I Know You

by Annabel Kantaria

  ‘Thanks for coming. It means a lot.’ I smile at her, thinking about how difficult it must be for her. ‘Would you like to… hold him?’

  Her eyes widen and I see her chest move as she breathes in and out, her jaw also clenching and unclenching. Then she says, ‘Really? I’d really like that, if you’re sure… but he’s sleeping.’

  Maybe it’s my hormones but suddenly I’m overwhelmed with the desire for her to hold Joseph. I hope it heals her. I hope it makes her want to try again; to move on from the pain of losing her own child.

  ‘It’s okay. If you’d like to…’ I say.

  She hesitates by the bassinet, so I gently raise myself up in bed, slide my legs over the edge and stand, holding onto the bed for support. I didn’t have an epidural, but I’m still wobbly on my feet. Together we stand looking at my son.

  ‘So precious,’ Caroline whispers.

  ‘Go on,’ I say, so she reaches down and gently picks him up, and settles him in the crook of her arm, her face close to his.

  ‘Oh, the smell of him,’ she whispers, closing her eyes. ‘That baby smell. I wish they could bottle it.’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down with him? I need to use the bathroom.’

  ‘Are you able to? Everything went… well?’

  ‘Natural birth,’ I say. ‘Gas and air. But we’ll see about the bathroom. The midwife said I should try if I could, so I will.’

  ‘Okay, take your time,’ Caroline says, and I watch as she walks over to the chair and settles herself, all the while gazing into Joseph’s face. I have to say it suits her. Holding a baby suits her.

  ‘Back in a minute,’ I say. ‘If he starts crying and you don’t know what to do, just press the bell.’

  ‘Okay,’ she whispers and it’s as if she’s in a trance.

  I shuffle off to the bathroom.

  When I get back to the room, I know immediately that it’s empty but, even so, I look around, look into the corners and under the bed as my brain fails to process the fact that both Caroline and Joseph have gone. My heart feels as if it’s been ripped out of me; panic stampedes my senses. Not caring that I’m in a blood-smeared nightie, I rip open the room door and look down the empty corridor.

  ‘Caroline!’ I scream. And then I faint. Out cold on the floor.

  Thirty-eight

  I’m only out for a minute. When I come around, a nurse is kneeling in front of me and I’m lying on my back on the floor with my legs propped up on a chair.

  ‘Okay sweetheart,’ she says. ‘Don’t move. You just had a funny turn. Get up too soon, did we?’ She lifts my wrist and feels my pulse. With her other hand she feels my forehead, then looks into my eyes. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘The baby!’ I say, struggling to sit up. ‘Where’s my baby?’

  ‘Try to relax,’ says the nurse. ‘He was fretting a bit so your friend took him for a walk. I saw them leaving.’

  ‘Leaving what? The hospital?’

  The nurse tuts. ‘No. The room. I’m sure they won’t have gone far.’

  I try again to sit up. ‘Get him back. I need him back. My baby!’

  ‘Shhh… shhh,’ says the nurse, sliding a pillow under my head and gently easing me back down. ‘Don’t get up too quickly. Your baby’s fine. We’ll get him back in here before you’re back in bed, don’t you worry, but I don’t want you fainting again, so we’ll just take it easy, okay?’

  Bit by bit, she helps me up and then back into the bed, but all the while my eyes are on the door. I’m sweating heavily. I can feel the wetness of it on my hairline, at my throat and behind my knees; my whole body is damp with it. What’s Caroline doing with Joseph? My baby should be in here with me. He was inside my body a couple of hours ago – now he’s gone.

  The nurse bustles around the room, settling me in the bed, taking my blood pressure, bringing me a glass of water and making sure I can reach the call button.

  ‘Right. Try to stay put for a bit. I don’t want a repeat of that. Remember what your body’s just been through.’

  She leaves the room and then I hear footsteps and the piercing cry of a baby. I’ve not had Joseph long enough to recognize his scream but something deep inside me tells me it’s him and my body melts with relief.

  ‘Here we go… Here’s Mummy,’ Caroline says, nudging the door open. ‘I told you she was right here…’

  ‘Oh my god,’ I say as Caroline hands Joseph back to me, ‘please don’t do that again.’

  ‘What? You thought…?’ She laughs. ‘I forget how possessive new mums are. He was fussing. I thought a walk might help.’

  I smile weakly. I’m whole again now I have my son’s weight in my arms. I touch my lips to his forehead. We’re both looking at him when the door opens and Jake walks in.

  ‘Hello, hello,’ he says to all of us. He comes over to me, kisses my head, then peers down at Joe. ‘Oh my god, Tay! Is this him?’

  ‘No, it’s her pet llama,’ Caroline says.

  Thirty-nine

  Having a baby wasn’t as easy as I’d thought it would be. Nothing had prepared me for the huge responsibility I felt towards him. When he’d latch on to feed and I looked down at his tiny face and he looked back with those bright little eyes that looked like they knew all the secrets of the universe, I felt he was relying on me 100 per cent to take care of him; to feed him the right food; to keep him the right temperature; to make sure that he thrived – and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find it overwhelming.

  He cried a lot. After those first couple of days, Joe found his voice, and boy did he use it. He didn’t sleep much, either, his little naps between feeds barely long enough for me to shower, get something to eat and tidy up the house, let alone get some rest myself. I was jealous of the mums on my online forums whose babies slept for three or four hours at a stretch – what were they doing that I wasn’t? Why was my baby so fractious, so demanding, so unreasonable?

  And then there was the exhaustion. I’d never known anything like it; days lost in a haze of tiredness. There were times when I went upstairs and forgot why I was there; days when I found my mobile phone in the fridge; days when I woke up and cried with the bone-tired misery of having to get up and do it all again, having been up the best part of the night. Joe had colic in the early days. Every feed would be followed by screaming on his part, his face twisted in pain. I didn’t know what to do. I felt like screaming back. Sometimes I did.

  There was pain, too. No one told me about that: not just the physical tension in my shoulders from holding a baby, but the agony of the early days of breast-feeding. I got mastitis, and lay alternately shaking and sweating with fever until the antibiotics kicked in, my infected breast huge, red and throbbing like a beacon. I expressed milk using a double electric machine, my breasts sucked dry like a cow. In those early days, my sense of self was stripped to the bone. The person I was before Joe was born ceased to exist, and a new me – a shattered, careworn mother – evolved. The learning curve was steep; sometimes so steep I thought I’d fall right back down to the bottom.

  Did Jake notice any of this? I doubt it. He wasn’t travelling, but he did go back to work after a week and, once again, I found myself marooned at home. Only this time I wasn’t bored – how can you be bored when there’s a baby in the house? – but something was missing. There was an emptiness inside me that I couldn’t explain; an emptiness that wouldn’t go away, and I honestly think that Anna quite possibly saved my life. I don’t mean to sound overly dramatic but she came over every morning, soon after Jake left, and she made herself indispensable, helping me with housework and making sure I kept up with the laundry. I expressed milk, and she took Joe out for long walks so I could sleep during the day. Despite her own worries, she kept Joe and me in a bubble of safety and support. She became my backbone, my moral support, my cheerleader. Everything, with hindsight, that Jake should have been.

  *

  ‘Do you know much about post-natal depression?’ Anna asks me in the living room one day. She�
��s folding muslin cloths and babygrows at the dining table while I’m doing a bit of ironing and Joe is, for once, asleep in the bassinet I keep in the living room. Anna’s got a serious look on her face.

  ‘Not much. Why?’

  ‘Hmm,’ she says. ‘I was reading up about it the other day and, please don’t take this the wrong way because I want to help, but I wonder if you might have a touch of it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. You’re not yourself. You seem down. You’ve lost your confidence.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what I’m doing half the time, that’s why.’

  Anna shakes her head. ‘It’s more than that. You’ve lost all interest in life. You never want to go out.’

  ‘Because I’m exhausted!’

  ‘But you won’t even take Joe for a walk to the park. It’s so lovely to get out, get some fresh air – it’d do you no end of good, maybe help you sleep better at night – but you don’t even want to do that.’ Anna smiles to soften her words and I focus on the ironing. I’m doing one of Jake’s shirts, trying hard not to put tramlines down the sleeve, even though I’m seeing double. Anna’s right. I don’t feel myself, but I’d put it down to tiredness. I sigh.

  ‘I know I’ve been a bit subdued but I don’t think I’m depressed. I’m hardly sitting about sobbing, am I? And it’s not as if I want to kill myself and throw Joe out the window. I’m just tired. Really tired. Like you can’t begin to imagine. You have all this to come.’

  Anna looks at me in a way that makes me wonder what she sees. I know I’ve been skimping on the make-up lately so the black bags under my eyes are more obvious than usual, and my hair needs a wash, but what else?

  ‘Maybe you should get a blood test or something,’ Anna says. ‘You look like a corpse, and I tell you that as a friend. You’re also not eating. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. You’re living on coffee, tinned soup and toast.’

  ‘I’ve just had a baby,’ I say. ‘I think I’m a bit anaemic, and I’m not getting any sleep. Of course I’m exhausted. And I don’t have time to cook like I used to. So yes, our diet is a bit hit and miss at the moment.’

  ‘No, but above that. You look drained. Washed-out.’ Anna looks thoughtful. ‘When will your mum be able to travel?’

  My mum had fallen and fractured her leg the day after Joe was born. With her entire leg in plaster, and instructions to keep it elevated as much as possible, her planned trip to stay with me had had to be put on hold.

  I sigh. ‘I think that one’s not going to happen for some time. She’s just not up to the flight.’

  ‘What about Jake’s parents?’

  ‘His mum died years ago and his dad’s old – he’s in a home.’

  ‘I see.’ Anna frowns. ‘What about a night nurse? Don’t they have those nurses who come and do the night feeds so you can try to get your sleep back on track?’

  I sigh again. ‘All very well if you’re married to royalty, but for us commoners it’s a bit of a stretch.’

  ‘What about Jake? Is he pulling his weight? Can he do some night feeds? You are expressing. He could help out.’

  ‘He does occasionally on the weekends. But I feel guilty keeping him up all night during the week as he has to get up and do a full day’s work. Specially as he does so much driving. At least I’m at home so I can sleep when the baby sleeps.’

  ‘All very well in theory,’ says Anna, ‘but you don’t, do you? I’ve seen you. As soon as he nods off, you’re off doing the housework or catching up on the washing or something. And he doesn’t sleep for that long, considering.’

  Joe stirs and we both look over towards him, our tiny dictator swaddled in his blue dotty blanket.

  ‘So much disruption for one so little,’ I say when it becomes apparent he’s not waking up, after all.

  ‘But you love him?’ Anna asks. ‘Because, sometimes…’

  ‘Of course I love him,’ I snap. ‘But he completely rules the house. Everything revolves around him. It’s like he’s the sun and we’re the planets.’

  ‘Good analogy.’

  I let my head loll back on the sofa and close my eyes, feeling my eyeballs roll up ready for sleep, my head already heavy.

  ‘Why don’t you go and see your parents?’ Anna breaks into my micro-nap.

  ‘What? Take him to the States?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought about it. Flying all that time on my own with a baby? Jake can’t get any more time off. Not enough to go to the States, anyway.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘You couldn’t!’

  ‘Why not? I have no ties here, with Rob in Qatar. I can do my work anywhere. Besides, I could really do with a break before my own baby comes.’

  I look at Anna, searching her face and she looks back, eyes shining. She’s sitting up really straight now, smiling, and I can see that she’s plotting this trip in her head already.

  ‘We could do it,’ she says. ‘Take turns with him on the flight so each of us gets some sleep. I could help feed him, hold him… and then you’d be with your mum. How nice would that be? To have her there for moral support. Don’t worry about me – maybe Rob will join me there. He’s been offered the job, by the way. So we could use some time to decide if we want to move back.’

  This hits me like the proverbial tonne of bricks but I’m too excited by the thought of going home – of seeing my parents and showing them Joe – that I let it slip for now.

  ‘When’s your due date?’

  ‘It’s fine. I checked. I can fly up to thirty-six weeks and I’ll be thirty-two next week. I’ll get a “fit to fly” certificate from the doctor. I have no complications so it shouldn’t be a problem.’

  I purse my lips. ‘My parents are desperate to see him.’

  ‘Well, let’s do it! It’s probably easier to fly with a newborn than with a toddler who you’ve got to amuse.’

  ‘Do you really think we could?’

  ‘Yes!’ says Anna. She’s jumped up and is pacing the room. ‘How soon do you think we can go? Rob’s not coming back for another three weeks. If we went in the next few days…’

  ‘Let me talk to Jake,’ I say and, for the first time in a little while, my heart is full of hope.

  Forty

  It’s difficult to look back on what happened next. This is the hardest part of the story to recount. Jake agreed that I should go. Of course he did. What kind of man would stop his wife from seeing her mother? Maybe he was also worried about me, because he was very glad to hand over the duty of care to my mum, I could see it in the way he smiled and his shoulders relaxed the moment I suggested it. Perhaps I didn’t give him credit for how much he worried about me in those early days. It’s hard to see it objectively now.

  But he certainly didn’t have any concerns about me flying to the States with Anna. Not one. He thought it was a great idea. I want that on paper at this point: he thought it was a great idea. We are both to blame – that’s a fact that was forgotten in the aftermath, and I have to remind myself of it every time the guilt creeps up on me. But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.

  *

  The trip is exactly what I need. Once the tickets are booked and my parents told to expect us, and I get my energy back, despite the lack of sleep, I plan for the trip like a soldier, trawling ‘travelling with baby’ websites and forums for tips and advice on flying long haul with a newborn. Anna gets her ESTA; I take out travel insurance; arrange a passport for Joe; pay extra for premium economy; check the regulations for flying with bottles of expressed milk. Nothing is left to chance. We’re ready to go within a week of that first discussion. It’s a frantic week, but a good one. For the first time in months, I feel like the real me: invincible. Joe is six weeks old.

  The morning that we fly is etched into my memory. It’s a dull, grey day that threatens rain, as if even the elements know what’s about to happen. Had I been staying at home, I’d have been down at the thought of a late-March day being so miserab
le. As it is, I can’t wait to be up high in the bright blue of the atmosphere, looking down at the clouds as we hurtle towards the sunshine of California, of home. Before he leaves for work, Jake pulls me into his arms and holds me tight.

  ‘Look after yourself,’ he says, ‘and look after our son.’ He kisses me longer and harder than usual, and it squeezes at my heart. I don’t want to leave, but I do want to go.

  ‘I’ll message you when we’re through passport control,’ I say, and I wave at the car until he turns out of the end of the street.

  Anna and I take a taxi to Heathrow. It comes at 10.15 a.m., plenty of time: I don’t want there to be any rush, any stress. The driver helps me fix Joe’s rear-facing car seat into the cab and load the luggage. Anna, giddy with excitement, Instagrams a picture of the cab. She and I both have backpacks stuffed with nappies, wipes, muslin squares, blankets, spare baby clothes and rattles for our hand luggage. We’re at the airport before 11 a.m. The driver helps us haul the bags out of the cab and load them onto a trolley. I tip him.

  ‘Cheers, love,’ he says, and Anna starts pushing the trolley towards the terminal while I carry Joe in his car seat. I don’t know if it’s nerves or excitement about being back in an airport environment, the smell of jet fuel hanging in the air, but my insides flutter and cramp, and I realize I need the bathroom. I spot one right there, inside the terminal doors, and hand Joe to Anna.

  ‘Sorry. Won’t be long,’ I say, but I’m wrong. I don’t mean to go into too much detail – let’s just say that my stomach was loose with nerves. I wash my hands in hot water and dry them with paper, but I’m impatient to get going so I’m running my hands down my jeans to finish the job as I walk out of the bathroom looking for Anna.

  I’m going to describe what happens next in detail because I’ve gone over it so many times; told Jake and the police so many times. I’m smiling as I look around for Anna, half-expecting to see her sitting on a bench, dandling a rattle for Joe. The luggage trolley is there, by the wall, but Anna and Joe are not. My eyes skim over the people bustling past with their suitcases and carry-ons piled high, yanking wayward trolleys into line. I look left and right, and probably start to frown as my eyes move faster through the crowds, skimming over the bright reds, blues and yellows of the airline logos behind the banks of check-in desks. Outside, beyond the doors, taxis, cars and people-carriers pull up, disgorge passengers and leave. The electric doors whoosh open and closed, open and closed, bringing with them a blast of fresh air and the sound of car horns. Trolley wheels rattle; children cry.