I thought in the afternoons, as Dave and I walked – no, strolled – in the local park, gripping pram handle and coffee cup, like all the other parents.
A hood and a hat for the blinding sunlight.
Balled socks and folded babygros in neat stacks.
Floral fabric conditioner and frying onions lacing the air and warm, sweet milk everywhere. Bubbling away in me. Poured over the porridge that would feed me, so that I could make yet more milk to feed her. I never felt like an animal, not in the way of feeling hunted or preyed upon, but I also didn’t feel any more complicated than an animal. It was hard to explain exactly. Grazing and feeding her. Sun up, sun down.
There were plenty of times when, despite how happy I was, how honestly happy I was, I would start to think about the past. But I could always stop myself, because the important thing was that she was here.
Dave and I had spent ten years together already, looking at each other – across kitchen and restaurant table. Staring and blinking and watching and glancing in bed, meeting rooms, waiting rooms and at parties. De-coding the hidden messages in each other’s eyes. We knew every wrinkle, line and tic in each other: the single eyelash that ran counter to the rest. How the face contorted with laughter and tears.
The right time, then, to greet something new, a new version of ourselves with her barely there hair and tense red fists wrapped in a cellular blanket – cellular, like the mathematics paper marked with its complicated workings and rubbings out.
And there were other times, more than I care to remember, when Mia writhed and bobbed and made her warning siren sounds with a rounded mouth. And I worried. Like any mother would. I would pull her away from a feed, the sweat that had once sealed us now escaping, tickling and itching, all the while thinking: She is in pain. Something is hurting her.
‘She needs a new nappy, that’s all,’ Dave would say. ‘You’re just worried about things going wrong.’ That smile again.
Didn’t he know that after ten years together you can tell a genuine smile from a fake smile?
Why didn’t he say what he meant? Don’t spoil this for us, Cath.
On the early evening of the twenty-fifth day I drew the curtains against the setting sun and answered a phone call.
‘Is this the mother of Baby Freeland?’
Her mother. Hers.
Yes, I belonged to her.
‘Mia Freeland is her name now.’
I wanted her tone to change, to lilt into a floral exclamation of how lovely a name, but she was hesitant. She told me that her name was Kirsty and she was a health visitor, based at our local GP practice in Terrence Avenue.
‘There were some results from the blood test, the heel-prick test,’ she said.
I got hold of a flap of skin on the edge of my thumbnail and sucked through my teeth as it tore. Test. My four-letter word. Dave and I had failed so many tests already, each time more stinging than the last. But Mia was here now. Our final pass.
‘Are you still there?’ said Kirsty.
The heel-prick test, yes. They had taken a spot of blood from Mia’s heel when she was only a few days old, like they did with every newborn in the country. I had flinched when the thing like a staple gun had punctured her snow-white skin, so much worse than if it were piercing my own. A card was pressed to this tiny new wound and then lifted away to reveal a roundel of red. Now there were results. They hadn’t told me to expect results.
‘Yes, I’m here. Do you phone everyone with their results?’
‘Not unless there’s something, you know, definite to say. In Mia’s case they are inconclusive, which means we need to do more tests. Can you come to Atherton General tomorrow morning at eleven?’
‘The hospital?’
‘Yes, Atherton General, a bit past Clyde Hill … Fourth floor, paediatric outpatients’ reception. They’ll know to expect you.’
‘But what are the tests for?’ My stomach twisted and complained.
‘Her levels look a bit abnormal.’ There was a pause and paper shuffle. ‘For cystic fibrosis. I’m putting you on hold for a moment.’
The soft thump of blood drummed its quick new tune in my ears as I googled:
Cystic fibrosis – A genetic disease in which the lungs and digestive system become clogged with thick and sticky mucus …
Stomach pain …
Trouble breathing …
Must be managed with a time-consuming, daily regimen of medication and physiotherapy …
Over the years, the lungs become increasingly damaged and eventually stop working properly …
Debbie Carfax, twenty-three, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at the age of two and has been told she has less than …
Catching the common cold could kill this young man with cystic fibrosis as he waits for a life-saving lung transplant …
End-stage cystic fibrosis and how to manage the final days …
One in every 2,500 babies born in the UK has cystic fibrosis …
Average age of death …
Like drowning …
Just breathe.
A piece of hold music droned on, vanilla and classical, chosen to calm interminable situations.
I could feel the adrenalin rise inside me. Everything sharpening, narrowing, ready for flight as I stared at that single question.
Her levels looked abnormal.
I understood that there was a level to everything.
Under the right level, you drowned.
Above the right level, you overflowed.
Finally, a new crackle as the hold music was killed.
‘Yvonne says it’ll be something called a sweat test. You’ll need to bring lots of blankets for the baby to make her sweat. Do remember that. Blankets. And maybe some snacks and mags to pass the time?’ I had no time to reply before she said, ‘And make sure that your husband is with you. Have you got the address? Paediatric outpatients …’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
‘Best of luck.’ And with that, Kirsty was gone.
I hung up, the appointment details scribbled on the back of a tea-bag box with a free T-shirt promotion.
Make sure your husband is with you is the same thing as saying: Are you sitting down? It’s what a person says before they give you the news that will knock you to the floor
