Indy, who had been looking at dogs recently as she and Steve felt the girls were old enough to be good with pets other than hamsters, had a notion that Afghans were rare and cost a fortune. The dogs lifted elegant heads and gazed at her mournfully.
‘She won’t let the dogs in!’
‘Dogs aren’t that much help in labour,’ Indy pointed out.
She stepped over the dogs, entered the room and took stock of the situation. The bedroom was clearly souk central, was lit entirely by candles and mingling with the smell of incense was the scent of sweat and stressed human.
Monica Platt was squatting over a Swiss ball and moaning, with Flo by her side.
Seeing Indy, Flo beamed a sigh of relief and Monica moaned more loudly. ‘We’re at eight.’
‘Fantastic,’ said Indy and relieved Flo. ‘If you could open the window, Flo, and blow out the candles, please. And the incense. I think it might be better.’
‘But the birth plan—’ wailed Mark, holding up a document printed on pink paper.
‘The baby hasn’t read the birth plan and we need to see what we’re doing,’ Indy said, managing an even tone.
It was clear that Monica was exhausted after her night of labour.
‘It hurts so much,’ she wept, leaning against Indy’s arm as she helped the labouring woman to the bed.
‘You’ve been doing wonderfully and you’re going to keep on doing wonderfully till this lovely baby is born,’ said Indy. She looked around for water and a washcloth and saw an empty plastic beaker and no washcloth.
‘Flo, I know you’re shattered. You probably need a cup of tea,’ Indy added, with a meaningful look at Mike, who stared at her blindly.
Another day in the front lines of being a midwife.
Sonya, Stu’s sister, was on an early flight.
Meg knew that, actually, Stu wasn’t doing any meditation, but she hadn’t wanted to say that to their daughters.
‘I’m out with Ferdie and Redzer,’ he’d said on the phone, ‘we’re doing groom things.’
She’d laughed. ‘Groom things, what does that mean?’
‘You know, for the honeymoon and bridesmaids’ trinkets, things like that.’
‘Oh, darling,’ Meg had said, ‘I do love you.’
Stu had always been fabulous with presents. Not everyone was. Vonnie’s husband Gerry was quite good with gifts. But Alicia, one of Meg’s old friends from school, was married to a man who thought that a present only existed in the form of a gift voucher and not even a very big gift voucher. Roger truly believed that a twenty-euro voucher, or, when he was pushing the boat out, a twenty-five-euro gift voucher, would set any woman’s heart fluttering. They were divorced now. And while there had been many problems, Meg always thought that the whole gift-voucher thing was part of it. She hated meanness and so did Stu. Ironically, Stu’s hating meanness meant he’d gambled everything away. There was a sort of wild thing in Stu when it came to money.
Or there had been a wildness in him. It was gone now, she was sure. Thank goodness, she thought as she negotiated the roundabout at the airport. Thank goodness that wildness was gone. Those twelve-step programmes were completely amazing. She wished she could donate money to Gamblers Anonymous to say thank you.
When Sonya appeared at arrivals, she was pulling along two enormous suitcases. That was the first thing Meg noticed. Sonya did not normally travel this heavily. And Meg wondered for a fleeting moment if Sonya was coming back for good? She’d left Ireland years ago after fighting with her mother, which was very easy to do. Meg had rarely fought with her mother-in-law, but that was only because she tried to avoid her: it was the only way. But Sonya and her mother had fought constantly, although nobody ever commented upon this. It was just the way things were.
Sonya had eventually just given up and had left the country to work abroad. She’d been all over the place in her job as a nurse. Had worked in Saudi when it was the place to go to earn tax free money. And she’d finished up her nursing career in Northampton. She was older than Stu, sixty-six to his sixty-four. Sonya, Meg thought with a hint of pride, which she instantly identified as her vanity and felt guilty about, looked an awful lot older than Meg did. I’m a bad sister-in-law, thought Meg, as Sonya came towards her.
‘Hello,’ said Sonya brightly, hugging her.
She was a tall woman, well built with short grey hair cut in quite a mannish style and without a pick of make-up on her face. Not for Sonya the rounds of endless serums and creams. No.
She was a fan of the take-me-as-I-am approach to beauty.
‘You’re very good to pick me up,’ said Sonya. ‘What’s that naughty brother of mine doing that he couldn’t?’
‘Bridegroomy things,’ said Meg, taking both of the suitcases, ‘I’ll pull them both.’
‘No, don’t be silly.’
