Was she sleeping? Was the baby kicking? Was she taking her vitamins? Was she exercising enough? Was she eating the right foods?
It was a place she’d mostly visited alone, too, and that was fine by her. Though Josie had come with her on her first visit, when she was feeling so ashamed and scared, she’d since been happy to trot down to her antenatal appointments on her own – even had her mam offered to go, which, unsurprisingly, she hadn’t. She had about as much interest in Christine’s pregnancy as she had about Christine herself – which meant precious little, just like always. Christine hadn’t minded. She didn’t exactly want her mam involved. This was her kid, her future, and she vowed, over and over, that she was going to do things differently. Do it better. Do right by the child growing inside her. Be not at all like her own mam.
So she’d been happy to sit there with all the other expectant mothers – much preferred it, even. Here she was just one among many other waddling women, all chattering away, in the bright, busy waiting room; like a warm enveloping hug telling her everything would be okay. That girls just like her became mothers all the time. That it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
But now it felt like it, and Christine was horrified to hear that Josie wasn’t allowed to come in with her now. ‘Sorry, lovey,’ the nurse at the admission desk told them. ‘Your friends will have to wait out here. We need to whisk you off for an examination. See how baby’s doing, see how far you are along.’
Imran pulled a face, and let go of her as if jolted by a sudden electric shock. He was only lingering, Christine knew, because he was still waiting for his fare.
‘Don’t you worry, mate,’ Josie reassured her, pulling a purse out from her handbag. ‘You’re in safe hands now, and I’ll go and track your mam down, okay? Get her down here to look after you.’ Though both of them knew there was a good chance, what with her mam currently being at the bingo, that she wouldn’t get there in time even if she wanted to. Which, despite Josie’s constant attempts to change things, Christine was pretty sure she wouldn’t. Josie meant well, but she didn’t get it – they just weren’t like her and her mam.
So she tried to stay calm, knowing Josie was right. She was in safe hands, and now she was here, they’d take charge of things. Indeed, were already doing, because almost immediately Josie had left with Imran, a second nurse, after some consultation with a big whiteboard behind the first nurse, seemed to scoop her up almost – it felt as if she was being propelled along the corridor – and into an empty consulting room just off the waiting room, at the very point when the next contraction hit her.
The nurse helped her up onto the big trolley bed and, once again, being examined – as she had been, so many times, some on this very table – Christine was stunned by the intensity of the pain.
‘No wonder you’re pushing, love,’ the nurse said, peeling latex gloves from her fingers. ‘You’re eight centimetres! This little one of yours is obviously anxious to be born!’ Then she popped her head around the consulting-room door and yelled, ‘Someone fetch me a wheelchair!’, and within moments it seemed everyone was panicking.
This was it, Christine thought, as everyone hurried and fussed around her. All these months of wondering what labour would be like. She was frightened, but at the same time there was nothing she could do to stop it and all she could do was surrender herself to the inevitability. Only one thing was certain, or would be, she reckoned. That, good or bad, nothing in her life was ever going to be the same again.
The maternity wards were up on the second floor of the unit, and Christine was taken up in the wide hospital lift, which smelled of disinfectant and creaked as they rose. Only the week previously, a group of mums who had similar due dates had been shown around one of the wards, which, with its bright bays, patterned curtains and crisply made beds, had seemed a place in which nothing bad could happen. Though it had the same clinical smell everywhere else in the unit seemed to, it had a cheerfulness about it; a sense of homeliness, even. And there’d been a lull in labours – only one bed had been occupied, and the woman had been sleeping – and Christine had felt an unexpected surge of confidence. With the sun streaming in and the sense of calm and order, she could almost believe that whatever rows she had coming from her mam, it would, in the end, all be okay.
She was wheeled along the corridor, groaning now, almost growling – she couldn’t seem to stop the embarrassing animal noise coming out of her – right past the wards to one of the delivery suites. Here there was no such sense of calm. There was no way of dressing it up. It was a room with one purpose – one all too evident from the huge cylinders of oxygen strapped to the far wall, evident from the scales and instruments, from the functional Perspex cot and, worst of all, from the leather foot straps that hung from the ceiling and swayed above the bed.
‘Here we go, love. Let’s get your things off,’ the midwife commanded. Her name was Sister Rawson, and Christine was relieved to see her – even if a little earlier than expected. She’d last seen her only on Monday, and wasn’t due to see her again till next week, because she was still a good ten days from her due date.
Sister Rawson was middle-aged and hefty. Her uniform strained across her huge bosom and she had chubby pink hands; hands that held Christine firmly as she helped her out of her hateful borrowed smock, and into a crackling hospital gown that did up with tapes down the back. ‘Anyone coming? Baby’s dad?’ She held a monitor in her hand now. ‘No, it’ll be your mam coming, won’t it?’ she said as she began to strap the monitor around Christine’s belly. ‘She knows you’re here, does she?’ she asked conversationally.
Christine shook her head, gasping as a fresh wave of pain hit her. ‘She’s out. She doesn’t even know I’m here yet. My friend is going to let her know.’
Though it really was doubtful whether Josie would be able to get word to her in time. She’d left only an hour back for bingo, leaving the girls to their own devices. Down the Mecca on Little Horton Lane with her cronies, same as always, all trying to win the big one; the jackpot that might change their lives.
They never did, of course. They spent as much on cheap lager as they did on the bingo, and on the slot machines that hardly ever paid out. And they’d stay there, through the afternoon and on into the evening, topping up on lager till they left to go down the pub. No, there was little hope of her mam coming to help her, even if she was struck by a sudden rush of love and maternal feeling.
Which was also doubtful, even before she saw the baby. Christine was under no illusions on that score, and never had been. She knew intuitively that whoever had turned out to be the father, her mother just wouldn’t want to know. It was exasperating sometimes, how people didn’t get it. How they kept saying, ‘She doesn’t mean it. She’ll come round, just you wait and see.’ How they imagined that when it came to it her mam would become somehow different – how she’d suddenly realise how much she’d be missing. How, when it came to it, she’d be so excited to be a granny.
Christine had long since given up trying to enlighten anyone about this. Not Josie’s mam, June. Not Mr Weston, who she worked for in the café down on John Street. And though Josie knew better – one of the very few people that did – she still didn’t quite get how bad it was, not really. She still hung on to the idea that there was this unbreakable maternal bond; just that it was very deeply buried. But there wasn’t. There really wasn’t. But no one wanted to hear that. So Christine didn’t bother enlightening Josie further either. Her mam cared about two people, and that was pretty much it. Herself and her bastard of an on-off boyfriend, Rasta Mo.
At the moment, that was. That was all subject to change now. What hadn’t changed so far was how her mam dealt with the pregnancy. First she’d been furious, then resigned, then just irritable and resentful. Especially in the last weeks, when Christine had had to give up her waitressing at the café. With the extra money no longer coming in, Christine’s mum had all but washed her hands of her – at least (as she’d been fond of remarking, over and over) till she got off her fat backside and sorted out her dole. ‘You made your own frigging bed and you’re just going to have to lie on it, girl,’ she’d told her. And she’d know all about that. Because she’d had to do exactly that herself. Not just