‘A baby?’ I asked incredulously.
He nodded, his beautiful, innocent eyes so full of hope that it almost broke me.
‘Well, it’s not that simple…’ Jay jumped in.
He screwed his face up in confusion. ‘Why not? Why don’t you and Mammy have a chat?’
‘Why all this talk about babies?’ I asked to deflect attention away from his question.
He twirled his fork around in the air. ‘Brody in my class is getting a new baby brother or sister.’
‘Aw, that’s nice.’
‘If we gotted a baby then I can play with it.’
‘But we play with you,’ I said, somewhat childishly. I knew we were a poor substitute for a brother or sister.
‘I want someone to play dinosaurs with and you and Daddy aren’t very good at dinosaurs.’
‘Yeah… I get that…’ Jay agreed.
‘So can we get a baby then?’
‘Me and Mammy will talk about it, is that okay?’ Jay said to appease him. ‘Now eat up, little man, before your dinner goes cold.’
‘Okay,’ he said, bringing a forkful of spaghetti towards his mouth.
After we had tucked Finn up in bed, we came back downstairs to the kitchen. Jay began making the tea while I reached up to the overhead cupboard where we kept the biscuit tin and took out the last remaining packet which were Fig Rolls.
‘No choccy ones?’ Jay asked.
‘Sorry, this is all we’ve left.’
Jay shook his head and laughed. ‘This evening has gone from bad to worse.’
When the tea was made, we went into the living room and flopped down onto the sofa.
‘Where did all the baby stuff from Finn come from earlier on?’ Jay asked.
‘I don’t know.’ I tucked my legs up beneath me and dipped a biscuit into my milky tea.
‘I was starting to sweat. I wasn’t expecting to have to explain the birds and the bees over dinner tonight.’
I laughed.
‘What are we going to say if he asks again? Because he will ask again.’ Jay groaned.
‘We’ll just have to tell him that we’re still talking about it, which is the truth anyway.’
‘He really wants a brother or sister…’ Jay went on, leaving the statement dangling there. I knew he was waiting for me to react.
‘I know…’ I felt myself bristle. ‘But it has to beourdecision.’
‘Well, I think we need to take his feelings into account too. I don’t want him being an only child and now he’s telling us that he doesn’t want to be either. I loved how boisterous and chaotic my house was growing up and although we fought like cats and dogs, we always had one another’s back when things went wrong. I want that for Finn too.’
Jay was one of five and they were all really close despite now living all over the world. I only had my sister Linda but she was eleven years older than me, so growing up, it always felt as though we were at different life stages. We had got closer since I had become a mother though and she had supported me a lot during the early days with Finn when my depression had been a weight pulling me down and I felt unable to cope with it all.
‘I’d love to be able to give him that too,’ I cried, feeling tears press forward in my eyes, ‘but unfortunately, it’s not that easy.’
