‘It’s better for baby,’ said Seema, coming into the room.
‘You may not be able to, not everyone can. Or you may not want to,’ Indy added.
‘I’d like to,’ said Tanya, still staring tearfully at her baby’s little face with its perfect button nose, long dark lashes and rosebud mouth. She looked so blissfully happy.
Nobody went into midwifery for the money or the hours, Indy knew, but for this – this glory of delivering a new child into the world: that was the joyous pay-off. It was like hearing a foetal heartbeat for the first time and allowing the prospective parents to hear it too. No music was ever sweeter.
Indy never delivered a baby without thinking of her own two little darlings, Minnie and Daisy, and saying a prayer of gratitude for how lucky she and Steve were. Utterly blessed.
Savannah had one child, a superbright ten-year-old girl named Clary who stared at the world silently from behind thick glasses. She was like Savannah in looks, the long auburn hair, the same misty eyes, and yet Savannah had been such an eager child, eager to please. While Clary was silent and watchful.
Rory, the youngest of the sisters at thirty-five, had no maternal stirrings yet, although Indy could see it in Chantal, her sister’s partner. Chantal got dreamy-eyed at family gatherings when Indy talked about work: Indy could spot baby hunger a mile away. She wondered if Chantal and Rory had talked about it. They must have, mustn’t they?
Eden was open about not wanting a child. Not open with the electorate, of course.
Eden said that it was easier to keep some things to yourself when you were in politics. ‘People judge,’ she said simply. ‘I say nothing about it. Let them speculate, if they want. I get asked, of course, but I look a bit wistful and say “not yet”.’
Once, they’d have been confused by this but since Eden had been in politics for some years now, they understood. A person’s whole life was on show and could rip into them like shards of glass.
‘Sometimes I hate politics,’ Eden said occasionally. ‘Everyone thinks they have a right to know everything about you.’
‘Tell them all to eff off,’ was Rory’s answer to this.
‘You can’t,’ Eden would say, usually with a fierce blast of irritation.
Eden and Rory had been squabbling since they were small.
‘Eff off is not a political answer.’
‘It’s what I’d say.’ Rory was scathing.
‘Yeah, and you’re not a political representative,’ Eden said.
‘You’re in local politics, Eden, not the UN,’ Rory retorted.
‘Are you slagging off the local council because we make the world move, you stupid cow!’
‘Girls,’ Indy would say at this juncture. ‘Stop!’
Indy’s own daughters did not squabble this way.
Indy had worked hard to make sure that in her home, open squabbling wasn’t part of the way arguments were handled. Minnie and Daisy argued but lately, Indy felt they were old enough to be told that as they loved each other, they needed to sit down quietly and make friends again. So far, it was working. The rows were lessening.
Not like in the Sorrento.
But if it hadn’t been for the rows in the hotel, then Indy might never have fallen in love with Steve. Her sisters were too young, Indy reckoned, to have known how bitter it got at the end. Once, she’d have spent time talking with Lori, the Cork nanny who’d lived in the Sorrento for years, helping out with the girls, doing shifts in the restaurant. Lori had always been a haven of peace in their lives and her attic room, with its cosy sitting room and old brass bed had been where all the sisters had gone for chats whenever Mum was out.
But Lori had left by then. So Indy had found another place where she didn’t feel the tension between her parents. She’d spent hours with her friend, Carrie, in a house about an eighth the size of the Sorrento. In Carrie’s house, peace reigned.
Carrie’s mother, Anna, was a midwife and Indy had always found herself fascinated by stories of long shifts, of babies she’d helped into the world. Anna had been the reason behind Indy’s career choice.
There was no wild glamour in Carrie and Anna’s family life. No sense that a movie star would walk into Carrie’s house and ask for a double-strength vodka Martini and a double room in that order. But the calm … nobody raised their voices. Nobody ever loudly proclaimed that they were sleeping in the spare room, nobody ever yelled that they’d only put money on two horses that day instead of the four they really wanted to bet on.
Then Steve, Carrie’s brother, two years older than Carrie, came home from Germany where he’d been working with a master craftsman in handmade furniture and they’d fallen in love. He’d become her refuge, the love of her life. Steady, loving, emotionally intelligent.
‘If the photography doesn’t work out, will you still love me if I’m just a humble cabinet maker?’
‘Yes,’ Indy said. And she had.
