by Carmen Reid
‘Tomorrow? I can organize a flight.’ He knew how desperate he must sound and felt a bit embarrassed.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Don. You need to warn Bella. I’ll come at the weekend. Are you phoning from work?’ she asked sharply.
‘Yes.’
‘What on earth are you doing there? Your son isn’t even three weeks old.’
‘I had to get back.’
‘What utter nonsense,’ she said. ‘Take the next three days off and I’ll be there on Saturday. In fact, if you don’t take the next three days off, I’m not going to come, is that clear?’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he mumbled.
‘Don McCartney, you should be ashamed of yourself.’
Once the call was over, Don arranged the time off, despite the news editor’s raised eyebrows, and he left work that evening as early as he could.
He still hadn’t dared to phone Bella back and wasn’t quite sure what to expect when he opened the front door.
Bella was obviously giving Markie his evening bath, because there was frantic crying coming from the bathroom. Don went into the sitting room and flicked on the TV to the championship match he’d been hoping to watch.
He took off his shoes and glanced round the room. It looked extraordinary. There were cloths and pieces of kitchen towel in little heaps all over the floor. In one pile he spotted a yellow stained vest and several yellowish rolled-up nappies. Plates, one with a half-eaten cheese sandwich, and mugs half full of cold tea littered the area round the sofa. The beautiful leather sofa had an unmistakable yellow stain on it. Christ.
It was time to go upstairs and say hello. He took off his coat and carefully hung it up in the hall before heading up the stairs.
Opening the bathroom door, he saw Bella had Markie cuddled in a towel on the changing mat. He was shrieking and she was trying to talk to him soothingly as she struggled to put on a nappy.
She looked awful, her face was pale and blotchy with red-rimmed eyes, her hair was lank and fixed up messily on her head. She was wearing his old tracksuit bottoms with the hideous tartan shirt. The shoulders were stained with white patches of vomit and he could see patches of damp around her breasts when she turned round to look at him.
‘Hi,’ he said gently.
She didn’t say anything back.
‘I’ve taken the rest of the week off so I can help you, and Maddie would like to come down at the weekend.’
‘Fine,’ she said simply and turned back to Markie.
‘Does he need a feed now?’
‘Yes, no doubt,’ she snapped back.
‘Well when he’s finished, why don’t I take him and you can have a bath or a nap and I’ll order some curry in if you like.’
‘OK.’ She didn’t add anything more or look round at him again.
‘All right, I’ll go downstairs and tidy up a bit.’
She still didn’t reply, so he left the room.
About forty-five minutes later, Bella came down with Markie. He was nuzzled up against her shoulder looking dreamy.
‘OK, you’re in charge,’ she said, handing him over gently to Don.
She went out of the room and Markie started to grizzle. Don put him up against his shoulder and started to walk round the room trying to keep one eye on the football match – bloody hell, a penalty kick.
He stood still to watch the kick and could hear the soft choking noise which meant his son was puking on his shoulder. With some distaste, he looked over at the lumpy white vomit on his best work shirt. Where were the cloths?
He searched the room and realized he had tidied them all away, he would have to go into the kitchen. From the hallway he could hear the cheers, damn, a goal. Damn, damn, damn, he should be there. He should be in Italy right now, not dealing with baby sick.
Bella was standing naked in the bathroom waiting for her bath to fill. She looked at herself in the full-length mirror and the sight was utterly depressing. Her breasts were huge sagging marrows with silvery stretch marks streaked across them. Her stomach was unmarked but it looked deflated with crinkly skin covering a horribly large mound of wobbly flab. She turned around and saw with horror that her bum appeared to have dropped by five inches and there was a layer of unyielding cellulite sitting all round her thighs.
She sighed and tried to think happy thoughts. A bath, a long, hot, relaxing bath and she would feel better. She opened the bottle of fantastically expensive bath foam from Tania and leaned over the taps to tip it in.
The liquid hit the running tap water and bounced, spitting a blob back, which landed squarely in her right eye. It stung like hell. She rushed to the sink and tried to wash it out. AAARGH, her eye was smarting. She rinsed and rinsed then looked up in the mirror to see her eyeball, bright red and watering.
For a moment, she thought she was going to dissolve into tears for the millionth time that day, but she suddenly saw the funny side and began to laugh hysterically. She could feel her stitches strain as she drew breath and laughed again.
God, this was a nightmare. No wonder nobody warned you, no-one would have children.
She crawled into the bath and leaned back to relax, but now that the water was off she could hear Markie howling downstairs. OK, from now on baths were out, she would have to relax in the shower, where she wouldn’t be able to hear him.
With a heavy heart, Don had decided to abandon the football entirely and take Markie for a walk outside. He had finally managed to work the little howling bundle into his zip-up suit and then into the buggy when Markie vomited again all over his clothes and the buggy.
Oh God, Don groaned to himself, how do people do this? How do they manage with a baby, with a toddler, with two children . . . three? This baby was going to be dependent on them for the next sixteen years at least. Sixteen years!! He pictured Markie as a little schoolboy, as a 12-year-old, as a sulky teenager and he felt gripped by a vague panic, he didn’t know if he could handle this. Was this what he wanted? To go through all that stuff again: swings, sandpits, playground bullying, school football matches, homework, first dates, wet dreams, driving lessons, but this time as a dad?
He looked at the baby, crying now with vomit in a pool beside his face and on his jacket. God this was going to be really, really hard.
For a moment Don thought about his own dad and wondered what part of it all had caused him to walk out of the door for ever.
Chapter Twenty-eight
MADDIE’S VISIT WAS life-saving. She breezed in on a cloud of Crabtree and Evelyn Gardenia and diagnosed the cause of Markie’s long screaming sessions at once: ‘He’s absolutely starving, Bella. He’s enormous. You can’t possibly feed him all by yourself, not until you get some proper rest.’
Bella was happy to agree, so Maddie had barely dropped her bags in her room before she rushed out to buy baby milk, a sterilizer and bottles.
Once Markie had drunk Bella dry, he greedily sucked down several ounces of bottle milk and fell into a deep sleep which was to last for an astonishing six hours.
‘You see.’ There was no note of triumph in Maddie’s voice, she was just happy she could help. It had been a shock to see Bella looking so exhausted and unwell.
With an enormous pot of tea, Maddie held court in the sitting room: ‘I know baby care nowadays is very different from my day and just as well, I was in the maternity hospital for a month and only allowed to see Don every four hours and not at all during the night but, if you ask me, it’s gone too far the other way now, it’s all home birth and breastfeeding on demand and doing things naturally and that’s all very well if you’re a tribeswoman with a whole tribe to support you—’ she took a breath.
‘But Bella, you poor dear, you can’t even walk properly yet. You need total rest and relaxation. Don’t you dare feel guilty about giving Markie a top-up of bottle milk. Now I’ll make some more tea and then off to bed with you.’
Maddie went back down to the kitchen and Don and Bella were left on the sofa looking at each other. Markie w
as in the carrycot in the corner of the room still sound asleep.
Bella smiled.
‘She’s quite a girl,’ Don said, smiling too. ‘You better do what she tells you.’
‘I feel awful,’ Bella confessed.
‘You look awful too,’ Don added, but kindly and with a grin.
‘Thanks a lot.’ She considered hurling a sofa cushion at him, but didn’t have the strength. ‘If I could wish for one thing in the world right now, it would be for you to have the breasts, so you could feed him 24 hours a day and see just how hellish it is.’
‘You’re doing a great job, Bella.’
‘You lie. I’m the worst mother on the face of the planet, I was starving my baby and I wouldn’t even have known because I haven’t had the strength to take him to the baby clinic yet. He’s probably already on the at risk register.’
‘Bella! Go to sleep, hon,’ Don ordered. ‘Just go now!’
‘Thanks,’ she said. She got up and walked to the door.
He looked at the baggy grey tracksuit trousers, drooping round her bum. God, she had to get some new clothes, this was depressing.
‘Don, give the girl a chance!’ Maddie fired back at him when he mentioned it to her. ‘She needs rest, more rest and your love and care and attention – not to be told she’s looking frumpy. For goodness sake, give her time to adjust to this. You hardly look like Kirk Douglas yourself. A shave wouldn’t go amiss and maybe you should think about reacquainting yourself with the ironing board. There’s a stack of housework to be done and you will be the one doing it when I go back home.’
‘How long are you going to stay for, Mum?’
‘A week. I think that’s as long as any woman wants her mother-in-law around.’
‘OK. That’s great.’
‘Right.’ She drained the last of her cup: ‘The whole place needs a good hoovering, so Don, you do that while I dust, then we’re going to tackle the windows.’
He’d had six hours of fragmented sleep the night before and was desperate to join Bella upstairs in their cool, white haven of a bedroom, but his mother was right, the house was a mess.
Markie didn’t wake up until close to six o’clock. Don distracted him for a little then brought him upstairs to Bella.
She was curled up in the bed, still fast asleep. He placed Markie down on the duvet close beside her so that the baby would be the first thing she saw when she woke up. Markie lay on his back and gave a little gurgle. Bella’s eyes opened and focused on the baby. She smiled an intensely loving smile that gave Don a lump in his throat.
Then she looked up and saw him standing there and smiled the same smile at him too.
‘You’ve been asleep for hours,’ he whispered. ‘You look much better.’
‘Thank God. I feel better. Has Markie just woken up?’
‘He woke up about half an hour ago, but he’s starting to get hungry now.’
‘How long did he sleep for?’
‘Almost six hours!’
‘That’s amazing!! Have I been asleep for five then?’
‘Yeah, Maddie and I have renovated the entire house and she’s now busy making a “nourishing stew for tea”,’ he mimicked her singsong Scottish accent.
‘How sweet of you both.’ Bella still sounded dreamy.
She sat up in the bed and held Markie in her arms. She lifted her T-shirt and Don glimpsed the luscious creamy white breasts with big, pert nipples before Markie hungrily clamped on. He sat there watching and inhaling the milky, sweaty, sweet smell coming from them and realized he was totally turned on. He could hear the baby sucking noisily at her breast and God, he wanted her. He sat close beside her and kissed her on the cheek as together they watched the baby’s jaw moving up and down.
‘Where are you going?’ Bella asked as he finally got up to leave the room.
‘For another cold shower,’ he joked.
She gave a little laugh. Men. Absolutely obsessed with sex. She stroked her son’s tiny, downy soft head and tried to remember what sex was all about, but she just couldn’t.
Maddie cleaned and cooked and looked after Markie for as much time as she could, but it was hard to wrestle him away from Bella.
‘Go to your room!’ Maddie would order Bella. ‘I don’t care if you’re not sleepy, go and read a magazine, file your nails, have a bath . . . just rest. You’ll be sorry when I’m gone.’
‘I will be very sorry,’ Bella told her one morning over what felt like her seventeenth cup of tea. ‘I’ve got so much to organize, I haven’t done anything about finding a nanny, or a cleaner. We’ll really need a cleaner when I go back to work.’
There was a pause and Maddie looked up, surprised to see Bella’s eyes filling with tears.
‘Whatever’s the matter, dear?’ she asked gently.
‘I’m really confused about it all. Oh it’s nothing,’ Bella sipped at her tea, fighting back the urge to cry. ‘Just the hormones, isn’t it? Makes you feel like this.’
‘It’s normal to feel worried about going back to work. Of course it’s normal, you’re handing over your precious little boy to someone else,’ Maddie said.
At that Bella couldn’t hold back any more. She burst into fierce sobs.
‘I don’t want to do it, Maddie. I want to be here with him . . .’ Maddie put an arm round her.
In between sobs, Bella said: ‘But I loved my job, I don’t want to give it up. I just want the impossible . . . I want Markie to not exist for the time I’m working then be here when I get home. I can’t bear the idea of him crying and needing me when I’m not around, how will I be able to work thinking about him?’
Maddie cuddled her close and asked, ‘Can you take a bit more time off to work this out?’
‘Not really, no,’ Bella answered, thinking about the Danson’s contract for the first time in weeks.
‘Can you do some work from home? Or maybe go part-time for a bit?’ Maddie asked.
‘I don’t think so. Anyway we need the money. The mortgage on this place is astronomical and Don’s never going to get a pay rise and we’ve borrowed loads of money to do it up and furnish it. Oh shit, shit, shit.’
Maddie hugged Bella hard and tried to sound comforting, but she felt worried. She’d never seen her daughter-in-law like this before. Bella always had everything figured out, this was so unlike her.
‘You’ve got to find a lovely nanny Bella, that’s your top priority,’ Maddie said. ‘And get comfortable with her before you go back. Then go back with an open mind and see how it goes. If you hate it, have a rethink. You can change jobs or move to a smaller house, whatever is going to make you all happy.’
Bella wiped her tears and Maddie added, ‘Have you talked to Don about all this?’
‘No, he’s terrified as it is, if I tell him I’m scared, he’ll just take off altogether.’ Damn, damn, Bella could have kicked herself.
‘Just because his father walked out on us does not mean Don is going to do the same, Bella,’ Maddie said. ‘I’ve brought him up to be a good man and he won’t let you down, but be careful not to shut him out.’
There was an uneasy silence at the kitchen table, then Maddie decided to change the subject. ‘Well, the two of you are going out on Saturday night. I won’t hear any objections, you are going to scrub up and go off somewhere nice.’
Well, it was a reasonable idea, although the prospect of having to scrub up was making Bella feel mildly panicky. She went upstairs to look in the wardrobe. There was no way she was putting on her maternity clothes again, that would just be admitting defeat, but she was never going to get her enormous bust or flabby stomach into any of her old things.
There was still the Heathrow outfit. A sarong didn’t technically count as a maternity skirt and she could wear the green sandals from Tania.
She decided to give her friend a call.
‘Bella, hello! How’s the little pooky pie?’ Tania asked.
‘He’s fine. He cries a lot and feeds non-stop and goes through 200 n
appies and items of clothing a day.’
‘And how about Markie?’ Tania joked.
‘Ha ha. How are you? And Greg?’
‘I’m fine, he’s the same old . . . gone off to see his parents again. I still haven’t met them . . . live in the country somewhere. You know, I don’t even have their address or phone number.’
‘How do you speak to him when he’s there?’
‘On the mobile . . . when he remembers to turn it on.’
Bella was beginning to wonder how long Tania, Greg and the no-proposal situation could go on for.
‘You need to ditch him, find a nice man and have babies, Tania,’ she joked, realizing as she said it how much she needed a friend with a baby right now.’
‘Hmm. Anyway, are you chatting or do you want to arrange something?’
‘Do you want to come and cuddle and kiss with my baby next weekend?’ Bella asked.
‘But I don’t fancy Don at all!’ was Tania’s answer.
‘Ha, ha. Actually, that’s a real shame because he’s gagging for sex and if you could just service him for a few months I wouldn’t consider that infidelity at all because you’re family.’
‘Better incest than infidelity, that’s nice.’
‘Please shut me up, my mind has gone since birth.’
‘What’s 84 times 169?’ Tania asked her.
‘14,196,’ Bella shot right back.
‘Is it? Well if you’re right, that strange bit of your brain is still working, so good, you still have a job to go to.’
‘I hope so.’ She said this cheerfully, but wondered if she meant it.
Chapter Twenty-nine
THEY TOOK A cab to the restaurant and Bella felt weird and uneasy leaving the house without Markie. She’d given him an hour-long feed before they left, barely leaving herself enough time to get changed and made up.
He hadn’t been asleep but had snuggled quite contentedly in his granny’s arms.
‘Just go,’ Maddie had shooed her away. ‘He’ll be absolutely fine, he’s going to fall fast asleep and if he wakes up before you’re back, I’ll give him some bottle milk. Now go and enjoy yourselves.’
