I stare up an eerily quiet road with five or six dark houses and this does not feel, I realise, like where I live.
I have no idea how I got here or, as I walk, here or here or here or here and by the time I walk through the door it is the blackest, harshest part of the night and Ed is in bed and this building doesn’t feel like home any more either. I am at the dead end; the end of the road, again.
20
Scarlett
9 June
The next day, Poppy, newly on her feet, stumbles into the corner of a table and shrieks so loudly that it makes the hairs on my arms stand up as I run towards her and my insides go into shock. Another thing that’s been a victim of Ed and me not communicating: a proper plan to childproof our house ready for the toddler years.
I scream.
Poppy screams.
I’m distraught. How could we have neglected our girl like this?
Emma happens to be at our house, staying for a cup of tea as she has come round to borrow a travel cot. Emma doesn’t scream. In fact she is disconcertingly calm.
She takes Poppy from me and pushes her hair to one side, looking at her head closely.
‘Frozen peas?’ she asks and I run to the freezer. Wrap them in a tea towel.
‘Hold them on there,’ she says to me, with about sixty times the authority I’ve ever heard her demonstrate. ‘She’s going to be fine. But it is her head and it was a real whack so we do need to get her checked. We’re taking her to hospital.’
I freeze, in a rare north of England twenty-five-degree heatwave that’s rolled on since Ed and I were at the hotel. Not hospital. Never hospital.
‘I’ll call Ed,’ I say. ‘You don’t need to take us. Pop’s car seat won’t fit in your car anyway. Don’t worry. Ed will be here. Ed will come home from work. Ed …’
I take Poppy back from her; my baby is short of breath in panic and I know I can’t be helping. I try to breathe deeply myself.
‘Shhh, my love,’ I whisper. ‘It’s all okay.’
Is it? I stare at her head, a giant lump coming up by her temple.
‘Ed works in Warrington, right?’ says Emma. ‘You don’t want to be sitting here worrying while you wait for him to get back. I can strap the car seat in to my car – it’s not a problem.’
We walk outside together. She takes Poppy from me and puts her in the car seat.
I’ve never seen her so decisive. Emma leading things, me following. It’s not the natural order.
Emma sees me notice the difference and ducks her head. That’s more like it: more her usual body language.
Then she looks up.
‘If it reassures you at all,’ she says as she straps Poppy in. ‘I work at the walk-in centre.’
Is she serious? She’s a doctor? How could I not have known this?
‘Not a GP,’ she clarifies. ‘On reception.’
I think then of messages she’s sent at strange times when I presumed she was up with Seth. How she can meet up often some weeks but never on others. When we talked about Ronnie and she said how great it was that she accommodated odd hours. Shifts, I guess, but no one’s ever asked or mentioned it, though Cora must know. Everyone’s just talked over Emma more loudly, or more urgently, or veered off to Cora’s affair or dairy allergies or that baby cinema that’s started that does the good snacks.
Not our fault, I think, defensive – Emma should have spoken up more. That’s what I tell myself, anyway, when I think how awful it is that I’ve never asked.
It’s pushed out of my head anyway as Emma is moving me towards the door and Poppy is screaming again, in pain. She sits in the back with Seth, me wedged in the middle of them so I can hold her hand.
‘It’s okay, Pops,’ I mutter, holding her pudgy fingers as she stares wide-eyed, not understanding the pain. ‘Emma’s coming now.’
My heart races.
Of all the saviours I thought we would have in life, this one, with her cheeky wines and her Slimming World points, was not it.
I talk to Poppy all the way to the hospital while she cries, even though I am on the brink of a panic attack.
Because my baby is hurt and I am going back to hospital.
Poppy still screams.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.’
I touch the lump on her head and feel my breath get shorter.
In the hospital waiting room I shrink from the other people who want to make small talk and clutch Poppy to my chest as she whimpers.
How can these people chat about their dogs and the weather and that ticket machine that isn’t working? How can they breathe? I bury my head in Poppy’s soft brown hair as she burrows into my lap, screaming abated now but not herself, sad.
Ten minutes later we are in the triage room and I’m reminding myself that it’s not the same hospital, not the same hospital, not the one where I left her behind but it’s hard to remember it because of the smell, the sounds and because it’s another baby girl, vulnerable.
‘Looks worse than it is,’ says a nurse, as I struggle to breathe. ‘You’re right to come in but it’s just a bad bump. Scares you when they’re little, I know.’
‘So we can go?’ I ask.
‘Not quite so fast.’ The nurse laughs, as I am already picking my bag up. Emma is in the waiting room with Seth.
I look up at him. What?
‘You still need to see a doctor,’ he says. ‘Just to get a proper check.’
My heart is hammering.
I am burning up, suddenly, and the nurse looks concerned.
‘Sit down for a second,’ he says. ‘I think you need to calm down. Let me get your