‘Her mobile number, sweetie?’ The woman sounds like I’ve asked for a kidney. Before I can yell at her, she says, ‘Wait, Dr Marigold wants to speak to you.’
My whole belly is tight and sore, and I grip the phone. In the background, I hear the doorbell ring.
‘Julia, it’s Ewan.’
‘I’m in labour,’ I squeak. ‘I want my mummy.’
‘Where are you?’
‘At the house. No one’s here. I want my mummy.’
‘I’m coming, Julia. And I’ll find her.’
I drop the phone as the contraction fully kicks in.
As the contraction passes, the doorbell rings again. I need to get there, I need to get help. I take a deep breath, and stand up. It’s fine, no pain. I walk slowly, scared that if I rush I’ll trigger another contraction. But I get to the front door before another contraction starts, and I just have time to reach for the buzzer that opens the gate, before that one gets me. As it passes, there’s a banging on the door. I open it, and there, unbelievably, is Claire.
‘Julia,’ she says, and opens her arms. I fall into them.
‘I’m in labour,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what to do. I phoned my mum’s work. They’ll find her.’
‘We need to get you to the hospital,’ says Claire, in her matter-of-fact way. ‘Where’s your bag?’
‘I unpacked it,’ I say. ‘It was all wrong.’ I know that this would never have happened to Claire, but I don’t care any more – there’s another contraction, and I double over. ‘It’s coming now, Claire,’ I yell. ‘I can feel something down there.’
‘I guess we’re too late for the hospital,’ says Claire, as I try to breathe through my pain. ‘Don’t worry Julia, I’m here.’
‘Claire,’ I say, gripping her hand. ‘I’m sorry about Daniel. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.’ I start to cry. It’s like these words have been waiting to come out for months. Much like the baby.
‘Don’t think about that now. Let’s concentrate on this baby,’ says Claire, helping me back to my mother’s room. ‘It’s all okay.’
It could be five minutes later, it could be an hour – I don’t know – Claire has been talking me through the contractions, and seems to have been carrying out several phone calls at once – to my mother, to my doctor, and to Daniel – when the door to the bedroom bursts open. My mother and Ewan come through the door first.
‘Don’t push yet!’ is what Ewan is saying.
’I’m here, baby,’ says my mother, who never calls me baby.
I focus on Ewan.
‘I have to push,’ I say through gritted teeth.
He rushes past me into my mother’s en suite, and I hear the sound of handwashing. I presume this because my mother suddenly yells, ‘Clean hands,’ and runs in after him.
When he comes out, he says, ‘Julia, you know I’m a doctor, right?’
‘Is this really time for small talk?’ I ask.
‘I thought I’d just mention it before I put my hand inside you,’ he says.
‘Go for it!’ I shout, but only because a contraction’s just hit.
Ewan examines me, and then turns to my mother. ‘We’re not getting her to a hospital. You’re going to have to help.’
Something happens to my mother. She smiles, and then – I swear I am not making this up – her eyes fill with tears, and then she suddenly becomes a nurse. You can see it happen. She hasn’t been a nurse for years; she’s been a receptionist. But now I can see it. I can see the super-efficient nurse she must’ve been. Before I can tell her how glad I am that she’s my mum, there’s a towel on the bed and a basin of steaming water next to it, and Claire is sitting next to me feeding me ice chips. (Where the hell did she get ice chips? Being Claire, she probably has a little ice-chip maker in her car for when she finds people in labour.) Really, I’m pretty sure this is how it would have been in a hospital.
And then I’m pushing and pushing, and Ewan is saying, ‘He’s crowning,’ and my mother is standing with a towel ready for the baby, and Daniel arrives.
‘Bloody hell,’ he says, and vomits on the carpet. Nobody even turns to look at him, because the baby is here.
Helen
I don’t know at what point in the drama of Julia’s delivery I noticed the photo of Jack sticking out from under my bed. Jack holding Julia.
For a moment I wondered, How on earth did it get out of the box? And how did Julia end up in my room anyway? But then she let out a piercing shriek, and I quickly pushed the photo under the bed with my toe, and carried on helping deliver my grandson.
In movies when there’s a highly dramatic home delivery, once the baby is delivered, everyone steps back and smiles and all is well. Well, I don’t know what that’s all about, because once this baby was delivered, we got even more busy. We put him straight onto Julia’s chest, and admittedly she did get all cross-eyed with hormones and start crying – but Ewan and I had a placenta to deliver, a cord to cut, and a mess to clean up. We also had a baby to check for birth defects.
We offered Daniel the chance to cut the cord, but he started heaving again, and Claire laughed and said, ‘Not a chance,’ and so I got to do it – cut the cord between my daughter and grandbaby. And it would have been strangely moving except that Daniel vomited again, and all I could think of was how much vomit I was going to have to clean out of the carpet, not to mention how much blood was in my bed.
But finally, it was calm. Ewan declared himself happy with the baby, and he and Claire took themselves off to the kitchen to make tea for everyone. Daniel had managed to rally now
