47

‘It’s the best thing,’ Eric assured her. But his tone, in her fragile state, seemed too condescending for her liking. ‘If you haemorrhage it could be fatal, Evie. You can’t risk that.’

They were still in bed, early on the morning after her thirty-six-week scan. He was only saying the same thing the doctors, her mother, even her medically clueless dad, had said. And she knew they were all totally right. But it wasn’t their body that was going to be sliced open.

Eve, who had put on a brave face at the hospital and hadn’t quibbled with the doctors about the necessity of a caesarean, knew she didn’t want logic, she wanted understanding. She hadn’t slept a wink last night, imagining the birth: the epidural, the clinical glare of the operating-theatre lights, masked faces, the blue cloth screen obscuring the surgeon’s scalpel, the baby – a girl, they had been told, much to her and Eric’s delight – yanked unceremoniously from the wound. She wouldn’t feel a thing, wouldn’t see a thing, she’d just be a lump, lying there immobile and unable to participate.

She remembered Arthur’s birth, remembered the intense physical involvement, the agonizing pain, the breathless wait for the next contraction, the sight of her son’s dark head as he crowned between her legs. They’d worked together, she and Arthur: a team.

‘Suppose I can’t bond with her?’ she asked now, heaving up her pregnant bulk and swinging her legs over the side of the bed, where she sat cradling her belly between her hands, her back to Eric. It was so bloody awkward, sleeping. Every night she desperately longed for rest, but she could never get comfortable. If she did manage it for a brief moment – propped and bolstered at every angle of her swollen body – the need to pee would disrupt her and she would have to start all over again. She felt exhausted already and it was barely seven o’clock.

Eric pulled himself across the sheets and came to sit next to her in his boxers and white T-shirt. He looked wan and worn out too, but then he always did, even though he slept like the dead most nights. His face was still two-tone where he’d shaved off his heavy beard, the delicate skin pinkish and tender where the five-month growth had been. She reached up and laid her palm gently against his cheek and he pressed it to his face with his own.

‘Of course you’ll bond. As soon as she’s born it’ll be just the same as it was with Arthur.’

She shrugged. ‘No, it won’t, Eric. I won’t have gone through labour. I won’t be exhausted and exhilarated, I won’t have made the slightest effort. She’ll just be handed to me on a plate.’

Eric was silent, his arm around her shoulder. ‘But the baby will be safe and so will you—’

Yes,’ Eve almost shouted, sometimes hating her partner’s logical scientist’s brain. ‘I know all that. But you don’t understand. I’m not talking about being safe and doing the sensible thing – you know I’ll do anything it takes to make the baby safe – I’m just telling you how I feel.’

But Eve could see that Eric was baffled.

She tried again. ‘I wanted a birth like Arthur’s,’ she said, trying to keep her voice reasonable. ‘Just a normal delivery, with lots of pain and yelling and going red in the face, but feeling that glorious sense of triumph at the end. That’s all I’m saying. I know I have to do the caesarean, and I will. But I feel really upset about it.’ She just managed to get the words out before she burst into floods of tears.

‘They’re saying Monday, the twenty-eighth,’ Eve told her mother later.

‘Right, good. OK. Must be a relief to get a date. So what shall I do? I can come down on the Sunday? Or earlier. Just say the word, sweetheart, I’ll do whatever you want.’

Whoa, Eve thought as she listened to her mum’s gabbled response. ‘Everything OK, Mum?’

There was a pause. ‘Yes, fine.’

Her mother’s ‘fine’ usually meant the exact opposite, but Eve had long since ceased to query it. So she said, ‘It’d be great if you could come on the twenty-seventh. Or before, if you like. You know you’re always welcome.’

‘How long do you think you’ll be in hospital?’

‘Three or four days? Depends how it all goes, I suppose. Arthur’s not going to like it.’

‘Well, he managed last time. It’s not as if it’s new for him, you being in hospital. He’s got his dad this time, and I’ll be there. He’ll be fine.’

Eve was a bit taken aback at the peremptory tone in her mother’s voice. Usually, in matters concerning her beloved grandson, she was a total softy.

‘And his grandad, too. I just spoke to Dad and he says he’ll be staying at the cottage for the duration. Which is great.’

‘Right …’ her mother said, then stopped.

Frowning, Eve repeated her question, ‘Are you sure you’re OK, Mum? You sound a bit … odd.’

There was silence, then a forced laugh. ‘Do I?’

Eve waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. ‘Yes, you do.’

She heard a sigh. ‘I just seem to have a lot on at the moment,’ her mother said. ‘What with Iain selling his flat and this script they want me to do …’ She tailed off.

‘Right.’ Eve paused. ‘You know you don’t have to let Iain stay, if you don’t want to? I’m sure he’d understand if you—’

‘Oh, I know. He’s said as much,’ Stella interrupted, sounding almost impatient. ‘But I’m fine with him being here. It won’t be a problem.’

‘That’s good.’ Well, excuse me for caring, Eve thought. ‘And you’re positive you’re OK with coming to help out?’ she asked, wondering if this were at the crux of her mum’s mood. ‘I mean, if it’s difficult, you could just stay for the birth itself. I’m sure we can manage.’

‘God, no! I wouldn’t miss it for the world, sweetheart,’ Stella said without hesitation, her words genuine for the first time since the conversation started. ‘Me and Arthur will find lots of fun things to do while you’re in hospital.’

Eve laughed. ‘To distract him from realizing his life, as he knows it, is over?’

‘Ha! Yes. Poor child. It’ll be a while before he understands the benefits of a little sister.’

When she finally said goodbye to her mother, Eve was none the wiser as to the source of her mother’s strange mood.

‘Mum can be quite unpredictable these days,’ she told Eric when he wandered into the kitchen, his dark hair spattered with Dulux ‘Sorbet’. Arthur was watching catch-up of a children’s animation series about a chocolate-coloured bunny called Bing. Eve knew he spent way too much time in front of the television these days, but she didn’t have the energy and Eric didn’t have the time to find alternatives. He was painting the baby’s room, resurrecting the pieces of Arthur’s old cot, steeling himself for a confrontation with the Ikea flat-pack chest of drawers Eve had ordered online, and untangling the colourful felt mobile of trains, planes and boats that had hung over Arthur’s cot.

Eric sat down with her at the table. ‘Count yourself lucky,’ he said.

‘Lucky?’ She gave him a quizzical grin. ‘That my mum’s unpredictable?’

He raised his eyebrows, his expression amused. ‘My parents are so sodding normal, Evie. So … sewn-up and totally predictable. Like they’re painting-by-numbers people, not real.’ He sighed. ‘Even the cat wouldn’t stand out in a crowd.’

Eve laughed. She thought his parents were super-weird, their dour, self-righteous take on life precluding any sort of fun. But she wasn’t going to say that to him.

‘I’d like to bang their heads together,’ he said wearily. ‘Make them realize there’s a whole amazing world out there if they’d only relax a bit and open their eyes.’

‘I’d like to bang my parents’ heads together too,’ she replied. ‘I can’t tell from one day to the next whether they’ll be the best of friends or barely exchange two words.’ She laughed. ‘So stop complaining. Yours may be dull, but at least you know where you are with them.’