Nonno. He cared after all?
It transpired that they had all hidden it from her. Only now did the signs add up. Mamma’s gaunt appearance before she had left. (The cancer had just been diagnosed.) Her frail voice over the phone. Her later insistence that letters were better than expensive phone calls. Her promise that she would come over to England when the baby was born but at the moment she was ‘busy’.
And now, on top of the grief, she had to cope with this scrap. This thing.
You’ll feel different when you’re able to hold her. That’s what Ed and the nurses kept saying. But when they finally placed the rat in her arms, there was a high-pitched electronic sound. ‘It’s all right, dear,’ the nurse said. ‘It just means baby isn’t ready to come off the oxygen yet.’
It was all so scary. How could she possibly take it home if it couldn’t breathe on its own?
‘These things take time,’ said the young doctor briskly.
‘I keep telling her that,’ butted in Ed as though he were medically qualified himself.
Once more, Carla felt like a child who got everything wrong every time she opened her mouth. If only Mamma were here to help. She would know what to do.
Sometimes Carla thought they had taken her real baby away. The rat didn’t look anything like her or Ed. Even worse, they had been told that premature babies often had some ‘developmental issues’ which might not, according to the consultant, be apparent until later. How was she going to manage with the uncertainty?
Five weeks later, when Carla was paying another of her reluctant daily visits (prompted by Ed), she found a crowd of people around the incubator. This was not uncommon. Medical students were constantly being brought in to admire the smallest baby that had been born this year in the hospital. But an alarm was ringing – a different sound from the one before – and the screen next to the incubator was bleeping madly.
‘We’ve been trying to get hold of you,’ babbled a nurse. ‘But your husband and you both have your phones off. Have you thought of a name?’
Everyone had been asking her that ever since the rat had been born. But Carla had turned down all Ed’s suggestions during pregnancy, as if in denial of being pregnant at all. Now this thing was here, she still didn’t want to name it. That would mean acknowledging that it was here to stay.
‘You might like to have her baptized,’ said the nurse tensely. She was holding a form. ‘It says here that you are Catholic. The priest is here if you would like to talk to him.’
‘I don’t understand …’
‘My dear.’ A stout young man with a white clerical collar grasped both her hands as though they were intimate friends. ‘The nurse is trying to tell you that your daughter has taken a turn for the worse. Shall we ensure that she is prepared for the eternal life that is waiting for her?’
The rat was going to die? Wouldn’t that be the answer to all her problems? So why did she feel a sickening sense of dismay rising up through her?
‘It can’t.’
‘My dear, God’s plans aren’t always what we expect.’
‘Would you like to hold her, dear?’
No. She might drop it.
One of the doctors nodded to the nurse. The rat with all its wires was placed in her arms. A pair of small beady eyes stared up at her. A strangely long, almost aristocratic nose. And then Carla saw it. A tiny red hair on an otherwise bald scalp. ‘Poppy,’ she whispered. ‘She’s called Poppy. Poppy Francesca.’
Miraculously, Poppy ‘turned the corner’ as they put it, during the night.
‘You should have consulted me before you named her,’ Ed said when he finally turned up, his breath reeking of whisky.
‘I would have if you’d been there,’ she retorted, without taking her eyes off her daughter, who was now back in the incubator.
‘I was selling a painting actually.’
‘Never mind,’ said the nurse. ‘If you ask me, Poppy got what she needed. A cuddle from her mummy. Of course the doctors would say it was their skills that sorted out those lungs of hers. But there’s a lot to be said for love. For what it’s worth, I think her name is wonderful. We haven’t had a Poppy in a long time.’
‘I suppose it is rather distinctive,’ added Ed grudgingly. ‘Funny how the colour skips a generation, isn’t it? My grandfather was auburn, you know.’
Incredibly, in the following month, Poppy went from strength to strength. But as she did so, that flash of love Carla had experienced during that drama – yes, love! – waned. In its place was fear. No, Carla wanted to say, when they talked about Poppy being ‘nearly ready’ to come home. How would she cope on her own with a baby as fragile as this?
‘I know it’s hard for you, but we’ll be fine,’ Ed said as he cradled their daughter against his chest. It was all right for him. He knew what to do with a baby. But she was hopeless. And with Mamma gone, it felt as though half of her was missing. She should never have left her to come to this country.
‘Just the baby blues,’ said the health visitor when she came to visit and found Carla in floods of tears. ‘It’s very natural, especially after a tricky birth. Do let us know, though, if it continues.’
Natural? It was a complete and utter mess. On the one hand, Carla was terrified of leaving her daughter alone in case she stopped breathing. Yet if she did – what a horrible thought! – she would be free from this terrible, overwhelming responsibility.
If only she could get some sleep, she might be all right. But Poppy ‘catnapped’ rather than slept for the two or three hours that the baby books described. Every time Carla managed to close her eyes, Poppy was yelling again. It was like being on a twenty-four-hour flight without any refuelling stops. Day after day. Week after week.
‘She needs to gain more weight,’ said the health visitor. ‘Maybe a top-up bottle would help.’
So her own milk wasn’t enough? Once more, Carla could see in Ed’s face that she was a failure. Poppy’s startlingly blue eyes followed her everywhere as a double reproach.
‘Have you taken her to Mothers and Babies yet?’ asked the health visitor on another occasion.
Luckily Ed was in the gallery that time. ‘Yes,’ she lied.
But the truth was that Carla was too scared Poppy might catch something from one of the other babies at the group (there were so many awful germs out there!).
Had Mamma felt like this? If only she could ask her …
Meanwhile, she and Ed were about to lose their home. The bank was running out of patience. They would repossess next month if it wasn’t sold. That’s what the letters to Ed said. The ones he hid from her but which she’d learned to sniff out.
But she didn’t want to risk another row. When Ed got into a mood, he scared her, particularly now he was drinking even more than before. His eyes would go red and his body would shake as if it wasn’t his own. He even started talking about getting full-time custody of Tom (‘I’ve been talking to Lily about it’).
‘I couldn’t cope,’ she’d protested.
‘Have some sympathy, Carla. He’s my son and I want him with us.’
Where had the old Ed gone? Yet he was softness itself when it came to calming Poppy, whose lungs now worked full time, day and night.
‘Get some rest,’ Ed would say in a way that suggested it pleased him that Poppy responded to him and not her.
But Carla couldn’t sleep. Instead she tossed and turned and thought about what might have happened if she and Mamma had never had the misfortune to live next to Lily and Ed.
It sometimes takes time to bond with a baby. That was another sentence from one of those baby books which lined the shelves from when Tom had been born. But every time Carla picked up this tiny scrap to latch it on to her breast (the only thing that would soothe her), she felt a terrible, overwhelming sense of panic.
Her initial terror that this child would die had now been replaced by another worry. In the panic of premature labour, she had forgotten temporarily that last note with the spidery writing.
YOU AND YOUR CHILD WILL PAY.