How long had we been staring at her tiny body? Twenty seconds? Twenty minutes? She was doing her magic trick: breathing in through her chestnut nose, swelling and deflating. We were leaning over the cot, inhaling her second-hand air; it did us no good, but we didn’t care.
Brought us closer together.
Us. You and me and her.
She was our queen to be protected. She was an enemy, bent on our destruction.
I made a ‘T’ sign with my index fingers. You smiled, and we tip-toed to the kitchen, weary and defeated and happy. I boiled the kettle.
Six o’clock in the morning. We should have slept. She’d had us up since five.
You’d leaped from the bed like you’d been half awake waiting to feed her. I’d been half asleep. I followed you in useless solidarity. She screamed as I held her while you unpacked a babygrow, dry and white and new. Did you tut when you took her from me? Annoyed that I’d failed to soothe her? Hard to tell in the dark.
She wouldn’t latch, you said, demanding explanations from me with your eyes. Why wasn’t she hungry? Was the nappy too tight?
‘I could make a bottle,’ I said. ‘Try the breast again in the morning?’
You burned me alive.
And then, without reason, she locked her lips to you, and the consumption began. Her mothwing eyelids fell and twitched, her cheeks pulsating in their hungry rhythm. Your shoulders loosened.
We sipped the tea in silence.
She woke again as I tidied away our cups. In the hours most people call mid-morning, I ran errands to busy away the last days of my paternity leave.
*
Handshakes in the corridors, slaps on the back, a gentle cheer in the canteen. Like I’d just returned from war. Steven brought a box of mini muffins from Tesco.
‘Welcome back, Karlo,’ he said. ‘Fair play to you.’
‘Ah thanks, it’s been brilliant. Glad I took the full month.’
It was over the top, embarrassing and lovely.
Nobody asked me to do anything until lunchtime. Then I was back in my cleanroom coveralls, facemask and goggles for the first time since she was born. Back to watching an automated production line fill sterile syringes by the thousand. Would anyone notice if I slept standing up?
She was napping when I got home. I thought you’d be happier to see me.
‘Should we not wake her so she sleeps tonight?’
‘Don’t you dare,’ you said. ‘That’s the first decent nap she’s had.’
I told you about the new antibody we’d started making, but you seem distracted.
‘It’s a TNF inhibitor?’ I said. ‘For arthritis, but there’s trials in psoriasis and Crohn’s.’
‘That’s another language from another planet.’
‘No worries,’ I said. ‘You’ll catch up when you come back. What’s for dinner?’
You looked out the window.
*
We zombied our way through the days and nights until she was six months and sitting up. From the spare room, the night feeds sounded less frequent, but you said her sleep was as bad as ever.
‘I’ll move back into the bedroom next week when we’re both working,’ I said. ‘Fair’s fair.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Can’t what?’
‘Put her in the creche. Not yet. Look at her.’
She was sitting in an inflatable ring, trying to eat a large plastic ball that eclipsed her tiny face.
‘You kinda have to,’ I said.
It wasn’t an argument because we weren't shouting.
*
Our queen gave us an awful night. Like she knew her world was on the cusp of disruption. I’d been getting up to her all week since we got her onto the bottle.
I leaned against the wall, strung out, watching you pack a bag of bottles and nappies and soothers and clothes and a long list of what she likes and doesn't like and how to comfort her and how to contact us.
‘It’s fine, it’s three hours,’ I said, flat-voiced. ‘You can pick her up at lunchtime.’
‘Why don’t we just start properly tomorrow?’ you said. ‘What’s the point in putting her through this when I’m home doing nothing?’
‘Let’s not, okay? You know the answer.’
A ‘dry run,’ the creche called it. A half day to get her used to the place, then six hours tomorrow and the full eight next week when you’re working full tilt again.
We barely spoke as you fixed her into the car with her silk-trimmed blanket and squeezy giraffe. I listened to the radio while you double-checked that everything was in the boot, gave her another kiss, made promises in a sunny voice and waved us off.
Morning rays warmed my face through the car window. She was asleep by the time we rounded the corner, before you had decided what to do with your half day of agonising freedom.
*
The coveralls can be sweaty. I like to take mine off when the eleven o’clock break comes. Step outside the cleanroom for a breath of new air, even if it means I have to repeat the aseptic protocol before reentry.
A phone vibrated and sang in my locker as I pulled blue booties from the dispenser. Nobody ever called me except charities and scammers. I had one shoe covered in blue plastic when it rang again. I sighed and dragged my body over to the locker.
Three missed calls from you.
Stephen rapped on the window of the dressing room with boiling urgency. I pressed the door release button.
‘What?’
‘Little Princeton rang.’ He spat the words.
‘Little Princeton?’
‘The creche,’ he said.
‘I know Little Princeton is the bloody creche.’
‘Your wife’s trying to get through to you.’
‘Yeah, I saw ‒ what’s up?’
‘The creche was expecting your little one this morning.’
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