be able to do this. I’d told myself it would be OK. But as I look at the empty, waiting cot, the packets of nappies and the second-hand car seat in the corner, the world seems to shrink away and I’m overwhelmed by the enormity of getting through it all alone. I have no one. And yet how can this be? I’d had friends in Manchester, a gang of girls from school I’d been devastated to leave behind when my mum moved us to Fremton. But once I’d met Connor, nothing else had mattered. After it was all over and I had moved to London the memory of Heather and what had happened between us had meant I’d kept my distance from other people, turning my back on any friendships that came my way. And now here I am. I feel as though I’m on the edge of a cliff, about to leap, and there’s no one to catch me as I fall.
It’s an endless, sleepless night. For a long time I stand at the window looking out at the street, watching as it gradually clears of life, the darkness thickening, only the occasional sweep of a car’s headlights or the odd solitary figure to show me that anyone else exists in the world but me. I think of my Uncle Geoff, but the thought of his panic if he was summoned now almost makes me smile.
When the next contraction comes in the early hours of the morning it’s so painful and frightening that I call the hospital, too desperate to wait any longer. When I finally get through to the duty midwife, her voice with its strong London accent is calm and kind. ‘Is there anyone with you? The baby’s father?’
I gulp back a sob. ‘No,’ I say. ‘He’s not involved.’
‘I see. Well not to worry. Can you call a friend, a relative perhaps? Someone to wait with you, help you time the—’
‘No, there’s no one.’
There’s a pause. ‘OK. Well that’s fine, my love. You’ll be fine,’ and the sympathy in her voice brings fresh tears to my eyes.
‘Yes,’ I whisper.
‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, I know it’s hard. But you need to wait just a little longer. We’re full to bursting here and we’re asking our ladies to come in when the contractions are five minutes apart and are lasting for at least one minute. We’ll be waiting for you, though, I’ve marked you down for admittance today, so there’s no need to worry.’
‘OK.’ I grip the phone, desperate not to let her go. In the background I hear telephones ringing, the noises of a busy ward.
‘That’s great. You’re doing really well. You call right back if you need to, OK? And as soon as those contractions start to speed up, you call a taxi and come straight here.’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Yes. OK. Thank you.’ Reluctantly I hang up and begin to wait. It’s nearly noon by the time I call the cab and begin the journey to the hospital.
Her name is Maya and her skin is a pale, rose-tinted brown. Her hair is thick and black and her father’s large dark eyes gaze back at me from beneath long black lashes. She’s perfect. And from the moment I meet her, from the moment the nurse hands her to me, I know that I can’t love her.
It seemed, in the delivery room, as if the panic and confusion had come from nowhere. I remember sudden shouts for backup, being wheeled at speed down corridors, the midwife’s urgent explanations about the cord wrapped around the baby’s throat. And then an operating theatre, people in masks, a large Scottish woman shouting that it was all going to be OK, to try to relax, to breathe deeply, that there was nothing at all to worry about, nothing at all, but that I must stay perfectly still.
A strange dislocation had beset me, as though I was entirely divorced from whatever was happening to me in the lower half of my body, which was numb by then and shielded from me by a blue screen. A calm, dream-like state engulfed me, half hypnotized by the bleeping machines, the doctors’ tense exchanges, the air of urgent concentration. When one of the masked figures held aloft, like a rabbit from a hat, the bloodied, blue-tinged creature, when I heard its weak, scratchy cry, I felt with complete certainty: that is not mine, that did not come from me. ‘A girl!’ the Scottish voice announced. ‘Look, hen: a lovely wee baby girl!’
The ward I’m on is busy, with several other new mothers squashed in here beside me. When my baby is brought to me I smile, I hold her to me, I nod and listen to the nurse when she shows me how to put her to my breast. And then she is left by my bed, sleeping, while the horror washes over me in icy waves: this is not my child. She did not come from me.
I wake an hour later to feel hot burning pain spreading from my pelvis. I watch the other mothers, their exhausted triumph, their loving smiles, the congratulating visitors gathered around their beds. My baby lies in its clear plastic crib, staring back at me, mewling helplessly.
Uncle Geoff visits the following day and sits by my bed on a plastic chair, too big and too male amidst all the nightgowned women with their smells of milk and babies, averting his eyes in horror when my neighbour unfastens herself to offer her child her breast. He holds Maya in his large, tobacco-stained fingers, her head lolling awkwardly against his old leather coat, and tries to think of something to say. ‘Tiny ears,’ he offers eventually, and we both nod. When she begins to cry he thrusts her back to me. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asks anxiously.
‘She wants feeding, I think.’
His eyes fall to my chest and he jumps up in alarm. ‘Well, then, I’d best leave you to it, shall I?’
I take Maya from him and try to smile. He pauses and says, ‘I’ll tell your mother, shall I?’ His eyes meet mine and he adds gently, ‘I mean, she’d like to know, I expect, that you’ve had her.’
Mutely I nod. He takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. ‘Well done, love, she’s a little belter, you’ve done me proud.’ He leans down and gives me a hug, my face crushed against his chest, breathing in his aftershave and leather smell, and the lump in my throat threatens to choke me.
‘See you soon,’ I say.
‘Aye, see you soon,’ he smiles, and I manage to make it until he’s left the ward before I begin to cry.
When I’m finally discharged the cab drives me through the London streets, Maya asleep in the seat next to me. Peckham and Nunhead slide past, the sun shines, people and traffic go about their business and yet nothing seems real, substantial, trustworthy. The cab stops at the lights and I have to fight every instinct in my body not to open the door and run. And when the two of us are alone in the flat for the first time, fear – shocking, overwhelming, gutting fear – almost knocks me off my feet.
I look at her beginning to stir in her car seat on the kitchen table and I’m paralysed by indecision, unable to remember what I’m supposed to do with her, how I am to begin. In the hospital, because of her difficult birth, she was regularly taken away and monitored, only given back to me when it was time to feed. It seems incredible, mind-boggling that they have entrusted me with her, that they deem me capable of keeping this creature alive and free from harm.
But the minutes pass, and then the hours and the days. We fall into a sort of nightmarish routine, she and I, tinged by lack of sleep and the feeling that I’m only seconds away from losing my mind. Through the constant, exhausting panic I manage somehow to change her and feed her when I need to; I sleep, fitfully, when she does, but when she’s fed and changed and still she cries, wanting something else, something that I can’t give, I can only lie and listen to her, waiting for it to stop.
I try hard to breastfeed her at first, but with every passing day it seems to get more difficult. She roots endlessly, painfully at me and when at last she latches on it seems to take an age before she’s satisfied. Afterwards she sleeps fitfully, waking far too soon, demanding food again. I cradle her small head, horribly fragile and alien in my hands, while her neck lolls uncomfortably, and she cries and cries and cries.
The health visitor, a small, very pale girl named Lucy, comes the following Tuesday. I don’t tell her that I fantasize about running away and never coming back, that every day the feeling of dread gets worse and worse, that most days I don’t get dressed or washed. Instead, Lucy sits on my sofa and drinks my tea and weighs and measures Maya and checks my scar and talks about how the traffic’s