to a sixteen-year-old Isabel telling her about her boyfriend and dating and kissing. Isla had listened intently, hanging onto every word, but then Isabel had suddenly stopped telling her things.
A plane roared overhead and the sob that came from Isla was so deep and so primal it was as if she were back there—waking to the sound of her sister’s tears and the aftermath, except this time she was able to cry about it.
Their parents had been away for a weekend. Evie, their housekeeper, had lived in a small apartment attached to the house and so, effectively, they had been alone. Isla, on waking to the sounds of her sister crying, had got out of bed and padded to the bathroom and stood outside, listening for a moment.
‘Isabel?’ Isla knocked on the bathroom door.
‘Go away, Isla,’ Isabel said, then let out very low groan and Isla realised that her sister was in pain.
‘Isabel,’ Isla called. ‘Unlock the door and let me in.’
Silence.
But then came another low moan that had Isla gripped with fear.
‘Isabel, please.’ She knocked on the door again, only this time with urgency. ‘If you don’t let me in then I’m going to go and get Evie.’
Evie was so much more than a housekeeper. She looked after the two girls as if they were her own. She worried about them, was there for them while their parents attended their endless parties.
They both loved her.
Isla was just about to run and get Evie when the door was unlocked and Isla let herself in. She stepped inside the bathroom and couldn’t believe what she saw. Isabel was drenched in sweat and there was blood on the tiles, but as she watched her sister fold over it dawned on Isla what was happening.
Isabel was giving birth.
‘Please don’t tell Evie,’ Isabel begged. ‘No one must know, Isla, you have to promise me that you will never tell anyone …’
Somehow, despite the blood, despite the terror and the moans from her sister, Isla stayed calm.
She knew what she had to do.
Isla dropped down to her knees on instinct rather than fear as Isabel lay back on the floor, lifting herself up on her elbows. ‘It’s okay, Isabel,’ Isla said reassuringly. ‘It’s going to be okay.’
‘There’s something between my legs …’ Isabel groaned. ‘It’s coming.’
Isla had been born a midwife, she knew that then. It was strange but even at that tender age, somehow Isla dealt with the unfolding events. She looked down at the tiny scrap that had been born to her hands and managed to stay calm as an exhausted Isabel wept.
He was dead, that much Isla knew, yet he was perfect. His little eyes were fused closed and he was so very still.
Tomorrow she would start to doubt herself. Tomorrow she would wonder if there was something more that she could have done for him. In the months and years ahead Isla would terrorise herself with those very questions and would go over and over holding her little nephew in her hands instead of doing more. But there, in that moment, in the still of the bathroom, Isla knew.
She wrapped her tiny nephew in a small hand towel. There was the placenta and the cord still attached and she continued to hold him as Isabel lay on the floor, sobbing.
‘He’s beautiful,’ Isla said. He was. She gazed upon his features as her fingers held his tiny, tiny hands and she looked at his spindly arms and cuddled him and then, when Isabel was ready, Isla handed the tiny baby to her.
‘Did you know you were pregnant?’ Isla asked, but Isabel said nothing, just stared at her tiny baby and stroked his little cheek.
‘Does Sean know?’ Isla asked.
‘No one knows,’ Isabel said. ‘No one is ever to know about this.’ She looked at Isla, her eyes urgent. ‘You have to promise me that you will never, ever tell anyone.’
Some promises were too big to make, though.
‘I have to tell Evie,’ Isla said.
‘Isla, please, no one must know.’
‘And so what are we supposed to do with him?’ Isla demanded.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You know what you don’t want me to do, though. You know that he needs to be properly taken care of,’ Isla said, and Isabel nodded tearfully.
‘You won’t tell anyone else,’ Isabel sobbed. ‘Promise me, Isla.’
‘I promise.’
Isla sped through the house and to Evie. The elderly housekeeper was terribly distressed at first, but then she calmed down and dealt with things. She understood, better than most, the scandal this might cause and the terrible impact it would have on Isabel if it ever got out. She had a sister who worked in a hospital in the outer suburbs and Evie called her and asked what to do.
Isla sat, her tears still flowing as she recalled the drive out of the city to the suburbs. Isabel was holding the tiny baby and crying beside her till the lights of the hospital came into view. Evie’s sister met them and Isabel was put in a wheelchair and taken to Maternity, with Isla following behind. The midwife who had greeted them had been so lovely to Isabel, just so calm, wise and efficient.
‘What happens now?’ Isla asked. It was as if only then had they noticed that Isabel’s young sister was there and she was shown to a small waiting room.
It had been the last time Isla had seen her nephew.
She didn’t really know what had gone on.
Evie had come in at one point and said that the baby was too small to be registered. Isla hadn’t known what that meant other than that no one would have to find out.
Her parents would later question Isla’s decision to become a midwife. They had deemed that it wasn’t good enough for a Delamere girl but Isla had stood by her calling.
She’d wanted to be as kind and as calm as the staff had been with Isabel that night.
With one modification.
Though her sister had been gently dealt with by midwives who had been used to terrified sixteen-year-old girls who did not want their parents to find out, one person had been forgotten.
Isla had sat alone and unnoticed in the waiting room.
Now she knew things should have been handled differently—the midwives, the obstetrician, at least one of them should have recognised Isla’s terror and spoken at length with her about what had happened. They should have come in and taken care of the twelve-year-old girl who had just delivered her dead nephew. They should have carefully explained that the baby had been born at around eighteen weeks gestation, which had meant that there was nothing Isla could have possibly done to save him.
It would be many years before Isla got those answers and she’d had to find them out for herself.
Yes, that night had left scars.
Despite appearances, despite her immaculate clothes and long glossy hair and seemingly spectacular social life, Isla had equated sex with disaster. Not logically, of course, but throughout her teenage years she had avoided dating boys and in her final year at school Rupert had seemed the perfect solution. Still she’d kept the secret of that night to herself.
She had promised her sister after all.
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