Playing with the Grown-ups Read Free Page B

trip to the hospital. I knocked on Bestepapa and Bestemarna's door, with a navy-blue
     pea coat on top of my nightie, and I said, 'The baby's coming.' Bes-tepapa leapt out of bed, and he was as agitated as I was
     calm. Bestemama kissed my stomach for luck (she had to stay to look after Elsie and Ingrid) and we said goodbye.
    When we walked outside, everything seemed electric. The moon lit up the garden so we could follow the path to the car. It
     was an Indian summer that year, and everything was still in bloom, and I remember thinking that the roses had never looked
     more voluptuous, or smelled quite as beautiful. The night was so thick and alive with magic it was tangible. As we were getting into the car, the canaries, in the silence of the garden, sang out, as though they were heralding the beginning
     of your journey, and wishing us well.
    We drove to Oxford, Bestepapa and I, listening to Duke Ellington and eating boiled sweets. Just before we got there my contractions
     became closer and closer together, so sharp they took my breath away.
    Bestepapa had smuggled a bottle of champagne into the waiting room, and he paced there for seven hours, as I screamed and
     pushed, pushed and screamed and the world was nothing but you and me, and this extraordinary, other-worldly pain, but it kept
     reminding me how alive I was, how very much I wanted you, and I called out for Bestemama as you were pulled out by forceps
     that looked like medieval instruments of torture. You screamed, outraged that you were in this cold place of strip-lights
     and intrusion. They placed you in my arms. You had barely any hair, and because of the forceps, your little nose was squashed
     to one side of your face, as though you had been in a boxing match. But when I looked at you, I had never seen such perfection,
     or felt such an all-consuming love. I was on fire with love for you.
    The doctor went into the hall to tell Bestepapa that you were born and he shouted and hooted so much they had sternly to tell
     him to shut up. He came in and he held you in his huge hands like you were a baby butterfly, crying big salty tears that fell
     on your face. You seemed undisturbed by all of the commotion, and Bestepapa declared you, in a choking voice, ' A GOOD EGG.'
    Her mother cleared her throat.
    'Well, birthday girl.' She stroked Kitty's hair back from her eyes. 'You know the rest.'
    Having feasted on the rich tale of her existence, Kitty got ready for the spare banality of school. Ingrid and Elsie took
     her shopping in the afternoon, and there was a big birthday supper, whose menu she was allowed to dictate, like a miniature
     gourmand with an eye for excess.
    Her mother came back from one of her London trips flushed and dizzy. Kitty presumed she had met a man and took up her watchpost
     outside the sitting room.
    'Who is he?' asked Ingrid.
    'It's God. I've found God,' Marina said serenely.
    There was silence as her sisters waited for the punchline.
    'I always felt like something was missing. I've ached my entire life; except when I was pregnant.'
    This was news to Kitty. She wondered if a lifelong ache was like the flu. It sounded painful.
    'But I've found God and now I feel whole.'
    Elsie's giggle broke the spell.
    'That's classic! Woohoo, God! . . . You are joking?' she asked nervously.
    Kitty heard a match being struck, the measured drag of a cigarette.
    'No, Lillian Rhodes invited me to what I thought was a yoga class, this teacher they've all been banging on about, and I went
     in exercise clothes to this house in Victoria, and I was sort of dreading it, and I was meant to meet Lola and the Baron for
     dinner after at La Farniglia. When I walked in, incense was burning and there was a circle of people sitting at the feet of
     this, this, being. Everyone looked so happy and full of love. No one was judging anyone . . . I sat down and HE looked at
     me, a look of utter compassion. I felt like a boulder rolled aside and my heart opened when I sat at