Charlotte
I’ve been preparing for a catastrophe like this my entire life and now it’s here, like I always knew it would come.
In emergency situations, only ten to 25 per cent of people behave reasonably and make life-saving decisions.
Most people – around 80 per cent – will be generally stunned and bewildered.
And the final ten per cent totally malfunction, often with associated screaming and hysteria.
Seth’s made fun of me our whole marriage that the first thing I do whenever we book into a hotel is to look at the fire evacuation posters and then inform him of our means of escape.
I also go out into the corridor and count how many doors there are between our room and the fire exit, as you often have to do it in darkness or in a corridor filled with smoke.
Right now, everything is playing out, statistically, pretty perfectly and yet I’m on the very edge of coping.
I’m the only one holding us together and the one keeping us alive, but it’s much harder in real life than the simulations I run in my head.
I got us out, I tell myself, as Lauren cries and screams on the ground.
Steffi’s bending down to try and calm her and I allow myself a few moments to gather myself.
We ’ re alive.
The biggest mistake people make in disasters is not getting out quick enough, and I managed it.
The memories are already fireworking around my brain in technicolour, setting off further adrenaline shots.
Catherine wheels of disjointed sequences . . . running downstairs and finding the garden ablaze. Woody sitting, unaccompanied on the decking, almost eclipsed by smoke as Lauren screamed herself frozen . . .
seeing the bucket of water and chucking it over the fire as soon as I could but knowing it was way beyond that . . . how Lauren wouldn’t move . . . she grabbed Woody and wouldn’t move . . .
trying to help her and everyone evacuate, but also trying to put out the fire . . .
My hands are shaking against the parched ground but they are allowed to shake now. We’re out. We ’ re alive . But the entire horizon is burning and I still can’t believe Lauren would allow this to happen.
She’s screaming into the sky like she’s having some kind of exorcism.
‘They’re going to take him away. They will. They will.’
‘Shh, it’s alright,’ Steffi’s rubbing her back while sending us panicked eyebrows. Nicki’s staring in horror down at them. They are the stunned 80 per cent.
Lauren’s the malfunctioning one. It’s up to me to pull this together. I must prioritise. We escaped. We’re alive. We’re out. First priority sorted. The fire.
The engines are on their way, there’s nothing more I can do. Nicki’s parents’ house . . . I doubt it will be salvageable. But the most pressing matter is my friend in front of me.
My friend who, for whatever reason, was lying down when her baby went out onto the decking and pulled open a smoke grenade. How is that even possible? How is it Woody’s alive?
Seemingly unharmed. But Lauren’s right . . . she left him . . . he almost died. We all did. If social services find out . . . it’s . . . this, right now, this is the priority. Mending Lauren.
Calming her and Woody down. Then I need to check we’re all OK from smoke inhalation, and, yes, I really do need to get to hospital about this potential miscarriage. But not yet. Not quite yet.
We all gently crouch around Lauren who’s still hyperventilating into her baby, wailing as he wails. I’ve never seen anyone so broken. She’s stroking Woody’s hair which is sodden with tears.
Her eyes are wild and unfocused, her legs splayed at awkward angles. And, as I stare at her, everything that was said between us evaporates like vapour. Any jealousy or resentment or rage, it just goes.
I put my hand on her shoulder and she jolts. ‘Lauren? What happened?’
Each word is uttered between sobs. ‘You know what happened. I left my baby unattended and he’s burnt down the whole country.’
Woody’s clambering out of her arms, wanting to seek refuge from her smothering. I bend down and collect him and Lauren lets me, folding in on herself, crying harder while Woody burrows into my neck for comfort.
‘I ask this without judgement,’ I say, using a calm and steady voice as I pat her back. ‘But what was happening when he crawled out?’
‘I . . . I was upset . . . I was crying. I was crying so hard I couldn’t . . . I thought he was safe in there, didn’t realise the door was open . . . I . . . I’m so exhausted.
I didn’t check though. I’m so careful with him, I promise. But I’m so . . . today has been so much . . . the one time I don’t check,’ she says.
She lowers her head to her knees and gives herself a moment to fall against rock bottom again. Woody’s gone still, clutching the material of my dress in his tiny, chubby hands while we all watch his mother.
After a second or two, she raises her head and talks again. ‘I’ve fucked up my life.
Everything is fucked up. I hate my life. I hate it. I’m so trapped and there’s no . . . respite, ever again, and today, it just got too much and I only needed a minute, one to cry and get myself together, and this . . . this . . .’ she throws her arms out to the smouldering vista ‘. . . this happens because I dared to give myself a moment. And now they’re going to take him, take him, my darling baby . . .’
Lauren cries into the breeze carrying fire across faraway fields. We all share a look as our own personal dramas fade, our focus on this crumpled heap of our best friend. Steffi rubs her back. While Nicki lowers herself tenderly to the ground to join her.
‘I thought everything was OK?’ Steffi asks, her fingers running circles around her spine. ‘With Woody? You seem—’
‘I’m a fat disgusting miserable mess and a terrible mother,’ Lauren interrupts. ‘If I seem anything else then it’s a lie. I’m so unhappy,’ she starts crying harder, somehow, trails of phlegm landing in her hair. ‘I’m so agonisingly unhappy. Having Woody has taken away everything that I loved about my life. I worked so hard to have all these good things in my life to make sure I was “ready”
to try for a baby, and then, overnight, having a baby has robbed all those things from me. Honestly, each day I wake up and it’s like being punched in the face. I haven’t slept for more than three hours in almost a year.
He just won’t sleep. And he won’t take a bottle so I can’t get any rest.’ She thumps the ground. ‘And fucking Tristan keeps leaving me with him, even though I’m on the brink of drowning at any given moment, and I lose it with Woody all the time. I shout in his face.
I tell him to shut up. I once threw him across the bed . . .’ She gasps. ‘. . . you can hate me, I hate me. For what a shit mum I am. For how I’m getting so little joy from my baby when I know I should feel lucky.
I get to the end of each day and all I can do is catch a breath, maybe take a shower, then I go to bed by 8.30 as I’m so exhausted, and another day is over, and all I’ve done is survive it.
Then I’m woken three hours later, and it all starts again. I have no plans for my life anymore, apart from to just survive each day, and I honestly don’t see how this will ever get better.’
She smacks the grass again as she shakes her head and tries to wipe her tears away with sooty, dirty, hands. ‘And, do you know what?’ She asks, almost in a whisper. ‘Now this has happened and they’re going to take Woody away.
They’ll probably put me in prison, won’t they? And you know what I thought, as we were driving away from the fire just now? I thought “ at least in prison I ’ ll be able to get some sleep ”.
I may never see my baby but at least I’ll get eight hours and be able to take a shit by myself, and maybe exercise and read a book in jail . . .’
She has no words left, only sobs, ones that convulse her whole body. We clutch at her and she clutches back, while I sit Woody on the ground in front of me and he happily grasps at dandelion clocks.
I admit I’m starting to waver at holding it together. The significance of the last half hour is smacking me full whack as we try to comfort our drowning friend. Prison . . .
Lauren’s right. She could go to jail for this . . .
I stare out at the faraway blaze that’s nowhere near finished burning. So much damage already . . . Even though it was an accident, so much has been destroyed, the police may have to prosecute someone . . .
Will I get prosecuted too? I’m the one who took off the safety cap. Then Lauren lets out a gasp and fully hugs us, her smoky hair in my face, and I’m pulled back to now and filled with love. This moment. My friend who needs us right now.
‘I had no idea,’ Steffi murmurs. ‘You’ve not said anything. Not at all since he was born.’
Lauren sniffles and pulls away. ‘What can I say? I can’t tell Nicki because she’s about to go through it all herself and I can’t be the bitch who scares her off. Anyway, maybe it will be fine for you, Nicki. I hope so much it is.
Maybe you won’t almost die in childbirth, and hypnobirthing will work for you, and you won’t want to scream every second since your baby comes out because you’re not a shit mother like me.’ Nicki opens and closes her mouth uselessly. ‘And I can’t talk to you, , sorry, because I know how much you desperately want this. And, Steffi, I love you, but I couldn’t . . .
I know part of you would be ... well . . . thinking you’re right about this having a baby stuff.’ It’s Steffi’s turn to open her mouth and close it again. ‘Not out loud,’ Lauren adds. ‘But you’re thinking it . . .
I’ve tried to get help. I called my doctor but all they can do is give me medication that will give me side effects for a few weeks before they help.
I’m hanging on by such a thread that I can’t even imagine things getting worse before they get better, so I’ve not filled out the prescription.
There’s a waiting list for counselling,’ she said. ‘Probably about two years, said the GP, if I’m not dead by then. I’m hoping things with Woody will get easier anyway.
Everyone says it gets easier but then they also say it stays hard, but gets hard in different ways, so you can never get on top of it and never feel like you’re doing a good job.
I used to be so good at my job! At being a friend. At being a wife. A daughter. And now I’m failing at everything but most of all I’m failing at being a mother, I’ve never failed so much at something, and look at today, look at that . . .’
She thrusts her arm out towards the blaze below us. Nicki takes my hand and I can’t even imagine what it’s like for her, being pregnant and hearing this, watching her parents’ home disintegrate from afar.
But, like me, we’re currently focused on Lauren and the things she’s saying, the pain she’s bleeding.
The pain I can’t believe I’ve missed until now. All I saw were her occasional social media posts, with jokes about no sleep juxtaposed against a picture of a baby made almost entirely of pudgy cheeks that made me shiver with envy.
I saw the picture but didn’t listen to the words. I saw the baby but didn’t see the mother. I didn’t see my friend when she most needed me to see her.
‘Tell us about it,’ I say, stroking Woody’s hair, who is still in my arms, sucking his thumb, oblivious to the chaos he’s caused with his innocent, beautiful, existence. ‘Tell us what’s happened to you.’
Nicki takes her hand and holds it to her heart. ‘Yes, tell us. I won’t be scared. I’d rather know, Lauren.’
‘And I won’t secretly think I’m right,’ Steffi promises. ‘I’ll just be here for you.’
‘We’re all here for you,’ I say. ‘Just tell us.’
The sirens can be heard in the distance, but they’re background noise, undistracted by Lauren having a chance to say it and have someone listen.
She talks us through her birth, in explicit detail, weeping as she details the agony and fear.
She details the days left alone in hospital afterwards.
The helplessness.
The feeding issues.
The sleeping issues.
The tongue tie issues.
The everything-but-nowhere-to-get-help issues.
She tells us how she hurts herself sometimes so she doesn’t hurt Woody when he wakes.
All of it’s a horror story and yet I’ve heard it all before from other mothers.
I’ve just not wanted to listen because it wasn’t happening to me, and I was too jealous.
They’ve tried to tell me that birth is terrible, that services are broken, that husbands are useless, that babies don’t sleep and society still expects you to function like they do.
I know that breastfeeding is incredibly difficult.
I know that everyone hates mothers – the space they take up, the way they sag, their prams in our way, their children ruining the nice dinner you’re paying for.
I know that childcare is cripplingly expensive and oversubscribed.
I know post-natal depression is incredibly common.
I know all this.
They keep trying to tell us.
But I haven’t listened or tried to see it properly – for my own reasons.
But, today, I stop wishing Lauren would shut up and be grateful.
I stop secretly thinking ‘well you chose this’. And I try to listen instead. I let her cry on me instead.
Lauren details every meltdown, breast infection, failed attempt to improve Woody’s sleep, failed attempt to improve Woody’s feeding so it might improve the sleep, every argument with Tristan, every person tutting at her in public for not controlling Woody or leaving the pram in the wrong place.
Every strange physical symptom of severe sleep deprivation – the eye twitches, the hallucinations, the intense tempers, the endless tears.
She details every call to the health visitors’ centre that never gets returned, the blocked accounts on Instagram for accusing others of misinformation, the ‘car crash’ of her postpartum vagina and how she once dared look at it and vomited.
She detailed every full-on minute of the never-ending process of growing a baby and birthing a baby and then keeping it alive and happy.
Feed by feed, nap by nap, wonder week by wonder week, tooth by tooth, developmental leap by leap, health scare by health scare, play group by play group, nursery rhyme by nursery rhyme, tidy-up by tidy-up, bedtime routine by bedtime routine, night wake by night wake.
The sheer, audacious, everyday relentless effort of motherhood – such an exhausting, all-encompassing ‘gift’.
One I’m still desperate for, but, for once, I’m looking at the mother and feeling something more than jealousy.
I’m ready to try and understand.
‘In that moment on the sofa, all I wanted was for someone to take it all away,’ Lauren says. ‘To just have it taken away so I could be me again, just for a second.’ Her voice goes up. ‘And now this has happened and they really will take him away . . .
I can’t . . . I love Woody so much, I promise.’ The sobs explode out of her. ‘I know that makes no sense with everything I’ve just said, but I love him . .
I can’t bear . . .’ She reaches towards me and pulls him into her lap and he nestles into her neck. I marvel at what a happy baby he is, the love so evident on his face. A safe baby.
A secure baby. Lauren’s somehow doing such a brilliant job through all this, if only she could see it, believe it, get some help, have a break, be seen, be heard, be listened to.
She rocks with him, presses her nose into him, and takes deep sniffs of his scent. ‘I know what I’ve done . . . Just look at what I’ve done . . . Neglect . . . I . . . Social services. Prison. They can’t take my baby, can they? Will they take my baby for this?
‘No,’ I shout. ‘They won’t take him. I won’t let them.’
I know there’s due process. I know there’s law and order. I know a valley is burning to ash, but no. I love due process. I love law and order. But no. It’s not right, or fair, and I refuse for my friend to be punished.
‘Me neither,’ Steffi adds, hugging both Lauren and Woody at the same time, like she’s throwing herself in front of them as a car heads right for them. ‘We’ll think of something,’
‘We will,’ Nicki adds, joining the hug as much as she can. ‘We will.’
I push myself into their mass of bodies and we huddle together on the hill, breathing in each other’s breath, painting each other with our sweat.
I clutch tighter and they all copy, and, for a quiet, perfect moment, we are one organism – a fusing of womanhood and the love we have for each other.
A new thing I know for certain arrives in my head.
Today wasn’t about making the baby shower perfect.
It was about protecting Lauren.
Rescuing Lauren.
Loving Lauren.
If I protect her as a mother, then I’m going to be OK.
If I make Lauren alright, then my baby will be alright.
If Lauren’s alright, then I’ll be alright.
And Nicki will be alright.
And Steffi will be alright.
Woody starts laughing at being the centre of a human sandwich, clapping his hands.
His laughter is the most precious sound I’ve ever heard, and it carries out over the vista.
Together, we’re all going to be alright.
As the horizon burns, we make our plan. We will tell the same story. We will protect our own. None of us will break. None of us will give her up. They can’t prosecute all of us. We are together in this, as it should be. I see that now.
‘You can’t do this,’ she keeps saying. ‘If you’re caught lying . . .’
‘We won’t get caught lying,’ Nicki says. ‘We’re in this together.’
She has her hand on her stomach, and Lauren reaches out and puts her own hand on top of it. Steffi follows and then I, until our fingers build a tower and Woody laughs again and reaches out to join in. Too much time has passed already and we break apart and make our way back to the car, our thighs sticky on the seats, the stench of smoke on our hair as it lifts on the breeze as we drive towards the hospital.
In hushed voices, we start to tell each other the truths we’ve been hiding. And, under the hum of the car engine, and the hum of our confessions, Woody finally falls asleep in his car seat.