The Second Child Read online

  Sarah stopped. Then the next contraction hit, then the next.

  ‘Good, nearly. Good. Harder, keep going, Sarah. Push, push, all the way. Just one more, Sarah. Even harder this time. Yes. Yes. That’s it. Good girl.’ Sarah slumped back. There was a flurry of activity at the other end of the bed. I bent my head against her sweaty hair. Ice-cold relief sluiced through my insides. It had stopped.

  Then through the voices of the nurses a wail rose. ‘Dad?’ I was summoned to pay attention. They lifted up a bloodied, waxy baby. ‘A healthy little girl.’ But my attention was back on Sarah. The pain had let go of her body, but what was left was absolute stillness.

  An unnatural stillness.

  ‘Sarah!’

  One of the nurses brushed past me and strapped a cuff on her arm. The mood in the room shifted. There was a new type of urgency. The older nurse barked instructions. ‘Dad. Listen to me. Sarah’s lost a lot of blood and her blood pressure is dropping. She needs to be looked at by the consultant. We’re going to transfer her now. We’ll take good care of her, but we need to do it now.’ They pulled the sides of the bed up and started pushing Sarah out of the room. ‘You stay here. We’ll come and fetch you.’ They thrust the bundled-up baby into my arms. The door banged shut behind them as they took Sarah away.

  They tricked me into staying.

  I glanced down and saw a tiny, scrunched-up red face, creamy smears on its forehead and around its nostrils. My daughter. The young nurse who was the only one left in the room smiled nervously. ‘Congratulations. Five pounds four ounces. She’s small, but perfectly formed.’ I passed the bundle back to her and ran out into the empty corridor.

  *

  I can’t run any further. My pace slows to a jog, then a walk, then to a complete stop. My legs, my lungs, my heart are just too tired. The baby Sarah gave birth to was our daughter, but she was not Lauren. I gulp for air, hands braced on my knees, head down, trying hard to get myself under control. For a few seconds I have no idea where I am. A car drives past, slowly, and the occupants stare at me, curious, concerned… suspicious. I force myself to set off again, but the effort I have to make simply to move is phenomenal. Suddenly I want desperately to be with Sarah. What the fuck am I doing miles from home! I start to plod along the road, heading back, one foot in front of the other, feeling a level of fatigue that bears no relation-ship to the distance I’ve covered. I wish I had my phone with me so that I could ring her. I wish I could pick up the pace and get home quicker. I wish I had some money and could get on a bloody bus, but I haven’t any of these things, I just have my memories.

  If I thought the birth was bad, the aftermath was almost worse.

  It took me a frantic half-hour of running along corridors before I finally found the right operating theatre. They told me that Sarah had to be given a general anaesthetic and a blood transfusion and that she… was being stitched back up. I sat on a plastic chair in the waiting room with the other, grey-faced people and stewed with frustration and anxiety. It took eleven door swings before they summoned me into Recovery.

  Recovery was a series of separate bays, each containing an inert form and a load of machinery. The room was filled with the regular blip-blip of the monitors, the hiss of oxygen and the murmur of nurses trying to rouse their patients. Sarah was in the end bay. The Recovery nurse was stroking her hair, speaking softly to her.

  After what felt like an eternity, Sarah’s eyes fluttered open and she focused on me. Her face was very pale, her hair a tangle, but she was calm. She looked more like Sarah again, but a drained and spent version of Sarah. I held her hand, careful not to knock the plastic tube inserted in it. Her eyes closed again briefly, then opened.

  ‘Phil. Where’s the baby?’

  ‘She’s fine. Healthy. No problems. They’re looking after her,’ I reassured her. Sarah closed her eyes and drifted back to sleep.

  The painful truth is that I had no idea where our baby was at that point.

  The next forty-eight hours were grim. Sarah had a very high temperature that they just couldn’t get down. They said it was her body fighting the blood loss and the exhaustion. We were put in a side room, away from everyone else. It freaked me out that Sarah was so immobile and absent. They brought the baby in on the first day, but Sarah really struggled. She fed her, with the nurses’ help, but that was all she could manage. She was too unwell. That’s when they suggested that the baby should spend a few days in the nursery.

  At the time we were glad that she was being well cared for.

  In my defence, I didn’t know what to do with a newborn. After James’s birth Sarah had introduced me to our son, willing into existence a bond between us. From day one, she taught me how to love and handle him. They came as a unit, a physical, flesh-bonded block of mother and son, with a small space left open for me to start growing into being James’s dad. This was completely different. Sarah simply wasn’t well enough to handle me, or the baby.

  So there really was no other option but for her to go into the nursery.

  Day two brought another blood transfusion, another shot at getting Sarah sorted out. And finally, on day three, she did start to improve. During the course of the morning, the Sarah I knew started to come back. She ate something, she got up very slowly and she managed a shower. By teatime they’d booted us out of the side room and back onto the ward.

  That’s when they brought Lauren back to Sarah for good.

  Or at least that’s when they brought us a baby that we assumed was our daughter.

  The following day, to my shock, they discharged us.

  But even that wasn’t straightforward. There was some cock-up with Sarah’s medicines that had to be put right, and I hadn’t adjusted the car seat enough for a newborn. One of the other mums was there, thankfully. She helped by holding Lauren while I struggled with the straps. And then at last it was all sorted. We left the ward and headed home.

  Thank God!

  I round the corner and see our house, lights blazing, curtains open. The relief is enormous.

  6

  Saturday

  PHIL

  THE FIRST thing I hear when I open the front door is, incongruously, laughter, followed by the series of thuds and bangs coming from upstairs. Ali. The last thing I need right now is Sarah’s sister. The light-fitting rattles overhead and I hear James yell, ‘Not fair’, followed by a load of shouting. I take the shopping through to the kitchen and dump it on the side. There’s another crash. Sarah follows me in with Lauren. We both glance up at the ceiling.

  ‘James is right – she has a right to know, after all she’s done for us, for Lauren.’ Sarah is spookily close to telepathic sometimes, or perhaps she just has an extra-sensitive antenna when it comes to the mutual reservations that Ali and I have about each other.

  ‘Yeah.’ I pull frozen peas and ice cream out of the bags.

  ‘She’s been around for all of it.’

  I move on to the fresh stuff: apples, broccoli and, for some reason, sprouts. No one likes sprouts, apart from Alan, so Sarah must be planning a visit from her dad. Another conversation we seem not to have had. ‘I wasn’t disagreeing.’

  Without looking at me, Sarah responds, ‘You were, in your head. I’ll sort Lauren, then I’ll speak to her. Do you want to be there?’

  ‘Not really.’

  With the shopping put away and Lauren settled in the lounge, Sarah takes a deep breath and heads upstairs. I hear the ‘Hi’ and the sudden drop-off in the wrestling, then nothing. She must have pulled the door closed behind her. Lauren pats the floor next to her and I take up my position. I get an old-fashioned look when I click off the kids’ TV in favour of the golf. She signs ‘More’, meaning more of her stuff, and I sign ‘Later’, meaning ‘No – time for my stuff’. We watch golf together in companionable silence, only for half an hour, I mentally promise, an equitable compromise. As I sit on the carpet, watching multicoloured millionaires hitting a small ball around the testy eighteen holes of The Open, the memory of the
first time I was alone with Lauren, the night she came home from hospital, comes unbidden into my head: that first slim thread of a bond that has thickened and twisted and knotted itself around my heart ever since.

  After the trauma of her birth, it was like coming through an airlock back into a safer, kinder, familiar sanctuary. James was a complete giddy kipper having his mum back, resisting Sarah’s hugs in favour of chattering her through the amazingly complicated parking system that he and Ali had constructed in the front room, using every book from the bookcase. Ali said a brief ‘hello’ and thankfully took the hint and left fairly quickly. James gradually slowed down. He feasted on boiled egg and soldiers, as we didn’t have much in the cupboards, then he had a cuddle with Sarah and eventually he crashed out asleep. Sarah, after much nagging, went up to bed soon after. Feeding Lauren hadn’t gone well.

  I sat in the lounge, the lamp on low, the TV murmuring in the background: the US PGA Tour, sunshine and long strolls up immaculate fairways. We were finally together under one roof, safe and sound, everything calm. Lauren was in her carrycot on the floor, sleeping, I wrongly assumed. As I came back in with a coffee, I saw that she was actually awake, lying there peacefully, eyes blinking. I sat on the carpet beside her cot, my back against the sofa, sipping coffee, easing back into the comfort of home. It was time for me to say ‘hello’ properly to my daughter.

  I put my coffee down and, with warm hands, I carefully lifted her out of her cot and laid her on my knees, supporting her floppy little body. She was small – small all over. James was a strong, bouncing baby from day one, a bit of a bruiser really; in contrast, Lauren was all in proportion, but she had bird bones, delicate and feather-light. Her little body felt loose inside her Babygro. It was much too big for her; Sarah had had to roll up the cuffs to free her clenched little fists. She flinched as she lay on my knee, her arms jerking outwards, her eyes wide in shock. I remembered those early-days jerks and tremors. James did it as well: physical aftershocks from the birth, or so the midwife said.

  She had blue eyes, dark-fringed, not like Sarah’s at all. I vaguely remembered something about all white babies having blue eyes – could that be true? It didn’t really matter. I gently stroked my clumsy fingers across her scalp with its covering of tufty, soft, almost black hair and, as I did so, I noticed a dark-pink flush on Lauren’s forehead; it was as if someone had pressed their thumb against the skin, leaving an impression. I kissed her gently, marvelling that she was here and home with us. After three holes of golf, her eyes closed and she drifted back to sleep. I finished my coffee while she slept lightly on my knee.

  My negotiated ‘half hour’ of golf is nowhere near up when Lauren pokes me in the ribs. The manicured greens of golf give way to the lurid AstroTurf of Teletubbyland. Such are the compromises of family life.

  SARAH

  When I walk into his room James has his head wedged against the wall and Ali is sitting on his back, demanding he admit defeat. Seventeen and thirty-five years old respectively and they still play like ten-year-olds. Ali has always loved playing rough. I hated it when we were growing up. I’d try to escape whenever she challenged me to any sort of contest, but she’d chase me round the house, demanding I join in, relentless and combative. I’d usually go crying to Mum the minute it got too physical. In James, Ali has finally found a willing accomplice.

  The roughhousing started when he was tiny. It was Ali who taught him how to do headstands when he was three, and back-flips on the trampoline at five. It’s down to her that James developed the ‘best’ Chinese-burns technique of any kid at junior school and that he can now beat most fully-grown men at arm-wrestling; apparently it’s something to do with where you put your elbow. The scar on his thigh is courtesy of Ali convincing him, when he was eight, that of course he would be fine going another branch higher in the apple tree, and the only broken bone he’s ever had happened during a game of beach cricket that got out of hand when Ali was bowling.

  James ‘taps out’ and she rolls off his back. They both look up at me, faces flushed. ‘Oh, hi.’ Neither of them is the slightest bit embarrassed.

  ‘Hi.’ I respond. With a heavy heart I pull the door closed behind me, putting paid to their fun.

  Twenty minutes later Ali is still shaking her head in disbelief – and who can blame her? She seems unaware that as soon as I started talking, she reached out and took hold of James’s hand and she has yet to let it go; the physical closeness between them goes much deeper than head-locks and endless games of ‘knuckles’.

  ‘So what happens now?’ she asks.

  ‘They’re trying to work out who the other family are. When they’re sure, we’ll be notified. Then there’ll be more blood tests and then… then, I suppose we’ll meet them.’

  ‘Shit!… Sorry.’ She puts her hand to her mouth like a child, casting me as the parent. Then, in the new world of topsy-turvy reactions that we seem to be inhabiting, her next question is, ‘How’s Phil coping with it?’

  ‘He’s okay. He’s cross with the hospital, of course.’

  ‘Cross? I’m guessing that’s a bit of an understatement,’ she says and she shakes her head again.

  7

  Mementoes

  SARAH

  THERE IS no rhythm to the following days. It’s a staccato stagger of the normal routine, interspersed with long periods of waiting, punctuated by unpredictable phone calls. They ask a lot, but tell us very little. Jeremy Orr, the guy leading the investigation, informs me that they’ve found all the relevant staff rosters and they’ve started interviewing the people who are still working within the Trust. More hesitantly, he also tells me they’ve put together a definitive list of mothers and babies who were on the maternity unit at the same time as us, but he gives me no indication as to the possible timescales or the likely success of their searches. I find myself holding my breath while doing the most mundane things. Phil and I orbit each other, mis-timing our attempts to talk and misinterpreting each other’s feelings. Since the weekend his quietness has taken on a tense, uptight quality; it’s not so much sadness any more, it’s more impatience. His anger at the hospital – in fact at the whole medical profession – is just below the surface of every conversation we have. I’m wary of stoking it. I choose my words very carefully when I update him on the lack of progress being made. I’m lonely without him and worried about the bitterness that’s flooding through him; his usual tenderness is being drowned out by his silent rage.

  As the days crawl by, the house becomes both my refuge and my cage; it’s also, I realise, as the sun streams through the smeary windows, a damn mess. I decide to restore some order. I may have no control over anything important, but I can at least tackle the sticky fountain of rubbish overflowing the top of the kitchen bin and make some inroads into the wash basket. Once I get started it’s almost cathartic. I throw bleach around in the kitchen and crash through the rooms with the Hoover, knocking paint off the skirting boards. With the downstairs done, I go up to tackle the bedrooms. I’m drawn first, as I always am, to Lauren’s room, but when I step inside the energy of the past hour deserts me and I flop down on the bed. Everything in this room was chosen for her: the fairy lights that soothe her at bedtime, the soft toys she never cuddles, the picture books she hurls on the floor and the soft rug we change her on. It’s a sanctuary created by us to keep her safe and snug. I lie down and watch the paper whales twirl on the mobile above her bed. The temptation to sleep tugs at me. I pull her duvet around me, breathing in her scent.

  When I start awake, I don’t know whether I’ve been asleep for two seconds or two hours. I’m lying on my side, cocooned inside her covers, feeling blunted and confused. This low down, the view is completely different. I can see the dusty corners of the room that my slapdash vacuuming never reaches, the clothes that have slipped off her chair and the clutter of odds and sods pushed under her chest of drawers: her sandals, the slippers she never wears, a box of toys? No. Not toys.

  I’m awake now.

&nbs
p; I scramble out of bed, reach under the chest of drawers and pull out the box.

  It’s thick with dust, put away fourteen years ago and never looked at since. I wipe away the accumulation of years of neglect, getting my fingers filthy in the process. Heedless, I smear the mess on my jeans. It’s Lauren’s baby box. Dad bought it for us, an unusual and unexpected gift, not his type of thing at all. The cover design is twee: ‘It’s a Girl!’ is emblazoned across the front in curly script and underneath the writing there’s a cartoon of a bouncing baby with a cute topknot. The box is tied with a bow, once pink, now grey. I pull loose the ribbon and open the box.

  Inside is a time-capsule. The beginning of our daughter’s life, our daughters’ lives – the one that came home with us and the one I gave birth to. I lift the congratulations cards out onto the floor and carefully put aside the identity labels, the teddy and the newborn Babygro patterned with tiny pink puppies; and there, in the bottom of the box, is a small pile of photos. I look through them slowly. There are seven in total. There is the original of the photo on the digital frame and six others, taken by Ali when she came in to visit me. In these later photos the ghost mother is replaced by a more recognisable version of me.