Then Alice
Then
Alice
I am always left alone during the 3 a.m. feed. This is Charlie’s hungriest time; he’ll suckle for forty-five minutes, first one breast, then the other. The nurses tried him on a bottle the moment I’d signed the adoption papers, despite my protests, but he wouldn’t take it.
‘Here’s your crosspatch,’ says the night nurse, lowering a screaming Charlie into my arms. ‘I’ll leave you two in peace.’
I detect the pity in her voice. Everyone knows that later on this morning is our big goodbye.
The moment she has gone, I manoeuvre myself out of the bed, one arm held beneath Charlie as he continues to feed. The slightest disturbance and he’ll yell out his fury and wake the whole ward. I’m barefoot, according to the plan, and dressed only in a nightdress, but I do swaddle him in the green cashmere shawl Rick brought for me.
In the darkness, at first glance, the baby is obscured. I’m just a girl finding her way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I stand behind the curtain for a moment, gathering my strength, while my heart slams against my ribs and Charlie continues to suck in his emerald cocoon.
There are five other beds in this ward, all with their curtains drawn around them, and I force myself to walk slowly in what I hope is a soothing, rocking motion for the baby. Through the swing doors, pause, allow myself to experience the nauseating surge of pure fear. To my left, just metres away, is the reception desk, where two nurses are talking. They are facing the opposite direction, but just a 180-degree swivel of one of their heads and I would be spotted. To my right, a corridor with wards on either side, and at the far end a door that leads to the staircase where Rick is waiting. I continue with my stealth-like walking, the mild squeak of flesh on linoleum, the baby sucking, my breast slowly emptying.
I am almost there, the door in sight, when a nurse comes out of the last ward, wheeling a cot in front of her.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To the bathroom, bad stomach.’
There is, mercifully, a bathroom a few feet away, and I slam open the door with my free hand. Inside, leaning back against the door, panting with fear, I somehow manage to dislodge the baby, and he yells out in protest. Forcing my nipple back into his mouth, stifling him mid-yell, praying that he will latch on straight away. The desperate thud of my heart. Did the nurse hear his cry? I am too frightened to open the door to find out. I wait, trying to steady myself with long, deep breaths, and each second that passes is interminable. There is so little time; I have to get this right. I count to ten and force myself to ease the door open, inch by inch, each squeak like a gunshot. No one there. Across the corridor, running now, heart squeezing painfully, through the door to Rick waiting on the other side, his frozen, fearful face a match for mine.
He wipes his forehead to mime relief and takes my free arm to help me down the staircase, one step at a time. We mustn’t rush, we cannot risk jolting the baby again. Three flights of stairs, our progress painfully slow. And at the bottom, more terror as we open the door to the ground floor with no idea of what or who we will find. But at 3.30 in the morning the hospital is dead, and no one sees us escape through a back door into the night air. We are unchallenged, Rick wandering around a hospital where he has no right to be, me an undischarged patient, and the tiny package in my arms a baby with a new adoptive mother to meet tomorrow.
Charlie has fallen off my breast now, but he seems quite content as I hoist him up over my shoulder, rubbing his back in soothing circles the way Penny taught me on the first day. I hear his sweet little belch against my ear – such a small, small thing, but it makes me cry, tears that drip down my face. To think I might have missed this.
‘Almost there, my love,’ Rick says, pulling a key from his jeans pocket as we approach the car park. ‘Check out our wheels, if you please.’
A dove-grey Morris Minor with red leather seats and chrome wing mirrors that beam out in the darkness.
‘It’s perfect. Where did you get it from?’
‘Robin gave me the cash. I bought it this afternoon.’
‘Robin knows?’
‘Only that we’re leaving, not where we’re going. No one knows that.’
‘Not even Tom?’
He grimaces. ‘Definitely not Tom. We are no more. We both lost heart after … after what happened. And don’t look at me like that. Tom is the least of our problems.’
Charlie and I get into the back seat, and the moment the car pulls away he falls asleep. I press my lips against his head, inhaling his smell, just the lightest touch so as not to wake him.
‘I didn’t know you could drive,’ I say.
‘Of course I can. Just haven’t got around to taking my test yet.’
We lock eyes in the rear-view mirror, allowing our smiles to grow.
‘Richard Fields, I love you,’ I say, and he blows me a kiss.
‘Same here, Alice Garland.’
We arrive at the beach at sunrise, as if we’d timed it so that our new beginning would be filled with pink and orange and stripes of gold. Charlie wakes the moment the car stops, but instead of wailing for food, he gazes up at me with Jacob’s eyes.
‘Let’s sit on the beach for a while,’ Rick says, and he takes Charlie from me, still wrapped in his green blanket, and passes me his jacket to wear over my nightgown. We arrived at this beach as the sun rose once before, Jake, me, Rick and Tom. The grief is acute as we walk down to the water’s edge, the crunch of sand beneath my feet, the salty air whipping my face, and I understand that it always will be. But I also know we’ll be all right. One day. Some day.
I reach for Rick’s hand and we stand together, the three of us, with the heat of the new sun on our faces.