Anna scoops her up as I simply stand there. ‘Oh, Alice, Alice…’ She glances at me, concern warring with judgement. I see it perfectly. ‘What happened?’
‘She wouldn’t stop crying.’
‘Milly…’
‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘It’s going to be all right.’
It’s clear to me now, in a way it wasn’t before: I’m not good for Alice. I’m not the mother she needs. I go upstairs and stay there until Matt comes home. I hear his lowered voice and Anna’s too, their worried murmurs. When Matt comes upstairs, I pretend to be asleep.
But that night, when he is sleeping, I creep into Alice’s room. She is lying on her back, one arm flung out by her head, palm up. She looks completely at peace. Her breath comes in little snuffly snores. As I stare down at her, I feel it – that rush of love that I’ve been longing for, that warm, welcome flood of maternal feeling. I would do anything for her. I know I would.
Which is why, the next morning, I tell Matt I am leaving.
Twenty
Anna
I can’t help but laugh as I blow a raspberry on Alice’s tummy, and she gives me one of her gummy grins. She had just started smiling in the last few days; she will be five weeks tomorrow. Milly has been gone for nearly two weeks.
I was shocked when Matt told me, his face gaunt, his expression dazed, the morning after Milly’s disastrous walk to the park. ‘She went to her parents’,’ he said, his voice hollow. ‘They picked her up this morning. She said she can’t stay, it’s been too hard. She needs some space.’
I held Alice to me, trying to take it in. Milly had just gone? As concerned and worried as I felt, I couldn’t keep from feeling something else as well – a treacherous relief, even joy. I had Alice.
It was wrong of me to feel that, I know. I tried not to feel it, but it kept pushing through, like a seedling through the soil, determined to seek the light. I had Alice.
‘Perhaps that’s for the best, Matt,’ I said. ‘For a little while, at least. She can rest and recover…’
‘She needs to be with Alice.’ He sounded fierce.
‘And she will be,’ I assured him. ‘When she’s ready.’
I moved in to their house the next day, bringing Winnie with me, because it seemed easier for both Matt and me if I was on site. It was nothing more than a simple matter of efficiency, or so I told myself.
Alice slept in the Moses basket in my room; it made sense for Matt to get his sleep while he could, since he had to go to work. I didn’t mind getting up at night to settle her or give her a feed; I soon came to treasure those moments we shared, the two of us, cocooned by the soft night, where I could pretend this was how it really was, how it always would be.
Soon I fell into an easy routine built around Alice. A feed in the morning, and then while she slept I’d shower and dress, and then tidy up around the house. After she woke up, I’d feed her again, and then if the weather was good I’d take her for a walk, either in the pram or the sling that I took out of its packaging, with her nestled warmly against me. Then I would come home and potter around, feed and change Alice, read while she lay on my lap, or walk with her if she started to fuss. I’d make dinner for the three of us, and we’d eat together.
Sometimes Jack came by, and we’d play with her together, marvel at her lying on a mat on the floor, kicking her tiny legs. Although he never said anything, I don’t think I was the only one imagining this was all real.
Although I called Milly’s parents every day, and sent her photos of Alice by email, it was easy to let her drift to the back of my mind. There wasn’t anything I could do for her besides what I was already doing, and Alice was the one who needed me now. So during those long, languorous days, when it was just me and Alice, I gave myself permission not to think of Milly at all.
At the park one day, I sat on a bench, gently rocking the pram, enjoying the wintry sunshine. It was early December, and the Christmas decorations had come out, with lamp posts spangled with lights and wreaths.
‘Oh, how adorable!’ A mum with a baby in a sling came to stand near Alice, cooing down at her tiny, flower-like face. ‘How old?’
‘Four weeks, but she was a preemie. Her due date isn’t for over another week.’
‘Oh, wow.’ The mum looked at me in frank admiration. ‘You look amazing.’
‘Oh…’ The syllable slipped through my lips softly, like a sigh. And then I didn’t say anything else. In my defence, how could I? It was hardly the moment
to say I wasn’t the mother, that her actual mother had abandoned her, at least for the moment. Of course, later I realised I could have just said I was babysitting. But that didn’t occur to me at the time.
‘And she’s doing well? Feeding well?’
‘Yes, she is, actually. She’s doing amazingly, considering, well, everything.’ I smiled and rocked the pram.
‘She’s your first?’ I opened my mouth to say I knew not what, unable to perpetuate the fiction quite that much, but the woman steamrollered over me before I could respond. ‘Do you know any other mums in the area? Because there’s a mums and babies group that meets in the community centre on Thursday mornings, from ten to twelve. We have a coffee and a chat, while the babies feed or scream.’ She smiled, with a little eye roll. ‘You know how it is.’