Bad Blood. Julie Shaw

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      Christine privately agreed. Josie was tiny. There was nothing of her. And though Christine had never dared to ask, she imagined that was why her friend’s nickname had always been Titch. And there she was, like a whale, a great lumbering whale. And with the shakes now. She felt woozy and unsteady on her feet.

      ‘Me?’ Imran said again. Then he shook his head firmly. ‘Sorry, love, but I can’t be doing that. S’pose someone sees me? They’ll probably think I’m the fucking father!’

      ‘You wish,’ Josie replied in disgust. ‘Mate, she doesn’t go near your type.’

      ‘Mate,’ Imran parroted. ‘I don’t go near hers. No offence, love,’ he added, as he came round to the kerbside. He grinned and his fabled gold teeth both winked at her in the sunshine. ‘Come on,’ he coaxed. ‘Let’s be having you before the little bleeder plops out in the road.’

      Christine cringed with shame and embarrassment as the two of them dragged her none too gently from the parking bay to the maternity-ward entrance, the words ‘your type’ going round and round her head. She loved Josie – couldn’t manage without her, truth be told – but she wished she would shut up for once, because what she was saying to Imran was really too close to the bone.

      Up until now, she had kept the paternity of her unborn child a secret. Told anyone who asked to mind their own business. But the time had come now. She’d be keeping her guilty secret no longer. In a couple of hours – probably less, given how her insides were feeling – everyone would know who the father of her baby was. Or they’d make an educated guess. And they’d be right.

      The Maternity Department at St Luke’s sat at the furthest end of the huge sprawl of hospital buildings, and seeing the familiar entrance calmed Christine a little. A place she’d never once so much as glimpsed before the nightmare had happened, it had become something of a sanctuary for her over the past few months – a safe place where no one ever questioned her or judged her. A place where they didn’t care about the whos and whys and wherefores of her pregnancy – where they simply took care of her, were kind to her, were concerned about her well-being. Was she sleeping? Was the baby kicking? Was she taking her vitamins? Was she exercising enough? Was she eating the right foods?

      It was a place she’d mostly visited alone, too, and that was fine by her. Though Josie had come with her on her first visit, when she was feeling so ashamed and scared, she’d since been happy to trot down to her antenatal appointments on her own – even had her mam offered to go, which, unsurprisingly, she hadn’t. She had about as much interest in Christine’s pregnancy as she had about Christine herself – which meant precious little, just like always. Christine hadn’t minded. She didn’t exactly want her mam involved. This was her kid, her future, and she vowed, over and over, that she was going to do things differently. Do it better. Do right by the child growing inside her. Be not at all like her own mam.

      So she’d been happy to sit there with all the other expectant mothers – much preferred it, even. Here she was just one among many other waddling women, all chattering away, in the bright, busy waiting room; like a warm enveloping hug telling her everything would be okay. That girls just like her became mothers all the time. That it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

      But now it felt like it, and Christine was horrified to hear that Josie wasn’t allowed to come in with her now. ‘Sorry, lovey,’ the nurse at the admission desk told them. ‘Your friends will have to wait out here. We need to whisk you off for an examination. See how baby’s doing, see how far you are along.’

      Imran pulled a face, and let go of her as if jolted by a sudden electric shock. He was only lingering, Christine knew, because he was still waiting for his fare.

      ‘Don’t you worry, mate,’ Josie reassured her, pulling a purse out from her handbag. ‘You’re in safe hands now, and I’ll go and track your mam down, okay? Get her down here to look after you.’ Though both of them knew there was a good chance, what with her mam currently being at the bingo, that she wouldn’t get there in time even if she wanted to. Which, despite Josie’s constant attempts to change things, Christine was pretty sure she wouldn’t. Josie meant well, but she didn’t get it – they just weren’t like her and her mam.

      So she tried to stay calm, knowing Josie was right. She was in safe hands, and now she was here, they’d take charge of things. Indeed, were already doing, because almost immediately Josie had left with Imran, a second nurse, after some consultation with a big whiteboard behind the first nurse, seemed to scoop her up almost – it felt as if she was being propelled along the corridor – and into an empty consulting room just off the waiting room, at the very point when the next contraction hit her.

      The nurse helped her up onto the big trolley bed and, once again, being examined – as she had been, so many times, some on this very table – Christine was stunned by the intensity of the pain.

      ‘No wonder you’re pushing, love,’ the nurse said, peeling latex gloves from her fingers. ‘You’re eight centimetres! This little one of yours is obviously anxious to be born!’ Then she popped her head around the consulting-room door and yelled, ‘Someone fetch me a wheelchair!’, and within moments it seemed everyone was panicking.

      This was it, Christine thought, as everyone hurried and fussed around her. All these months of wondering what labour would be like. She was frightened, but at the same time there was nothing she could do to stop it and all she could do was surrender herself to the inevitability. Only one thing was certain, or would be, she reckoned. That, good or bad, nothing in her life was ever going to be the same again.

      The maternity wards were up on the second floor of the unit, and Christine was taken up in the wide hospital lift, which smelled of disinfectant and creaked as they rose. Only the week previously, a group of mums who had similar due dates had been shown around one of the wards, which, with its bright bays, patterned curtains and crisply made beds, had seemed a place in which nothing bad could happen. Though it had the same clinical smell everywhere else in the unit seemed to, it had a cheerfulness about it; a sense of homeliness, even. And there’d been a lull in labours – only one bed had been occupied, and the woman had been sleeping – and Christine had felt an unexpected surge of confidence. With the sun streaming in and the sense of calm and order, she could almost believe that whatever rows she had coming from her mam, it would, in the end, all be okay.

      She was wheeled along the corridor, groaning now, almost growling – she couldn’t seem to stop the embarrassing animal noise coming out of her – right past the wards to one of the delivery suites. Here there was no such sense of calm. There was no way of dressing it up. It was a room with one purpose – one all too evident from the huge cylinders of oxygen strapped to the far wall, evident from the scales and instruments, from the functional Perspex cot and, worst of all, from the leather foot straps that hung from the ceiling and swayed above the bed.

      ‘Here we go, love. Let’s get your things off,’ the midwife commanded. Her name was Sister Rawson, and Christine was relieved to see her – even if a little earlier than expected. She’d last seen her only on Monday, and wasn’t due to see her again till next week, because she was still a good ten days from her due date.

      Sister Rawson was middle-aged and hefty. Her uniform strained across her huge bosom and she had chubby pink hands; hands that held Christine firmly as she helped her out of her hateful borrowed smock, and into a crackling hospital gown that did up with tapes down the back. ‘Anyone coming? Baby’s dad?’ She held a monitor in her hand now. ‘No, it’ll be your mam coming, won’t it?’ she said as she began to strap the monitor around Christine’s belly. ‘She knows you’re here, does she?’ she asked conversationally.

      Christine СКАЧАТЬ