Playing Nice

“Oh,” I said, taken aback. “That’s really kind, but I don’t think we’d ever consider sending Theo to a boarding school. We’ve actually got a really good C of E primary a few streets away. And we’ve started going to church.” Miles looked puzzled, so I added, “You know—On your knees to save the fees? The school’s massively oversubscribed, but if you’re a regular churchgoer, the vicar can allocate you a place.”

“Ah.” Miles nodded. “Well, you’ve clearly got it all under control. Boarding and so on can seem a bit antiquated now, can’t it? But look, I might as well change the places to Theo’s name anyway, and they’ll be there if you ever change your mind. You never know, he might turn out to be a Harry Potter fan, and actually quite like the idea of going away.”

I didn’t tell Maddie any of this in the car. I thought it was best to emphasize the positives. I suppose that’s something I’ve done for her ever since the NICU—being strong for her. People look at her and see someone who’s incredibly capable and tough. They don’t know about the struggles she had during the first year of Theo’s life, particularly after I did that charity ride. If I’m honest, that was one of the reasons I ended up becoming Theo’s main carer. Getting back to work was all part of Maddie’s recovery, and only I know how fragile she still is.

16

MADDIE

FOR THE FIRST FOUR months after Theo’s birth, I held things together. My parents flew over from Australia to see us. The flights had originally been booked around my due dates, of course, and the tickets weren’t transferable. Although they’d offered to buy new ones and come when Theo was in the NICU, there hadn’t seemed much point. When they did come, of course they wanted to meet Theo—but there’s only so long even a doting grandfather can sit with a small baby, let alone a restless grandfather like Jack Wilson, and they wanted to tour the sights of London as well, which kept us all busy. At least they stayed in a hotel, so only Pete could see how sleep-deprived and stressed I was becoming. Time after time I felt myself getting angry with him for no reason, and although I’d been signed off for sex by my GP six weeks after the birth, there was absolutely no chance that was going to happen. I didn’t even tell Pete the doctor had said it would be all right. I suspect he googled the timings, though, because one night when Theo was about three months old he tried to cuddle me. But when I went rigid, he stopped.

“It’s all right. There’s no rush,” he said gently.

“Too right there’s no fucking rush,” I snapped. Just for an instant, him telling me what was and wasn’t all right about my own body seemed like the most presumptuous, patronizing thing ever.

He peered at me by the light of the bedside clock. “Mads? What’s up? I only meant, it’s not a problem.”

But it was a problem, I knew—for me, not him. Sex meant childbirth, and people shouting Now and slicing my belly open with a scalpel. Sex meant small, monkeylike babies being fed with nasogastric tubes in the NICU. Sex meant exposing my C-section scar, and all the other scars that weren’t visible as well. Sex meant adrenaline flooding my veins, and a feeling of nameless dread clenching my insides.

But I didn’t tell him any of that, because I didn’t want to talk about it.

* * *

—

“I’M THINKING OF DOING a bike ride for the NICU,” Pete said, not long after my parents had flown back.

“A what?”

“There’s a Facebook group—Dads Behind the NICU. The idea is that we’ll all raise funds for the appeal.”

I didn’t even know the NICU was having an appeal. “Why do they need funds? St. Alexander’s is part of the NHS.”

“Yes, but they have a separate charity for nonessentials—the bits the NHS can’t pay for. The main one is, they want to buy a flat near the hospital for parents to stay in while their babies are in the unit. Bronagh and some of the other nurses did a sponsored fun run, but they’re still thirty thousand pounds short.”

I looked at him, surprised. “Are you still in touch with Bronagh?”

“Well, we’re both members of the fundraising group.” He saw my expression. “It’s a Facebook page, Mads,” he said patiently. “It’s not like we’re meeting up for coffee.”

“I hadn’t realized you missed your nursie groupies so much.” Even as I said it, I wondered at the venom in my voice. What was happening to me?

“Anyway, the dads are thinking of cycling all the way from Edinburgh to London,” Pete went on after a moment. “It’s an opportunity to show our appreciation to the hospital for saving our kids, and do something practical for them at the same time.”

Put like that, how could I refuse? “What about work? I thought you’d used up all your holiday.”

“They’ve offered to convert the time we spent in the hospital to compassionate leave. They’re right behind this. The editor’s already pledged two hundred quid, so everyone else should chip in at least twenty. I’ve been doing some calculations and I reckon I could raise over a grand.”

“Well, that sounds like it’s sorted, then,” I said bitterly. Which was stupid of me, I knew. I could feel myself turning into one of those people who seize any opportunity to make a barbed remark, even when it meant forgoing the chance to tell my partner what I really felt.

So instead of I don’t think I can cope without you, I just said, “Send me a postcard from Scotland, won’t you?”

* * *

—

PETE THREW HIMSELF INTO preparing for the ride. He assembled a bike from parts he hunted down on eBay. He and the other dads met up for several practice rides, all of which seemed to end with them in the pub, slapping one another on the back and telling one another how much their calf muscles ached and how heroic they were.

I was jealous. I didn’t have a group like that, or any group for that matter. The prenatal classes I’d booked started three months before my due date, so of course I’d missed those. There was a support group for mothers of preemies, run by people who’d been through it themselves, but I was still burying my head in the sand and the thought of getting together with other NICU veterans and endlessly rehashing the experience repelled me. I wasn’t dwelling on the past like them! I was looking forward! Before Theo, my social life had revolved around my job—the hardworking, hard-partying world of advertising. Going on shoots meant long hours on location, often abroad—it wasn’t unusual for the call time to be five A.M. or even earlier, but I always had enough energy for drinks in the hotel bar at the end of the day, and the wrap parties after the last day of filming were legendary. I’d made some deep, even intense friendships, but no one in that world really had time for a chat or a coffee with a new mum—they might say they did, and schedule something, but there was always some crisis or other that meant it had to be postponed. And it was an iron rule of advertising that a lunch or coffee rescheduled more than once was never going to happen. After that, it made you look desperate to pursue it. People said it took a village to raise a child, but I didn’t even have a cul-de-sac.

Pete set a goal of twelve hundred pounds on JustGiving and started emailing colleagues. Within a week he’d reached two thousand pounds. He read me some of the comments people left with their donations, and every so often he’d have to stop. “Keep going Pete and Maddie and little Theo, we’re all thinking of you,” “You’ll come through this stronger than ever,” or even just “Such a great thing you’re doing,” all reduced him to tears, or at least to manly silence. It had been one of the things I’d first liked about him—that he wasn’t afraid to cry in front of me—but since Theo’s birth, his emotions seemed to have become a gushing tap, while mine had gone in the other direction.

When I looked through the donations later, I noticed there was a pledge of ten pounds from Bronagh. Still doing the great work I see Pete! she’d written. He hadn’t read that one out.

Sometimes, feeding Theo in the middle of the night, I’d Skype my parents. It was strange to see them having lunch on the sun terrace while I was shut up in a dark bedroom in London, the streetlights turning the curtains sickly yellow. On one occasion, I put Theo down in his cot before I called them, only for him to start wailing a few minutes later. “Hang on,” I said to my mother wearily. “I’ll just go and get him.”

Then I heard my father’s voice, off camera. “She’s spoiling that baby. Tell her, Carol. You have to let them cry, or they never learn not to.”

I waited for her to say something, to explain that it wasn’t like that these days, but she didn’t. I stopped Skyping them after that.