Read an Excerpt
Babyface
By Fiona Gibson Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.
Copyright © 2004 Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-373-25064-9
Chapter One
Birth Something has broken into our bedroom. It zaps past my ear and lands on Jonathan's cheek.
Pain sneaks in, swelling, clenching my middle. "It's started," I tell him.
He twitches, and the bluebottle buzzes away. "Are you sure?"
"Think so. It goes away and then -" I grope for something to cling on to and find his hand.
"I'll phone the hospital. Keep breathing."
Jonathan has assembled the flat-pack crib at the foot of our bed. A Winnie the Pooh mobile arches over the space where a baby will sleep. Soft toys - a penguin, a bear and an otter - nestle at the head end. My hospital bag contains Bach Rescue Remedy to aid relaxation, plus button-front nighties for easy access to breasts.
It's not a big thing, having a baby. People do it all the time. In the moment it takes you to squeeze out a tea bag so it doesn't drip on your way to the pedal bin, five miniature people will have emerged into the world.
Jonathan reappears in the bedroom. He extracts balled-up socks from the top drawer and his favorite baby blue sweater - the one he handwashes himself in case I make it go felty - from the one beneath it. "Put on something warm," he instructs, easing me into a fleece that has been so stretched by my stomach it appears to be forty-one weekspregnant, even when no one is wearing it.
He guides me out of the front door, a hand resting gently against my back. His cheeks are flecked with red blotches. He has that kind of skin; the sort that mottles easily, especially when he's stressed. The postman hovers on the path. "She's having a baby," says Jonathan, as if he needs to explain things. The postman has a round potato face and a waterproof jacket which rustles. In an attempt to remove himself from our property, he teeters backward, bouncing gently against the hedge. Perhaps he fears that the head will emerge and he'll be obliged to assist, seeing as delivering stuff is his job.
Jonathan lowers me onto the car's back seat. I have looked forward to this journey, imagined it over and over: swerving past slow-moving vehicles and juddering to a halt beside a rectangle of battered grass where, with some vigorous panting, I will plop out the infant onto Jonathan's tartan travel rug. Men will run out of the barbers, haircuts half finished, clapping and cheering like there's a fight going on, and I'll think: "All this attention. It's not so bad, being a mother." Jonathan will wrap the three of us in the rug and a photographer will arrive from the Hackney Gazette. "I didn't do anything much," Jonathan will say. "Nina managed it all by herself. A natural mother."
Jonathan will, of course, know what to do. One lunchtime he bought Babycare: Your Essential Guide to the First 12 Months by the softly permed Dr. Hilary Dent. I read a chapter each night while marinating in sweet almond oil in the bath. "We need to bone up," Jonathan said, pleased to see me taking the whole business seriously. I studied pastel drawings of baby at breast, baby having its hair washed ("important to remove city dust and dried food, though unlikely to be your infant's favorite activity"). But still I know nothing. I have never held anyone younger than myself. One time, when my magazine's Art Editor came into the office to show off her new baby, I made sure I was busy with phone calls and an urgent feature shimmering on my screen. Wendy appeared at my desk with knackered eyelids and a hopeful smile. "Would you like a hold?" she asked.
I forced myself round to face her, feigning surprise. "I'd love to," I said, "but I'm bunged up with a cold. Don't want to breathe my germs all over him." I even shut down the back of my throat so I'd sound really ill.
"It's a her," she said. Wendy's smile congealed and she backed away to find people who were good at admiring babies. She knew I was lying. That wobbly newborn neck: I didn't want any part of it. Not when the child appeared so fragile that holding it wrongly might cause its head to snap off.
And now, as we park in a space meant for hospital staff only, I can't get over the neck bit: a person, independent of me, with a wobbling head of its own. The cot is assembled but I'm not ready, not really. Another month - extra time, like in football - and maybe I'll get there. At least, when the baby takes a breather from booting my innards, I can pretend it's not really happening at all.
"Good girl, good girl," he says, passing me a clear plastic mask for a breath of gas-and-air. Do-the-right-thing Jonathan. Apologize-when-the-condom-splits Jonathan. His fine sandy hair clings to a wet forehead. The lambs-wool sweater is discarded. His gray T-shirt has dark splodges under each arm and a mysterious brown splatter on the front. And I am no longer bracing myself for contractions but sensing an enormous shifting downward that no one can stop, no matter how hard I scream that I have changed my mind and want to go home to my flat where I live alone, fry all my food and wake up in tepid bathwater.
Finally I feel it, wedged for a second, then out and squealing. "It's here," says Jonathan, "the baby's here. It's a boy."
Jonathan's upper body is over mine, heavy and damp. He is replaced by the infant, who is deposited on my stomach, skinny-limbed, wrinkled as bacon.
"Look at him, Nina," Jonathan says. I can only stare upward at beige ceiling tiles with black speckles, like ants. When I do look, the child is regarding me with moist, swimmy eyes. A woman with coarse yellow hair delves between my legs.
And the voice comes, sharp and metallic above hospital clatter: "So, Nina, see what you've got yourself into this time?"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Babyface by Fiona Gibson Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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