Chapter 31
Dawn was breaking as Fiona checked that she’d gathered together all of the towels and cloths and the bathmat that had become victim to either the process of giving birth or the process of cleaning up afterwards. She switched the dial on the washing machine to the hottest and longest wash and hoped that magic would be worked. The noise of the machine filling with water must have drowned the sound of Joe’s key in the lock because as she turned to deal with the murky water in the mop bucket, he was standing in the kitchen doorway. He looked exhausted and elated at the same time.
“How is she?” Fiona had planned to get angry with him. What was the point of a mobile phone if he kept it switched off? But the physical exertion of cleaning and the strangely different atmosphere of Christmas morning had calmed her.
“Mother or baby?” He sank onto a chair. “They are both beautiful. Rose will be beside herself for missing these special early moments. She doesn’t even know we are grandparents.” Joe put his head in his hands and sobbed.
Fiona felt uncomfortable and fiddled with the mop. The shared histories of the ex-spouses, daughter and now granddaughter were stronger than the single year shared at arm’s length by herself and Joe. Were the feelings of love he’d previously professed for Fiona genuine or, as her mother had suggested, was it a relationship of convenience on both their parts? She rinsed the mop bucket out at the sink. The sobbing became quieter but when she turned around his head was still in his hands.
Fiona stuck the mop in the corner by the back door and went over to Joe. She gently removed his hands from his face and helped him sit up straight. “Tell me exactly how they’re both doing.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. Joe didn’t need all her emotional baggage brought to the situation. “Natalie is a poppet — it’s the first time I’ve ever held a newborn baby. The first time I’ve ever seen a new life come into the world. It was magical.” She didn’t mention her own terror the previous evening or the wildness of Adele’s screams. Let Joe have only the beautiful pictures in his head. She handed him the kitchen roll. He blew his nose and dabbed his eyes.
“She told me . . . you saved . . .” he spoke haltingly around the sobs, “both their . . . lives. And Meeko . . . apparently, he’s a knight in shining armour . . . Thank you. I knew it was near her . . . time. I should have been contactable.” Then he looked up at her and stroked her cheek. “You are a damn fine woman, Fiona.”
His words made her glow. “Anyone would’ve done the same. And Meeko saved the day by getting us to hospital.”
“Meeko.” Joe stared down at the crumpled tissue in his hand. “The yoga teacher turned Santa turned demigod. His name keeps getting mentioned by you, and now by Adele.” An edge had come into his voice.
“He’s a friend.” At least he was until an invisible iceberg slid between us. “A purely platonic friend.”
Joe shrugged, as if dismissing the situation. Then he smiled and sat up straight. “Meeting your first grandchild is an instant cure for a hangover and it deserves a proper breakfast. I’ll cook.”
Later they made love. And that felt magical too. Fiona put it down to the emotional wringer they’d both travelled through. It was more than a physical act performed with the aim of pleasuring and self-indulgence. They clung to each other like a sailor with his lifebelt in a tumultuous sea, as though they each wanted to squeeze as much comfort and emotion from the act of placing naked flesh against naked flesh as possible. Afterwards they lay hand in hand and with their legs still wrapped around one another. Fiona was grateful for the privacy of Adele’s absence.
The landline interrupted the sated feeling of togetherness.
“Fiona! I thought you were picking me up at ten?”
She glanced at her watch. Five past. “Mum! I’m so sorry. We overslept — it’s been an exciting night.”
“I don’t want to know about the pair of you getting excited. When will you be here?”
“Thirty minutes. I promise.” For once she didn’t feel bowed by her mother’s criticism. “And have I got news for you!” She kissed Joe’s forehead in the same gentle way she’d kissed Natalie’s hours earlier. “Read the turkey joint instructions while I’m gone and preheat the oven,” she told him.
Dorothea was in seventh heaven when she learned about Natalie’s birth and demanded they go straight to the hospital instead of back to Fiona’s house.
“No. The nurse told Joe that they both need time to rest and get to know each other. She suggested visiting this evening.”
Dorothea was happy to be plied with chocolates and sherry to make up for the late appearance of Christmas lunch. Fiona applied herself to warming, decanting and throwing away packaging. She felt both guilty and relieved for not adhering to her usual ‘cook from first principles’ rule. Joe helped Dorothea set up her new smartphone. The old lady came into the kitchen with it when the Yorkshire pudding box was still on the counter. Fiona held her breath, determined not to let whatever her mother said next spoil her Christmas.
“I can’t wait until the next coffee morning! Brenda and Sonia will have to sit through these at least five times, and listen to my commentary.” Her mother was beaming as she leaned in front of Fiona and slowly swiped through an album labelled ‘Natalie’. Joe had obviously taken his proud grandfather role seriously. She and Meeko had been too shell-shocked by the whole event to take a single picture. “And by then I’ll probably have even more — we must make sure to get one, or ten, of me nursing that little darling. After all the hours I’ve spent smiling, nodding and asking polite questions about other people’s grandchildren, I deserve some air time of my own. Joe said he’ll show me how to send the pictures to other people next.” Her mother walked out of the kitchen without remarking on the Yorkshire pudding box.
Fiona grinned. It was unbelievable how much nicer her mother became when she had something to capture her attention and passion. Having something that mattered in life, be that a career, a relationship or a family, was truly important. The residents of Dorothea’s block didn’t know what was about to hit them, and it was likely the old lady would become a star turn because few of the others would have a great-granddaughter- by-proxy .
Lunch was ready to go on the table an hour later than originally planned but Meeko still hadn’t arrived. Fiona was sure he would have had second thoughts about refusing her dinner invitation.
“How much longer?” Joe called from the lounge. “Our stomachs are beginning to think our throats have been cut.”
“I was hanging on for Meeko.” Her disappointment at his non-appearance was like a physical pain.
Joe walked into the kitchen and put his arms around her. “Is that really necessary? He’d be here by now if he was coming. I think your best friend has let you down.”
Fiona tried to analyse Meeko’s cool attitude when he’d dropped her off. Could his financial worries have caused something to sour between them? But how? If Joe and her mum weren’t here, she would’ve gone round to Meeko’s flat immediately to check on him and put right whatever had gone wrong between them.
Then her phone beeped with a message:
It’s best I stay away. You’ve a lot going on. I’ll let you concentrate on those you trust.
Meeko didn’t even soften his words with a smiley face. And the last sentence was weird. Something cold settled in the pit of Fiona’s stomach. This was a long-term rebuttal, not just a refusal of today’s invitation. Losing your best friend on Christmas Day hurt like hell. And why was he talking about trust?
Fiona pasted on a bright smile and called her diners to the table. She buried her feelings beneath the excess jollity necessary to carry off a regal paper crown, a dire joke on a slip of paper and Dorothea demanding that they each have several turns with the flimsy, curling fortune fish from her cracker.
“It’s a shame that nice young man with the Santa outfit couldn’t make it.” Dorothea sat back in her chair after managing to squeeze in a second helping of pudding. Unusually she hadn’t had her annual moan about a homemade pudding giving far superior results than a bought one zapped in the microwave.
“Not much of a friend if he lets you down at the last minute on Christmas Day. It’s been better just the three of us — all family, and that’s what Christmas is about.” Joe’s antipathy, maybe even jealousy, towards Meeko was obvious. He looked at his watch. “I think it’s time we went to see the newest addition to that family.”
* * *
Adele looked as tired as Fiona felt after a night with negligible sleep. She’d been moved into a ward with five other women and babies, but her curtains were drawn along both sides of the bed and open only at the foot end. It made Fiona think of a blinkered horse. Natalie was sleeping in an opaque Perspex fishtank.
“Oooh! Let me at the little munchkin,” Dorothea said excitedly as they approached the bed.
Fiona pulled on her mother’s hand. “Wait. Let Joe and Adele have a couple of minutes together before we go barging in. It’s tiring work being a new mum.”
“In my experience mums always want as many people as possible to admire their offspring.”
After giving his daughter a hug and a kiss, Joe turned and waved them over.
Dorothea stared into the fishtank with a mesmerised expression and gently stroked the baby’s cheek with her forefinger.
“This is Natalie.” Joe beamed at Fiona’s mother.
“She is the most beautiful thing I ever saw. Can I hold her, Adele?”
Joe answered before his daughter could utter a word. “Of course you can. You’re the nearest little Natalie will have to a great-grandparent.” Dorothea sat down on one of the two plastic bedside chairs and Joe handed her the swaddled baby.
“Hello, Natalie. I am your great-grandma-by-proxy — how’s that for a mouthful? We’ll have to find a way of shortening it for you, won’t we?” The old lady sat crooning and rocking as though she’d been transported to a better place.
Fiona studied the happiness radiating from her mother. Again it was obvious that the hours spent alone in her flat did not bring out the best in Dorothea. With nothing else to fill her mind she picked cantankerous fault with anything and everything. It was impossible for life to live up to how it had been in her mother’s heyday. But giving the old lady a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and other people to interact with and care for, melted away that selfish, critical streak that hides somewhere inside all of us.
Joe was standing at Dorothea’s shoulder, equally enraptured. Fiona pulled the second chair closer to the bedhead on the opposite side to her mother, relieved that this time she wasn’t being forced into close physical proximity to Natalie before she was prepared emotionally. She spoke to Adele. “I’m sorry we’ve descended en masse like this when you’re still exhausted and sore. Your dad hasn’t stopped smiling all day. He is so proud of you, and as pleased as punch with little Natalie. He couldn’t wait to bring Dorothea.”
Adele gave a tight-lipped smile. “I just wish Mum could see her.” A silent tear dripped down the pale cheek. Adele brushed it away with the back of her hand. “Sorry, you didn’t come here to listen to me blub on Christmas Day.”
“You cry all you want to.” Fiona passed over a box of tissues from the bedside cabinet. “As well as a new baby, you’re coping with the absence of someone close to you.” She paused, not sure whether to say the next words, but if they were going to build any sort of relationship under the same roof, it would help to have everything out in the open. “Correction: with the absence of two people close to you, if you count the baby’s father. Plus, you’re still very young and have had to mature into a mother almost overnight.”
Adele had her head turned away from her father and was trying simultaneously not to cry and to blow her nose silently. Fiona didn’t know whether her words were helping the new mum or making the situation harder. “And you’ve done that last thing spectacularly well — as shown by the fact that you’re worrying about upsetting us on Christmas Day, when in fact it’s us that should be concerned about you . Less than twenty-four hours into motherhood and you are doing fine!”
Adele managed a smile. Natalie began to whimper and was trying to inject movement into her arms and legs beneath the blanket wrapper. Dorothea tried to calm her with little strokes to the head but the baby would have none of it and the noise level rose.
“She’s hungry,” Adele pronounced with the certainty of a mother already learning to interpret her infant’s needs.
“We’ll go for coffee and drop back in thirty minutes. OK?” Fiona hoped neither Joe nor her mother would put up an argument. “Do you want the curtains completely closed?” Adele nodded gratefully. Fiona hadn’t suggested the cafeteria purely out of concern for a young mother who was still new to breastfeeding. After breaking down so publicly in the delivery room the previous evening, she felt on the verge again, and seeing that Madonna moment of a mother feeding her child would set her off. The thought of it made her blink hard.
Afterwards Adele looked brighter. Or maybe it was something to do with the recently applied lipstick and blusher. Her hospital bag had obviously been well planned.
“When can you both come home?” Joe was now cuddling Natalie, who was punch drunk on her mother’s milk.
“A couple of days, I think. Something to do with my blood pressure and the lack of consultant rounds on the bank holidays.”
Forty-eight hours of privacy for her and Joe, plus time to get a grip of herself emotionally. The moment these selfish thoughts surfaced, Fiona quashed them, but she couldn’t help feeling grateful for the opportunity to regain and, hopefully, strengthen her relationship with Joe.