Her eyes droop, she is almost asleep and then there is a loud bang on the front door. Fleur is on high alert, eyes wide. What is this madness?
The midwife.
For fuck’s sake.
You’d think, as occupational skill sets go, a quiet knock might be something you’d master when a lot of your job involves visiting people who have just had a child and who are desperate for them to sleep.
Fleur screams.
I go to answer the door.
‘Oh, petal, missing Mummy?’ says the midwife, sweeping past, then she looks at me. ‘Sorry I’m late. Snuck you in at the end of the day. Any news?’
I glower at her. Internally, of course; externally I am serene.
Loll sticks her head round the door.
‘Nipping to the shop while the midwife is here,’ she says. ‘Give you some space.’
Please don’t, I think. For all of her irritating ways, space to have a one-on-one chat with the midwife about everything I don’t know and all that has happened sounds terrifying.
‘Well,’ I say to the midwife as she starts to strip Fleur off for a weigh-in. ‘Yes, some news – she has a name. Fleur.’
‘Ooh!’ she says. ‘That’s sweet. But I meant any news on mum?’
I blush. Of course that’s what she meant. Jesus. That’s what everybody means. I touch Fleur’s face. My poor baby. Nobody asks the usual questions; how much did she weigh, what’s she called, how was the birth, because they are far too focused on the situation we are facing.
‘Yes,’ I say quietly. ‘We think she is in France.’
Her eyebrows zoom upwards.
‘France,’ she replies, peeling off Fleur’s nappy and placing her on a towel on the scales. ‘Well. Seven pounds six. Lovely. Putting it on nicely. She’ll be back to her birth weight in no time.’
Then she pauses.
And I realise: I can’t remember what her birth weight was. How bad a dad does that make me? Then again, since I was told that news, we have mislaid her mum. The figure has been superseded by others: number of hours since we last saw Romilly, pounds of panic I am dragging around the house.
The midwife starts to put Fleur’s nappy on as she turns to me.
‘Who on earth has she gone to France with then?’ she asks.
‘No one,’ I reply. ‘We’re going out there to get her – well, my friend is.’
She nods, impatient. She is on the floor expertly buttoning Fleur into her babygrow.
‘That’s good,’ she says. ‘Yes.’
She holds my daughter up as if she’s examining a pretty vase.
‘Sooner we have you back with Mummy, the better – hey, petal?’
She hands her back to me and climbs up to standing.
‘But, Marc,’ she says. And she is kinder then. Puts a hand on my arm.
‘What I’m trying to say is that when women have babies, it’s a huge undertaking, physically and mentally. Childbirth, especially the first time round, drains women. Exhausts them. Makes the most basic tasks about as much as you can manage. When it’s your first, even a relatively simple birth like Romilly had is mammoth, emotionally and physically.’
I nod. Mmm hmm. Yep. I get that. What is her point?
‘The whole thing is also such a shock. To the mind and to the body.’
She sighs, but it’s kind. Building up to something. Feeling her way around it.
‘Marc, in my experience – and that’s twenty-five years of helping women have babies – there is no way that whatever she was experiencing, Romilly came up with a plan to go abroad, got out of hospital and away all by herself when she and her body had just been through the huge, life-changing experience of having her first child. I’d argue we’re not saying unlikely. We’re saying impossible.’