“She’s doing really well.” Julie the midwife beamed at us both. “And you have a name. It’s lovely.”
The next few hours were filled with more baby stuff. Nappies, getting Neva up and moving and in the shower, leaving me alone with my daughter for the first time. I couldn’t stop staring at her, completely stunned that she was actually here, which was how my dad found me, gazing at the tiny mite in my arms because there was no way I was putting her down, possibly ever, unless it was to pass her to Neva. I’d happily carry her round for the rest of her life, even when I was an elderly man of eighty and she was fifty-four.
“How is she, son?”
I turned to the man I hoped to be as good a father as.
“Neva or Maia?”
“Is the right answer. Both.”
“Neva’s amazing. Maia is just - ” There were no words.
My dad stepped closer, smiling at his granddaughter. “I remember when you were this small. I felt like a clumsy oaf holding you. Never did drop you though – that was your mother.”
I laughed, still holding Maia. “You can hold her tomorrow. For today, she’s just mine and Neva’s.” I was standing by that.
“Fair enough. As long as I get to hold her before your mum - ”
He spoke too soon, my mother coming through the door into our room, loaded with balloons and flowers.
“You will not be holding her before me. Take these.” She thrust her offerings at my dad and came over to me. “Oh my. Jude, she’s beautiful.”
“She wasn’t when she was born.” I touched my daughter’s head with my lips, another kiss. “She was red and wrinkly and covered with slime, and she screamed louder than you did when I jumped you into the pool.”
“Bit like you. You were so loud I asked the midwife if she could shove you back in.” She touched Maia’s tiny hand. “You are divine.” She spoke to the baby, clearly, as she would never refer to me or my father as ‘divine’. “And I’m going to spoil the bones of you and your mummy.”
“Hey.” Neva walked back into the room, wearing a dressing gown she’d bought specifically for after the birth. “How’s my girl.” She came straight over to me and held her arms out.
I passed Maia to her, the only other person who was getting to hold her, maybe for the foreseeable. Certainly until we were sleep deprived, so possibly tomorrow.
“Has she been okay?” She looked up at me, almost anxiously.
“Not a peep. Sleeping and she keeps making this little ducky movement with her mouth.”
“Ducky?” She frowned at me, still a smile though.
“Like this.” I tried to mimic the movements, which just made Neva and my parents laugh. “Like a little duck.”
And that was how my daughter got her first nickname.
Ducky.
CHAPTER18
Neva
OCTOBER
My baby had grown.She was no longer the tiny duck we’d brought home from the hospital six weeks ago. She was heavier, bigger, hungrier and louder.
My daughter was loud.
Even at such a young age she knew the art of manipulation and she had Jude exactly where she’d want to keep him for the next half a century or more. Every squeeze of his finger, every gurgle, every flicker of an eye and he was doting on her.
I’d commented once on how it wasn’t me who’d wanted a sperm donor, it’d been him who wanted a surrogate, which had made him laugh and come back later with a huge bunch of my favourite flowers and lots of murmurs in my ear about how he’d gotten so lucky and other sweet things that made my heart beat even faster and feel even bigger.
I was lucky too, which I had mentioned to him at the end of my favourite celebrity dancing show one Saturday evening. I was just worried that when Maia was six months old, we’d be making a decision I no longer wanted to make.
