Bad Blood

Josie shook her head. ‘You wish, mate. You’ve got stitches?’ Christine nodded as she took her friend’s free arm. ‘That’ll be it then. Then there’s the after-pains, of course …’ She’d already steered her in the direction of the house. They’d pulled up a couple of cars down as Eddie was outside tinkering with his Escort. ‘And brace yourself, love,’ Josie said. ‘Because now the hard work begins. As in feeds round the clock and no sleep for the foreseeable future. Welcome to the wonderful world of motherhood!’

‘Little ray of sunshine she is, isn’t she?’ Eddie had popped up from under his bonnet, his curly hair haloed by the sun. ‘Full of sympathy and helpful little nuggets of advice, eh?’

Josie aimed a toe in his direction and Christine felt a stab of anxiety for Joey’s safety. ‘Piss off, Eddie,’ Josie said, laughing. Then she took a step closer to him. ‘Want a peek?’ she asked, twisting so he could better see into the folds of blanket.

Eddie grinned. ‘That’s a whole bundle of trouble right there, that is. You all right, love?’ he asked, turning to Christine, his expression sympathetic.

‘S’pose,’ she said, though she felt anything but.

Christine had always felt at home round at Josie’s, where everything felt just that bit nicer. When her own house was full of tired, old-fashioned furniture, Josie and Eddie’s place was almost like a show home. They didn’t have much spare cash, she knew, but they had made the best of what they did have. There was a modern low-backed sofa, one of those huge paper lanterns hanging from the middle of the front room ceiling, a glass coffee table with chrome legs and a huge shaggy rug. They also had one of those enormous stone fireplaces along one wall, with a specially designed shelf for the telly.

Most of all, though, was that Josie’s home was a place of warmth and calm, where no one ever shouted or got wasted. And watching her friend now, doing everything one-handed with the baby still tucked close beside her, Christine knew immediately that she was going to dread having to leave.

But leave she must. She was a mam herself now, with a whole tiny life depending on her, and much as part of her wanted to collapse into a heap and sleep, another part was already struggling with the scenario before her – of both Joey and her being mothered by Josie. Of her friend taking charge, of having already taken Joey. And there it was again; this powerful urge to take him back again.

She didn’t. The more rational part of her didn’t feel equal to the task of doing anything but watch her friend gratefully, as she lay the baby on the couch and in seconds removed the woolly hat and knitted coat it had taken her so long to put on.

Joey stirred and kicked his tiny legs. ‘There,’ Josie cooed. ‘That’s better, isn’t it, little man? Oh, our Paula’s going to think she’s died and gone to heaven,’ she added, turning to Christine, who still felt incapable of doing anything but standing there, mutely. She felt dizzy now, foggy, as though her brain wasn’t quite functioning.

Josie obviously noticed. ‘Sit down,’ she ordered. ‘Go on, before you fall down.’ She picked Joey up again and nodded towards the couch. ‘I expect your blood pressure’s through the floor. You must be dropping on your feet. You need a proper rest, Chris. You’ll feel much better once you’ve had a decent kip. Tell you what, I’ll leave Paula round my mam’s for a bit longer. Look after your little man for you while you get your head down for a bit, okay?’

‘Oh, Josie,’ Christine started, ‘I can’t let you. I’m supposed to –’

‘Nonsense. Now look,’ she said, going round to the far end of the couch. ‘Don’t laugh, but I couldn’t carry your Moses basket down on top of everything else. So I thought this would do for now … Least till I go back up to your mam’s and fetch it …’

She’d hooked her heel round something and was dragging it across the carpet backwards. ‘Had a bit of help from Paula – and a gift – of her second favourite teddy. Just on loan, mind.’ She grinned. And what she’d pulled out was a drawer. ‘It’s from the chest up in the spare room,’ she explained. ‘And trust me, this is luxury. My nan used to put my dad to bed in a drawer.’ She laughed then. ‘Only difference being that it was still in the chest of drawers, and if he played up, she’d shut it – with him still in it!’

She stopped laughing then, and came across, sitting down beside Christine, who had started sobbing so hard that her shoulders were shaking. It had come out of nowhere. It was seeing the cot. The wooden drawer. The whole emotional whump of it. That she was a mum, with a baby, and had nowhere to go.

But for her friend, anyway … Life suddenly felt so precarious. ‘It’s all right, love,’ Josie soothed. ‘You’re just tired, overwhelmed. Come on, let’s get this little fella tucked up – and don’t worry. He’s quite safe. Come on, to bed with you. Now.’

Joey’s cry cut through the fog like a knife. So distant, yet so powerful, as if designed specifically to seek her out. Which she supposed it was, and the fierce protectiveness washed over her immediately, but now it was accompanied by a feeling of something like claustrophobia, as the thoughts that had assailed her before she’d drifted off to sleep all returned with a vengeance. She was on her own. She had a child to support. Her life was changed beyond recognition. No more could she ever do what she liked when she liked. Her life would instead be governed by the cries and the needs of her tiny infant, who needed things she didn’t yet really know how to give. She was clumsy. Inept. Fearful of breaking him or dropping him. Had nothing to offer him except her love. Which counted for nowt, really. Not in the real world. And the glances of the nurse and midwives were beginning to hit home. Because, even if sympathetic, which she conceded they mostly were, the taint of disapproval, of regret, was still so obvious behind the smiles. She’d been a stupid girl. Irresponsible. And not at all up to the job she’d been given as a result. A job that would last for longer than she’d been alive.

She had no idea how much time had passed, only that it was still daylight and that she was sweaty. She’d not got into the bed – she’d had no energy to undress – but had pulled the candlewick bedspread over her, more for comfort than heat. She thrust it off, and ground the heels of her hands into her stinging eyes.

She felt a gentle hand on her elbow, and started. She’d not heard Josie come in. She rolled over to see Josie standing there, holding a mug of something. Christine could still hear Joey mewling downstairs. ‘Feeling better now?’ Josie asked.

‘Much,’ Christine lied. ‘What time is it?’

‘Just after five. And that little one of yours needs a feed. I’d make up a bottle, but, you know …’ She let the statement lie there. And Christine did know. That was her job. To make up a bottle and feed her one-day-old baby. Just thinking about it made her breasts stab with pain. The midwife – not at all happy that Christine said she’d bottle feed – had promised her it would stop in a few days, but in the meantime it was as if they had a life of their own.

It had all seemed so straightforward, deciding to bottle feed. There never seemed any question but that it was the sensible thing to do. It was what her mam had done, and what everyone else seemed to do too. And if she’d needed convincing – which she hadn’t – her next-door neighbour would certainly have put the lid on it; whipping her saggy tits out here, there and everywhere, not seeming to give a stuff who clocked them. Could she imagine doing that, ever? No, she couldn’t.

But perhaps she’d been wrong. Her boobs were actually leaking now, under her bra. Doing what they were supposed to, she realised. Why hadn’t that ever occurred to her? But now she was at Josie’s there was nowhere properly private to do it anyway, and she certainly wasn’t getting her tits out in front of Eddie. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, stretched and stood up. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘Good,’ Josie said, already turning to go downstairs again. Christine followed. ‘All important for the bonding.’ Another word she’d kept hearing. As if she wasn’t ‘bonded’ to Joey more that she’d ever felt possible to be connected to anyone, ever.

She followed Josie down the stairs and into the front room. Joey’s wail cut through the air like a speaker cranked up to high. How could something so little make so much noise?

Paula’s eyes lit up when she saw Christine and she rushed towards her, arms spread. ‘Kissty!’ she sang, seemingly oblivious, over the racket. ‘Kissty! You got a baby!! Baby Doey!’ Her excitement made Christine want to cry all over again.

Josie had already set out everything Christine needed to make the feed up. The steriliser sat on the draining board, bottles and teats bobbing inside it, the tin of formula on the worktop beside it. Joey himself, still in his drawer, was now up on the little table, eyes screwed up, lower lip quivering as he screamed his fury, fists clenched, cheeks scarlet. Christine felt a jolt of fear at the idea of picking him up.

Josie must have seen her expression. ‘Leave him be,’ she said. ‘Soon as he smells you, he’ll only kick off even more, trust me. There you go. Know what to do?’

Christine nodded. ‘They showed me.’

Paula was tugging at her top. ‘I help! I help! Feed baby Doey!’

‘He’s a very hungry baby Doey, isn’t he?’ she said, scooping Paula up into her arms instead, and kissing her forehead. And then wincing as her little body squashed her still-stabbing boobs and her little feet drummed against her belly.

‘I help you?’ she asked again.

Josie calmly peeled her off. ‘No you don’t, missy,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to help me lay the table. Time for tea soon. Daddy’s waiting. And he’ll be kicking off himself if we don’t get a move on,’ she added.

And though she didn’t mean anything by it, Christine felt it even so. That she was a nuisance, and Joey’s crying was really getting on Josie’s nerves.

She peeled the plastic lid off the can of formula, racked with guilt.

The community midwife was called Sister Davies and arrived on the doorstep at ten the following morning. It being a Sunday, there had obviously been no rush for anyone to get up, so Joey’s dawn screaming session felt doubly bad. Anxious not to make things worse, having crept down for a bottle just as a watery sun was rising, Christine had stayed put in the spare room with him then for as long as possible, willing him to settle again, so he wouldn’t disturb anyone. Then, once he was asleep again, had washed and dressed herself as quietly as she could.

But she could tell by Eddie’s expression that all her creeping around hadn’t helped. He was too nice to show it, but she knew even so. Having them stay was a nuisance he could do without. Having let the midwife in – he’d had little choice as he’d been on his way back out the front to work on his car – he immediately made himself scarce.

Josie seemed keen to leave Christine alone with the midwife too. ‘That’s my husband,’ she explained briskly, her offer of coffee having been declined. ‘We’re putting Chrissy and Joey up for a few days, just till she gets herself something sorted out.’

The midwife clucked as she put her bag down. She looked fierce and disapproving, and, fearful of an interrogation, Christine wished Josie would stay. She had already been clear. She must keep her trap shut about her grandparents – and definitely about Nicky. She must make it clear to everyone who asked that she had nowhere to go. They’d not make her a priority otherwise. Christine didn’t see how any of this would be anything to do with the midwife. How would she know anything about it? Why would she even care? Yes, she knew she had to do that when she called the council Monday morning, but was the midwife going to grill her about it too? She hoped not, but looking at the woman’s doughy, unsmiling face, she was no longer sure.

As it turned out, it was obvious why Josie had taken Paula and left them to it – and also why she’d pulled the front-room curtains before she went. Because the first thing the midwife did after pronouncing Joey a ‘handsome fella’ was to ask her to take off her knickers and lie on the couch, in order that she could check that everything was ‘as it should be’.

‘And how are your breasts?’ she wanted to know, apparently satisfied with things at the other end. ‘Any heat coming off them? Any pain?’

Once again Christine was subjected to a quick but thorough pummelling, but though she said yes to both, neither admission seemed to cause the midwife any concern. ‘Hot and cold flannels’ was all she said. ‘You’re just going to have to grin and bear it, I’m afraid.’

Finally, Sister Davies turned her attention to Joey. Christine had been proud of her small success in managing to dress him relatively easily. Seeing the matter-of-fact way Josie handled him had begun to give her confidence. In fact, he seemed altogether less fretful when she held him firmly. But it didn’t prepare her for the way Sister Davies handled him; undressing him unceremoniously, seemingly oblivious to how he shivered, weighing him in a little pouch thing and jotting a figure down in his notes, then inspecting him all over, at one point jiggling his legs alarmingly, before finally handing him back, naked, stunned and bawling, so Christine could re-dress him while she put away her things.

‘Well,’ she said at last. ‘Baby seems to be okay. And how about you, young lady?’ She eyed Christine quizzically. ‘Are you eating well? Have you slept? Are you okay?’

Then she smiled – an expression that hadn’t seemed to come naturally, but transformed her face – and Christine decided she wasn’t quite as fierce as she looked.

‘I think so … I’m … well, I don’t know yet …’ she told her. ‘It’s all a bit …’

‘Overwhelming?’ The midwife smiled again. ‘Well, my love, why ever would it not be? Doesn’t matter who you are. Black or white. Rich or poor. Young or old. Same for all of us. A woman’s lot, is what it is. One day at a time,’ she finished, standing up and patting Christine’s shoulder. ‘Take it one day at a time. That’s the best way.’

It was only after she’d gone that Christine realised why she liked her. Black or white, she’d said. Just like that. Had just tripped right off her tongue. Sister Davies didn’t hold it against her.

The same could not be said of the housing officer who was sitting on the same couch at Josie’s house a scant six days later. It wasn’t half an hour after Sister Davies had vacated it after her daily visit, and Christine wished she’d found some way to keep her there, to help her fight her corner.

The housing officer was a gaunt woman with a stern, unfriendly air, and a mouth that drooped down at the corners. The result, no doubt, of being employed in a job where you spent most of your life telling people ‘no’. She was currently writing something in her folder with a Biro, having dispensed her latest nugget of unwelcome news: that because Christine and Joey did in fact have somewhere to go – i.e. her grandparents’ – she couldn’t possibly expect to be a priority.