A group of teenagers was spilling onto the street, and despite the car radio on loud he could hear the doof-doof of the music. Though he had driven past, regretting it, resenting it even, he executed a hasty U-turn, flashed his lights at the drunken idiots and pulled over. Opening the gates and heading up to her unit, he saw the lights were on. Hearing Willow’s screams from inside, he knocked at the door.
When there was no answer he realised how scared she must be.
‘Celeste,’ he called during a tiny lull in the music. ‘It’s me, Ben.’
‘What do you want?’ He could see she’d been crying when she opened the door.
‘I heard the noise on my way back from work. You can’t settle her in this. You should have rung me...’
‘You wouldn’t have been home,’ Celeste pointed out, but despite her flip retort he could tell she was still close to tears. ‘It’s only a party...’
Which it was—a very loud party, but next door to a very new baby and a very new mum, who just hadn’t needed it tonight.
‘I can’t get her to feed, and the nurses said it had to be every three hours at the most,’ she said forlornly.
‘Come on,’ he announced. ‘Let’s grab her things and you can both crash at my place.’
She was about to say no, about to close the door, but a small fight was erupting in the next unit, and, however much she didn’t want to need help, tonight she did.
‘Please, Celeste...’ Even inside her flat the music was just as loud! ‘Pack a bag and come and stay at my house tonight,’ he begged again.
She would have argued, but she was too relieved. She wasn’t sure if it was her own tension or the noise that was upsetting Willow, but after six weeks of tender care in the special care unit, Celeste was scared enough being on her own with her, without the invasive noise and chaos of next door.
She was trying to clip Willow in her little seat to carry out to the car, but Ben had other ideas. ‘Just put her in her pram. It will be just as easy to walk...and she can sleep in it.’
She would never have walked outside with the party mob there, but with Ben she felt safe. He pushed the pram and bumped it down the steps as Celeste locked up. The gates to the units were already open and with his arm around her they walked in swift silence away from the noise along the street and only when it faded in the distance did he talk.
‘You should have called the police.’
‘What, and have my neighbours hate me?’ Celeste said ruefully as they walked along the street. There was a nearly full moon, which provided plenty of light, the music was just a thud in the distance and she could hear the welcome sound of the water now. ‘It was only a party...’ she said again.
‘It’s no place...’ He didn’t finish the sentence, but Celeste knew what he’d been about to say.
‘It’s all I can afford, Ben,’ she told him quietly.
‘I know that.’
‘There was a small house in town for about the same price—I should have rented that, but I wanted to be closer to the beach. The flat seemed fine when I inspected it. I didn’t think to ask to see it at eleven o’clock on a Friday night...’ She took over the pram, and was walking more quickly now. Willow, overtired, was still crying, and Celeste was both annoyed at him and at herself. She was trying so hard to cope, so hard to do right by her baby, yet at every turn she seemed thwarted, at every turn life tossed her another curve ball... ‘I’m doing my best,’ she said as they arrived at his house. ‘Though, I’m sure you don’t think it’s good enough—’
‘I never said that!’ Ben interrupted.
‘No, but you think it!’ she retorted. She was angry at him and she knew she shouldn’t be. It wasn’t his fault, he was being perfectly nice, but his home, his order, his everything only seemed to highlight her own inadequacies.
‘Why don’t you feed her?’ Ben suggested soothingly. He carried the pram and the baby up the stairs and past his stunning bedroom to a rather nice guest room, where he parked the pram. ‘Rest on the bed, the view’s lovely. You can both relax and get Willow calm and settled...’
‘And her mum too...’ She was just a bit embarrassed at her outburst. After all, it wasn’t his fault how he made her feel.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll find some sheets to make up the bed.’
‘Thanks,’ she said awkwardly.
‘Come out when you’re ready.’
‘I need...’ He was turning to go and she stopped him, rummaging through Willow’s bag. ‘Is there anywhere I can warm up her bottle?’
‘Sure,’ he said.
‘Actually...’ she picked up the hot little bundle that was her sobbing baby ‘...could you hold Willow for me?’
‘I’ll do the bottle,’ Ben said, in an annoyingly calm voice that only made her appear more frazzled. ‘I know where everything is.’
He took the bottle and she changed Willow while her screams quadrupled. She felt like howling herself. She knew he’d been expecting her to just lie on the bed and flop out a boob, to feed her baby herself...
She felt such a failure, felt so close to crying that she barely managed to thank him as he returned a couple of moments later with a warm bottle. He sort of hovered for an uncomfortable moment as she sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed and took it from him. Then Willow’s mouth clamped onto the teat as if she’d been starved for a week and the only sound was of gulps and tears as an overtired baby finally took its bottle from an overwrought mum.
Although Willow was gulping her bottle, she kept jumping and startling while she was doing it. Celeste kicked off her sandals and lay back on the bed, pulling Willow in tighter, but every time she almost relaxed, the baby would suddenly startle as if the noise, the angst, the panic from her mother was all about to start again.
It was nothing unfamiliar to Celeste.
The party had just been the clincher. In the few days since she’d been home from the hospital, practically every time she’d sat down to quietly feed her babe, her mother had ‘dropped in’, offering all kinds of suggestions—‘Change her first,’ or ‘Change her after she’s fed,’ or ‘Hold the bottle higher,’ or ‘She needs winding,’ each well-meaning suggestion from Rita only exacerbating the tension further.
Celeste desperately wanted to be back in the hospital, wanted to be feeding Willow with knowledgeable staff offering quiet encouragement, or even to put her to bed in the hospital at night and go home, as she had last Sunday, missing her but knowing she was being well looked after—no, that Willow was being better looked after than she could manage by herself.
‘It’s okay, Willow, it’s all okay, Willow,’ she said softly, over and over again until finally Willow believed it, until finally her little jerks and startles stopped, and the gulps of tears faded. Celeste felt this unfamiliar surge of triumph as her baby relaxed into her, scared to move almost as Willow moved from resisting her to this passive, trance-like state almost—seemingly asleep, but still feeding.
She really was asleep, Celeste realised as she took the empty bottle from Willow’s mouth and watched her little eyelids flicker.
So asleep that if the party down the street relocated to outside the bedroom window, Celeste was quite sure that Willow wouldn’t wake up.
And she had done it all by herself.
She’d never been so alone with her baby and felt so much a mum at the same time.
Celeste stared down at the perfect features of her daughter, dark little eyebrows that looked as if they’d been pencilled on, her fine pointy nose and little rosebud mouth, and she thought her heart would swell and burst there was so much love inside it for her baby.
A scary love that knew no bounds—yet still she felt so inadequate.
This little scrap of a thing was just so utterly and completely dependent on her, there should be no room to feel anything else.
Except she did.
She didn’t want to move, didn’t want to put her down. She just wanted to stay safe on this bed, holding her baby, watching the bay with Ben just a call away. To simply hold onto this first ray of peace.
‘Don’t fall asleep holding the baby.’
She could hear her mother as if she were in the room with them.
And she was right, Celeste sighed, heading over to the pram and gently lowering Willow in.
As she headed out to the lounge, Ben, sprawled on one of the sofas, looked up from the show on the television he was watching and poured her a glass of wine. It was the second little ray of peace she felt. For the first time since Willow’s discharge from hospital, she felt as if she were home.
‘She’s asleep,’ she told him.
‘Good. How are you?’ he asked.
‘Better.’ She took a seat on the edge of the sofa opposite him. ‘You always seem to bailing me out. It won’t be for much longer.’