‘How about a dog?’ he grinned, pushing his luck.
‘Why the hell not?’
‘Next you’ll want chickens!’ Peter cried.
‘No, believe me,’ I insisted, feeling a little sick again, ‘I will never, ever want chickens.’
Epilogue
It felt different. She felt different. She, who didn’t have a name yet. I felt love without fear. That was new. I wanted her to stay awake. To see her eyes’ slow blink. When she rooted around my breast, her little lips opening and closing, searching my skin for a nipple, I let her, watched her, luxuriated in its sweetness, her clueless, instinctual need. How strange that I didn’t want to press the panic button to call for a nurse when she cried, as I had done with Rosie and Noah. How unfamiliar to be experiencing her newborn wail – her distress – knowing it would pass, confident she would settle in my arms eventually, confident that I was enough, even as she cried. She slept. I slept. She cried. I cried. She ate. I ate. We were working together. There was nothing more than this simple ritual for us right now; in these strange hospital hours, in this small blue room, in between worlds, nothing else mattered.
The door opened a crack. I didn’t cover myself. I wasn’t embarrassed by my semi-nakedness.
‘Come in,’ I whispered to Peter. My throat was still hoarse. The midwives had laughed with Peter about how much noise I had made during labour. I didn’t remember. I think I left my body. She had arrived quickly.
Peter’s face melted at the sight of us. The pride of what I had produced spread through me.
‘How was your night?’
‘Noisy out there in the ward. But blissful in here. She’s an angel.’
‘She is incredible,’ Peter said, placing his large forefinger in her tiny hand, which curled around him, knowingly.
‘Where are the others?’
‘They’re outside with Helen. Are you ready for them?’
‘Bring it on,’ I grinned. I was a little anxious about Rosie’s reaction to her new sister.
Peter smiled at me and pushed a strand of my dirty hair away from my face to tuck it behind my ear. ‘Well done, Mrs Bradley.’ And then at the door, before he left, he added, ‘You’re incredible too, you know.’
The door opened. Two timid smiles appeared. Rosie was holding Noah’s hand. Behind her back, she held something.
‘Hello, you two. Come and meet your new baby sister.’
‘Wow. She’s beautiful, Mummy,’ Rosie said, stepping cautiously towards us.
Noah pulled away from Rosie and jumped onto the bed. I lifted the baby up, away from his bounce. Her newness, her smallness, was exaggerated by Noah’s boisterousness. ‘Careful Noah.’
‘Can I stroke her?’ Noah asked, peering into her face.
‘Yes. But be gentle here,’ I said, brushing my hand where her skull bones had not yet met.
‘She’s got greasy hair,’ Noah noted, pressing his fingers across her bald head. She didn’t have much hair. A few wisps of blonde, like Noah had had when he was as new as her, and so unlike Rosie’s full, dark head.
I looked over to Rosie.
‘Can I hold her?’ Rosie asked, placing a little present bag by her feet.
I hesitated, wondering if I could depend on Rosie yet. And then shame shadowed my heart. I had been trying so hard to trust her, and here came the real test.
‘If you sit down there on that chair, I’ll hand her to you.’
Carefully, I heaved my battered body from the bed and placed the swaddled bundle of my youngest daughter into my eldest’s arms. Rosie glanced up at me briefly, proudly. The newest Bradley woke up, taking for granted her big sister’s presence, and closed her sleepy eyelids again, comfortable where she was.
A few minutes later, my mother arrived. There were gasps and balloons and presents. Distracted for a moment, I took my eye off the baby.
‘I brought you some food. Hospital toast is the pits,’ Mum said, pulling out one snack after another.
Then I heard the baby’s mewling cry. I looked over. Rosie was pressing her index finger into one of her baby sister’s tiny eye sockets.
‘Stop that, Rosie!’ I flew at her, and lifted the baby out of her arms. ‘What were you doing?’
Rosie flinched, guilt flushing her cheeks. ‘I promise I wasn’t pressing hard.’
My instinct was to punish her, to send her out of the room, to ban her from holding the baby ever again.
‘I was just seeing if she could wink.’
‘Oh,’ I sighed, catching Peter’s eye. A flicker of concern and doubt crossed his face. We had asked the clinic in Prague to resend us Kaarina Doubek’s profile information, which we had then talked through with Rosie. Now I feared it had been too much for her, too soon.
‘She’s too young, darling.’
‘But I still can’t do it,’ she whined.
And again, it was all about Rosie, when it should have been about the new baby.
‘Real ladies don’t wink or whistle,’ my mother stated, missing the point.
Rosie’s chin wobbled and her eyes watered. ‘I only wanted to see if she could do it, like you and Noah can.’
I had to remember that Rosie was taking her own baby steps, and it was a small measure of progress that she was communicating her real feelings to me, rather than bottling them up.
I pushed aside my resentment, handed the baby over to Peter and knelt down beside her. ‘Rosie, it doesn’t matter. You can do lots of other wonderful, clever things, which you’ll be able to teach your baby sister in time. You will always be my big girl, and don’t you forget it.’
When I looked into Rosie’s face, I noticed that my firm reassurance had calmed her, as though a veil of anxiety had slipped from her face.
‘What have you got there?’ I smiled, nodding at the little bag she had put by her feet earlier, feeling relieved there was a distraction, but weary of the longer struggle ahead of us: managing Rosie, managing the baby, remembering that Noah needed me too. I hoped the full year of maternity leave had been the right decision. It was going to be a steep learning-curve.
‘I forgot!’ she gasped, presenting me with a dusky pink posy of sweet peas. ‘They’re from Mrs E. She left them on our doorstep. It’s got a note.’
My empty womb cramped up. ‘She knows where we live?’
I looked over at Peter, who shrugged, possibly wondering why it mattered. I had not told him what I had done. I had not told him about the call I had made to the police after we had moved away from Virginia Close; a safe distance away, to our pretty, beamed cottage in a village near the coast.
With a shiver, I read the little card.
Dear Gemma,
Congratulations on your new baby girl.
Sweet peas are happiest with their heads in the sun, free and innocent, and their roots deep in freshly-turned earth. I thought they might suit her, a spring baby.
Love from,
Mira and The Chickens.
I dropped the note as though it had burnt my fingers.
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Peter said, alarmed.
The references to freedom and innocence and freshly turned earth, and those bloody chickens, was a subtle message from Mira. She must have known that the anonymous phonecall to the police had come from me. Not that it had amounted to anything. Barry’s doleful photograph was still languishing on the police’s missing persons list somewhere in the system, alongside millions of other lost faces. One heated argument overheard by a neighbour – with a suspected grudge – was not enough to justify digging up her garden. Mira had covered her tracks too well.
‘Has she said something horrible?’ Rosie asked protectively, her face falling.
‘No. It’s nothing.’ I discarded the flowers on the side table.
Peter picked up the note and read it to himself.
‘Sunshine and strong roots. Sounds like she’s trying to say sorry.’
‘She’s talking about her own freedom,’ I mumbled.
‘Why?’
‘Never mind.’
‘She was a weirdo,’ Noah said.
‘I agree,’ I said, when usually I would tell him off for being so rude.
‘She seemed much jollier after Barry left her,’ Peter mused.