Rob started to rise from the chair.
‘Don’t,’ Nina said. ‘She’s sleeping.’
Rob settled again but now he was watching Nina carefully. She had been watched – by Rob, by a succession of midwives, then by a male doctor with a perfunctory manner and an eye on the clock – constantly since she and Rob had arrived at Saint Mary’s. That had been before six in the morning, yesterday.
‘So,’ Rob said softly. ‘Talk to me.’
Nina stared at the ceiling. The aircon dried her tears faster than was natural, making the skin of her cheeks taut. ‘It all happened very fast.’
Rob chuckled. ‘You would have liked a few more hours of labour?’ He wilted under her glare. ‘Sorry. Misjudged that one.’
‘You don’t feel it? All this, so soon?’ She pointed at the sleeping baby. ‘She’s our responsibility, us together. How long have we even known each other? A year? We don’t even have a joint bank account, Rob.’
‘One year and one month,’ Rob replied. Wincing with caution, he raised the child to allow him to shuffle the heavy chair closer to the bed. ‘Who cares about numbers? We know each other, Nina. We know what we want. We know where we’re going.’
A sob swelled up within Nina’s throat. She pushed it back down, then nodded without conviction. ‘But we didn’t want this, did we? Not actively, I mean. It wasn’t the plan.’
‘Fuck the plan,’ Rob said cheerfully. ‘My plan is to be with you. To take the journey, with you. And now we are three.’ Carefully, he twisted to show the baby to her. ‘Look at her. She’s on our team.’
Nina stared at the scrunched-up face, the screwed-shut eyes. Nina hadn’t had a chance to see what they looked like open, but weren’t all babies’ eyes blue in colour at first, like Rob’s? What evidence could she rely upon to determine whether the child looked anything like her?
‘I know this means we’re bound together now,’ Rob said. ‘More than a shared bank account. More than a mortgage or a marriage.’ His eyes flicked up, then down again to the baby. ‘And I like it. I like the idea of being bound to you.’
Nina opened her mouth to reply. A midwife entered, knocking on the glass panel as she pushed the door open. Her uniform was blindingly white under the fluorescent strip light: she must have only recently started her shift. Her name tag read Magda.
‘Okay, Mum,’ Magda said. ‘It’s about time we had a go at a feed. All right with Dad hanging around?’
Nina looked at Rob, who gave an it’s up to you shrug. She nodded.
‘You’re right-handed?’ Magda said. ‘Then let’s start with the left boob. I’ll help support her to begin with, then you can take over.’
Rob rose and offered the baby to Nina, but Nina made a show of fumbling with the tie of her gown. Magda received the child effortlessly, holding her against her body with one arm as if she were a rugby ball or a draped towel. Her breast now freed, Nina pushed back against the pillows to straighten herself, though she wondered whether it appeared like an attempt at a retreat. Magda lowered the child onto Nina’s lap. The baby’s eyes remained closed even as she raised her face towards Nina’s breast.
‘There she goes,’ Magda whispered. ‘She knows what to do.’
Nina only wished that she did too. She had paid diligent attention at the NCT classes, but from this angle the process was alien. She waited, frozen, for the baby to find her nipple. Magda put her hand on her bosom, pushing it towards the encroaching lips.
Nina looked up at Rob. He was hovering between the chair and the bedside, trying not to look more interested than was appropriate.
‘Isn’t Laurie your mum’s middle name?’ Nina said.
He shook his head. ‘No. Louanne.’
The lips grazed Nina’s nipple. She didn’t look. If she kept pressed against the pillow, Magda’s hand blocked any clear view of what was happening. She had a flash of certainty: This isn’t going to work.
‘Whatever name we pick for her,’ she said, ‘should be meaningful.’
Rob’s face crumpled. He eased himself to his knees on the floor, elbows upon the bed, the same pose in which he had been fixed during her final hour of labour. ‘You’re not listening. Don’t you see? Any name will have meaning, once it’s attached to our daughter.’
CHAPTER SIX
Nina made a circuit of the ground floor of the house, looking for alternative distractions before she poked her head into the tiny kitchen.
‘Can I help?’ she said.
Tammy turned from the open freezer. Loudly, she said, ‘You’re the guest, dear.’
‘Please don’t think of me like that. If Laurie and I are going to stay for a while—’ she winced at her accidental emphasis on ‘if’, ‘—then you need to let us make ourselves useful.’
‘All right then.’ Tammy straightened and smoothed down her apron. ‘How does it all work at home with you and Bobby?’
‘I’m sorry, how do you mean?’
‘He was always a good little chef. Did he give it all up when he found a woman?’
‘No. Quite the opposite, in fact. He’s very much the boss in the kitchen. Always searching through celebrity cookbooks for new ideas, always picking up tips from the other mums.’
‘And you?’
‘Don’t get me wrong, I can cook. I just don’t have the time.’
Tammy nodded slowly. With distaste, she said, ‘You’re a modern woman.’
Tammy shivered, then glanced down and laughed. She closed the freezer door, then crossed to the small kitchen table with its thick laminate cover, swivelled one of its two chairs and sat down heavily. She rubbed at her calves.
‘The only thing that surprised me,’ she said, ‘– at the church, I’m talking about – is that your word was ‘Laurie’. If you were going to pick a name, I’d have expected you to say ‘Bobby’, or I guess ‘Rob’. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all.’
There was nothing overt in her expression to suggest animosity or that her observation was a test. It was impossible to know whether she had any inkling about what Rob had done to Nina.
‘Clay told me I should say a word to learn its essence,’ Nina said slowly. ‘Rob and I have been together for fifteen years. I know his essence.’
Tammy smiled. ‘But your own child will always remain a mystery.’
Nina refused to reply. Perhaps there would be a thrill, after all, in seeing Tammy’s dawning response about what kind of child she herself had raised.
‘You’re a modern woman,’ Tammy said again. ‘I never did understand what it is you do.’
Nina’s lips tightened. ‘I’m a producer for BBC North West Tonight. It’s a TV news programme.’
‘When I was a girl, produce was what farmers sold in the marketplace.’
‘It’s hard to explain. Basically, everything that appears on the TV screen is there because I decided it would be.’
Tammy’s laugh was light and tinkling, and fake. ‘Goodness. You make it sound as though you make the news. As if you hide the cats up trees, loot the stores, murder the call girls.’