‘I’ve been up with her all night. I just don’t know what’s wrong with her?’ Rebecca shrugged. ‘She won’t settle. Nothing I do works. Maybe we should have stayed at home, but I thought the fresh air might do her good. I thought she might sleep in the buggy…’ The tremor in Rebecca’s voice was clear to them both.
‘Well she certainly has a set of lungs on her, I’ll give her that. I can’t believe such a dinky little thing like her would be capable of making such a racket.’ Lisa grinned and affectionately stroked her tiny niece’s cheek, to see if she could deter the child from her angry cries.
‘Come on, Ella, darling. Try your bottle,’ Rebecca said, aware of the people at the tables around them who were disgruntled by the noise, wanting to enjoy their coffee in peace.
Rebecca forced the teat of the bottle into Ella’s mouth, but the baby pursed her lips tightly, spitting the bottle back out. Turning her head away, she screamed louder.
‘I think that’s a firm no,’ Lisa said with a smile. ‘Jeez! She certainly knows her own mind.’
‘Come on, Ella…’ The plea was clear in her voice as Rebecca tried the dummy instead. ‘This will help you sleep.’
‘Here, do you want me to have a go?’ Holding out her arms, Lisa offered to take Ella from Rebecca, so that her sister-in-law could drink her coffee before it went stone cold.
‘No, it’s fine. I can manage.’
‘Oh, I have no doubt about that,’ Lisa said softly, catching the defensive tone in her voice and seeing tears of frustration forming in her eyes. ‘Honestly, Becks, stubbornness is a Dawson family trait. I bet my mum would say that Jamie was the same as a baby… in fact, he’s probably even worse now as a grown man. Is he helping you?’
‘Yeah, he does what he can,’ Rebecca said tightly. ‘He’s just got a lot going on right now, you know how it is. Work’s super busy. He’s stressed out. It’s hard.’
‘Always a workaholic. I guess nothing changes, eh?’ Lisa nodded, making a mental note to make more effort to help out with her niece. She’d have a word with her brother too. Knowing Jamie, he’d be near on useless with the day-to-day care of his daughter. Of course he adored her, but Jamie’s number one priority would always be his business. By the looks of it, it had taken Rebecca a whole year and a newborn baby before she found out the hard way that she’d be left to her own devices when it came to looking after Ella. She hated seeing Rebecca struggling.
Lisa had been dubious at first about Rebecca’s intentions, but had quickly realised she’d been wrong to judge her. Rebecca didn’t want anything from Jamie except love, and a family, she presumed. And Lisa could see that she was doing everything in her power to make the relationship work.
‘Nothing I do seems to be right,’ Rebecca said, shaking her head. ‘I’ve taken her to the doctors twice this week, and both times they’ve said she’s fine. But I just don’t know. It can’t be right her crying this much, can it?’
‘Do you think she might be teething?’ Lisa offered before laughing at her words of advice. ‘Fuck, we’re all in trouble if you start taking baby advice from me. I only know what I hear from the two women in my office who have recently become mothers. Baby talk is the only talk going on right now, and trust me, some of the stories they’ve told me about childbirth has honestly put me off for life!’
‘Teething? Do you think? She’s only two months old…?’ Rebecca said, running her finger across Ella’s pink firm gums checking for signs of a tooth poking through. ‘Nope. Nothing there. Unless they haven’t broken through the skin yet,’ Rebecca said, a hint of relief in her voice that it wasn’t another thing she’d simply missed. Another thing she’d not noticed that she could add to her ever-growing list of failures so far as a mother.
‘What if she’s sick? What if there’s something wrong with her? What if the doctors weren’t thorough enough with her?’ Rebecca said, her voice rising. Rubbing the child’s back rhythmically. She was self-conscious that the other customers in the small coffee shop were glancing over at her now, irritated by the loud wailing noise. She felt they were silently judging her for not being capable of making the noise stop, all of them thinking the same as Jamie, that she didn’t know what she was doing.
Putting the dummy back down on the table, Rebecca’s hand shook. Knocking her cup of coffee over, she jumped to her feet, lifting Ella up to avoid the spillage but not quickly enough to stop the pool of hot coffee from spreading across the table and trickling down her legs.
‘Here, give Ella to me,’ Lisa said, standing up and reaching out her arms for Ella. She rocked the child gently in her arms while Rebecca patted her trousers with a paper napkin.
A waitress joining them, helping to mop up the mess with a handful of cloths.
‘Can you bring a fresh cappuccino, please?’ Lisa asked, handing the waitress some money, before the two women sat back down again.
‘Becks, it’s a cup of coffee, not the end of the world,’ Lisa said, shocked to see her friend openly crying after the waitress returned a few moments later and placed a fresh cup in front of her.
Lisa had guessed rightly that this had nothing to do with a spilt coffee, or Ella being fractious and difficult. There was something much bigger on Rebecca’s mind and whatever it was would have to be coaxed out of her.
‘What is it, Becks? You know you can tell me anything…’
‘I don’t even know where to start,’ Rebecca said, her words coming out in sporadic bursts between sobs. ‘It’s everything. I’m just so bloody tired. I haven’t been sleeping very well and when I do finally go to sleep, I keep having these awful nightmares. They seem so real, so terrifying that I’ve been suffering with panic attacks. When I wake up, I’m just physically exhausted. And I’m trying my best to keep on top of everything, and to keep it all together, but I’m failing miserably. I keep forgetting things,’ Rebecca said quietly, before adding, ‘Important things. Like Ella’s doctor’s appointments. I think the surgery think I’m losing my mind. I turned up there the other day only to be told that they’d received a text from me to say to cancel it. I felt so stupid. I don’t even remember sending it. Then yesterday, the health visitor turned up to do Ella’s eight-week check. I don’t know how I missed it. It was in my diary on my phone, but I’m sure when I checked it that morning there’d been nothing pencilled in. And typically, Jamie had come home early. He’d forgotten something he needed for work, and he found the health visitor out on the doorstep waiting. The house was such a mess, I was a mess, and Ella was crying and he just looked so disappointed in me…’ Rebecca shook her head, cringing at the memory of how angry Jamie had been that she couldn’t seem to manage the most basic of tasks.
‘I’m sure he’s not disappointed at all. He’s probably just worried about you, that’s all. So what if you forget a few things? That’s normal, isn’t it? They don’t call it baby brain for nothing, you know. Sarah, one of the new mums I was telling you about in my office, told me that she once put a pile of clean towels in the dishwasher and a pile of dirty plates in the airing cupboard. Can you imagine! She found it bloody hysterical though. Especially when her husband got out of the shower and found them. She said her brain’s been like a sieve since she had her son. It happens.’ Lisa laughed, trying to make light of the situation.
‘I think the health visitor thinks it’s a bit more than that. She left me this.’ Grabbing her bag from under the table, Rebecca reluctantly slid the leaflet across to Lisa.
‘Home Start? What’s that then?’