Page 36 of The Life She Could Have Lived

YES

It took Anna a long time to come round and realise that her phone was ringing. By the time she was fully awake, Edward was sitting up, rubbing his eyes.

‘Answer it,’ he said.

She paused before doing so. Her mother had died a few weeks before but she was still terrified of phone calls that came in the middle of the night.

‘Hello?’

‘Anna.’ It was Nia. ‘I’m sorry to call you in the middle of the night. I’m…’

Her voice turned muffled and then disappeared, but Anna thought she heard a groan.

‘It’s okay, Nia. What’s happening? Is it the baby?’

Anna felt cold, suddenly. She pulled the duvet over her knees. She was sitting up and she knew Edward was looking at her, waiting to hear what it was. She did a quick calculation. Nia was seven months pregnant. Aidan was away with work.

‘It’s coming,’ Nia said. ‘The baby’s coming, and it’s too early and Aidan isn’t here. Will you come with me, Anna?’

‘Of course. I’ll come and get you. I’ll be there in five minutes.’

She was already up and out of bed.

‘The baby?’ Edward asked when she ended the call.

‘Yes.’

‘It will be okay,’ he said.

‘It might not. It’s too early.’ Anna pulled jeans out of a drawer, rummaged around for a top. ‘I can’t think straight. What do I need to take?’

Edward shook his head. ‘It all feels so long ago. She’ll have everything she needs. Just take some money for food and parking.’

‘Will you and the boys be all right? Will you get Sam to school? Make sure Thomas gets up in time?’

‘Yes, don’t worry about us. Go.’ He stood and kissed her on the forehead. ‘And give Nia my love. It will be okay, Anna. I know it.’

Nothing much had changed in the years since Anna had given birth.

She didn’t know what she’d expected. On the drive to the hospital, Nia had been almost silent.

She’d said she was just concentrating on getting through the contractions, but Anna could feel the fear coming off her in waves.

They’d got lucky, Nia and Aidan, conceiving within the space of a couple of months, and Nia had said all along that she didn’t trust it.

That she was waiting for something to go wrong.

But the twelve-week scan had gone without a hitch, and then the twenty-week one, and it had seemed like they were out of the woods. And now this.

When they’d arrived at the maternity unit of the same hospital where Anna had had her boys, a friendly midwife had bustled them in and examined Nia in a side room and found her to be in active labour.

Since then, it had been quite relaxed, with Nia puffing away on the gas and air and handling the contractions much better than Anna remembered handling them herself.

In between, she was classic Nia, telling stories and asking for snacks.

They’d been assigned a room and a midwife called Eleanor who’d mostly left them to their own devices.

‘How are you doing?’ Eleanor asked, putting her head around the door.

Nia smiled a little weakly. ‘I’m okay, thanks. Anna’s looking after me.’

‘Any word on your partner’s arrival?’

‘He’s on his way. He should be here in a couple of hours. He won’t miss it, will he?’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

‘Look…’ Nia said, and Anna could tell from the tone of her voice that she was about to say something she found difficult.

‘I know I’m really old to be a first-time mum, and the baby is coming too early, and I don’t know whether people are saying everything will be okay because they don’t want to tell me the truth, or… ’

Eleanor came to the side of the bed and put a hand on Nia’s shoulder.

‘I’ve delivered a lot of babies, Nia. We never know for sure how it’s going to go, what’s going to happen, that everyone is going to be all right.

We just do our best. And that’s what we’re going to do with you.

There’s a cot ready in special care, and the best obstetrician in this hospital is on duty, and I’m here. That’s the best we can do.’

Anna was so grateful for Eleanor. She tried to remember the midwives who had helped her through her labours, but she couldn’t.

It was so long ago. All she could remember was that it was the worst pain she’d ever known.

Eleanor had a calming presence, and Anna wondered whether it was that that had led her to this job, or whether the years in the job had taught her to be calm.

‘Okay,’ Nia said.

And then another contraction came, and Anna stepped forward to take Nia’s hand, and she felt utterly helpless as her friend writhed and moaned her way through it.

‘Tell me about your births,’ Nia said when it was over.

‘Didn’t I tell you at the time?’ Anna asked.

‘No, don’t you remember? I said I’d once googled the word episiotomy and the images had made my eyes water and I would thank you not to fill me in any further on the whole process.’

Anna laughed. ‘Oh yes, I remember now.’

‘What do you have?’ Eleanor asked. ‘How many?’

‘Two boys,’ Anna said, ‘twelve and nine. And you?’

‘I have one girl,’ Eleanor said. ‘She’s six next week.’ She turned to Nia. ‘Do you know what you’re having?’

Nia shook her head. ‘We wanted it to be a surprise, and now it’s decided to come two months early and when Aidan’s not around and I think that’s surprise enough.’

She put her head in her hands, and then another contraction came, and Anna remembered so clearly the feeling of hopelessness that had taken over her, both times, when she was birthing her sons.

‘I’m here,’ Anna said, ‘and I know it’s not the same, but let me assure you, one birthing partner is just as useless as another. It’s all down to you, I’m afraid. But if you need anything, I’m here.’

When Aidan turned up, in the early afternoon, Anna felt as if a weight had physically been lifted from her shoulders.

She was no longer responsible. She saw the relief in Nia’s eyes, too, and she saw the way Eleanor smiled.

All was as it should be. And it was then that Anna realised that Nia was part of a family now, and a little less part of her.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, or have winded her, especially since she had a family of her own at home, but it did, a little.

Aidan put his hand on Anna’s shoulder, after he’d kissed Nia. ‘Thanks for being here. I know it will have meant the world to her to have you with her.’

Anna shrugged. ‘It was nothing.’

It was what you did for a friend. Anna turned to Nia. ‘I’ll go home now, and wait for news.’ She reached for her friend’s hand. ‘You’re doing brilliantly.’

Nia smiled up at her and Anna knew that she wasn’t really there, not fully. She was exhausted and scared, and she would be until her baby arrived, and then for all the years afterwards. She was a mother.

Anna let herself into the house and stood in the kitchen, boiling the kettle. It felt so empty after the bustle of the hospital. She called Edward at work.

‘Hey. Did she have the baby already?’

‘No, but Aidan arrived so I came away.’

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Hard to say. It should be, I think.’

‘You sound shattered. Why don’t you lie down for a bit? You’ve got a couple of hours before school finishes.’

‘I think I will,’ she said.

She wanted to say something else, about how seeing Nia on the verge of becoming a mother had made her feel rootless, somehow.

How seeing Nia and Aidan acting as a team for this ultimate act of partnership had made her feel as if she’d floated far away from him, her own partner.

But she didn’t know how to say any of it, so she just said she would see him later and ended the call.

Edward had been right about her being exhausted, but once she was lying in bed with the curtains closed, she felt wide awake again.

She thought about Nia, wondered how she was getting on, whether it was close to being over yet.

It was strange to imagine Nia just entering this world she’d been a part of for more than a decade.

She thought back to her early days as a mother and mostly remembered crying and feeling like she was getting it all wrong.

She remembered Thomas thrashing in her arms, refusing to nap, refusing to feed.

The way she’d wondered whether it had been the right thing to do, whether she’d made a dreadful mistake. She hoped Nia wouldn’t feel like that.

And of course, those thoughts led her back to her own mother, as so often happened.

At her mother’s funeral, Edward had stood beside her with his hand on the small of her back, and she had hated herself for questioning her whole life, including her marriage to him, while he was trying to be there for her.

Her mum had led a lonely, closed-up sort of life, and now it was over, and only a handful of people had come to say their goodbyes.

Was her life so different? She hoped that her style of mothering was more generous and open.

She knew, at heart, that it was. But what about everything else?

Had she made much of a difference to anyone?

Had she done the things she desperately wanted to?

The things that scared her? She pictured Steve, that kiss they’d shared in the kitchen, how it had felt like coming home.

You couldn’t always live for the moment, could you?

Yes, she had been drawn to Steve and she had felt like perhaps she loved him, but she had built her life with Edward.

Wasn’t it the right thing – the responsible thing – to stay true to that?

When she thought of Steve, she couldn’t help but imagine the life the two of them might have lived together, if things had been different.

If she’d turned her back on her marriage and given it a go with him.

She would never know how it might have turned out.

Whether it would have been a dream or a nightmare.

She didn’t know Steve’s habits, his faults.

That was the way things were. You took the chance, or you didn’t. You went one way or another.

Anna’s phone beeped and there was a message from Aidan. ‘He’s here! Everyone’s doing well.’ There was a photo of Nia holding their baby, her face clear and her eyes bright. She looked tired but somehow transformed.

‘One big love,’ Anna whispered to herself, ‘and one baby.’