When the baby has her nappy on, Loll wraps her in a blanket, stands up and rocks her.
‘Hey, you,’ she whispers, breath on her face. I realise then that it’s the first time they have met. ‘Oh gosh. Your cousins are going to love you. You are in for so many cuddles.’
I smile, sad. Don’t miss out on that, Romilly. Please don’t.
It’s 7 a.m. now. An hour since I found out Romilly had left. It’s a relief she is not with the baby, but postpartum psychosis means that there is a chance she can be a harm to herself too. Loll and I talk around that, carrying it in our deep frowns and shaky hands instead.
‘Bring them round,’ I say. ‘Would be nice to see them when we get home.’
Loll’s bottom lip is sucked into her mouth.
‘It’s just …’
Ah. Yeah.
‘Bit intense?’
She nods. ‘Sorry. But yeah. They’ve been through a lot, my kids, in the last few years with the divorce. I want to shelter them … Hopefully it’ll all be over soon and they’ll never need to know.’
I am envious. Her children can avoid this; mine has no choice but to be a part of it.
I pull out my phone.
‘Okay, so postpartum psychosis then. Firstly – the timing. This usually hits straight after the baby is born.’
Loll’s face stays buried in the baby. ‘Marc, I know all of this,’ she says. ‘We don’t need to go over it.’
My eyes are back on my phone.
‘Feeling suspicious or fearful – could explain her bolting.’
Loll bites that lip again.
‘Restlessness – well, she’s not here so yeah. Pretty restless.’
Not even a wry smile.
‘Confused. Acting out of character. Delusions.’
I look at her.
‘It carries on and it all makes sense. And I tell you what else makes sense – fuck all. If you freak out when you have just had a baby, you have a cry, call your friend, post something panicky on Facebook. You don’t leave. It has to be this.’
Loll puts the baby in the Moses basket. She wraps her arms around her own body like a blanket even though it’s twenty degrees outside, the start of the warmest day of the year so far. We are only in May.
‘I know,’ she says, voice hard as set cement.
‘Every symptom, every …’
She places a soft hand on my arm but her voice doesn’t lose its solidity. ‘You don’t have to convince me, Marc,’ she says. ‘I went to every one of Romilly’s meetings with her. And I saw my mum go through it.’
I nod, in my place. Defer. Loll is the expert.
After that, we get back to the baby.
Loll – a surrogate mother to Romilly often, as there is a ten-year age gap between them – takes charge. As I sit on the edge of an empty bed messaging and calling everyone Romilly is close to, Loll is rummaging through the hospital bag that Romilly packed, muttering: ‘Going home outfit, going home outfit, the yellow cardy, hat.’
‘I don’t think she needs a hat, Loll,’ I say, trying to find a purpose as I sit swinging my legs off the bed like a teenager, phone in hand. ‘It’s a warm day.’
She doesn’t look up. Keeps rummaging. ‘Babies always need a hat, Marc – it’s a thing. Heat escapes out of their little heads.’
Is it true?
I’m embarrassed at my lack of knowledge.
Part of me wants to tell her to sling on the first babygrow she finds, that it doesn’t matter what the baby wears; we are in the middle of a crisis.
But slowly, like a ritual, Loll starts dressing the baby in this soft tiny onesie that she has been looking for and something about it calms me for a few seconds. I stop looking at the messages coming in on my phone; look at this spindly doll instead.
Loll looks up at me. Pauses.
‘Is it okay?’ she asks suddenly. ‘That I’m doing this? It doesn’t feel right. It should be her parents.’
‘Well nothing about this is right,’ I say with a shrug. ‘It’s just clothes.’
And doesn’t our baby deserve it? A nice outfit, some ceremony, the stuff the other babies have?
She is currently deprived of fifty per cent of her parents; the least we can give her is a thirty-quid John Lewis babygrow with a fancy collar.
Afterwards, Loll and I stare at each other.
‘Ready?’ she asks.
I nod.
And when we leave, nobody takes that picture – you know the one, me from behind, walking along holding the baby in the brand-new car seat.
Actually, nobody takes any pictures.
Nobody tells me from the back seat to drive slower, slower, slower all the way home because nobody is in the back seat with our baby, holding her hand.
Loll is in her own car.
In here, it’s just the baby and me.
Silence.
But still, we head home, into a day that is the wrong shape and grotesque.
This can’t be it for good now, I think, a sick feeling spreading across my middle.
Romilly has to undo this.
But I have a terrible feeling that she won’t.