She didn’t know how or even if that was possible. Or how long it was since she had seen him standing alongside them, on their side, on her side. Or how long it was since she had felt gratitude towards her husband. But she felt it now.
21
Nick was catching up on emails, the ten o’clock news in the background, when Bea appeared in the kitchen doorway, rubbing her eyes. He went straight to her and picked her up, holding her tightly. She was bed-warm, and smelt like fabric softener and sleep. ‘What’s the matter, my love?’
‘Can’t sleep.’
It was a weirdly adult expression, like something she’d heard someone else say. And it was patently not true. She’d been asleep. He’d checked on them all at around half past nine. And she looked so sleepy, here in the kitchen, her eyes half closed against the light. ‘Warm milk?’
She nodded, and nestled into his neck. He held her on his hip while he filled a small mug with milk from the fridge, and blasted it once, then twice, in the microwave. He stuck a finger in it to make sure it wasn’t too hot, then went into the living room holding his daughter and the mug, and settled himself and her in an armchair. Bea rearranged herself to lie on his chest, and he stroked her hair for a few moments.
She sat up, pushed her hair back from her face, and reached for the milk, drinking it and looking at him.
‘Better?’
She smiled. ‘But I don’t want to go back to bed yet.’
‘Okay.’
‘I want to stay with you for a bit.’
‘Okay.’
‘You’re doing work.’ She’d seen the open computer on the kitchen table.
‘Nothing important. Not as important as you, anyway.’ Nick winked at her. ‘We could read a story?’
Bea shook her head. ‘Tell me about Mummy.’
Nick’s guts twisted. This had happened a few times now. The counsellor said it was perfectly normal. Healthy, even. Keeping Carrie alive for the children was important. As long as you let them bring it to you, not the other way around. Only Bea did it. She seemed to know instinctively only to do it when they were on their own, never in front of her siblings. This nocturnal encounter of theirs was almost a regular thing now. Delilah was too young to pose the question, although she looked at pictures of Carrie, and Arthur, of course, would have barely any memory of her.
‘What do you want me to tell you about?’
‘Tell me about when I was in Mummy’s tummy.’
‘Ah. You in Mummy’s tummy!’ He ruffled her hair. ‘Would you like to see a picture?’
Bea nodded. Nick took his phone out of his shirt pocket, and scrolled quickly through the photos. ‘Here’s one.’ It was the obligatory scan picture. Bea’s spine, her heart, her face in eerily accurate detail. Bea glanced at it, but shook her head. ‘I want to see Mummy.’
He swiped. ‘Okay. This is that same day. This is Mummy the day they took that picture of you in her tummy.’ Carrie, looking rueful, standing by a water-cooler, drinking from a plastic cup. Trying to achieve the required balance of a sufficiently full bladder that you weren’t completely desperate to empty, as required by the sonographer.
But Bea didn’t seem satisfied. Nick caught her drift. She wanted full on Moby-Dick. Which was, he almost smiled, exactly the way Carrie had always described herself in the third trimester.
He moved forward a few months. And found what he wanted. A picture of Carrie taken in early May 2013. About two weeks before Bea’s due date. In the garden, on an unseasonably warm day, feet up on a stool, hands clasped under the belly the better to show its huge swell. Her face a bit rounder than normal, smiling excitedly. ‘There you are.’
‘Mummy looks happy.’
‘She was. We were. We couldn’t wait to meet you.’
‘Was I born soon after this?’
‘Yes. Very soon. Mummy had already packed her suitcase to take to the hospital. She had put it by the front door, because she knew otherwise I’d forget it.’
Bea giggled. ‘Like swimming kit.’
Nick nodded, mock-sad. ‘Yes, like swimming kit.’
‘Why did she need a suitcase?’
‘She needed some pretty things for you to wear to come home.’ He scrolled quickly past all the shots from the delivery room. Found one of the three of them the midwife had taken – Carrie all neat and cleaned up, smiling triumphantly in a fresh nightie. Him shell-shocked and delighted. Bea in their arms, tiny and wrinkled and swollen-eyed.
‘I look funny.’
‘You look gorgeous.’
‘My Babygro isn’t pink.’
‘No. We didn’t know whether you were a boy or a girl until we met you.’
‘Really?’ This thought intrigued her.
‘Nope. Mummy wanted a surprise.’ He remembered how badly he hadn’t wanted a surprise. But Carrie had insisted. He remembered going out and buying an armful of pink stuff the first chance he’d got, so completely chuffed with his daughter.
Carrie had been ready. Calm, joyous and competent. He hadn’t. Not if he was honest. Not until the second he’d held her in his arms. He’d been playing the part of expectant father, scared stiff. He’d done every single thing that was expected of him but he’d lain wide awake, almost every night, next to Carrie and her ever-expanding form, wondering if he was ready.
She’d set the pace for almost everything in their life, and she’d done that with this too. He trusted her completely. He just didn’t necessarily trust himself as much.
‘Were you glad I was a girl, Daddy?’
He squeezed her. ‘Oh, yes. Of course. I always thought you were. I thought Lila was a girl too, and I had a funny little feeling that Arthur was a boy.’
‘Why?’
‘He kicked Mummy a lot more than you two did.’
Again the chuckle. He felt rewarded by it. ‘Naughty Arthur.’
‘Not naughty. He didn’t know, did he? He was just in a hurry to get out and play football.’
He could hear Carrie, moaning beside him, in their bed. Arthur had been the heaviest of their babies – a whopping nine pounds two ounces to Bea’s tiny seven pounds four.
‘I remember that!’ She sounded delighted. ‘You could see his feet in her tummy.’
‘That’s right.’
Sometimes when they’d been talking like this, Bea would bring herself to the present and say she missed her mum. Other times, she seemed happiest to dwell in the past. Tonight was the latter, so that it was almost like the two of them were pretending Carrie was in another room, attending to Arthur, maybe, or folding laundry in the kitchen. It was as comforting as life got, these days, and Nick went willingly along with Bea’s unspoken fantasy.
Eventually, Bea laid her head on his chest again, and put her thumb into her mouth. Nick laid his own head back against the sofa. Quite soon he felt Bea get heavy, and her breathing slowed. The weight of her, and her peace felt good, so he lingered there awhile before taking her back to bed and returning to his laptop.
In some respects he’d come a long way from that callow youth in the delivery room, wondering if he would cope with a family, in others no distance at all. He’d always taken strength from Carrie, aped her confidence, her fake-it-till-you-make-it attitude towards everything new and untried, and, God, he was still trying to now.