‘As you know, in the past we have had some … complications,’ she says. Her words are devoid of emotion, consonants sharp as scalpels. I close my eyes, but the pictures flash up anyway, of the babies that came before. The flat pods of their eyelids. The shapes of their heads. My chest heaves; the thump of my heart feels too fast, my face too hot. I feel Daniel’s grip on my hand tighten. I know how hard this is for him, too.
‘We are just being extra careful this time, OK? I’m checking for everything.’
I nod, and we both wait while she alternates between moving the probe across my belly and typing up notes.
‘Oh-kay, baby is in good position. Here, look.’
We are both entranced by the flickering screen – there he is, a real baby, with arms and legs and a tiny nose.
‘Oh my God, Helen,’ Daniel says. I can hear the smile in his voice, but I can’t tear my eyes away from the image of our son, his large, outsize head, his wriggling body that is yet to catch up. Fourteen weeks to go.
‘This is the umbilical cord, see here? And this is the placenta.’ Patches of blue and red pulsate on the screen to show the blood flow.
‘OK. Heart is good, lungs are good. Spinal cord OK. Now I’m just measuring the fluid at the back of the neck, but it’s looking very normal.’
Sometimes we catch a nose, or a hand – something human – and Daniel and I look from the screen to each other and back to the screen again, both making the same noises at once, noises somewhere between nervous laugh and an expression of wonder. Then the probe will move, and it will flicker, darkly, into something else. Something that could be human or reptile.
‘All fine. Baby is perfect,’ the sonographer says. Her voice is still muffled by the mask. I close my eyes, saving her words for later, like coins in a purse. There is nothing wrong with him. Nothing. He is perfect.
She takes the probe again, gently moves it down towards my hip. The screen is filled with a hand.
‘Ah, see? Baby is waving.’
I look at Daniel, smiling at his mesmerised expression. He squeezes my hand again but doesn’t take his eyes off the screen. The image of the baby is reflected in his glasses, two lit squares of black and blue.
She flicks the lights on and hands me some tissues. ‘All done for today. I’ll make a picture for you to take home.’
As I turn to look at Daniel again, I see that he is still staring at the screen. His entire face is wet with tears.
‘Oh, Daniel,’ I say, half laughing. ‘You’re worse than me.’
He does not seem to hear me, though. His eyes are locked on the freeze-frame of the baby’s waving hand. When the sonographer switches the screen off, and the image is gone, he continues to stare at the grey square of the monitor.
‘Daniel? Is something wrong?’
Daniel drops his head into his hands, his shoulders shaking. I put my arm around him. The sonographer is back, standing in front of us, apparently unsure what to do. She snaps her blue plastic gloves off, first one, then the other. I see her glance at the clock. She has other couples to see.
‘Daniel? Come on, we need to go.’
I stroke his back, try to drop my head, meet his eye. But no matter what I do, he can’t seem to stop.
GREENWICH PARK
In Greenwich Park, there are old doorways. He noticed them the first time he came here. Even in the moonlight, they stay in shadow. He walks through the park at night, past the line of bent trees, twisted over to one side by the wind on the hill. His shadow is long, looping over the tarmac paths that criss-cross the lawns. She makes him hunt her, her hot blood smell.
She likes doorways. Alleyways. Walls wet with ivy wet with rain. The backs of churches. Once even a graveyard, the stones lined up against the path. Dark, cold, secret places where she is the only warm thing. She grips him, tightly. They move quickly, on all fours, or against walls. They bite, scratch, claw at each other’s wrists. When she finishes, she gasps, like she is drowning, and in that moment, he feels that he is not old or young or rich or poor or even himself, really. He is just here, awake in the dark, an animal, and alive.
Does he want to get caught? Does she? He is not sure. God knows what she wants. Mainly he just wants this feeling, this feeling like he is falling, like he might die if he lands but in the falling he is alive, to his fingertips.
He wonders sometimes what he would do without it. How he would exist. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how he would breathe without this, without knowing it is coming.
27 WEEKS
HELEN
It hadn’t mattered so much when we were both at work. But now that I’ve had to give up, and I’m stuck at home, I’m finding my patience with the building work is slowly unravelling, like a fraying hem. With every new misery, another thread comes loose.