Loving Amélie Read Free

You’ll
need all her stuff, if she’s…staying. Phone her.”
    “What?”
    Chris held out his phone and looked
dumbly at the keypad for almost a minute. When it beeped a third time with a
message from Amélie – three messages in succession after a wasteland of
more than six months – he didn’t flinch.
    “She says a courier will be with you within the hour.
He will bring everything you will need to take care of her for now. ”
    “Christ, was she listening?”
    “ Her name is Amélie Christina. I was not
permitted to give her your surname without your consent. Please look after her,
chéri.”
    His voice had risen to a rasp
by the end of his speech, and he gave in to the gale of tears that had been
threatening to undermine him at the lift doors. Sara, too, wept some more,
attempting to embrace baby Amélie, and to console her father, at the same time.

 
    In accordance with the message,
a courier arrived at quarter to twelve. He was dressed from collar to toes in
black leather and a black helmet, and displayed a reluctance to raise his visor
with what seemed like complicit secrecy.
    “Did you see the lady who sent
these?” Chris asked him, compelled to raise his voice to penetrate the helmet.
“Did she look alright? Was she with anyone? Family?”
    “I just need your signature,”
was the courier’s vapid response.
    “Is he in on this too, do you
reckon?” Chris remarked more quietly to Sara, and he signed, and they took
delivery of three large, carefully sealed cartons.
    They unpacked a treasure trove
of baby paraphernalia. Nappies. Bottles. A sterilising unit. Tins of powdered
milk formula. Tubes of Bepanthen. Dummies in plastic boxes. All-in-one baby suits. In an
envelope, Sara found Amélie’s birth certificate: a sharply creased document in
official pink print, with entries completed by a registrar in exquisite
calligraphy.
    “She was born at St Mary’s
Hospital and Birthing Centre, Paddington, on the 13 th of June at
four ten in the afternoon,” she said. “That makes her a Gemini, I think.” Sara
looked down at the tiny round head with its caplet of soft hair, the colour of
garden birds. “Aw!”
    “Don’t give me any astrological
bollocks,” said Chris, heatedly, unable to focus on the small person that had
brought chaos and disappointment into his life that morning via one implausible
stunt. Sara eyed him disapprovingly; so he wailed: “I know Jack Shit about babies, Sar’. Why has
she done this to me?”
    “Oh, man up, Christopher,” Sara
replied. “This can’t be about you right now. Or any more , to be honest. God knows what Amélie has been going
though, while you’ve been drinking your own body weight in wine every day. This
baby is here now, and she needs looking after. By her dad!”
    Chris battled with a selection
of responses; and settled on: “It just seems so wrong, dumping a baby on a guy
with no notice. It’s unfair.”
    Between the two of them - while
baby Amélie grumbled a gentle warning of impending hunger -   they took turns to soothe her: Sara
rocking her gently, Chris holding her in her blanket like a bottle of Cava he
was afraid might explode. They quickly read instructions; turned on the
steriliser and mixed feeds.
    Confident that lids were
tightly fastened and all was going to plan, Sara turned her attention
uncharitably back to her best friend.
    “Perhaps if you had made a
proper effort while Amélie was with you, you wouldn’t be in this fix.”
    Chris was reminded fleetingly
of an occasion when he had met Sara for dinner shortly after Amélie had
finished with him. She had been particularly cagey because she had come hot
foot from drinks with his former lover; and spent the evening hovering over
“the other camp”, not wishing to be drawn too much, but, nevertheless, making a
number of critical observations (that increased in number as the evening wore
on and the wine flowed).
    He was also mindful of the many
more occasions when Sara could hardly