Chapter 23 #2
Damien the dreamer, the fearless adventurer. What would he have made of Tim O’Donoghue and his offer? What would he have said to him?
She raised her head, the answer clear. Damien would have said nothing at all, because if he was still alive, Chance House would not be for sale. If his idea of the destination restaurant had failed, he would have tried again with something else. He wouldn’t have let the house go without a fight.
Chance House. It has to be an omen. The name, I mean. It’s our chance to make something wonderful here.
He was gone now, but she wasn’t. She owed it to him, and to their shared dream, to take this chance.
She lumbered to her feet, still horribly upset, still battling with anger and shame and hurt, not noticing in her distress that the ginger cat had come padding silently in through the open door.
She would phone Greta – no, she couldn’t phone her yet: she’d still be driving.
She’d phone Deborah, tell her she’d changed her mind.
She saw her phone on the worktop, where she’d left it to charge – but as she crossed to get it she stumbled over the cat and crashed heavily on to the floor with a cry of fear.
She lay unmoving, heart hammering, cheek stinging from where it had slammed onto the tiles. An arm hurt when she tried to pull it from under her; a knee throbbed.
The baby – was the baby moving? She’d twisted in the act of falling, an instinctive attempt to protect her baby from the worst of the impact, so now she lay awkwardly on her side – but had damage been done?
She whimpered in terror, afraid to move, but she had to move. She had to get help. She had to get to her phone, which meant she had to stand up.
She planted the arm that didn’t hurt on the floor. She pushed up with it, but the movement caused a stab of pain that made her cry out again. She waited, heart hammering, before making another attempt, and again the pain jabbed, pinning her to the floor. No. She must move – she had to.
Gritting her teeth, she gave another heave, shouting to get past the pain – and as she dragged herself to her knees she felt the release of a sudden hot gush between her legs, drenching the loose trousers she wore.
‘No,’ she moaned, ‘no, no’ – and then, and then, and then, she heard, or imagined she heard, the sound of a vehicle.
‘Help,’ she called, in a voice that came out like a whimper. ‘Help, help,’ straining, and footsteps, thank God, sounded outside, and someone materialised at the kitchen door.
‘Jesus—’ he said, rushing in, throwing something on the worktop before crouching beside her. ‘Jesus, Lydia—’
‘I fell,’ she cried, conscious of the state of her, on hands and knees with wet trousers, ‘I fell, I fell, I fell,’ gasping in panic, able only to repeat it. ‘I fell, I fell.’
‘I need to get you up,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring you to the hospital – quicker than waiting for an ambulance. Tell me if something hurts, and I’ll stop. OK? Are you OK with that, Lydia?’
She nodded and he raised her slowly to standing, and it hurt but she clenched her teeth and bore it, and together – he holding her around the waist, she leaning into him and gripping his arm – they moved slowly out to his van, and he lowered the back of the passenger seat so she was almost lying, and her clothes were wet, and she was wetting his seat, and another sharp stab of pain sliced through her, making her forget her stinging cheek, her throbbing wrist. With her good hand she grabbed the side of the seat and gave a low, despairing moan.
‘Hang on,’ he said, and she heard him running back across the gravel, and she squeezed her eyes tight and concentrated on breathing in, two, three, four, out, two, three, four, and when he came back he had found a throw, and her bag.
He covered her with the throw and they set off, and she heard him on the phone as he drove, but the words were lost to her, so half crazed she was with fear and pain.
Her daughter, her baby – and every so often a new agonising pain would knife through her, making her cry out, making her arch her back in an effort to find relief. She bit her lip, and tasted blood.
After an eternity he stopped. Her door was opened almost before he pulled up, and she was lifted gently on to something with wheels and ferried through doors and down a corridor and through more doors – and it wasn’t until later, much later, until after she’d given birth, roaring and screaming, and crying for Damien, and the baby had been whisked off, and Lydia had been cleaned up, it wasn’t until after all that had happened that she remembered she’d never thanked him.
‘Well,’ Susan said, ‘that was an interesting few hours. Drink your tea. You must be exhausted.’
Susan was there. Susan had turned up sometime during Lydia’s labour. Andrew rang me from the van, she’d told Lydia, when it was all over. He would have rung Marian, only he didn’t have a number for her, so I rang her on the way here. She said she’d tell Brendan and Kathleen.
Lydia was still reeling. She felt both headachy and light-headed. She was fragile, and frightened. She felt close to hysteria, close to some edge. She wondered if she was still under the influence of whatever they’d given her during the labour. Had they given her something? She had no idea.
‘My baby.’ Her throat hurt when she spoke. Her eyes stung. Her cheek smarted. Every muscle ached. Her pelvis hurt when she moved. Someone had bandaged her wrist. She wanted to sleep for a week, for a month.
They’d shown her the baby before they’d taken her away, but Lydia had been too stunned to take her in properly. Hair, she thought. Dark, she thought. She was afraid to be happy about becoming a mother. ‘She was born too soon,’ she whispered, tears rolling out sideways, into her ears. ‘Too early.’
‘Hey,’ Susan said, ‘you heard the nurse. She’s fine, just a bit small, so they’re putting her into an incubator for some extra help.’
‘She’s going to be OK?’ She clutched at it. Grabbed at it. ‘That’s what they said. They’re bringing you to see her later. She’s tough, like her mama.’
‘My parents.’ Her father, due tomorrow – or was this tomorrow? ‘What day is it?’
‘Still Monday, around teatime.’
She tried to piece it together. She remembered Greta being so angry, and her tripping over the cat after Greta had left, and Andrew appearing.
She remembered her terror, and snatches of the drive to the hospital, and the calamity of the labour.
It felt like an eternity of a day, but it was only teatime.
‘Where’s my phone?’ With a fall of her heart she remembered it charging on the worktop – but when Susan rummaged in Lydia’s bag it was there.
Andrew must have thrown it in when he’d run back for the bag.
Susan went outside to update Marian on her own phone while Lydia called her mother and gave her the news.
‘God almighty!’ her mother exclaimed. ‘Are you both OK?’
‘I’m OK. The baby’s in an incubator.’
‘That’s only because she’s premature, Lydia. All early babies need a bit of help, and they’ll know exactly what to do in the hospital. We’ll come first thing in the morning. You need to sleep now. Try not to worry, darling.’
Try not to worry, when she was on the point of shattering into fragments from worry. Melting into the bed from worry. Bursting into flames from worry.
‘You’re getting a lovely shiner there, by the way,’ Susan said on her return, ‘and you look like you’re about to fall asleep, so I’ll head off and see you tomorrow. I know Marian has a key to Chance House. She said she’d drop by to check everything’s OK, and to make up a bag for you.’
‘Can someone feed the cat?’ It wasn’t the cat’s fault. ‘Her food is in the press by the fridge freezer.’
‘I’ll call Marian on the way home. If she’s already been around, I’ll sort it.’
‘Thanks, Susan – and please thank Andrew.’ She would never be done thanking him for this.
Susan had barely left when a woman in blue scrubs appeared with a wheelchair. ‘You can come and see your baby now,’ she said.
With the woman’s help she edged gingerly from the bed. She was wheeled from the room and along a corridor to a lift that ferried her down to another floor and all the time she was afraid to speak, afraid of what she might find at the end of her journey.
So tiny, so tiny, in an incubator that dwarfed her further, a tube no wider than a fishing line disappearing up an impossibly minuscule nostril.
Eyes closed, astonishing blue veins on the lids, lashes dark like the damp strands of hair on her head.
Mouth pursed, skin pale, so pale. Fingers all there, toes too.
Chest rising and falling with frightening rapidity: too fast, slow down.
Wearing nothing but a tiny doll-sized nappy.
But she was moving, little arms batting the air, little feet kicking. She was alive. She was adorable. Lydia felt all the emotions in the world. Her and Damien’s daughter, conceived in love.
‘Her breathing was a little compromised when she was born,’ the nurse told her, ‘so the tube is just giving her a bit of help for the moment. Those tiny lungs are working hard.’
Lydia couldn’t take her eyes from the miracle of her daughter. ‘What’s her weight?’
‘Five pounds three ounces, not too bad at all. We’ve had full-term babies that size.
We’ll keep her here for a week or so, just to give every organ a chance to get stronger, and you can come and see her whenever you want.
In the meantime, you’ll need to express your milk – I can show you how right now – and we’ll feed it to her until you can feed her yourself.
It’s the best nourishment she can have.’
‘Can I . . . touch her first?’
‘You can indeed – and all going well, you’ll be able to hold her in a couple of days.
Let’s make sure your hands are perfectly clean.
’ She was wheeled to a sink and given soap and a nail brush to use, and at last she put her hand through an opening in the incubator and touched the soft, soft skin of her daughter’s arm, and was reassured by the warmth of it.
Never alone again: it was the two of them now.
Back in her bed, there was one more call she had to make before she could sleep. She found the contact and placed the call and waited to see if it would be answered.
It wasn’t. After several rings there was a click, then Greta’s voice said, Please leave a message. Just as well: she couldn’t interrupt a voicemail.
‘It’s Lydia. I had no idea what that man was planning – of course I wouldn’t have agreed to sell it to him if I’d known, no matter how much he’d offered.
What do you take me for, Greta? How could you think I’d do such a thing?
I’ll phone the estate agent first thing in the morning and tell her I’m not selling to him.
And by the way, I’ve had the baby, and I think she’ll be OK. ’
After hanging up she sank into sleep, waking only when the door opened. A nurse, she thought blearily, looking for her to give more milk.
It wasn’t a nurse.
‘I knocked,’ Kathleen said, ‘but you didn’t hear.’