The Hand That First Held Mine Read Free Page A

breathing. A pipe somewhere in the house shudders, then falls silent. There is a slight scratching on the roof tiles above her, like the clawed foot of a bird.
     
    It must have been the baby who woke her, shifting its curled position inside her, stirring perhaps after a long sleep, a leg kicking out, a hand flailing against skin. It’s been happening a lot lately.
     
    Elina swivels her head to look around the darkened room. The furniture, crouching blackly in the corners, the blind over the window that glows with same dirty orange as the streetlights. Ted beside her, hunched under the duvet. Books are piled up on Ted’s bedside table, his mobile phone glows green in the gloom. On her bedside table there is a stack of something that looks in the dark like outsize handkerchiefs.
     
    There is another noise that comes from somewhere near Elina’s head, a sharp, sudden heh-heh sound, like someone clearing their throat.
     
    She starts to turn over in bed, towards Ted, but she is struck with a searing pain in her stomach, as if her skin is splitting, as if someone is holding a blowtorch against her. It makes her gasp and she puts down her hands to check, to reassure herself with the feel of the drum-tight skin, the swell of the baby. But there’s nothing there. Her hands encounter only space. No swollen bump. No baby. She clutches her stomach and feels deflated, loose skin.
     
    Elina struggles upright – the scald of that pain again – letting out a strange, hoarse scream, and seizes Ted by the shoulder. ‘Ted,’ she says.
     
    He groans, burying his face in the pillow.
     
    She shakes him. ‘Ted. Ted, the baby’s gone – it’s gone.’
     
    He springs from the bed and stands in the middle of the room, in just a pair of shorts, his hair spiked, his face stricken. Then his shoulders slump. ‘What are you talking about?’ he says. ‘He’s right there.’
     
    ‘Where?’
     
    He points again. ‘There. Look.’
     
    Elina looks. There is indeed something on the floor beside her. In the half-darkness, it appears to be a bed that a dog might sleep in, an oval basket. Except this one has handles and inside it something is swaddled in white. ‘Oh,’ she says. She reaches for the light switch, clicks it on and the room is immediately flooded with yellow brightness. ‘Oh,’ she says again. She looks down at the empty skin of her stomach, then at the baby. She turns to Ted, who has flopped down again on the bed, muttering about how she’d scared the shit out of him.
     
    ‘I had the baby?’ she says.
     
    Ted, caught in the act of plumping his pillow, stops. His face is uncertain, frightened. Don’t be frightened, she wants to say, it’s all right. But instead she says, ‘I had it?’ because she needs to establish this: she needs to ask, to vocalise it, to hear it asked.
     
    ‘Elina . . . you’re joking. Aren’t you?’ He lets out a nervous, low laugh. ‘Don’t, it’s not funny. Maybe you . . . Maybe you’ve been dreaming. You must have been dreaming. Why don’t you . . .’ Ted trails into silence. He puts a hand on her shoulder and for a minute he doesn’t seem to know what to say. He stares at her and she stares back. She allows the thought: There is a baby in the room with us. It’s here. She wants to turn around and look at it again but Ted is clasping her shoulder now and clearing his throat. ‘You had the baby,’ he says slowly. ‘It was . . . in hospital. Remember?’
     
    ‘When?’ she says. ‘When did I have it?’
     
    ‘Jesus, El, are you—’ He stops himself, rubs a hand over his face, then says, in a more level voice, ‘Four days ago. You had three days of labour and then . . . and then he came. You came out of hospital last night. You discharged yourself.’
     
    There is a pause. Elina thinks about what Ted has said. She lays out the facts with which he has provided her, side by side, in her head. Hospital, baby, discharged, three days of labour. She considers the idea of