‘Meredith, we’re not going to sit here and get pissed when you could be in the throes of labour,’ Nicola points out.
‘Oh, I don’t min—ARRRGHHHH!’
As her eyes bulge, I look at my watch and start timing. It’s only as the stopwatch on my phone passes the 30-second mark and she’s still clearly in a lot of pain that I realise something: Meredith really is in labour.
The next two contractions seem to be suddenly and significantly closer together, a discovery I make at the exact moment we pull up at traffic lights and hit the sort of jam you’d expect on the M25 during rush hour.
‘Is everything okay?’ Harry whispers.
I flash him an uneasy a look. ‘Maybe we should’ve phoned for an ambulance. Could you ask the driver how far away the hospital is?’
His eyes widen as he silently comprehends the implication of my question. The implication being: I hope he’s going to say two minutes. And not a second longer.
Because while I know most first-time mums spend hours in labour before the baby actually arrives, Meredith’s contractions have become alarmingly close, alarmingly quickly. That’s on top of the fact that, despite my earlier reassurances, she is weeks away from what is her due date and, therefore, I won’t relax until she’s in the safe hands a of a medical professional.
Harry says something to the driver in Spanish and turns back to me.
‘Usually no more than ten minutes.’
‘Usually?’
‘There’s a festival on tonight so the traffic’s bad.’
My eyes jerk to Meredith as she shrieks, ‘Oh God, here’s another one!’
The driver spins round looking mildly aghast.
‘Shall I tell him he needs to put his foot down?’ Harry asks.
Meredith lets out a scream capable of curdling the haemoglobin of a vampire bat. ‘Yes. YESSSSSSSSSS!’
Harry and the driver proceed to have a frantic exchange in Spanish which culminates in the latter’s face turning a peculiarly inhuman colour, which I can only describe as pistachio. He then clobbers the accelerator and, before any of us can register what’s going on, we’re screaming along the pavement like a tank fashioned out of oil drums and a chainsaw in a final scene from an episode of The A-Team.
‘Shit! What’s happening?’ Meredith asks, and it seems obvious to everyone but her.
‘Let me phone ahead,’ decides Harry. ‘I think we should ask for an ambulance to come and get us.’
‘Good idea,’ I say, wiping sweat from my forehead as it becomes evident that Meredith’s contractions are blending into one big, giant ball of pain.
I glance out of the window and witness pedestrians of all ages and persuasions diving out of the way as our limo ploughs along the pavement, before plopping down on the other side of the kerb.
‘How far away is . . . ARGGHHHHHHHH!’
I pick up my phone and start dialling a number. ‘Who are you phoning?’ Nicola asks, panic written all over her face.
‘Carmel, my boss’s wife,’ I reply.
‘Why?’ demands Nicola.
‘She’s a midwife,’ I explain, as Carmel answers the phone, clearly expecting a discussion similar to our previous ones.
‘I have nothing more to say to that dickwad,’ she announces.
‘It’s not about David,’ I blurt out. ‘My friend is in labour, I really think she’s close to giving birth but we’re in a limo stuck in traffic.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Carmel, I need you to help.’
I can sense her panic before she even speaks. ‘It’s more than thirty years since I’ve even looked at another woman’s vagina, Imogen.’
‘I’m sure it’s like riding a bike. Besides, you’re all we’ve got.’
I can hear her take a deep breath. ‘Okay. Right. Let me think. Have you phoned an ambulance?’
‘My other friend is phoning to try and get one, but I’m worried that she’s going to have the baby before it gets here.’
At this, Meredith glares at me. ‘Jesus H. Christ – ARE you? You never mentioned that before!’
I ignore her. ‘And I’ll be honest,’ I whisper into my phone, ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO?’ Meredith shrieks. ‘BUT YOU KNOW EVERYTHING, IMOGEN! YOU KNOW . . . ARGGHHHHHHHH!’
‘Has the driver pulled over?’ Carmel asks. She suddenly sounds incredibly, mercifully, calm.
I look up and realise that he’s taken a diversion through a pedestrian part of the city and we’re currently driving through a dense parade of Flamenco dancers. The car is engulfed in a rainbow-coloured array of bodies, as if we’ve crash-landed the set of Strictly Come Dancing.
‘No.’
‘Then get him to.’
‘STOP!’ I yell, banging on the driver’s window with my good arm. He slams on the breaks and Meredith – mid-contraction – goes flying into the mini-bar.
‘Remind the mother to pant and not push until she’s absolutely ready,’ continues Carmel – an instruction I repeat to Meredith – before she adds, ‘Have you had a look?’
I squirm. ‘No.’
‘You need to. Let me know if you can see the baby’s head.’ She says this so matter of factly, you’d think we were camped in woodland and she was asking if I could see a great spotted woodpecker.
I wedge the phone into my shoulder and instruct Harry and the driver to avert their eyes, an entirely unnecessary request as that’s clearly the last place they want to look: Harry continues talking on the phone in frantic Spanish, breaking only to tell me that an ambulance knows where we are and is on its way. Then I try to manoeuvre Meredith into a position so I can get a good look as Nicola holds her hand and tells her she’s doing brilliantly. I lift up her skirt and take a deep breath, hoping that I’m not going to see what I think I might about to.
‘Is the baby’s head visible?’ Carmel repeats.
I open my eyes and there it is – the bulge of the head of the baby, its soft, distinctive hair showing clearly.
‘Yes,’ I croak.
‘FUCKKKKKKKKK!’ Meredith screams, and I don’t know whether that’s prompted more by that revelation, the sheer pain, or the fact that several dancers dressed like large, green parakeets are now involved in a furious altercation with the driver about his choice of parking spot, oblivious to what’s going on behind the blacked-out windows.
‘Place your hand on the head and provide it with support to stop it from popping out,’ Carmel tells me. ‘Remind mother to try and pant at this stage – we don’t want her to tear.’
I try my very best to summon up some inner strength and to appear matronly. ‘Meredith, don’t push – just pant,’ I instruct her.
‘I can’t help it! I need to push. Something’s making me push! It’s happening on its own.’
‘She needs to push!’ I tell Carmel.
‘Okay, in that case you need to guide the baby out then. Just guide, don’t pull.’
I decide not to bore her with the small matter of me only having one non-broken arm to play with and instead place my hand gently on the warm hair of the baby’s head.
‘Let me help,’ says Nicola, ‘I’ve got two working hands.’
She squeezes in next to me and places her hands underneath mine so there’s absolutely no chance of the baby falling to the floor. Slowly, but probably not as slowly as I’d like, it begins to emerge. Meredith has a break in contractions and looks at me with eyes like tennis balls.
‘Is it happening, Imogen? Nicola? Is my baby being born?’
I swallow and force myself to nod as my chest feels like it’s about to burst open. Another contraction arrives and Meredith lets out a guttural roar loud enough to be heard in France, the sheer force of Mother Nature pushing this baby more than she is.
Before I can take anything in, the baby’s head is out.
With adrenalin coursing through my body, I’m torn between terror and a strange but very clear surge of optimism.
‘You ca
n do this, Meredith,’ I say, as her face twists with pain. ‘We can do this. It’s going to be okay. It’s nearly here. You’ve done the hard part.’
I don’t know why I’m convinced this emphatic speech would be enough to get her through it . . .
‘No-I-fucking-well-can’t-Imogen-Copeland,’ she growls.
I hate to disagree with a woman in this position, but there’s no other option. ‘You can, Meredith. You are . . .’
My words emerge as she launches into another vociferous push and I am only dimly aware of the door opening, Spanish-accented voices instructing everyone to get out, and someone dressed in a reassuringly medical-looking outfit appearing at my side.
I slip back along with Nicola as the contraction reaches its height and I’m outside when I hear the first, raw cries of a tiny newborn human.
I dip my head back into the limo to see Meredith in a state of catastrophic dishevelment. The floor of the car looks like it’s in a Quentin Tarantino movie.
But it’s not the shock or the gore or anything else that I focus on. It’s the sight of the beautiful baby curling into its mother’s arms for the first time.
There’s only room for one of us in the ambulance and Meredith, clearly convinced that I am some sort of obstetrics guru, wants it to be me. It means I’ll miss my flight – we’re meant to be leaving in less than four hours – but she’s the immediate priority, so I don’t hesitate.
I go to step into the ambulance, but pause and turn round. Because, in the chaos of the last hour, one unpalatable fact has been pushed to the corner of my mind and it now hits me now like a freight train.
This is the last time I’ll ever see Harry.
It’s just gone 11 p.m. and his flight leaves at 6 a.m., meaning he’ll only have time to go back, pack and perhaps catch a couple of hours’ sleep before heading to the airport.
This rushed farewell isn’t the one I’d imagined, yet the speed of it isn’t the main problem.
The main problem is that I don’t want to be saying goodbye at all.
‘I need to go with Meredith,’ I tell him.
‘This is it then.’ He nods, taking a step towards the ambulance doors and reaching out for me.
Our fingers touch as a paramedic ushers me in and I become acutely aware that there is a woman and tiny, premature baby inside who probably need urgent medical attention.
‘Goodbye Harry.’
He drifts backwards, his face bathed in the warm glow of the streetlights as music blares out from the carnival. ‘Goodbye, Imogen.’
The door shuts and he is gone.
Chapter 58
It’s a baby boy. Such was the shock of the whole thing, I only thought to ask when we were in the ambulance and on our way to hospital. Given that he was born at thirty-four weeks, he’s tiny – only 5lb 6oz – but not so tiny that he seems anything other than healthy.
His size meant that as soon as we got to hospital, doctors and nurses were all over him, before he was moved to a special care unit. But, according to the English-speaking midwife who visits Meredith immediately to check her over, it’s a precautionary measure. Reassuringly, he’s the biggest baby in there.
‘How are you feeling, or is that a silly question?’ Nicola asks Meredith as we sit next to her bed on a bright maternity ward. Nic ended up returning to the hotel in the limo with Harry, before making her way straight back here once the carnival had died down.
Meredith looks shocked and exhausted, overcome with emotion. ‘I feel like . . . like . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m a mummy.’ She shakes her head incredulously.
I grin. ‘I told you that you could do it.’
‘You two delivered my baby,’ she breathes.
‘I did nothing, thank God,’ Nicola protests. ‘It was Imogen really.
‘YOU delivered your baby, Meredith. I was just there to catch him. Although I’m very glad it didn’t quite come to that. Thank God that ambulance arrived when it did.’
‘You were brilliant,’ she continues. ‘Who gives a toss if your radio-interview skills leave something to be desired? You’ve just brought a new life into the world.’
When she puts it like that, it’s hard not to feel a whole lot better about things.
Nicola and I find a spot to sleep in a waiting room just outside the maternity ward. By and large, I’m happy to report the place has a significantly pleasanter class of clientele than the last Barcelona hospital I found myself in.
I’m attempting to settle into a position suitable for snoozing when Nicola says something that makes me suddenly less sleepy: ‘Imogen, something weird happened when I went back to the hotel.’
I frown and sit up. ‘Oh – what?’
‘I thought I’d better let Elegant Vacations know what had happened and that we weren’t going to be catching the flight, only I didn’t have any numbers for the woman Meredith has been dealing with. So I went to Reception and asked if they could put me in touch with her or, indeed, anyone from Elegant Vacations.’
‘And?’
‘It turns out Elegant Vacations has nothing to do with our booking. They didn’t know what I was talking about. We’re not on an Elegant Vacations holiday.’
I frown. ‘They must’ve just made a mistake. Maybe the person you spoke to didn’t know about the competition.’
‘Hmm. That’s what I said. In fact, I was so insistent they ended up calling the general manager, thinking he was bound to know about the competition.’
‘And?’
‘It turns out there wasn’t a competition.’
This development filters into my brain, followed by the next fact, which Nicola repeats almost simultaneously to me thinking it. ‘The booking was in Meredith’s name. Along with the bill.’
Day Eight
Chapter 59
I nap fitfully, my dreams interspersed with thoughts of Florence, and Harry, and colourful flashbacks of the unforgettable experience we’ve all been through. I’m woken by a vivid morning sun ascending over Barcelona as I realise Nicola is on the phone, pacing up and down the corridor.
‘Mum, this isn’t an ultimatum,’ she says. ‘It’s simpler than that. It’s about me telling you that I love you and that I’m sorry I couldn’t be the person you wanted me to be. I’m sorry I couldn’t marry a nice man, or provide you with the grand-children I know you’d have loved. But I love you and Dad more than anything. And if you love me, then I’m asking – from the bottom of my heart – for you to do this thing for me. It’s not too late. It’ll never be too late.’
She continues the call for another ten minutes or so. When it finally ends, she sits down next to me looking drained.
‘You okay?’ I ask.
She nods. ‘Maybe I’m delirious from lack of sleep, or my head is wrecked from everything that’s happened . . . but I woke up with an urgent need to address some of the issues I’ve failed to address lately.’
‘About you and Jess, you mean?’
She nods.
‘And?’
She shrugs. ‘It wasn’t a total dead loss. But I’ve thought that before . . .’
We’re approached by the midwife who’s been in and out of Meredith’s room all night and she gestures to Nicola and me to follow her. As we pad along the corridor to the special-care unit, we see Meredith standing by the door to it in a hospital gown, gazing through its large pane of glass. Her smile when she turns to us is no less sparkling for the fatigue.
I clutch her hand and we quietly enter the room, watching in a bubble of emotion as the midwife lifts up the baby and gently puts him in his mother’s arms.
His eyes flicker open and he starts to stir, bleating like a newborn lamb. Meredith rocks him gently and, with an instinctive shush, presses her lips against his head until he quietens.
‘Have you decided on a name?’ I ask.
‘Adam,’ she tells me. ‘It’s Nathan’s middle name.’
I grin. ‘I bet his dad’s looking forward to seeing him.’
‘He managed to get a flight last night. I think he’d have waterskied here if there had been no alternative.’
‘When’s he due to get here?’ I ask.
‘In the next couple of hours. And my mother should be here by early evening. Have you two tried to get another flight yet? I’m so sorry you missed the one that was booked for you.’
Nicola looks at me. I look at Meredith. There’s a loaded silence, as Meredith bites her lip.
‘Bugger. You know, don’t you?’
‘What on earth are you doing paying all this money for us to come on this trip with you, Meredith?’ I say, with gentle exasperation.
She rolls her eyes. ‘Never let me commit a bank robbery, I’m clearly rubbish at subterfuge.’ She sighs. ‘I just wanted us all to have a brilliant holiday together. You know, before everything changed for me. I just thought, I’ve got this money that Dad has passed on to me. I could invest it or do something sensible and dreary with it, like my mum wants me to, or I could do something that I really want. I knew you’d never be able to afford somewhere like this yourselves, and that it’d take something really special for you to agree to leave Florence, Imogen. I also knew you’d never come if I told you I wanted to pay.’
‘Well I’m paying you back,’ I insist.
‘Me too,’ Nicola says.
Meredith reaches over and clutches both of our hands. ‘No, you’re bloody not.’
I go to open my mouth when she interrupts. ‘Do not argue with a woman who’s just been through what I’ve been through. I haven’t got the energy.’
I lean in and give her a hug, deciding to leave this matter for a more appropriate time. ‘Thank you, Meredith. It was unbelievably generous of you.’
‘It was, you daft thing,’ adds Nicola.
A smile flickers to Meredith’s lips. ‘Now, what about those alternative flights – have you managed to sort one?’
‘I spoke to the airline,’ replies Nicola. ‘There’s a flight direct to Manchester at 5 p.m. if we want it. You’d have to get the train back to London with Florence though, Imogen, from your mum’s—’
The Time of Our Lives Page 29