32
At the birth, they played 1990s hip-hop.
‘Most people choose Mozart,’ Mr Abadi said, with a curious smile. ‘They want something calming.’
‘Marisa says she wants music that makes her feel strong, like she can do anything,’ Kate explained. ‘It’s her idea. And we like it, don’t we?’ She turned to Jake, sitting beside her in the now familiar chrome-framed chairs of Mr Abadi’s office.
‘We do,’ he replied, grinning.
Mr Abadi gave a quick twitch of the head, but he was amused rather than disapproving.
‘We aim to please,’ he said, making a note with his gold pen in the medical records.
So it was that Leo Christopher Sturridge made his entrance into the world accompanied by the frenetic vocals of Busta Rhymes rapping ‘Thank You’. When Jake and Kate were invited to cut the umbilical cord and when they heard their baby cry for the first time and when the midwife handed Kate her son, it was Snoop Dogg. Jay-Z accompanied the moment when Jake took Marisa’s hand and squeezed it tightly, crying tears that came from somewhere beyond his conscious mind. As Kate held her baby, Marisa looking on with a tired smile, the playlist segued into TLC. The whole thing was stupidly beautiful.
‘Hello,’ Kate said, peering into her son’s mottled, querying face as Jake cupped the baby’s velvety head with his hand. ‘We’ve been through a lot to get to meet you.’
On the bed behind them, Marisa rested back on the pillow, her body bloodied and sweaty with exhaustion.
Kate turned to her.
‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘Thank you so much.’
By the time Kate held Leo to her bare chest in the next-door room, the music had stopped and there was a calm so solid it felt like certainty. She and Jake craned forwards to hear Leo’s tiny sniffles and squeaks, each noise signifying the barely credible fact of his existence. The baby’s fists were scrunched shut and the crease of his barely formed fingers and nails struck her as something prehistoric and inexplicable. She was astonished by him, at once so miraculous and yet so fully theirs.
As soon as Mr Abadi had delivered him, as soon as Leo had emerged into the clinical light of the theatre, Kate had recognised him as hers. They had been linked forever, she saw now. She simply had to wait for her son to be born. It didn’t matter which strands of whose particular DNA had gone into creating the infinitesimal nuance of him. He was hers. This she knew to be true.
Jake kissed her gently. Soon he, too, would hold Leo close, pressing his skin against the baby’s newness, but she wasn’t ready to give up her son just yet. She felt fiercely that she would never be able to let him go, not fully. She felt a momentous current ricocheting through her blood cells. She was stronger than anything on earth, capable of everything it would take to protect her son. She was fizzing – crazed, even – with motherhood.
‘He’s got dark hair,’ she said. It was true – Leo’s head was dusted dark brown, so that when she lowered her lips to his face, and her hair fell forward, she and her son were a perfect match.
At weekends, they walk along the riverside path. Today, it is sunny and windy, one of those London days that looks deceptively warm from inside the house but which requires jackets and jumpers outside of it. Jake has the baby strapped to his chest in a sling and Kate, wrapped up in a parka and hoodie, walks alongside, holding his hand and checking occasionally to see whether Leo is dropping off to sleep. He’s ten months now, and they’ve almost got him into a routine. Leo mewls gently.
‘Sh-sh-sh,’ Kate says. ‘You know you want a nap, poppet. Come on, have a nice little sleep.’
She cajoles him in a soft voice, the same one that she uses when Jake is at the office and she spends long hours chatting to Leo as if he understands. For two days a week, she works from home with the help of a nanny and often she will find herself treating Leo like a particularly receptive colleague. As long as she keeps her voice light, as though she is reading from his favourite storybook, Leo is entranced by whatever she says.
On Friday, Leo had been sitting in his high chair, pompous as an emperor with a plastic spoon in his chubby fist, seemingly indignant at having a bib around his neck, his face smeared with mashed carrot, and she knew he was about to lose it. She could tell from the particular tension in his neck, the slight flare of his nostrils, that he was gathering up his efforts for a momentous caterwaul.
Quickly, she launched into a sing-song rendition of her thoughts and anxieties from that particular day.
‘So we’re organising a junket, Leo, and you’ll never guess what one of the film’s stars asked us to do …’ She waited. Leo, attention diverted from his threatened tantrum, widened his eyes as if to say, ‘Please, continue.’
‘Well, she wants us to repaint the entire hotel suite. Says the smell of tired hotel rooms triggers her. I know! Crazy, right?’
Leo banged his spoon against the plastic tray.
‘You and me both, mate,’ Kate said. ‘So I said no, and then she threatened to pull out altogether and so now’ – she lifted Leo out of his high chair and scooped him close to her – ‘I don’t know what to fucking do. Yes, yes that’s right, poppet, I don’t know. Mummy doesn’t know.’
Leo’s mouth split into a smile. She laughed, then, and he rested his head against her clavicle. There was no better feeling.
The first few months had been brutal, of course. Although Kate had known all about the sleep deprivation in theory – had longed for it, even, during all those years of trying – the reality was still difficult to deal with. But it was true what those blissed-out new mothers said, the ones she had once found so annoying: she genuinely wouldn’t have it any other way. Leo was a gift so precious that it was only logical to be expected to work for it. Take away my sleep, she wanted to say. Takeaway my individuality, my job, my nights out, my ability to read a book, my trendy clothes – take all of it and see if I care. There was no sacrifice too great; no lack that she wouldn’t willingly suffer. She had her baby. Finally, after so much time and so much suffering: he was here.
As for Jake, he was an attentive, sweet-natured father who got up to do night feeds, tucking the baby into one arm with a bottle and checking his emails on his phone with his other hand. He was proud of the technique. Seeing him like this made her love him more.
She liked the fact their home was now filled with baby paraphernalia and toys: fabric books that crinkled to the touch, bears in waistcoats, brightly coloured play-mats and foam balls and tinkling rattles. They had turned Marisa’s room into the nursery, installing shelves for baby clothes and muslin cloths and nappies. Before she left, Marisa had given them a mobile of elephants and beach balls to hang above Leo’s cot. She had painted it herself. It caught the light in the mornings, and Leo followed the movement of the shapes and the shadows they cast on the ceiling.
Marisa had moved in with Jas after they got back to London. It had been agreed between the four of them: they all knew it was a good idea for Marisa to have her own space, and Jas’s flat was only a short drive away from the clinic. Jas had a beaten-up VW Golf and offered to take Marisa to appointments whenever necessary. Kate and Jake covered the rent, topping it up when they could and, in this way, they got through the last month of the pregnancy.
