by Julia Green
Mia kicked shut the bedroom door behind her and lay down with the baby on the single bed. Someone had put a vase of lilac on the dresser. The photograph frames had been rearranged, the one with her mother in it pushed further back. Mia saw all this in an instant; evidence of someone being here, in her room. It had better not have been that woman. Miss Julie Blackman. Her old teacher. Dad’s girlfriend. Disgusting.
Mia fed the baby, propped up against the pillows like she’d learned at the hospital. They’d been surprised she’d kept going this long, even. Expected her to give up after the first few tries, like so many of you young girls, but she’d been determined to give it a go. She’d read up about it, how important it was to try to breastfeed the new baby, in the old baby book her own mother must’ve used. The spine of the book was torn from being opened so much.
Mum was busy with her own life now, in Bristol. With Bryan. A baby didn’t fit in with that new life. She hadn’t wanted Mia to have him in the first place. She’d thought Mia was throwing her life away. It had nearly been the end of her, she’d told Mia back in the autumn, having three children. Nearly four. She’d had a miscarriage with the last one. Only now was she ‘beginning to get my life back. At my age!’
Through the window Mia watched the sunlight catching the top of the ash tree. No leaves yet; the black buds still tightly furled on the tips of the branches. Tiredness washed over her. She dozed with the baby still held against her breast. He dozed, too. His lip quivered as he slept. His hands were curled into tight little fists.
Mia heard Annie leave the house. She slept lightly then, still cradling the baby in her arms. She half woke, half dreamt. Names. She had to think of his name. They looped through her head like the continuous revolving adverts outside the supermarket in Ashton. Ceri, meaning loved one; Kai, man of the sea; Leon, Leonardo, Luke. She was getting closer. She’d know soon, what his name was.
The doorbell rang again. Dad’s voice, registering surprise. Lots of voices, giggling, footsteps. The girls from school! She’d expected them at the hospital, but they’d not managed to get there before Dad collected her. They must have come straight here instead.
Mia eased the baby back down on to the bed and swung her legs over the edge. She felt stiff; her legs ached. She stood up, peered into the mirror on the chest of drawers, pulled her fingers through her hair to spike it up a bit, grimaced at herself. She smoothed the creases out of her T-shirt, pulled it down properly over her belly. No time to change. She picked the baby up again and padded carefully downstairs.
‘Hello, everyone!’
Mia felt suddenly shy, the centre of attention. She sat down on the sofa with the baby. Becky, Tasha, Siobhan and Ali clustered round. To begin with they were quiet, reverent almost, drinking him in. The smallness of him. The aliveness. A real, live baby! Then everyone relaxed a bit.
‘Oh, Mia, he’s just so sweet! Look at his little fingers. He’s curling them round my thumb, look. He can grab things already!’
‘Can I hold him?’
‘No, I’m first. Mia said, when he wakes up a bit more.’
‘His eyes are open. Look! Really blue. Not like yours, are they, Mia?’
Nudges. Smiles.
Mia laid the baby on Becky’s lap. The others jostled in for a closer look.
‘Give him a bit of space! You can each have a turn,’ Becky said.
‘Such tiny fingernails! Oh, Mia, he’s adorable!’
‘Go on, then. Open your presents!’
Ali pushed the pile of pretty packages closer to Mia. They’d been wrapped in different shades of blue tissue paper, tied up with silver ribbon. It must have taken them ages. Mia could imagine it: her friends all sitting round together at Becky’s, after school. Laughing. Talking about her. Passing each other the tissue, the ribbon.
Mia unwrapped the parcels carefully, one by one, without tearing the paper. Ali twitched with impatience, exasperated at her for taking so long. Mia didn’t know why she’d come round with the others. Curiosity? To gloat?
Inside, Mia was feeling strange. Even though the presents were all for her, she felt left out of something.
‘Thanks.’
There was a tiny silver mirror from AH and a blue aromatherapy candle from Siobhan. Tasha gave her a turquoise beaded, embroidered purse and a small soft rabbit for the baby.
‘Sweet,’ Mia said. ‘Thank you.’ She stroked the rabbit’s velvety ears.
Her hands rested limply in her lap amongst the sea of tissue. It had gone quiet. The girls were watching her, then each other. It wasn’t going quite how they had imagined. They’d expected something more from her. More fun.
‘Here, let me take him.’ Tasha took the baby, so that Becky could give Mia the last present.
‘It’s a mobile thingy,’ Becky explained. ‘To hang in your room above his cot.’
Mia held up the silver stars. They revolved slowly, catching the light. It was beautiful. She listened to the whispering sounds the stars made as they touched each other in the draught. Everyone watched Mia, suddenly unsure.
Siobhan rallied. ‘So, what was it like? Give us all the gruesome details!’
‘Yuck! No thanks.’ Ali screwed up her nose.
‘Mum says, if women could know in advance what it was really like, then nobody but nobody would ever have a baby and the human race would all die out!’
‘They’d do it some other way. Genetics. Cloning or something.’
‘Those rich bitches all have Caesareans. Too posh to push!’
‘But then you get a scar.’
‘It’s quite neat, though. Billie had one. Only because she had to, though. Emergency,’ Tasha said.
‘Who’s Billie?’
‘Tasha’s half-sister.’
‘So, Mia? Go on. Tell us.’ Tasha smiled.
Dad opened the door. They all looked up guiltily, as if he’d caught them out.
‘All right, girls? Don’t wear her out. She’s only just come home, remember.’
Ali spoke first. Of course. ‘We just couldn’t wait any longer, Mr Kitson – I mean David. Just had to see him.’
Mia scowled at Ali. Still at it, then. Flirting with Dad.
Siobhan put out her arms to take the baby from Tasha. ‘My turn. I know how to do it. You have to hold the head up. Whoops.’
Mia winced. They were passing him round as if it were a party game.
Dad looked round the room. ‘What’s all this, then? Presents? That’s nice. Can one of you help clear up the paper?’
‘We’ll tidy up before we go.’
‘Thanks, Becky. Everything OK? What’s up with Baby Blue?’
‘He doesn’t like Ali. She’s made him cry,’ Siobhan teased.
‘Shut up, you!’
‘I’ll take him again, shall I?’ Becky said. The baby started to wail. ‘Or maybe he’s hungry. Mia?’
Mia had had enough. ‘It’s OK, Becks. Give him here. Careful.’ He’s not a bloody parcel.
She lifted up her T-shirt and the baby turned hungrily towards her. She bent forwards over him. That smell. Sweet, milky baby smell. She closed her eyes, shut them all out.
‘Oh, my God! Look at you. Bloody hell, Mia. They’re HUGE!’
‘Shut up, Ali!’ Tasha snapped back. ‘Don’t be so mean.’
Ali pouted and sulked. Becky and Siobhan smirked behind her back.
The baby wouldn’t feed. She couldn’t do it with everyone there, watching. Must have been mad to even think of it. They thought she was gross, the way she looked. The baby cried like a cat. His face had gone red and spotty. She wanted to cry, too.
Tasha came over and sat down next to Mia. She stroked the baby’s head gently. Mia fought back the tears.
‘He’s really special, Mia. You’re amazing. Coping with all this. Honestly. I know we don’t have a clue, really.’
Mia looked gratefully at Tasha. She understood more than the others. Tasha was from a huge family: four proper brothers and sisters, and then an assortment of others, ste
pbrothers and stepsisters, and she was somewhere in the middle. So she was already an auntie at fifteen, several times over. If you went round her house, there were always small children and babies hanging out there. That’s why they usually went to Becky’s, instead. Or Mia’s, where no one interfered. Well, used not to.
‘What are they talking about?’ Mia nodded her head towards the other girls, who were still giggling.
Tasha smoothed one finger along the baby’s cheek. ‘Ali’s sixteenth, remember? She’s having a party. Saturday week. Her parents are going out specially. Everyone will be there. We’re getting really tarted up for it. Just for a laugh. Going shopping after school on Thursday.’
Mia curved her hand lightly round the baby’s soft skull. If you looked closely, you could see the place where the bones hadn’t yet fused together. The fontanelle. You could see it pulsing, like a heartbeat, through the membrane. That’s why you must be careful with a new baby’s head, she thought. And then, So they are all going to a party. Except me.
‘I don’t suppose you –’ Tasha started, but Mia interrupted angrily.
‘No. Of course I can’t.’
Dad opened the door a second time and stood there, surveying the scene. He liked it when all the girls were here. He’d said so often enough. Today, though, for once, he was thinking about her. ‘Time’s up. End of visiting. Mia and the baby need a rest from you lot!’ He smiled broadly at them. ‘Come again another day, yes?’
Ali brushed against his arm when she left, on purpose. ‘See you soon, then.’ She said it to Mia, but it was Dad, David, she was smiling at.
Becky bundled the tissue paper into the kitchen bin on her way out. Tasha was the last to leave.
‘I’d love to help, babysitting and that, when he’s a bit bigger. When you’re ready. Honestly.’
‘Thanks, Tash.’
‘Look, we’ll come round after we’ve been shopping and show you what we’ve got. So you don’t feel so left out. OK?’
The door slammed. Mia imagined them all going down the garden path, then up the lane to Becky’s. Talking about her. Feeling sorry for her. Planning what they’d wear for the party.
Everyone would be there.
Including Will.
Everyone except her. She was stuck here, now. Forever and ever.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dawn. Mia sat on her bed with the curtains open, watching the sun rise while the baby sucked. He was putting on weight, like he was supposed to. Mia felt an inordinate and surprising pleasure that it was purely due to her that he was thriving. The health visitor had weighed him yesterday and written it down in a little red book. There was a graph you could fill in, plotting the gains in weight so you knew your baby was growing. It seemed, at last, that this was something at which she could succeed.
On a good day, that was. There were the other days, dark and depressing, when she couldn’t even seem to find time to get dressed, and the baby grizzled, or bawled his head off, and she was totally alone with him for long, long hours while everyone else was at school.
The whole sky had turned from pink to a thin pale blue. The leaves on the ash tree outside Mia’s bedroom window were beginning to open out now, fresh and green. Right at the top a blackbird was singing. Even from here, she could see its tiny throat reverberating as it sang its heart out.
When the baby cried, he opened his mouth so wide it became a red gaping hole. Mia would like to be able to open her mouth like that, to really let rip. The sound that would come out: what would it be? Rage? Grief? Hard to give something so raw a name. It was like there was a big bottomless pit inside her that nothing could fill up. She wanted. She needed. What?
Was it Will she was missing? The baby’s birth had brought all that back again. She knew they weren’t together any more; hadn’t been, for months. But seeing him in the hospital, seeing his echo in the baby every hour of every day, it had all come flooding back. How she’d first felt about him.
She thought about what it would be like, him with her, sharing the baby together. His arms around her.
The baby was so little, and he needed so much, and she had to give it to him because she was all he had. Dad did his best, but there was so much he couldn’t do. He had to go to work, for one thing. And he still had loads of work to do in the evenings, even when she most needed someone to give her a break. And no one could feed the baby but her. And that was what he needed; so often. She had had no idea. It was quite normal, the health visitor, Vicky, said. She was doing it perfectly, feeding him when he wanted, every couple of hours and sometimes more often.
‘It’s a full-time job, Mia,’ she’d said yesterday, ‘looking after a new baby. And you have to rest as much as you can. Eat well. Drink lots of water. Otherwise you’ll be too exhausted to cope. Seriously. But it won’t always be like this.’ She’d smiled.
Won’t it? Mia looked down at the baby. He’d stopped sucking and now turned his head to look up at her. His dark hair was damp and ruffled; his blue eyes tried to focus on her face. Will’s eyes.
It was Thursday. Becky and Tasha and everyone might call round on their way back from shopping in Ashton after school. But that wouldn’t be till about six, at the earliest. More than twelve hours away. Dad had got school and then a meeting. Vicky would probably call in the morning sometime. And the rest of the day it would be just the two of them, her and Baby. Perhaps, if it stayed sunny, she might take him out for the very first time.
They dozed together in the early-morning light. She was vaguely aware of the sounds of Dad getting up: water gushing in the bathroom, his feet along the landing and down the stairs, the radio on in the kitchen. The smell of burnt toast drifted upstairs. Just before he left, he tapped at her bedroom door.
‘Mia? Awake yet? I’ve brought you a glass of orange.’
She woke up just enough to tug her T-shirt down over her breasts before Dad came in.
‘Lovely morning. Sleep any better? How’s my blue-eyed boy?’
Mia groaned. ‘Don’t wake him up, Dad.’
‘How was the night?’
‘I had to feed him about a million times.’
‘You poor old thing. Still, he’s only very little. He doesn’t know about night and day yet, does he? He’ll get the hang of it. I’m off now. You going to be all right? Becky’s mum said she might call in on you later, OK? She’ll bring you some lunch, knowing her. And you can phone me at school if you need to, for any reason.’
‘Like what?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Mia. But if there was an emergency or something. And there’s Annie not far away, and the health visitor’s coming, isn’t she?’
‘Stop fussing, Dad.’
‘See you later, then. I’ll try not to be too late home.’ He leaned over and kissed the baby’s head, and then hers.
She heard the front door slam, the car engine start up, the car crunching over gravel and then receding into the distance.
Mia thought about Will. When was the last time he’d kissed her? Months ago. Before she’d told him she was pregnant.
Will would be on his way to school now. If she went outside she might even see him walking down the lane to the bus stop. School was all revision classes, Becky said. Study leave started in a week or so, and then the first GCSE exams. At least she didn’t have to do them.
Her body ached still. She longed to sleep and sleep, with no interruptions, for days, weeks. For a hundred years. Like Sleeping Beauty, Mia thought. To be woken by a kiss from a handsome prince. As if.
The doorbell rang. Mia woke with a start. The clock on the chest of drawers said eleven. She slid out of the covers so as not to disturb the baby, but too late; he woke abruptly and started to yell. The doorbell rang again. Must be Vicky. Mia pulled a fleece top over her T-shirt and then scrabbled around for the trousers she’d left in a heap on the floor. She snatched up the baby and padded downstairs.
‘Sorry, Mia. Were you sleeping?’
Vicky smiled from the doorstep. She was quite young
and had this broad, open face that instantly won you over. Fair, short hair, all messed up from where she ran her hands through it. There was nothing threatening or judgemental about her. So completely different from those nurses in hospital.
Vicky followed Mia into the sitting room. ‘Shall I make us a drink? I’ll take him, if you want to finish getting dressed. I know how hard it is, doing everything with one hand!’
Mia handed over the wailing baby. Vicky didn’t jiggle him, like most people did with crying babies; she sat down quietly with him, cradled him, looked right into his screwed-up little face and talked gently, soothing him with words and closeness.
‘It’s hard, little one, isn’t it? But you’re OK. You keep telling us what it’s like, that’s right. You’re safe here, sweetie. I’ll hold you close and Mia will be back in a minute to feed you. She won’t be long.’
Mia hovered in the doorway, listening to her words. She loved the way Vicky was with him; so quiet and gentle. The way she talked to him as if he understood everything. Then she turned and ran upstairs to get properly dressed. She combed her hair, glanced at her pale face in the mirror, stuck out her tongue at it.
She could still hear Vicky’s voice, chatting to the baby. Finally, Mia went back downstairs and into the sitting room.
Vicky came in with her coffee and a glass of water for Mia. ‘It’s good to start going out and about again. How about coming to the Young Parents’ group I told you about? Wednesday mornings, in Ashton. There’s a bus you can get into Ashton, isn’t there?’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘There’s a new girl, your sort of age. With a baby boy, too. She could do with some friends. She doesn’t know anyone round here. She was with the fair, you know – travellers – but she’s been poorly. Had to stay on behind.’ Vicky turned her attention back to the baby. ‘He’s looking fantastic. Aren’t you so clever! We won’t weigh him today. We don’t want him upset all over again.’
Already, Vicky had become a sort of friend. She understood what it was like. She had a child of her own, although she was so young. ‘It was because of having him, at seventeen,’ she’d told Mia the first time she’d come to the house, ‘that I worked out what I wanted to be.’