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They stopped at a strip mall on the way and picked up sandwiches – ‘We’re eating sandwiches for dinner?’, ‘They’re called po’boys, darling, they’re very good, your father has gone a bit mad for the whole concept of frying an oyster’ – and then they were on their way to Gabby’s. Just as Ada had felt longing for her parents as she closed in on them, now she felt a retro anxiety at the idea of dealing with her sister.

A memory drifted in of watching Gabby circle her eyes with dark liner, getting ready to go out with friends when she was fifteen and Ada was twelve. She was usually thrown straight out of Gabby’s room but tonight was receiving the silent treatment instead which felt like a hug. Ada asked, ‘Gabby, do you have a boyfriend?’ and Gabby said, ‘None of your fucking business,’ then stopped circling her eyes and said, ‘Why, do you?’ And Ada had felt like they were starting a real conversation so she had said, ‘I think so? A boy called Peter catches the same train as me and he asked his friend to ask me to be his girlfriend and I said OK but only if he asked me himself and so I think on Monday he’s going to ask me.’ And Gabby looked at her, really appraised her then, and said, ‘Well. Good for you.’ She turned back to the mirror and said, ‘Can you get the fuck out of my room?’ and Ada did.

They parked on the curb outside a two-storey pale yellow house with a neat lawn and a flag pole though, Ada noticed, there was no flag on it. Her parents hopped out and hurried to the door, her mother holding a magnum of pale pink wine (she said that’s how they sell them here and her father said they sell regular bottles too and her mother pretended not to hear him), her dad with the takeaway bag banging against his legs. Ada followed them and hung behind them when they rang the bell.

Hank answered the door and Ada’s first impression was that rarely had photos so well captured a person. He was exactly as she had imagined him, his angles as predicted, the size and weight of him oddly familiar for a stranger. He hugged both her parents then said, ‘Ada, I assume!’ and squeezed her lightly and she suppressed a strange urge to touch his biceps. He led her into a cosy living area, still mostly lit by the setting sun outside, and in the centre of a sagging dark green sofa was her sister and a baby.

Gabby was breastfeeding and looked at Ada and said, ‘Get over here! I can’t get up,’ and Ada walked to this person who seemed less known to her than Hank. Ada had always thought of herself as the softened version of Gabby. Round-cheeked where Gabby was angular, both with dark hair but Gabby choosing a heavy fringe. Privately Ada thought Gabby should have been the actor because while Ada was prettier and people loved to look at her, Gabby had A Look. Her bones made themselves known while Ada’s were undercover.

The woman feeding the baby had hair lighter than Ada’s and Ada realised it was the colour hers used to go in the Australian summer while Gabby stayed indoors. Her body was soft at the edges and her smile creased around her eyes. Ada felt they had never looked more similar, although Gabby was somehow more Ada than Ada – she had taken her freckles and sprinkled them on her own cheeks. It took growing and birthing a baby for Gabby to acquire the body that Ada had gained as a teenager and she seemed to wear it so naturally. Ada sat next to her and didn’t know how to hug her without disturbing the baby so she leaned her head on Gabby’s shoulder and Gabby said, ‘This is Orion.’

Ada looked down at the child’s closed eyes and dark sticky hair with scatterings of dry skin underneath and realised that she had never been this close to a newborn before. Orion didn’t look like a baby exactly, had none of the pudgy healthfulness that she was used to. He wasn’t a toddler with a running nose or a five-year-old kicking a ball or a nine-year-old with earnest questions or a teenager slamming a door or her sister sitting beside her. He was papery skin and legs like a frog sticking out from his polka-dot onesie. It was like someone had dressed an alien and tried to pass it off as a human. She felt something stir inside her that she recognised as love but she couldn’t make sense of it. She didn’t even recognise him and he wasn’t hers. He was still attached to her sister and she realised she had been looking at a breast for quite some time but Gabby didn’t seem concerned by it.

‘He’s beautiful,’ she said and Gabby said, ‘I think he’s pretty weird-looking, but you know, they all are,’ and then, ‘He reminds me of you when you were born. You had all this hair too,’ and Ada realised she had never, not one time, thought about Gabby meeting her when she was this small.

‘How’s the whole … boob thing?’ and Gabby shifted a little so Ada sat back up and Gabby said, ‘It really fucking hurts.’

And from the other side of the room Diana said, ‘Yes darling, I’m sorry, I’d forgotten how it hurts at the start. I promise it feels totally normal after a while,’ and Gabby said to Ada, ‘The cheer squad over there didn’t mention the bleeding nipples,’ and Ada felt she was in the TV version of her own family. She whistled and said in a faux southern drawl, ‘Introducing Florida’s most distressing punk group, the Bleeding Nipples!’ and Gabby laughed a little but not enough for Ada to keep the bit going.

Hank came out of the kitchen then with a big water bottle with a straw in it and some apple slices and Ada watched as he knelt in front of Gabby and held the bottle for her to drink. He then took one piece of apple and placed it gently in her mouth and she gave him the thumbs up and he took his place on the other side of the room. Gabby chewed and swallowed and said, ‘It’s all very dignified as you can see,’ and Hank said, ‘She’s doing so amazing,’ and he sounded like he might cry and Ada did not see what she contributed to this place.

Hank asked her questions about her flight and she remembered to thank him for booking it but he waved her off. And as Gabby switched Orion to her other breast – leaving the first one hanging out for something like a minute until she reclipped the bra, which no one reacted to at all – Hank asked her thoughtful questions about where she lived and the show she had done in Edinburgh. He told her he had been on several business trips to London but had always stayed close to the Shard which he understood wasn’t real London and maybe when Orion was a little older they could come to visit. ‘I’d love to eat somewhere that isn’t Soho and with someone who wasn’t my boss!’ and she laughed politely as she tried to imagine Hank catching a show at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club then crossing the street for a curry.

Orion finished feeding – he simply took his mouth off and everyone accepted that he was done but how did he know? How did any of them? – and Gabby said, ‘Would you like to hold him?’ Ada held out her arms as this fragile bumpy creature was laid in them and Gabby said, ‘This is your Aunty Ada.’ The child blinked and looked at nothing in particular, closed his eyes, rolled a tiny fist in and out. Ada felt a vibration in his stomach and said, ‘I think I can … feel him digesting? Is that crazy?’ and her mother said, ‘No, you probably can. They’re just guts at this point,’ and Gabby said, ‘The miracle of life. Turns out it’s mostly shit.’ But she was looking at Ada holding her baby like it was a miracle and for the first time Ada considered whether Gabby was the one who planned this trip after all.

When she got home that night she messaged Mel a photo of her with Orion and then sent it to Stuart. He asked her what it was like meeting the baby and she didn’t know how to answer him and she was so tired so she just said, ‘It was a lot.’ She climbed into bed and realised it had been weeks since she’d slept alone, she spread herself sideways and felt relief. She asked Stuart about his day and he told her about some sort of shift-swapping drama at the cafe and she fell asleep before she could reply.

TWENTY-SIX

25/09/2017

Stuart Parkes

20:45

How was Camp Baby today?

•••

Stuart Parkes

21:27