when she opened her eyes that the clouds parted and the snow ceased its frenzied dance. That it was she who cost Hull its first white Christmas in a generation. She who brought out the sun. It would be a lie. But it would be a lie that made his daughter smile. A lie that allowed him to remember the first few days of her life with something other than a dull throb of agony.
He hears movement behind him.
Turns.
‘Get back in that bed …’ he begins.
‘Well, I’m still a bit tender but if you want me that badly …,’ says Roisin, her face pale, her eyes dark. She’s wearing a baggy yellow nightie and has a pink band holding her unwashed, greasy hair back from her face. She seems shapeless, somehow. He has grown so used to the bulge of her stomach pressing at her clothes.
‘Roisin.’
‘I’m bored, Aector. I need some kissing.’
He sighs. Rolls his eyes indulgently.
‘Come here,’ he says.
Unsteadily, she crosses to where her husband sits, his massive bulk crammed into a wooden, high-backed orange chair. He’s facing the window but the curtains, with their nauseating greens and browns, are closed. She winces as she slides herself onto his knee, then drops her head to press her own clammy forehead into the mess of untended ginger curls upon his crown.
‘You smell,’ she says, and there’s a muffled smile to her voice.
McAvoy, for the first time in days, snorts a laugh. ‘You’re not exactly a bowl of potpourri yourself.’
She raises her head. He feels her small, moist hand upon his cheek, turning his face upwards, angling him into her gaze.
For a moment they simply stare, a thousand conversations rendered pointless by the ferocity and tenderness of their connection.
‘I was so scared,’ she says, and although they are all but alone, she whispers this admission, as if afraid that it will be used against her.
‘Me too,’ says McAvoy, and his truth seems to make her stronger. She leans down and kisses him. They kiss for an age. Break away only to smile at one another, to grin at the silliness of it all. To share a gleeful, knowing little glance, in the direction of the foot of the bed.
Lilah Roisin McAvoy was born on 15 December at 6.03 a.m.
Roisin had gone into labour almost as soon as McAvoy left the house, angrily reacting to Tom Spink’s text; thundering through the blizzard in the people carrier with its ready-packed maternity bag in the boot.
She had tried to call him. Willed him to answer his telephone. Focused all her energies on reaching out through the cold miles between them. To come home. To help her.
Eventually, her cries woke Fin. It was he who persuaded her to ring 999. He who said that sometimes Daddy had to work and couldn’t be there when other people wanted it. He who held her hand in the ambulance as the paramedics talked behind their hands about the volume of bleeding, the ice and snow on the roads, their belief that they should get time and a half for working nights in these conditions.
Roisin had tried to hold on. Tried to hold the baby in until the nurses reached her husband. But Lilah wanted out. Slithered out amid a gory rainbow of blood and mucus and was scooped up by a bald, bespectacled, Nigerian doctor, who carried her away to a waiting, scrubbed table, and performed complicated manoeuvres upon her tiny frame.
To Roisin, it seemed as if he was trying to breathe life into a dead bird.
She had turned away. Closed her eyes. Waited to be told the worst.
And then she heard the cry.
Lilah was four hours old, pink and wrinkled, with a breathing tube taped to the side of her face and oversized socks and mittens on her hands, before her father pressed his red, sweaty, tear-streaked face up against the plastic incubator and made the first of the thousand apologies he would stutter throughout the first few hours of her life.
When he took her from the nurse, she fitted perfectly in the palm of his hand.
Fin laughed at that. Asked if he had ever been that small. McAvoy told him no. That his sister had been so desperate to see him, she had come into the world early. That he was a big brother now, and it was his job to protect her.
Fin nodded solemnly. Gave her a wet, inelegant kiss upon the head. And then returned to the room full of grubby, donated toys, where he had been playing with a three-wheeled fire truck at the exact moment his sister began her wailing.
‘She still sleeping?’ asks Roisin.
‘Out like a light. Just like her mum.’
‘We’ve had a busy couple of days.’
‘Yes.’
She tenses, as if preparing to vacate her husband’s knee, and then relaxes, as she acquiesces to his firm hands and sinks back into his embrace.
‘Let her sleep.’
‘We nearly lost her, Aector. If she’d died … if she hadn’t woken up …’
He feels her begin to shiver, and holds her tighter, shushing her sobs.
After a time, he again asks her the question he had blurted out through bubbles of snot when he raced into her room three days ago, snow billowing from his coat, a security guard dragging at either arm, almost water skiing behind him as he barrelled along the polished green linoleum.
‘Will you ever forgive me?’
She answers him now, as she had then, with a perfect white smile. And for a precious moment, McAvoy feels so happy, so perfect, so loved and rewarded, that it crosses his mind to stop his own heart. To die happy.
This time, when she moves, McAvoy lets her. She stands. Winces again. Reaches out and pulls open the curtains.
‘Bloody hell.’
They are four storeys up, enjoying one of the few private rooms on the maternity unit of Hull Royal Infirmary. The vantage point affords them a view of a city rendered almost faceless. Its landmarks, its idiosyncrasies, its character, all mute and anonymous beneath a thick covering of white. The streets are largely deserted. Roisin cranes her neck. Looks down at the car park. It is virtually empty. Half a dozen large 4x4s are parked here and there across the wide open space, like islands on a vast ice rink. The hospital is down to a skeleton staff. Those who were at work when the snow began to fall have largely stayed here. Those at home, with a car capable of staying right-side-up, have made it in, but the conversations on the eerily quiet wards and corridors revolve around how they will get home again; whether the car will even start when they ease themselves back behind the wheel.
‘We’re best off in here,’ says McAvoy, pulling himself out of the chair.
McAvoy leans past her and looks out of the window. Gives a wry smile as he sees the small huddle of frail old men and fat middle-aged women, coats over their pyjamas, puffing desperately on cigarettes at the entrance to the car park; sucking the smoke into their lungs like diabetics gorging on insulin.
McAvoy looks down at the floor. He becomes suddenly aware of the mobile phone in his pocket. Feels it giving off waves of energy. Feels his fingers begin to twitch as he becomes overwhelmed by a need to switch it on. To plug himself back in. To find out what he’s missed these past three days of pain and prayer.
‘Roisin, do you mind if I …’
She’s smiling. She gives the briefest of nods.
McAvoy stops at his daughter’s cot. Rubs his big, rough fingers against her soft, fleshy cheek.
Forty-three missed calls.
Seventeen text messages.
A voicemail service filled to capacity.
McAvoy stands in the doorway of the maternity unit, listening to the drone of voices.
Finds the call he has been looking for.
‘Sergeant McAvoy, hi. Erm, this is Vicki Mountford. We met the other day to discuss Daphne. Look, this might
