“Of course.” She finds a Jay cloth to wipe the sink.
It takes me half an hour to reassure her that I don’t mind, that I can easily follow all the steps on the list just like every time before. That I won’t let Malinara fall, or let her choke on anything, or let wild animals come in to eat her… Eventually, I manage to push Lessa out the door.
Not a minute too soon, because she’s barely out of the house when there’s a thin mewl from upstairs. I take the steps two at a time and hurry into the bedroom. Malinara’s just managed to kick her covers away, so I pick her up before she breaks into a proper cry that Lessa can hear.
She snuffles a bit then settles into the crook of my neck, not fully awake yet, her little body soft and warm with sleep. If she’s going to follow her usual pattern, there’ll be a ten-minute grace before she wakes up properly and realises she’s hungry. My nose tells me that she also needs a change, and I’m torn between changing her now at the risk of waking her up properly with no milk ready.
“Do you mind waiting in your dirty undies for while?” I whisper.
She says nothing, but in her place, I’d hate sitting in a poopy nappy. “If I change you now, do you promise to be quiet?”
We go through to the bathroom, and I lay her on the changing table. Then, keeping one hand lightly over her tummy to stop her wriggling, I turn on the tap and wait for the combi boiler to fire up. When the water is warm enough, I plug the sink and then undo the nappies and lower a quiet Malinara into the impromptu bath.
Her face brightens and her mouth opens into what looks like a capital letter D lying on its belly. I know she’s only two months old, but is that a smile? Yes, it is. Her first smile, I think. “You like swimming, don’t you?”
She grins again.
“Wait till your mum sees this, she’s going to fall in love with you all over again.”
Once clean, I rinse her off and take her out of the bath, wrapping a towel around her for a gentle rub. “Thank you for being quiet, little angel.” I lift her up and hold her against my chest with one arm while pulling up a new nappy to lay it on the table.
And that’s when I feel it.
A spreading warm wetness trickling down my front.
“Oh, that’s mean. That’s plain evil. Why couldn’t you have done this a minute ago when you were still in the sink?”
She answers me with another heart-melting grin.
I have to repeat the washing process again, which is easy enough; what’s difficult is changing out of my wet shirt and into another while holding her. I manage somehow and we go down to the kitchen. Lessa always has a few bottles of expressed breast milk in the freezer.
Either Malinara recognises the kitchen and knows food is coming, or she wants to torture me; either way, she starts crying, loud and persistent.
“It’s okay, baby, just need to defrost the milk and warm it up.”
I find a small saucepan and fill it with water and put it on the hottest plate on the Aga. Not an easy task with one hand. She, of course, doesn’t appreciate the delay and wants her food now.Now, now, now, now, now.
I find her soother and give it to her. The screaming stops. A wonderful quiet which doesn’t last when she spits it out and goes back to wailing.
Why is the milk taking so long to warm up?
Frantically looking for something to distract her, a flash of yellow catches my eye. It’s her honey-bee rattle, a gift from Hedge, Elodie’s grandfather. Malinara loves this rattle, it has a sweet tinkly sound when shaken, and she always follows the bee design with her eyes.
“Hey,” I say as softly as I can. “Look what I found.” I shake it and touch it to her nose, but she wriggles in my arms and keeps on wailing. “Come on, please just another minute. Here, why don’t you grab this and play with it.” I press it into her waving hand. An instant later she’s thrown it down, it rolls under the kitchen cupboard and disappears. Wonderful!
“Your mother is never going to trust me alone with you ever again.”
At this point, she’s screaming so loud, I expect the entire island to come to see what I’m doing wrong. Putting bath before food, what a stupid move!
There’s something really urgent, really compelling about a baby’s cry. Mother nature’s way of making sure hungry babies are fed. In desperation, I reach into the hot water in the saucepan and pull out the bottle, give it a little shake then touch it to my cheek. No, it’s still cold. And my fingers are dripping hot water. Then another idea comes to me. I press the tip of my little finger to her mouth. After a moment, she starts sucking. For some reason this works a little better than the soother, not long but it’s a break from the screaming.
“Poor little girl, I’m sorry.”
Finally, the milk is warm enough, so I place the teat on her lower lip and wait. A moment, then she puckers up and starts sucking hungrily. A look of bliss comes over her face. A look that makes me forgive her everything.
A little later there’s a knock on the kitchen window. When I look up, Doris waves at me from outside. It’s a measure of how far she’s come to trusting us, me in particular, that she now feels she can approach me directly.
I open the window, Malinara in my arm. “Hi, Doris.”
