Charlie was Granny’s dog. She must have shut him in the garden, because I hadn’t seen him since we got back. He was raven-black like the sky outside.
‘Hey, by the way,’ I said. ‘The sky—’
I paused. The sky had returned to normal in the space of a few minutes.
‘Did you see the sky?’ I asked, sharply. Something did not feel right. Something did not feel right at all. The light outside was bright, now, but brassy, as if there was a nuclear cloud above us.
Granny craned round, trying not to wake my daughter. ‘Did I see the sky do what? It’s not going to rain, is it?’
‘No, it went dark. Well, black, actually, but now it’s . . .’
I stopped. People in authority took babies away from women who started saying crazy things. I’d nearly lost my girl to adoption; I wasn’t going to lose her to a bunch of hormones.
‘Obviously, I’m just being stupid,’ I said, and put the salad in the fridge. I didn’t have time to eat.
A wave of unspecified dread broke over me as I turned back to Granny, so I smiled. I’d been feeling euphoric, since my daughter had been born – all-conquering, glorious. I wasn’t ready for the emotional crash everyone said to expect.
Hormones. Just hormones: not everyone got the baby blues. Besides, it had been the weird midwife who’d warned me about this emotional dip, the one who sometimes used strange dialectical words I didn’t know. Almost like a code – as if she was testing to see if I was a member of her cult.
I crouched down again in front of my daughter and then stood up, forgetting to hold onto something, because the panic reappeared. I gasped at the pain in my abdomen. ‘I might go for a drive,’ I said. ‘If she’s still asleep?’
Granny frowned. Behind her, the radio played quietly. Exotic-sounding voices from across the Atlantic, maybe in Hawaii, or Malibu.
‘If she’s still asleep?!’ Granny said. ‘Oh, Emily, you need to rest. Why don’t you go and have a nap now? You can’t drive. Not for another five and a half weeks.’
I’d forgotten about the driving ban. But that was just for the really poorly mothers, whose C-section wounds got infected, or something like that. I was healthy and well. So incredibly well; my body was doing all the things a new mother’s body should with the most beautiful precision. I loved it.
The door!
I went too fast to answer it, and jarred my wound again. It was the midwife, wearing a strange uniform like a 1970s postman. I let her in, but the sight of her made me anxious. She acted as if we were old friends, but I’d never seen her before.
I answered her questions carefully. While we were talking, the same subterranean dread I’d had in the kitchen with Granny resurfaced, pulling me towards a crevasse. I talked my way through it.
The midwife asked some rather probing questions, and in the end I had to ask her what exactly her training was, which offended her less than I expected. My thoughts began to pick up speed. Who was she? When was she leaving? I wanted to dance. I needed to get a breast pump.
After a while we had a look at my little girl.
‘Oh, you’re a lovely boy,’ she said, undressing my daughter. ‘Look at you!’
‘She’s a girl,’ I said tightly. I didn’t have a good feeling about this woman.
The midwife stopped and looked over her shoulder at me. ‘Is there any chance of a cup of tea?’ she asked, after an extended pause.
I was more than happy to oblige: I felt murderous and oddly afraid. We’d been sitting in stasis for what felt like hours and this woman hadn’t even acknowledged how busy I was; how much of my time she was taking up. Had she actually met a new mother before?