by Polly Samson
My brothers were already my mother’s sons for six and seven years before she met my father, but I was my father’s first child. I hated being a one-off. More than once I begged my parents for a younger sibling but she always said: “After you?” Or: “One like you’s enough, thank you.” Or: “Not bloody likely!” And my dad just chuckled but I didn’t get the joke. I suppose I thought that if the recipe were any good, it’d be worth repeating.
In bed, forty or so weeks before my third baby was born, my husband said to me (at the crucial, sacred, stay-or-go-moment), “So what. We make lovely babies.” The earth moved. And then, so did the emergency services. The fire brigade this time. Quite what they were doing bursting into our hotel room at midnight we never did find out. But I didn’t have a care. I was loved enough.
“So what,” he said, “we make lovely babies.” My third baby lay in my arms. I breathed him in. The top of his head was for nuzzling, so warm and buttery. His pastel face was smooth and sweet as a sugared almond. He was new-born Charlie and new-born Joe, and he was new-born himself. I wouldn’t have been able to tear my eyes away from his even if I had wanted to. It was only later, as he slept moulded to my belly, that I realised that I hadn’t counted his fingers and toes, or looked for faults, or wasted time wondering if his father liked him: love is like that.
Other Work by Polly Samson
Perfect Lives (Virago)
Out of the Picture (Virago)
Lying in Bed (Virago)
