Chapter 27
Even though I knew, I knew, my relationship with The Dad was doomed, I dreaded telling him. I felt sick to my stomach from the moment I called him to suggest we meet. We tried chatting normally. I told him all about my lunch with the A&R man, but it was like pouring water down a blocked drain. Our conversation kept getting stuck in the S-bend.
Of course he looked incredible when we met for dinner. The Last Supper. Why did his height ever bother me? He smelled good and was kind and courteous as always. Maybe even more so. He knew something was wrong. I didn’t waste time. It would have been much worse to try sitting through dinner with that cantaloupe of angst in my stomach. So I let him have it straight out. He let me talk, let me finish. Then I asked him. Are you still in love with Elizabeth? He sighed. He looked sad. He said yes. I had nowhere to go from there. I wasn’t angry. I said it wasn’t fair to me. He agreed. I said I had to go, that there wasn’t anything left to say. He let me go, asked if I’d talk to him again when I felt ready. I said I didn’t know. I did know one thing. I wasn’t going to go out with him again.
It felt like one of those times when I should take myself away a bit to reflect (wallow?) in solitude. I didn’t get my reset button when the spring Zurich assignment was cancelled. An autumn day trip to Brighton wasn’t the same thing, but the sea air did clear my mind.
It was one of those unusual days that tempted us to think that Brighton was the San Tropez of the British Isles. Except that instead of hot sand, crystal blue warm water, a gentle sea breeze and the smell of sun cream, the wind howled down the pebble beach, churning the water into metre-high whitecaps. But the sun was glorious and my second ice cream was nearly as good as my first.
The pier was busy with pensioners taking advantage of their retirement to catch some weekday sun. The gulls bickered overhead, trying to hold steady in the gales, and I listened for the snippets of conversations that passed my bench. Mostly I thought about my future. Despite my disappointment over The Dad, and the tears I’d shed, in a way it confirmed that there was more out there for me. If I met someone like him, who made me feel the way he had, then I could meet someone else. Someone who wasn’t in love with another woman. I wouldn’t measure myself for a nun’s habit just yet.
As I wandered up the pier, my new phone rang.
‘Are you still in Brighton?’ Faith asked. ‘Shit, that figures. I’m in Winchester. We’ve got to get back to London. Kat just called. Clare’s gone into labour!’
‘But she’s not due for another week. I thought first babies were always late.’
‘Tell that to Clare’s womb. Baby It is eager to meet us. Which station do you go to? We may as well take a taxi together. Call me when you’re five minutes away, okay? God, I’m so nervous for her.’
‘Have you talked to her? Is she okay?’
‘B., she’s trying to push an eight-pound infant out something the size of a Smarties tube. Of course she’s not okay. I’ll see you at the station.’
Ready or not, the baby was coming.
‘What do you think we’ll have to do?’ I asked Faith in the back of the cab from the station.
‘Damned if I know. Kat says Clare wants us all there, but maybe she’ll let us stay in the waiting room. Moral support might be enough.’
‘You think so?’
‘No. I think we’re going to be on the front line.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’ There were few things less appealing than the prospect of seeing your best friend’s business end.
The Shag didn’t look any more pleased at the prospect when we saw him at the vending machine.
‘Hi.’ I hugged him. ‘How’s it going?’
He looked absolutely panicked. ‘Kat’s in there. She’s… she’s mean.’
‘Who, Kat?’
‘Uh-uh, Clare.’
‘Well, I’m sure she’s just uncomfortable,’ Faith said.
‘But she’s so mean,’ he repeated. Clearly The Shag needed our help. We’d all just have to get through it as painlessly as possible. ‘She wants you all in there. Kat’s with her.’ He wiped his brow.
As we herded him back down the hall, I asked, ‘What’s happening? Is she having contractions? I’m sorry but I don’t really know the procedure. What does happen now?’
Maybe keeping him talking would make him forget about the succubus in the delivery room who was posing as his girlfriend. I couldn’t concentrate on much of what he told me, though. I was thinking about how long it could take a woman to have a baby. If it was a long labour, we might not survive. ‘How long has she had the contractions?’
‘Since this morning. No, yesterday, they started last night. But we called the hospital and they said not to come in because they weren’t close enough. They told Clare to take a warm bath and relax. That didn’t go down too well. It sort of spiralled from there.’
I patted his shoulder. ‘It’ll be okay. We’ll do this together. Ready?’
He took a deep breath and opened the door. ‘Sweetheart, they didn’t have caffeine-free so I got you Coke Zero.’
‘Do you want to kill the baby? I’m thirsty.’
‘Have some water,’ said the midwife from the corner where she was filling in some paperwork.
‘I don’t want water, I want sugar!’ Her head threatened to spin around as she said this. If she vomited green bile, I was going for the priest.
‘Clare, Clare, I’ll go get you something,’ Kat said, giving me a warning look. I couldn’t tell if she was telling me to take Clare’s hand, or blinking in Morse code to run for my life. I took her hand. It was sweaty.
‘Thanks, honey,’ she said, sounding normal again. ‘I’m sorry, hello B., hi Faith. I’m having a baby!’
‘I know you are, angel,’ Faith rubbed her shoulder. ‘And we’re here to help, aren’t we, B.? So you just tell us what you need and we’ll do it. This is all about making you comfortable and having this baby.’
‘I’m sorry, but you can’t all be in here,’ said the midwife. ‘Two are allowed. It’s the hospital’s policy, but any more people and I won’t be able to do my job.’
‘Oh,’ Faith said. ‘Well, I’ll just wait outside, shall I?’ She edged toward the door. The coward.
‘You can take turns,’ Clare said. ‘They can take turns, can’t they?’
‘As long as they don’t get in the way, that’s fine.’
‘Thanks. B. can stay and then Faith can come in a little later. Is that okay, Faith?’
Faith kissed our sweating friend and bolted for the door.
‘Can I do anything to help?’ I prayed her answer wouldn’t involve going to the other end of the bed. The Shag and I were huddled together at the top end as if avoiding a lava flow.
‘You can time the contractions. They won’t take the baby out until they’re really close together.’
‘How close are they now?’
‘About two years apart. Just talk to me, okay? About anything.’
‘Er, okay.’ I wracked my brain. ‘Well, I’ve found some caterers for my birthday party who make amazing miniature Asian dishes. But don’t worry, we’re ordering hundreds so nobody goes hungry. And the DJ has his own barman and waiters who are making special chocolate cocktails. I guess you won’t be able to drink them, though. It’s in two weeks, can you drink by then?’
‘Of course I can. This baby is coming out today. To-day. I can eat and drink whatever I want as soon as that umbilical cord is cut. In fact, here’s what I want in the recovery room. And I’m not joking about this.’ She ticked off on her fingers. ‘Sushi. Peanuts. And the stinkiest blue cheese you can find. Because I can eat it all once the– owww.’
Her hand shot from the bedside, finding its mark with precision that made Swiss watchmakers look haphazard. The Shag yelped, sinking into the bed in an attempt to relieve the pain.
Did she just grab his…? Oh, God. ‘Clare, honey, let go,’ I said. ‘Here, take my hand instead. Jesus, you’re going to castrate him.’ When she finally released, The Shag slumped to the floor, curled around his swelling gonads.
Kat arrived with an armful of juice drinks, unaware of the hospital’s two-victim rule.
‘Clare, you could have killed him!’ I said. The Shag was demonstrating the breathing technique they learned in pre-natal class.
‘Sorry, did I hurt you?’
‘Noo, it’s fine,’ he whimpered.
‘How long was that contraction?’ She demanded.
‘Forty-two seconds.’
‘It couldn’t have been. That had to be at least two minutes long! Are you doing it right?’
‘What, telling time? Yes, Clare, I’m doing it right.’
‘It’s just that I think I’m in hard labour,’ Clare whined.
‘You’re not in hard labour yet,’ Kat said.
‘How do you know?!’
‘Because you can speak during your contraction. When it really hurts you won’t be able to speak.’
‘Are you saying this doesn’t hurt?’
‘No, Liebchen, I’m saying it doesn’t hurt as much as it will when you’re in hard labour.’
Clare welled up. ‘I’m scared,’ she whispered.
‘Kat! Don’t be so cruel. There are times for your honesty. This is not one of them.’
‘It’s okay, B., I made Kat promise to be honest. It’s better to know. I’ll get through this, right? Millions of women have babies. They do it all the time. Some even have more than one.’
‘That’s right, honey, our bodies are made to have babies,’ I assured her. ‘It’ll be fine.’
‘How the f*ck do you know that?’ Her alter ego snapped.
She was right. I was talking complete bollocks. If I were Clare, I’d pay someone every penny I had to knock me out and give me a C-section.
‘Why don’t I take a turn outside?’ I said. ‘Kat, we’re only allowed in here two at a time.’
I nearly ran for the door.
Later, after losing to Faith playing rock, paper, scissors, I returned to the crime scene. The Shag had aged badly in the interim. He staggered to the waiting room.
‘I’m tired,’ Clare said. ‘How much longer is this going to last? Can I have some gas, please?’
‘Of course, here you go, love.’ The midwife handed Clare a mask. She had a very soothing manner. ‘Now, you don’t have to suck it so hard, just breathe normally. That’s it.’
‘Is this normal?’ I asked her quietly. ‘The pain, I mean. And the reaction.’
‘Oh, yes, it’s perfectly normal. I’ve seen much worse. Men go out on gurneys sometimes.’
‘Seriously?’
‘No, I’m joking, but it can be very intense and some women don’t cope all that well, to be honest.’
‘Where is Clare in that range of coping?’
She considered my friend, who was trying to inhale the entire canister in a single breath. ‘She’s not one of the easy ones.’
Faith convinced the midwife to let us all in the room as long as two of us swore-to-God-and-hoped-to-die that we’d sit in chairs in the corner. That gave us front row seats for very grotesque live theatre. We were all exhausted but finally, things were starting to get somewhere. Clare looked like she’d been for a swim. At the midwife’s announcement that she was ten centimetres dilated and ready to deliver, Faith quipped from the chair, ‘Ten centimetres. What do you know, that’s a Manolo heel!’
Understandably, Clare ignored her.
Kat said to The Shag, who’d finally regained some colour in his face, ‘Maybe you want to rub Clare’s feet? It might relax her.’ She came over to sit down, pushing me off the chair. My turn, then.
‘If you touch my feet, I will kill you,’ Clare said between contractions. ‘And if you so much as peek under that sheet I swear I will never speak to you again.’
His face said he’d rather watch his own appendix operation. He was at no risk of sudden curiosity.
‘Excuse me,’ I said to the midwife. ‘When can she have the epidural?’
‘Oh, I don’t think she’ll need it at this point. She’s ready to push.’
‘I do need it, give it to me!’ Clare screamed.
‘I’m sorry, love, but your contractions are too close together now. She’d need to be very still to administer the epidural and she can’t stay still now.’ She was probably right, given that I’d seen less writhing in mosh pits. ‘It won’t be long, don’t worry.’
‘No epidural?’ Clare asked.
‘No, honey, but don’t worry, the midwife says it won’t be much longer… How long, exactly?’ I asked her. ‘Ten minutes? Twenty? It’s just that it might be easier if she knows.’
‘She hasn’t ordered takeaway, love, she’s having a baby. All right, Clare, are you ready? In just a minute I’ll want you to push. Wait till I tell you, okay? When the next contraction starts. B., you can help by holding her hand. Do you want to come down here?’ She offered to The Shag.
‘Don’t you dare!’ Clare bellowed.
‘No, no, I’ll help up this end,’ he said. ‘Clare, sweetheart, whatever you need, I’ll do.’ He swallowed. ‘If you need to grab me again, it’s okay.’
What a man he was, putting his nuts in the line of duty. What must have been going through his mind? He was about to become a father. He was minutes, hopefully, away from meeting his child. He looked determined, maybe a bit wild-eyed, but then we had been there nearly ten hours. Ten hours, poor Clare. Plus however many hours she was at home in pain. I’d never seen her so tired, and yet the contractions kept coming.
What… there was a smell. I looked over at Faith and Kat, recognition dawning.
Suddenly Clare blurted, ‘Oh f*ck, I’ve shit myself!’
The giggles came. Faith guffawed, triggering Kat to snort.
‘Oh my God, I had a curry!’ Clare wailed.
That’s all it took. We dissolved into helpless laughter.
She was laughing and pushing and crying and pushing. ‘That’s it,’ said the midwife, as if being shat upon was all in a day’s work. ‘One more big push, you’re nearly there now.’
Clare strained, her chin jutting forward, holding on to The Shag for dear life, grunting with effort, and the midwife finally said, ‘There you go. Welcome to the world, little one.’ She gently laid the squirmy blancmange straight on to Clare’s chest.
‘What is it?’ Clare and The Shag said together.
‘It’s a girl,’ said the midwife. ‘Meet your daughter.’
‘Our daughter,’ said Clare. ‘It’s a girl.’
‘I love you, Clare,’ The Shag said through his tears. ‘I love you both.’
‘I love you too, Harry.’ Clare smiled through tears of her own.