nappyless. Nearby, I’d lined up twenty full bottles of milk, ready to feed him with. The radio was on to drown the sound of his crying, and I’d hooked up a calculator to the microwave so I could monitor his vital signs.

  * * *

  —

  WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THAT is fuzzy. It didn’t take Pete long to realize he had to call an ambulance, and the paramedics arranged an emergency mental health assessment. I was admitted to a psychiatric ward and given antipsychotics and mood stabilizers. There were no spaces in a mother-and-baby unit, so Pete looked after Theo until I was well enough to come home. It took three weeks, and even then they only let me out when I agreed to join the support group I’d spurned before and do a course of cognitive therapy. When I got home, tired but calm again, I found the house full of flowers and a banner over the front door that read WELCOME HOME MUMMY. Pete had tidied and cleaned—he told me later it had taken two bottles of bleach to get rid of the smell of the soiled nappies I’d been storing under beds and sofas in case the doctors needed to examine them—and even bought Theo a bigger set of babygrows. When I lifted him from Pete’s arms into mine, he smelled of fabric conditioner and warm milk and love.

  “I’m sorry about the bike ride,” Pete said softly.

  I shook my head. “Don’t be. Besides, how could you have known what was wrong with me? Even the health visitor didn’t realize.” I looked around. “This place looks great.”

  “We’ve been having a good time.” Pete stroked Theo’s cheek, now plump and full like a baby’s should be. “Though he’s missed his mummy, of course,” he added quickly.

  “You don’t have to tiptoe around me now, Pete. I left Horrible Angry Maddie back in the psych ward.”

  He nodded. “I’ve arranged to work from home for a while, even so.”

  “Won’t Karen mind?” Karen was his editor, a woman Pete professed to admire but who I always thought sounded petulant and passive-aggressive when Pete described their interactions.

  “She’s really supportive. It’ll mean doing more roundups, but…” Pete shrugged. As newspaper budgets were cut, lists—as opposed to actual assignments—were taking up more and more of the travel section. There was even a weekly feature: Twelve Traveltastic…In the past few months, Pete had compiled “Twelve Traveltastic Beaches,” “Twelve Traveltastic Christmas Markets,” “Twelve Traveltastic Tapas Bars,” and “Twelve Traveltastic Tuscan Villas.” There was no actual travel involved, of course—the recommendations were sourced entirely from the internet, reviews from TripAdvisor lightly disguised with the word expect, as in “Expect pale-cream rooms and a poolside barbecue,” to cover the fact that the journalist hadn’t actually been there. It was dispiriting, mechanical work, and the fact that Pete was volunteering to do more of it in order to spend more time with me and our baby filled me with gratitude.

  “Saint Peter. Bronagh was right. I’m so lucky to have you.”

  “I’m the lucky one, Mads. I’ve got you and Theo.” He stroked Theo’s head, then glanced at me. “One of the dads who organized the ride—Greg—isn’t going back to work. He’s planning on being a stay-at-home dad.”

  “That’s brave.”

  “Funnily enough, he says everyone uses that word. He said to me when we were cycling, ‘What’s brave about it? No one calls a woman brave when she stops work.’ ” Pete paused. “He and Kate are in a similar position to us, actually. She earns more than he does.”

  I frowned. “I’d always assumed we’d both have to work. The mortgage is pretty steep.”

  “Well…I did a few rough calculations, and it’s not impossible.” He added quickly, “But look, now isn’t the time to go into all that. I just thought it was an interesting idea, that’s all.”

  17

  Case no. 12675/PU78B65, Exhibit 14C: email from Miles Lambert to Peter Riley.

  Dear Pete and Maddie,

  Lucy and I just wanted to say what a pleasure it was meeting you this morning—and of course, Theo too. To be honest, we’d been somewhat apprehensive about what sort of family our birth son would turn out to be living with. I think we can say for sure that both Theo and ourselves have been incredibly fortunate. We really feel we haven’t lost a son but gained some new friends.

  We were deeply touched by your suggestion that we become Theo’s godparents. That’s a definite yes from us, if you’re sure.

  And Pete, I meant to say—let’s go out for a beer sometime. Maybe this Wednesday after work? I think Lucy is going to get in touch with Maddie, too.

  Very best,

  Miles

  18

  PETE

  THE EMAIL FROM MILES was waiting next time I checked my inbox. It had been sent at two P.M., just a couple of hours after we’d left them.

  “He’s keen,” Maddie commented when I showed her.

  “Should I? Go for a beer with him, I mean?”

  “Why not? You always say you miss going out with your mates after work. And Wednesday evening’s a good time—I can be back by six, so you won’t need a sitter.”

  * * *

  —

  NEXT MORNING, WE HAD a Skype call booked with Maddie’s parents. We were both slightly apprehensive—her father is a big character, and the relationship between him and Maddie is definitely a complicated one. They used to clash when she was a teenager—she was impulsive and headstrong, he was authoritarian and domineering—but she talks about him a lot and he’s very important to her. I sometimes wonder if part of my own appeal for her is that I’m about as far away from him as she could possibly get, both geographically and personally.

  The call started well. Theo was in good form, taking Maddie’s iPad and proudly showing his grandparents a tower he’d made from Duplo. Then he used both feet to kick it all apart.

  “Pow! Pow! Pick up, Mika!” he told them.

  Jack laughed. “Who’s Mika?”

  “He means Michaela. She’s the nanny for some people we visited yesterday.” I took a deep breath. “Jack, Carol, there’s something we need to tell you. Just hang on a minute while I take the iPad upstairs.” Our bedroom was the only place in the house where Theo wouldn’t overhear, although unfortunately it meant I was now going to have to break the news to them on my own.

  “What’s going on?” Jack asked. I didn’t reply until I was safely out of Theo’s hearing. Then I explained. They didn’t say much, just the occasional “Jesus!” and “Bloody hell!” from Jack. When I got to the bit where we’d agreed with the Lamberts that we weren’t going to swap back, he was incredulous.

  “What? But they’ve got your bloody son!”

  “Yes. Just as we’ve got theirs.”

  “Well, if it was one of my children, I wouldn’t be happy,” Jack said with finality. “Carol, what do you think?”

  “Of course we’re not happy,” I said patiently. “We’re really shocked and upset. But what other solution is there? Give Theo away?”

  “I guess not,” Carol began, just as Jack said, “At that age, they’d get over it in no time.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” I said coldly.

  “Have you spoken to a child psychologist?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “What about a lawyer?”

  “The Lamberts have spoken to a lawyer. But that’s because they’re talking about suing the hospital—”

  “Bloody right they are.”

  “We just think that the proper way to deal with this is through dialogue and compromise,” I said. The words somehow came out sounding wrong—priggish and pompous instead of reasonable and considered. I tried a different tack. “You always say, once lawyers get involved in a deal, everything
goes to shit. Why would this be any different?”

  “A lawyer’s already involved,” Jack said darkly. “Just not yours.”

  Carol started to say something, but he cut her off. “So tell me, Pete. What exactly have you done, since being handed this DNA test supposedly confirming that our grandson, our real grandson, is living with another family?”

  “We’ve been to meet them. And we’ve talked. A lot.”

  “Jesus,” Jack muttered under his breath.

  “Could we speak to Maddie?” Carol asked.

  “Of course,” I said, resisting the urge to sigh. I went downstairs and handed the iPad back to Maddie, rolling my eyes to indicate that my part of the conversation hadn’t gone well.

  “Hi Mum, hi Dad,” she said brightly. “Just let me swap places.”

  She went upstairs and shut the bedroom door—I suspect as much to shield me from whatever her father was about to say as to stop Theo overhearing.

  It was fully ten minutes before she came down again. By then Theo had moved on to crashing engines together on his train track. “It wasn’t too bad in the end,” she said in response to my look. “I think they were just a bit shocked.”

  “Shocked at how we’re dealing with it, you mean.”

  “I think they just thought we’re taking it in our stride a bit too much.” By which she meant this had simply confirmed her dad’s view that I’m a lazy, unambitious loser. “Funnily enough, they came around more when I explained about…” She looked at me, not wanting to put her thought into words, and again I wasn’t sure if that was because of Theo or me. “When I explained about the other child,” she said eventually.

  I stared at her, incredulous. “You mean Jack Wilson is now happy because he thinks we got the better deal? That in some way we’ve won?”

  “He can’t help being the way he is,” she said quietly.