There was an east wind blowing on the night Tamara went into labour in the rambling Victorian house where Christopher and Angela now lived. The doors and windows shook as the baby fought to take its place in the world. The wind howled around the corners of the house and through the branches of the trees in the garden.
Christopher and Angela wandered through the half-decorated, uncurtained rooms. The dog followed them. The wind hurled leaves, twigs and snowflakes at the windows. After three hours they climbed the stairs, leaving the dog asleep in the kitchen. They went into the bedroom, where Tamara lay on the bed in a tangle of sheets crying for her mother. Christopher asked the midwife, “How much longer?”
“A while yet,” she said.
They went into the room they had prepared for the baby and checked once more that everything was in its place. They heard a loud crack as a branch split from a tree. Christopher pulled up the nursery blind with its Winnie the Pooh design and they looked out. The wind was making patterns of swirling snow.
Crackle sat downstairs at the table in the large kitchen, smoking and fiddling with the rings on his fingers. Gregory had been drawn up next to him in a customised chair with a built-in tray. He was assembling a jigsaw meant for six-year-olds. Occasionally he would whimper and hold out a piece to Crackle and Crackle would slot it in place impatiently, saying quietly, “Fucking baby.”
The baby boy cried the moment he left Tamara’s body. He was still attached to the milky green cord when Christopher crouched down at the side of the bed and cupped him in his hands. Angela looked at the tiny infant. It was like looking at a miniature Crackle; there was the same frowning brow. Tamara strained up to see her son, then dropped back in exhaustion. When she next woke up she heard the baby crying in a distant room.
Next morning, after the midwife had gone, Crackle counted and recounted the money Christopher had placed on the kitchen table and stuffed the bundle of notes into the pocket of his jeans. He put on his new leather jacket and zipped it up. He watched Angela hold a drinking cup with a spout to Gregory’s lips.
“Here’s your tea, Greg,” she said.
“Right, I’m off,” Crackle said. “I’ll be back for Tamara next week.”
Christopher couldn’t put the baby down. He cradled him in his arms, wrapped in a white shawl. He went to the top of the stairs and listened. He hoped that Crackle had taken his money and gone. Crackle opened the kitchen door. The dog woke up and followed him out into the hallway. When it saw Christopher with the baby it began to growl at the back of its throat. Barking and snarling, it crept up the stairs. When it reached the top it leapt into the air and snarled at the baby. Angela screamed.
Christopher held the baby tight to his chest. He covered its head with his hands, and kicked the squealing dog down the stairs. “Keep it away from the baby,” he shouted.
Crackle took the dog’s lead from a hook on the wall and clipped it on to the dog’s collar.
“I’ll take it off your hands,” he said.
Neither Christopher nor Angela spoke. Crackle opened the front door and walked out into the snow-filled whirlwind.
Christopher handed the baby to Angela. He ran out on to the path and stared after them. Within moments the dog and its new master had disappeared behind a thick, soft curtain of driving snow.
EOF