The First Time I Saw You: the most heartwarming and emotional love story of the year

by Emma Cooper

  ‘Right, and he left him? Your driver left a blind man on the side of the road and encouraged him to walk up a hill that has steep banks either side?’ I’m walking up and down behind the sofa and Mr McLaughlin is watching me with a mixture of concern and something else. It takes me a moment to place it but the word settles: pride. I feel a blush rise up my neck as I look away from him. ‘Well then, I trust your drivers will be the first to help us try to find him. Now tell me exactly where you left him.’

  ‘Right!’ I smile as I strap myself into the seat, adjusting the belt below my bump and instructing Mr McLaughlin how to push the seat back so his kneecaps aren’t forced up by his shoulders. ‘Let’s go and find him, shall we?’ I take a quick glance at the time, hoping I can get there before the next pain comes. I follow my headlights along the narrow road, rounding bends, and pull up beside the dip, which was flooded, and look up to where Samuel would have had to walk on his own.

  The winds argue with the branches of the trees, convincing them to lean to the left, but they resist, their opinions swaying to the right. Darkness tries to hide the snarls, but the wind snaps back.

  I follow Mr McLaughlin’s torch beam as I step out of the car. I try to tell him that there are hidden trails all along this part of the wood, but the elastic swallows my words and forces me to lean forward; I grip the roof of the car. I close my eyes and breathe out.

  ‘Oh Sam, what were you thinking?’ he asks out loud as he shines the torch back up the road we have just driven down.

  ‘Something must have—’ My words are swallowed by the pain. I lean my hands on top of the bonnet and concentrate on my breathing. When I open my eyes, Mr McLaughlin is tapping on his phone again.

  ‘I’ve seen that look a few times in my life, Our Sophie, how long – ah, Mrs M, we’ve got an emergency on our hands. Me and Our Sophie have just come to where they dropped Sammy off and the stupid eejit has gone off climbing his way up a bloody mountain road, by himself! He must have gotten lost.’ I notice the concern that crosses his face as he says these words. They are supposed to sound flippant, but as he looks up at the dense forest that leads up to the road, I can see fear hiding behind his tone. ‘But listen, Our Sophie is doing that thing with the face and the breathing and the bending over, just like— mmmhmm, right, grand.’ He looks up at me. ‘I’m to put you on speaker phone.’

  ‘Sophie?’ A soft voice, the same accent, enters the darkness of the roadside.

  ‘Hello?’ I answer, breathing out, the trek almost over, the elastic almost slack.

  ‘Ah, it’s lovely to hear your voice, so it is, we’ve heard so much about you.’

  ‘Oh, umm, it’s nice to hear you too.’

  ‘Now then, how far gone are you?’

  ‘Thirty-five weeks.’

  She takes a sharp intake of breath. ‘And how far apart are your contractions?’

  ‘They were every twenty minutes, but I think the last one was only fifteen.’

  ‘Mr McLaughlin? You’re to ring an ambulance, do you hear?’

  ‘I don’t think I need an ambulance, it’s quicker if we drive. The hospital is only—’ my breath is taken away, a knot in the elastic holding me still, ‘twenty minutes from here.’ The pain slides away. ‘I’m OK. We need to find Samuel, he could be hurt.’

  ‘Sophie love? Our Sammy was out of me like a bullet from a gun, I went from fifteen minutes to no minutes at all in the time it took Mr McLaughlin to put his shoes on. Now unless you want to risk my daft husband fumbling around in your nether regions . . .’ Mr McLaughlin’s face loses its colour at this, ‘you’ll do what I say, love, OK? You get in that car. Better to be safe than sorry.’

  ‘But Samuel—’

  ‘I’ll do all that from here, you just take care of my grandchild. Mr M? Give me the number of that taxi firm and I’ll start calling the police and the hospitals.’

  He does what he is told and passes me a scrunched-up cotton hanky. It has a small horse embroidered into the corner and smells like cough sweets and fabric softener. I take it from his hands and realise that I’m crying. He taps my hand. ‘You’ll be grand, love, just grand.’

  Week Thirty-Five

  Contractions Twenty Minutes Apart

  Samuel

  Our progress is slow. Each step takes time to negotiate and is rewarded by the agony of my ankle; each step could be taking me further away or closer to the end. All I have to guide me is the gradient of the hill, and the odd beam from a headlight. Another car passes, the lights swallowed by shadows and burning through the darkness with each twist and turn of the road, like the warning of a lighthouse. This car banks to the right once it reaches the base of the hill. I call out, but my voice is snatched away by the wind, played with like a game of hot potato. I tear a piece of my shirt off and wrap it around the palm of the hand that is holding on to Michael the Second. Both my hands feel bloody and torn, a far cry from the hand that would sign contracts and tap away on keyboards. Part of me wants to tear off a piece and wrap it around my head like Rambo. Get a grip, Michael tells me.

  I trip again.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Michael,’ I say under my breath as I drop to my knees. Sorry, he replies, I’m new at this.

  The ground beneath me feels like sponge and I sit down, rotating my foot, sharp pains careering through my joints, making my face contort with pain with each rotation. My head feels light; my mouth is dry. I need to get out of here. I’m dehydrated and soon I won’t have the energy to drag myself up this hill.

  The car below seems to make a U-turn and charges off in another direction. I look up towards the moon that is pushing through the clouds, the beam reaching out towards me like a rope. I grab it, pull myself up, and let it lead me to the summit.

  Week Thirty-Five

  Contractions Two Minutes Apart

  Sophie

  ‘Sophie? Sophie? Listen to me. You need to inhale the gas and air only up until the peak of the contraction, all right?’ The midwife tries to take the hose from my hand, but I glare at her. Just you try it, woman, just you try to take this away from me.

  ‘If she wants the air, she has the air,’ Mr McLaughlin says.

  ‘Pethidine,’ I say as I take the mouthpiece away. ‘I want pethidine.’

  ‘Ah now, Sophie love . . .’ Mrs McLaughlin’s voice filters through the speaker phone and the ripples of the waning contraction, ‘you don’t want that – made Sarah as sick as a dog, didn’t it, Sarah?’

  ‘Yeah, Sophie, stay away from that if you can, you’re almost there. Da?’

  ‘Yes, Sarah love.’

  ‘Make sure you’re not holding her hand, Da.’ Mr McLaughlin looks down to where my nails are digging into his palm. ‘Worst thing, Sophie, is if you’re tensing your muscles. Keep them nice and relaxed, you’re doing fine.’ I can’t believe I have the entirety of Samuel’s family as my labour partner.

  ‘Wendy, how’s my grandchild doing?’ The midwife looks at the printout and nods happily. Why is she happy? Nothing about this process is making me feel happy.

  ‘Right as rain, Mrs McLaughlin. Heartbeat is nice and steady.’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Mam!’ Sarah shouts in the background as the pain in my stomach begins to march towards the summit, dragging me with it. ‘The police are on the phone!’

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Mr McLaughlin? You’re doing well, I’m proud of you.’

  ‘Go away with yourself, you mad woman. All I’m doing is sitting here – ow!’ He tries to snatch his hand away from me, but I hang on: I’m almost at the top of the hill; I’m almost there.

  The contraction ends, and I close my eyes. Mr McLaughlin is stroking my thumb with his thumb. ‘You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine,’ he is whispering. I open my eyes and look at him, noticing how grey his skin has started to look and how deeply furrowed the crevices in his forehead have become. He looks away from me and then passes me my phone. Charlie’s name is flashing on the screen.

  ‘Where are you?’ Charlie ask
s. I can almost hear the steps he is taking, his hair bouncing up and down as he paces the kitchen.

  ‘I’m in labour.’

  ‘Labour? But—’

  ‘Never mind that, Charlie.’ I pull myself further up the bed while I still can. ‘Samuel’s lost, he’s there by the house somewhere. He’s blind—’ But the cord is pulling me back up the hill; it’s steeper than last time and a sound like a scratch leaves my mouth.

  ‘Blind? Sophie?’ I hear Charlie’s voice, but he is at the bottom of the mountain and I’m being pulled away to the top, the elastic almost cutting me in half. I hear Mr McLaughlin explaining things. I feel the midwife’s hand on my stomach, her eyes looking at the monitor and her gentle voice asking Mr McLaughlin if he could leave the room, so she can examine me.

  ‘I think I need to push,’ I say. A trolley laden with all things metal is pulled towards her and gloves are put on.

  ‘Let’s have a look.’ My head turns from side to side. I’m not ready. He’s not here. ‘Well, you didn’t waste any time, baby Williams,’ she says.

  ‘McLaughlin,’ I correct.

  ‘I can see baby McLaughlin’s head . . . plenty of hair there. Have you got any redheads in the family?’ She grins, but my feet are being strapped into their walking boots, a rope winched around my waist as I’m pulled away from the ground, the pain tightening around my middle as I’m dragged back up the mountain. ‘Shall I get your . . . um, birthing partner in?’ I nod as I try to concentrate on my breathing.

  ‘Charlie is out looking for our boy. Nice chap.’ He pats my hand and I return to base camp. He sits down.

  ‘I need to push!’ I say as primal noises escape my mouth and hang on to the walls, the sensation uncontrollable and all-consuming.

  ‘OK, let’s get ready to meet this baby, shall we?’ Wendy smiles up at me from between my open legs. ‘Good girl, and again.’ The pain takes hold of me and I look around for something to concentrate on, anything other than the way my chin is burying into my chest, every muscle in my body tensed. I find Mr McLaughlin’s face as a noise, somewhere between a grunt and a growl, leaves my mouth. I concentrate on the tear that is rolling down his cheek, the tiny blood vessels across the tops of his cheeks, the curve of his eyelashes. I concentrate on the way that he is looking at me, the way his rough hand feels in mine.

  The same noise, the same urge continues, over and over, until, with white-light clarity, I feel Bean’s head leave the inside of my body.

  ‘Right then, Sophie, now pant when you feel the next contraction . . . nice and slowly does it.’

  ‘Come on, Our Sophie, almost there, almost there.’ He smiles at me, his thumb moving backwards and forwards in time with the small rocks he is making in his chair: forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards.

  The last push.

  Sounds are dulled, like being underwater in a swimming pool. I can hear the noises above, but they are far away: echoes that leak and fade. I know that the lifeguard is pacing around the edges; I can hear my heart pounding inside my ribcage, hear the bubbles leak from my mouth as the last bit of oxygen escapes my lungs. Wendy is telling me I’m nearly there, that I’m doing brilliantly; the urge to push forces me to the surface, my legs tense, as I break through the pain, my baby’s head pushing through the surface and gasping its first breath.

  ‘It’s a boy,’ Wendy says, smiling.

  The room stills; time is frozen: the only sound is the beat of my heart and the muffled noises of my son’s first cry. My life before this moment is now a thing of the past, a thing that I can never return to. As this tiny creature, with blood still covering his red-haired head, is passed to me, I become a new person. I look down as I feel the weight of him, the warmth of him, filling my open arms. How is it possible to love someone this much when I’ve only just met him? His fists are clenched, his wide blue eyes, eyes that are the same shape as Samuel’s, are looking around the room, trying to find me, trying to see who it is who has been talking to him for the last nine months, trying to see if his dad is here . . . did he make it? Where is he? You said you’d find him.

  I look to where Mr McLaughlin is smiling down at his grandson, his face mimicking mine, a look of pure love, but with the loss of Samuel pulling around the edges.

  ‘Hello,’ I say. ‘Hello, Bean.’

  ‘Hello, young man,’ says Mr McLaughlin, his voice catching in his throat. ‘I’m your Grampa.’

  Week Thirty-Five

  Contractions Two Minutes Apart

  Samuel

  My body shivers beneath skin covered in sweat but I’m almost there. I lift Michael the Second up and he tells me there is a half-metre gap from where I stand and the edge of the road. I feel around for a loose piece of rock and pull it towards me, stamping and pushing it into the mud to help give me a little extra height before I pull myself up. I throw Michael up and hear him crack his back as he hits the tarmac. Pain screams in my shoulders and inside my biceps as my fingernails dig into the dirt, link their way into the maze of roots that hold the forest together and drag my body upwards. Primal noises escape my mouth and bounce around the forest, as I use every bit of my strength, every last bit of energy that is left in me to climb, to crawl, to get out of this forest and back on to the road. With a final grunt, my hands scratch against the tarmac; they pull my body up and I lie there, rolling on to my back, my breath coming out in shallow, noisy gasps.

  ‘We did it, Michael, we made it.’

  I close my eyes and stay slumped by the side of the road, just as I hear the growl of an engine. I open my eyes, sit up and squint towards the sound, where a light is bumping up and down the road towards me. I stand and begin waving my arms as it approaches; the growl slows into a grumble and the driver door opens and closes with a thud.

  ‘Samuel?’ a deep voice asks. I focus on the parts of his face that I can make out, the lights from the car showing me that another brick has been added: the circle of light is shrinking faster.

  ‘Yes,’ I answer, my voice battered and bruised.

  I feel a firm grip on my shoulder. ‘You stink of sheep shit.’

  ‘I know,’ I reply.

  ‘I’m Charlie, Sophie’s neighbour.’

  Blue lights flash from beneath the forest, my name being shouted by – three? four? five? – people.

  I can’t help but think of the irony of screaming for help for hours with nobody around, and then after I’ve slithered my way through the decay and excrement of the Welsh hills, that there are now four people here looking for me.

  ‘We need to get you to hospital,’ Charlie says.

  ‘I don’t need to go to the hospital. My ankle is a bit bashed up, but I need to get to Sophie.’

  ‘That’s why you need to get to the hospital. She’s in labour.’

  ‘Labour? But—’

  ‘They’re not going to let you see her smelling like that,’ he adds.

  I hear the boot opening; feel the wave of a blanket being shaken and then he takes me by the elbow and leads me inside the car. My teeth are chattering and I try to control them. The heater on the car is turned up as he calls the police and explains that I’ve been found.

  ‘How quickly can I get to her?’ I ask. ‘I don’t want her to go through this by herself.’

  ‘Your dad is with her. She’s not alone.’ Charlie speaks in strange, blunt sentences; it’s hard to amalgamate this with the rock-star image I’d had of him.

  ‘Da?’ I say, and I shake my head. If I had just waited for that other flight, I would be with her now. ‘Good man,’ I say quietly. My da. He always manages to save me. One way or another.

  ‘Yeah. I’ll ring him when we get home,’ Charlie says. The car bumps and sways up the road and I realise I was still a long way from Sophie. It slows, then the engine cuts out and I’m guided inside. I have no idea where furniture is or if there is mess on the floor. Charlie seems to instinctively know this as he steers me towards the stairs by my elbow; he says nothing as we climb the stairs or as he guides m
e into the bathroom.

  ‘Sit down,’ Charlie instructs, and I feel for the toilet seat. The tap is turned on and I hear a plastic cup being filled. He places it in my hand and I swallow it down in huge gulps. ‘Keep still, you’ve got cuts all over your face.’ I flinch as he wipes my skin with antiseptic, his movements slow and gentle. I notice he smells of soap and mints as he picks up my hand, turns it over and repeats the action.

  ‘How is she?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve been away. I shouldn’t have left her.’ He places my hand on my knee. ‘You’re done.’ I hear him shift and the shower is turned on. ‘There’s a towel on the hook at the back of the door, opposite the shower,’ he adds. ‘I’ll leave you some clothes on the bed, second door as you come out of here. The trousers will be too small.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. Tears threaten, and the emotion tightens my chest. I sense rather than hear him give me a nod.

  The police have arrived. I take careful steps down the steep stairs. Without Michael, it takes me longer to navigate. A waft of aftershave and a flash of dark hair lets me know that the uniform by my side is a man and he helps me towards the sofa, returning shortly after with a cup of tea and two biscuits. There is too much sugar and not enough milk but it is the best tea I have ever had, and the cup is empty too soon. The police ask me a few questions as I swallow the biscuits and I answer them impatiently.

  ‘Can we go now? I need to get to Sophie.’ I stand up, the edges of Charlie’s jeans scraping above the socks, and I’m grateful that I can’t see the state of myself.

  ‘I’ve tried to call, but Sophie’s phone’s not answering,’ Charlie says. ‘But I’m sure everything is fine.’

  ‘First baby, is it?’ The deep voice from the policeman booms into the room, and I wonder if he sings.

  ‘Yes,’ I answer.