They’re talking about Lyla dilating now, and he doesn’t think they mean her pupils. There’s the ponytail nurse, and another nurse with a tiny flower tattoo on her wrist. Lyla is bellowing now, like a farm animal – is bovine the right word? Calum grew up on a farm and Eddie was always afraid of the cattle; the weight and heft of them, their huge damp nostrils and flies buzzing around their eyes.
‘I can’t do it!’ Lyla shrieks.
‘What?’ Eddie exclaims, grabbing at her hand.
‘I can’t get the baby out of me—’
‘You’re doing fine, Lyla,’ says ponytail nurse. ‘Push—’
‘I can’t push! I’ve been pushing all night!’ Lyla announces – and Eddie realises that hours have spun by and he has to agree that Lyla can’t do this. So that’s that sorted. Quite simply, she can’t get the baby out. So what happens now? he thinks in panic. Will it stay inside? Bereabsorbedsomehow? It’s not as if she can send it back like a badly fitting jumper. There’s no returns form. Just a terrifying blur of shouting and pushing and Lyla is crying now, and the flower tattoo nurse looks around at him as if only just noticing that he’s there.
‘We’re going to call someone in,’ she tells him.
‘What does that mean?’ Eddie cries out. A doctor, he supposes. Or someone higher up the management chain? He assumes they don’t mean a plumber.
‘We’re getting the registrar,’ the ponytail nurse explains, and time seems to swirl in an almighty soup of pushing and crying while Eddie thinks:registrar?Aren’t they for weddings? And a terrible thought hits him: they’re going to get married because Lyla is about to die in childbirth, like in the olden days when women gave birth in huts on piles of straw. And now he’s gripping her hand, as if holding on to her is the only way he can stop her from slipping away.
A woman arrives. An impossibly glamorous woman in a red dress and full make-up, looking utterly out of place in the bleak hospital setting, as if she has breezed in by mistake, expecting a party. Eddie almost expects her to be carrying a bottle of wine.
Immediately, the chaos subsides as the woman assumes control. She speaks sternly to Lyla: ‘Push, Lyla. Push, as if you’re doing a great big shit.’
Eddie blinks in shock that this posh-looking woman in red lipstick can speak like that. Then there’s some terrible object being wielded about. A shiny thing like the tongs his dad uses when he’s barbecuing his special Portuguese beef, only they’re not for a barbecue, they’re being inserted— Oh God, he can’t look. There are yelled commands to PUSH PUSH PUSH, and Lyla is wailing but she’s also magnificent, Eddie realises – this girl he met at a party in a smelly flat. Then everything seems to stop: the cries, the mayhem, Eddie’s life as a carefree young man. And the red-dress woman hands a small thing to theponytail nurse, and Eddie thinks they’re wrapping it; he can’t take in what’s going on because he is crying in great, racking gulps.
The thing is handed to Lyla like a parcel. Eddie watches as Lyla blinks through sweat-drenched hair, and holds their baby daughter and puts her to her breast.
And her tiny mouth purses, and tears pour down Eddie’s face as he stares at his daughter, the most beautiful thing he has ever seen in his life.
Chapter Forty-six
September
Living at Kilmory Cottage: Carly, Kenny, Eddie, Lyla, Grace
Carly
We couldn’t believe how small she was, and how perfect. Baby Grace, already forming expressions, her eyes big and round and shiny blue, assessing the world.
‘Oh, Frank,’ I murmured. ‘I can’t believe it. Our granddaughter.’
‘Yeah.’ His voice cracked, and we sat together, and came back day after day as Grace seemed to gather strength with every minute of her new life.
We didn’t talk aboutus.All that mattered was coming to see Lyla and Grace. It was about them, not Frank and me. And that’s what Suki said too, when we had the chance to talk. As soon as the news had reached her, she’d driven straight from her cabin, gaining a speeding ticket en route.
‘I just wanted to say,’ she told me, as we did a coffee run to the hospital canteen, ‘I did figure out that Lyla and Eddie weren’t really together all that time.’
‘Oh.’ I exhaled, not knowing what to say to her. ‘I’m so sorry …’
‘Carly, it’s not your fault!’ she exclaimed. ‘You just went along with it. I realise that. You didn’t want to make things difficult for them.’
‘It was just sprung on us,’ I started. ‘That first time we met you for lunch.’
She smiled. ‘I had my suspicions then. You can tell, can’t you, if people have a genuine connection?’
I nodded. ‘So … why did you go along with it?’
‘Oh, the story she concocted was so cute, I wanted to believe it had happened that way …’
‘Whatwasthe story?’ I asked hesitantly.
