Page 50 of The First Time I Saw You
My hands feel the walls for the banister as I make my way downstairs. Something has been left on the last step and I curse as my foot slips, and my heel hits the floor with a crack. I reach down, feeling and looking for the culprit. My hand clamps around plastic legs and brings a startled-looking Barbie out of the tunnel and into my line of sight.
‘Barbie nearly killed me,’ I say as I throw her on to the kitchen table.
‘Do you know,’ Mam begins, ‘my friend who worked in the hospital said you’d be surprised just how many men “fall” on to Barbies. Strange world we live in.’
‘Never mind that now, Mrs McLaughlin. Isabella has a lead on this Sophie girl Samuel’s been harping on about.’
My eyes trace my way around the room until I land on Isabella, leaning on the far side of the kitchen, and she looks very pleased with herself.
‘You missed one of the garages. This is a new branch and they’ve only just added it to the Fast Fix website. I rang them, and they checked their records for Sophie Williams and found that they did repair a car by that name.’
‘That’s great!’ I shout, making my way to her but slamming my shin into a chair that isn’t tucked under the table properly. ‘Fuck!’ I rub my injured leg. Isabella crouches down in front of me where I’m rubbing my shin. She’s so close to me that most of my vision is filled with her face.
‘That’s not all,’ she smirks. ‘One of the mechanics picked up her car. He couldn’t remember the number but . . . I’ve got a street name, Sam.’
Week Twenty
Sophie
Charlie has stayed at home today waiting for Handy Huw to fix my car; he really is quite handy. According to my calendar, it’s not even officially summer and yet outside, the cars sweat, their leather insides melting and expanding; flowers lean heavily towards the hazy sun out of duty rather than enjoyment. It’s the type of day where the heat dampens everything: the clothes on the line hang heavily, the trouser legs cramp, desperate to kick themselves forward, but the wind, exasperated by the heat itself, is too lethargic to massage their movements.
I’ve come into town to get a few things for the house. I buy a bunch of yellow roses to put on my new sideboard and swat away a fly as I stop to look through a bakery window. An alarm pierces through the seaside songs, slicing through my thoughts about fresh bread and strawberry tarts as a woman runs through the open doors of a boutique, her hair fanning around her in brittle waves, as if it had been in a plait but is now untied. Her white summer dress billows out from her thin frame as she tries to escape the advances of the security guard who is scanning up and down the street, his eyes latching on to her, his feet pounding the concrete in pursuit. My body begins to react. I step backwards as she turns her head, her eyes wild as they scan the road. The bunch of yellow roses in my hand is showered and fresh and the petals glisten inside the cool polythene.
I take another step back as she runs towards me. It all happens so quickly, none of us able to react in the way we would have wanted to when we replay this later. I would have turned and run; I wouldn’t have stopped outside the bakery, and Charlie would have arranged for Huw to come on a different day.
But as it stands now, as she slams her hands against my shoulders, sending me flying backwards, none of the things we could have done matter. My feet leave the ground, my back arches and the yellow roses escape my grip.
It’s strange the things you notice when your free will is taken from you. As my back lands with a crack against the concrete path, my thoughts aren’t about the baby inside my tummy. I’m not picturing Bean sleeping with a thumb held in a rosebud mouth, the delicate spine curled into a comma; I’m thinking about my mother’s vase and how the yellow roses would have looked nice in it. And as I watch one of the petals float through the air and on to my stomach, I’m thinking that I should buy a new vase.
I’m not thinking of those things that could have changed this outcome, because we didn’t do any of those things.
As the midwife arranges the paper blanket over the bed in the assessment room, I tap a message to Helen but delete it. She would ring me and I don’t want to talk. Instead I message Charlie:
I’ve had a fall, I’m in the hospital, could you come?
My legs dangle over the edge of the bed as she checks that my blood pressure is OK and then asks me to lie back, put my feet together and relax my legs as she examines me.
‘The swab is clear of blood, and you’re not dilating.’ She peels off the gloves with a flick that snaps into the quiet room, looping the stethoscope around her neck and placing the metal disk in various places on my bump.
‘The little monkey is in a bit of an awkward position.’ She smiles at me, but the smile is guarded. ‘We’ll take you for a scan now to check baby.’ My mouth won’t form the words to ask her if she could hear Bean’s heartbeat.
As we leave the room, she holds on to my elbow and guides me towards a seat alongside the corridor where the ultrasound rooms are. The carpet tiles sit neatly, side by side, maroon twine twisting around vertical tubes.
The sounds around me, the chatter, the calls of patients’ names, fade behind the images on the walls. Posters of babies in the womb taunt me and so I focus my sight on the inoffensive: the fire alarm, the signs for the emergency meeting point, the fire extinguisher, the fire door. I look back at the alarm: I could pull it; I could pretend that this isn’t happening. But my chance is missed: the same technician who I saw at my twelve-week scan smiles at me, calling my name. My feet drag my body inside, even though my fingers itch to pull the alarm.
‘We’ll check baby first,’ the technician says, ‘then we’ll take you down to get your back checked by a doctor. How are you feeling?’ she asks as I lower myself on to the bed. How can I tell her that this baby means more to me than I ever imagined it would? That Bean is the reason I get up every day, that it’s the only thing in my life that I have ever done that feels right. Without Bean, I have nothing. What will happen to me? Will I go back to London, back to the noise and the demands, back to days where I don’t notice the things in life that are special? Without Bean I will be back to a life where I am alone, a life in black and white.
There is a gentle tap on the door just as she lifts my top up to reveal my swollen stomach. The idea that within it Bean could be hurt, that it could be in pain, fills me with an ache so acute that a small whimper escapes my lips, making the midwife stop her movements.
‘Sophie, are you in pain?’ she asks, her concern embedded in her frown. I shake my head, but I can feel that my legs are shivering beneath the blanket.
There’s another knock on the door and a small crack of light breaks into the room. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but there’s someone here to see Sophie. He says to tell her Charlie is here?’
The midwife turns to look at me. ‘Would you like Charlie to come in?’
I nod my consent, the door widens, and he steps into the room, sits beside the bed and takes my hand.
‘I’ve brought you an overnight bag; there’s a toothbrush and some toothpaste. In case you need to stay here. Overnight.’ His voice is stilted, and it stretches around the words that are trivial, snapping at the words that aren’t. Cold gel is squeezed on to my stomach, the scanner pushes down on to my skin; the screen fills with the image of my baby.
