“Right,” said Harper, “they’re beautiful. When were they born?”
“Saturday night.” She nodded to the one in yellow. “Morgan was born at 8:17 p.m. His little brother came out at 8.21. He’s called Riley.”
“Lovely,” said Harper. She scrabbled for a platitude to fill the silence. “Well, you’ve certainly got your hands full there.”
Lauren turned her eyes on Harper. “Do you have children?” she asked.
Harper didn’t know why she didn’t answer immediately. All her life she’d been answering immediately, giving the same almost stock response, No, not me, I’m not the maternal type, said in a way that made it clear she didn’t want any more questions. Today was different somehow; Lauren wasn’t making small talk. She wasn’t implying, like some people did, that Harper’s biological clock was all but ticked out. She was asking Do you understand what just happened to me? Standing there in front of Lauren Tranter, so devoid of artifice, not just hoping but needing the answer to be Yes, yes I do, the truth was on her tongue. But she swallowed it.
“No, not really,” she said, immediately hearing how stupid that sounded. Not really? What did that mean? Lauren made a small frown but didn’t say anything more. Harper went on, “I’ve got a little sister. A lot younger than me. So I guess I sometimes think of her as my kid. But no, I don’t have any children of my own.”
Lauren’s eyebrows went up and she seemed to drift away, unfocussed. Newly etched lines mapped the contours under her eyes, the topography of her recent trauma.
After a moment Harper said, “What happened to your wrist?”
The spot of blood on the bandage had grown from the size of a pea to the size of a penny in the time Harper had been standing there.
“Well, she, the woman, she…” Lauren seemed confused. “I don’t know.”
“Did someone hurt you?”
Lauren turned her head towards the window. Across the car park people were shuffling in and out of the big glass doors, needlessly high doors that dwarfed the people below. The doors were opening, shutting, opening, shutting, reflecting the morning sun as they met and flashing, leaving orange spots in Harper’s eyes. Lauren kept her eyes wide open into the blinding light.
“That man, Dr Gill. He said I did it to myself.”
“And what do you think, Mrs Tranter?”
“I think…” She looked down at the babies and up at the detective sergeant. Big, sad, frightened eyes, streaming tears. “I don’t think I can trust what I think right now.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
A beam of the slant west sunshine
Made the wan face almost fair
Lit the blue eyes’ patient wonder
And the rings of pale gold hair
She kissed it on lip and forehead
She kissed it on cheek and chink
And she bared her snow-white bosom
To the lips so pale and thin
Ten o’clock, visiting time. From her hospital bed Lauren observed a column of fuzzy colours approaching her and tried to focus. The fuzz resolved into the familiar shape of Patrick. It felt like years had passed since she’d last seen him.
“My God,” said Patrick, “what have they done to you?”
“It’s fine, everything’s fine,” said Lauren, but all that came out were broken sobs, the incoherent hupping yowls of an injured creature. Soon it subsided, trickled to whimpers. He stroked her hair.
“Shh, lovely,” said Patrick, keeping his voice low. On the other side of the bay, a jubilant party of assorted family was gathering around Mrs Gooch’s bed. Chairs were pulled across for older Gooches. Two smallish ginger children each possessively gripped ribbons attached to shiny silver balloons that trailed near the ceiling, announcing in bubblegum-pink lettering: It’s a Girl! One of the balloon-bearers stared slack-jawed at Lauren so that the lolly dangling from his open mouth nearly fell out.
“Shh. I know,” said Patrick, unaware of the gaping child at his back.
Another version of Lauren would have stared back until the boy looked away. This new, broken Lauren just shut her eyes.
Patrick said, “They left a message on my phone, but I didn’t get it until this morning. What happened?”
Lauren couldn’t respond to that immediately. She was floored by another wave of sobbing. A red-haired man—perhaps a new uncle of Mrs Gooch’s baby girl—cheered loudly as he rounded the corner into the bay, holding aloft an ostentatious bunch of lilies. Mrs Gooch glanced pointedly at Lauren and the cheering man said, “What?” and “Oh,” as he looked in their direction. Patrick turned and briskly pulled the curtain around, giving everyone the relief of the impression of privacy. After a time, words pushed through Lauren’s swollen throat in bits.
“I don’t know why I keep crying. I’m fine, I’ll be fine. Nothing happened. I think I’m going mad, that’s all.”
She gave a mirthless laugh, holding on tightly to her husband, making dark patches of wet and snot on the shoulder of his shirt. Patrick smelled of tea tree shampoo and his own slightly smoky scent. He smelled like home.
“Lauren, my heart,” said Patrick as he held Lauren’s face between his hands and smiled down at her. “You were mad before.”
That made her laugh for real, and the bad spell was broken. They both laughed, and then Lauren was crying again, and Patrick wiped her eyes with a wad of the cheap hospital tissues from the box by the bed. At that moment, the babies were almost as serene as Mrs Gooch’s. She really didn’t know why she kept crying. It didn’t make sense, when she saw what she and Patrick had made.
Patrick moved towards the cot. “Morning, boys,” he said. “I hope you’ve been kind to your mother.” He turned back to Lauren. “Did they keep you awake?”
“Of course they did. They’re babies.”
Her vision began to swim and sway, her eyelids felt heavy.
“I’m sorry,” he said, but his voice was muffled and far away. Sorry for what, she thought.
When she opened her eyes he was on the other side of the bed. Odd, she thought, I don’t remember falling asleep. A few seconds had gone, snap, a filmic scene change.
“I spoke to my mother this morning,” he was saying. “She sends her love. She wanted me to tell you, you did really well, you know, most women would have gone straight for a C-section.”
Lauren would never stop wishing that she had done just that. She couldn’t go back now, nothing would change what had happened during the birth, her stupid decisions, her worthless birth plan. But the regret was heavy on her. She felt like a fool for defying the consultant, even as she blamed him for planting the doubts in her mind, about whether she was capable, whether she would succeed. Perhaps if he’d believed in her from the start, she would have been fine.
“If it was me giving birth to twins,” the consultant had said, “I’d have a C-section.”
Ridiculous. He was a man. How could he know what it was like to give birth?
“Thanks,” she’d said, ungratefully. “I’ll think about it.”
My body knows what it’s doing, she thought. I’ll let nature take its course. I think I can trust in myself to be able to push these babies out on my own. People have been doing this since people have existed. How hard can it really be? Everyone has to be born, right?
Idiot. She hadn’t done well. She’d been washed through the birth, powerless, on a tide of modern medical intervention. They’d done well, the numerous, nameless nurses, midwives, doctors—without them she would have died, and the babies, too. But Lauren? She didn’t feel that she’d done anything but fail.