Page 101 of The First Time I Saw You
‘Mam!’ Sarah shouts in the background as the pain in my stomach begins to march towards the summit, dragging me with it. ‘The police are on the phone!’
‘I’ll be back in a minute. Mr McLaughlin? You’re doing well, I’m proud of you.’
‘Go away with yourself, you mad woman. All I’m doing is sitting here – ow!’ He tries to snatch his hand away from me, but I hang on: I’m almost at the top of the hill; I’m almost there.
The contraction ends, and I close my eyes. Mr McLaughlin is stroking my thumb with his thumb. ‘You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine,’ he is whispering. I open my eyes and look at him, noticing how grey his skin has started to look and how deeply furrowed the crevices in his forehead have become. He looks away from me and then passes me my phone. Charlie’s name is flashing on the screen.
‘Where are you?’ Charlie asks. I can almost hear the steps he is taking, his hair bouncing up and down as he paces the kitchen.
‘I’m in labour.’
‘Labour? But—’
‘Never mind that, Charlie.’ I pull myself further up the bed while I still can. ‘Samuel’s lost, he’s there by the house somewhere. He’s blind—’ But the cord is pulling me back up the hill; it’s steeper than last time and a sound like a scratch leaves my mouth.
‘Blind? Sophie?’ I hear Charlie’s voice, but he is at the bottom of the mountain and I’m being pulled away to the top, the elastic almost cutting me in half. I hear Mr McLaughlin explaining things. I feel the midwife’s hand on my stomach, her eyes looking at the monitor and her gentle voice asking Mr McLaughlin if he could leave the room, so she can examine me.
‘I think I need to push,’ I say. A trolley laden with all things metal is pulled towards her and gloves are put on.
‘Let’s have a look.’ My head turns from side to side. I’m not ready. He’s not here. ‘Well, you didn’t waste any time, baby Williams,’ she says.
‘McLaughlin,’ I correct.
‘I can see baby McLaughlin’s head . . . plenty of hair there. Have you got any redheads in the family?’ She grins, but my feet are being strapped into their walking boots, a rope winched around my waist as I’m pulled away from the ground, the pain tightening around my middle as I’m dragged back up the mountain. ‘Shall I get your . . . um, birthing partner in?’ I nod as I try to concentrate on my breathing.
‘Charlie is out looking for our boy. Nice chap.’ He pats my hand and I return to base camp. He sits down.
‘I need to push!’ I say as primal noises escape my mouth and hang on to the walls, the sensation uncontrollable and all-consuming.
‘OK, let’s get ready to meet this baby, shall we?’ Wendy smiles up at me from between my open legs. ‘Good girl, and again.’ The pain takes hold of me and I look around for something to concentrate on, anything other than the way my chin is burying into my chest, every muscle in my body tensed. I find Mr McLaughlin’s face as a noise, somewhere between a grunt and a growl, leaves my mouth. I concentrate on the tear that is rolling down his cheek, the tiny blood vessels across the tops of his cheeks, the curve of his eyelashes. I concentrate on the way that he is looking at me, the way his rough hand feels in mine.
The same noise, the same urge continues, over and over, until, with white-light clarity, I feel Bean’s head leave the inside of my body.
‘Right then, Sophie, now pant when you feel the next contraction . . . nice and slowly does it.’
‘Come on, Our Sophie, almost there, almost there.’ He smiles at me, his thumb moving backwards and forwards in time with the small rocks he is making in his chair: forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards.
The last push.
Sounds are dulled, like being underwater in a swimming pool. I can hear the noises above, but they are far away: echoes that leak and fade. I know that the lifeguard is pacing around the edges; I can hear my heart pounding inside my ribcage, hear the bubbles leak from my mouth as the last bit of oxygen escapes my lungs. Wendy is telling me I’m nearly there, that I’m doing brilliantly; the urge to push forces me to the surface, my legs tense, as I break through the pain, my baby’s head pushing through the surface and gasping its first breath.
‘It’s a boy,’ Wendy says, smiling.
The room stills; time is frozen: the only sound is the beat of my heart and the muffled noises of my son’s first cry. My life before this moment is now a thing of the past, a thing that I can never return to. As this tiny creature, with blood still covering his red-haired head, is passed to me, I become a new person. I look down as I feel the weight of him, the warmth of him, filling my open arms. How is it possible to love someone this much when I’ve only just met him? His fists are clenched, his wide blue eyes, eyes that are the same shape as Samuel’s, are looking around the room, trying to find me, trying to see who it is who has been talking to him for the last nine months, trying to see if his dad is here . . . did he make it? Where is he? You said you’d find him.
I look to where Mr McLaughlin is smiling down at his grandson, his face mimicking mine, a look of pure love, but with the loss of Samuel pulling around the edges.
‘Hello,’ I say. ‘Hello, Bean.’
‘Hello, young man,’ says Mr McLaughlin, his voice catching in his throat. ‘I’m your Grampa.’
Week Thirty-Five
Contractions Two Minutes Apart
Samuel
My body shivers beneath skin covered in sweat but I’m almost there. I lift Michael the Second up and he tells me there is a half-metre gap from where I stand and the edge of the road. I feel around for a loose piece of rock and pull it towards me, stamping and pushing it into the mud to help give me a little extra height before I pull myself up. I throw Michael up and hear him crack his back as he hits the tarmac. Pain screams in my shoulders and inside my biceps as my fingernails dig into the dirt, link their way into the maze of roots that hold the forest together and drag my body upwards. Primal noises escape my mouth and bounce around the forest, as I use every bit of my strength, every last bit of energy that is left in me to climb, to crawl, to get out of this forest and back on to the road. With a final grunt, my hands scratch against the tarmac; they pull my body up and I lie there, rolling on to my back, my breath coming out in shallow, noisy gasps.
