Fic: Baby Dear
Baby Dear
By minnow_53
Disclaimer: Lily, James et al belong to JK Rowling.
Pairing: Lily/Baby, Lily/James
Summary: Lily finds that looking after a baby can be hard work.
Genre: AU
Rating:PG
Now crossposted to hp_whatif and genfic_hogwarts.
Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the everywhere into the here.
George Macdonald
Baby Dear
Babies really were bloody difficult.
First, there was the drama with the mashed banana. Babies loved mashed banana, yes, they did. Dudley, Petunia always boasted, could eat two mashed bananas and still cry for more, though Lily thought that was downright greedy.
Well, her boy was that bit younger than Dudley, and a lot more abstemious. She held him on her knee, supported in the crook of one arm, while she tried to feed him with the other. But he shut his mouth tight when the plastic spoon appeared, sailing through the air like a spaceship, like a plane, like a streaking comet.
‘Who likes his yummy dinner, then? Who wants to grow big and strong?’ Lily held the spoon to his lips again, but he turned away disdainfully. When he did finally open his mouth, it was simply to emit a series of loud screams. He flailed out at the dish, knocking it to the floor and splashing banana puree over her best skirt.
Fuck.
Lily made herself smile, and bounced him on her knee a few times. He cried louder. She got up and paced from one end of the sitting room to the other, the howling bundle held tight against her chest.
‘Come on, sweetheart! Please don’t cry. ’ She sang, ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star,’ with no discernable effect.
‘I think somebody needs a good, long sleep!’
She laid him in his blue carrycot, and the howling, if anything, just got louder.
Perhaps he was cold. The January morning was crisp and clear and the radiators were on, but babies did have different needs. She covered him with his blanket. He kicked it off, momentarily distracted, then started to howl again.
‘Oh, no!’ Lily went upstairs to the bathroom and grabbed a towel, one of the white guest towels that guests didn’t dare use because they looked so clean and new. She spread it on the sitting room floor and retrieved her baby, singing ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ again. He didn’t seem impressed, though he stopped crying for a moment, gazing up at her with big, clear eyes, before scrunching them up again, opening his mouth and letting forth more cries.
Lily unpeeled his fuzzy all-in-one yellow suit. His nappy was drenched. His nappy. Nappies.
‘Shit.’
‘Well, not shit,’ she corrected herself, laughing a bit. ‘Come on, baby! Isn’t Mummy funny? We’ve got to go to the supermarket.’
She buttoned him into his suit again and put him back in the carrycot. ‘It’s a lovely ride in the car for you, young man! Won’t you love it? Won’t you? Won’t you?’
She put the carrycot in the back seat and secured it as best she could with a seatbelt. Dudley had a car seat, of course. Actually, he had two car seats, one fixed permanently in the back of the Dursleys’ Rover and one that could be detached and carried.
All too aware of the precious bundle behind her, Lily set off at a crawl to Sainsbury’s, braking whenever the speedometer crept past twenty. A couple of cars tooted as they overtook her, and Lily tooted back, annoyed. She really should have one of those Baby On Board stickers! She was so flustered that it took her a few minutes to notice that the crying had stopped.
Oh, my God, he’s dead. He’s dead. The carrycot got jolted and I’ve killed him!
She put her foot down on the accelerator and sped the rest of the way to the supermarket, not letting up until she was safely in a parking space. Her heart was beating so hard that she could actually hear it. And, now the car was stopped, she could also hear her baby again. Crying. Not howling this time. A plaintive, fretful wailing that set her teeth on edge, and made her want to sit down and wail too.
But she couldn’t. She undid the seatbelt and plonked the carrycot directly into a trolley, weaving her way skilfully to the Babycare aisle. Nappies. Sweet lord, how did you choose a nappy round here? Pampers, that was it. Pampers were good. And nappy sacks were good too, and baby soap and talc. Might as well stock up for the long haul. She also caved in and got a tin of formula and a couple of bottles. If he wouldn’t eat his banana, she had no choice but to regress to bottles, though really he should be weaned by now. Dudley was weaned at three months, but Lily privately thought Petunia had started far too early. He was already decidedly chubby. She didn’t want her boy to be chubby.
She queued at the checkout where, unfortunately, the salesgirl knew her, and a look of faint surprise crossed her face, before she said politely, ‘Hello, Mrs Potter!’
Lily said ‘Hello,’ as coldly as she could without sounding downright rude, to discourage any further conversation. She busied herself packing bags, not meeting the cashier’s eye, and paid by card, to avoid the interplay of change-getting with its inevitable chitchat.
Back home, Lily found the postman had been, bringing two bills and a letter from the hospital. She put the letter carefully on the dining table, where James would see it as soon as he got in. She didn’t want to open it right now. And anyway, she had more important things to do: a soaking wet nappy to change, a bottle to prepare, a baby to cuddle. Dry, full of milk and exhausted by his earlier tantrums, he fell asleep almost as soon as he’d finished. Lily was worried that she hadn’t even had time to burp him. What if he threw up in his sleep and choked? What if he choked anyway? She hovered uncertainly beside the carrycot, not liking to leave him, even to make a cup of tea.
Her boy. Her baby. He was sleeping on his back - oh, God, that was bad, wasn’t it? Or was it good? - with his tiny fists clenched, his mouth a plump rosebud, his long eyelashes still wet with tears. Lily’s heart filled with such emotion that she actually groaned out loud. She wanted to pick him up and hug him, hold him close and never let him go.
Petunia often said, ‘They’re most adorable when they’re asleep’, and though Lily didn’t always see eye to eye with Petunia, she had to agree. Funny how her stress and annoyance at his mammoth screaming session had completely evaporated, and all she could feel was this frightening, overwhelming love.
Eventually, Lily managed to tear herself away. She got up and made herself a ham sandwich, going back from time to time to check that everything was all right, then sat on the sofa with the carrycot at her feet, watching him sleep. The house had never felt so quiet, and Lily was so tired that she could hardly keep her eyes open.
She was woken by a motorbike revving in the street outside: the baby was woken too, and looked round startled, flailing with his arms. Lily yelled, ‘Shut up!’ at the bike, and took the baby in his cot to the kitchen, where she prepared another bottle. ‘Are you ready for a feed, my darling? Look, lovely milk. No horrid banana.’
He gulped it down hungrily, then burped of his own accord and started to cry again.
Lily sniffed and furrowed her brow. Damn. ‘I think you need a clean nappy, sweetheart. Come on, let’s get you changed.’
It took her a good ten minutes to get the baby cleaned up, and another five to wash herself afterwards. When she’d got the last vestiges of anything remotely resembling baby poo off her hands, she took him on her knee and looked at him a bit helplessly, not quite sure what to do next. It was still only two o’clock: a whole three and half hours until James got home. Perhaps they could go out for a while, stroll down to the local shops, and Lily could buy a couple more babygros.
But he gave a surprised little whimper and then sneezed, and sneezed again. Oh, God, he’d got a cold! Or maybe he’d got pleurisy, or even pneumonia. Lily wiped his nose with a tissue, her hand shaking. Well, a walk was out of the question then. You couldn’t expose a baby with a cold to a winter afternoon. And anyway he’d already been out in the car.
While she was racking her brains, he sucked his fingers and then gazed up at her thoughtfully, wistfully even, as if to say, ‘Can I have a little play now? ’ Lily had to laugh at the look on his face, and she hugged him, and kissed the top of his head and cooed, ‘Course you can play, course you can, course you can.’
Dudley had a playpen full of soft toys and squashy bricks that Petunia swore he could actually build with: ‘But then, my Dudders is exceptional.’ Dudley had a bouncing chair, though Petunia confided that he didn’t really like it much. He preferred to lie on his mat, a proper changing-mat with stars on it, not a white guest towel that had now been consigned to the washing machine, together with Lily’s best skirt. Dudley had a string of rattling clowns across his cot, which he batted with his fat hands. Petunia even read to him, Peter Rabbit and Thomas the Tank Engine, though surely seven months was a bit early to understand them, even for an ostensible genius.
Her boy also had a rattle, which had fallen into his carrycot, a blue rattle shaped like a rabbit, or should one say bunny? Lily fished it out from under his blanket and he reached for it eagerly, clutching it with a big, gummy smile, before putting it in his mouth and chewing it. Lily hoped he wasn’t teething. But no, she wasn’t even going to worry about that. Teething was perfectly natural. She placed him on the blanket on the floor so he had some room to move. With any luck, he’d tire himself out a bit.
He made a sound like a chortle that melted her heart, then lay there quite happily, kicking his little legs, rolling over off his blanket from time to time so she had to put him back. After a while, she started to suspect he was doing it on purpose: and he began to grizzle and whimper when she ignored him, so she propped him up beside her on the sofa with a couple of cushions. Her eyes felt heavy again in spite of her nap; she had never known a day go so slowly. Nevertheless, she forced herself to get up and switch on the television, flicking through the channels until she found a children’s programme. He sat on her lap as they watched Teletubbies and Postman Pat and a cartoon that seemed to be about sheep in space. She would have sworn he was taking in every word and action, even babbling ‘Baba ba’ when Tinky Winky pranced across the screen.
At five, the programme ended. It was starting to get dark, and Lily felt justified in saying, ‘I think it’s nearly bedtime, precious.‘ When he stared at her reproachfully, she added, ‘I want to take you up before Daddy comes home. You know he likes a bit of quiet time to unwind.’ She prepared yet another bottle - was he drinking too much? - then changed his wet nappy. Heaving a sigh of relief, she laid him back in the carrycot and took it upstairs to the nursery, where she put it down gently on the floor by the window. The nursery wasn’t quite finished yet - honestly, James was so slow with that lick of paint! - and she looked at it critically. There was meant to be a stencilled chest, and a mobile hanging from the ceiling, and a Disney frieze, but again, somehow neither she nor James had got round to them yet.
‘Shhh. Sleepy time now. Be a good boy, darling. Not a sound, okay?’
She did make the room look as nice as she could, stacking the nappies in a corner, and putting the rest of the new baby paraphernalia into a drawer. Tomorrow, she’d put a square of carpet down for the carry-cot, so it wasn’t lying on bare boards. Not that he seemed to mind. He gazed at her placidly, and she could have sworn he gave a little smile. And at least he’d have a night light: she didn’t want her baby to lie alone in the dark. It wasn’t a fancy nightlight like Dudley’s, just an old bedside lamp that James had taken against for some reason, but it shed a cosy glow over the little room.
He really should have a bedtime story like Dudley did, but she had no idea what to read. She mentally ran through the contents of their bookshelves. James liked anything about sport, and she went for biographies. She was currently struggling through a manual on interpersonal skills, required reading for work. Better leave it for today.
Lily was just about to go downstairs when she had a sudden vision of him rolling over in his carrycot, upsetting it, hitting his vulnerable, downy head on the floor. She pinched herself hard to dissipate the image then placed two old sofa cushions on either side of him.
He wasn’t asleep yet, but he was lying placidly enough, gazing up at her with those wide eyes. She squatted down to watch him for a while, singing ‘Bye Baby Bunting’ under her breath.
The front door banged, and Lily jumped up, literally jumped, adrenalin pumping round her body. ‘Now shush!’ she abjured her baby, putting a finger to her mouth. ‘I’ll be back up later.’
Downstairs, James was reaching for the television remote. He jumped in his turn when Lily came up behind him and put her arms round his waist.
‘Hey! You’re back early, Lily. Isn’t the big meeting this afternoon?’
‘It was cancelled. And I had a headache, so I thought I’d just go home. ‘
James put on Sky news. ‘Guess what? There’s a camera crew outside the station. Some poor woman had her baby snatched at the ticket office this morning. ‘
‘Oh, how awful!’ Lily said. ‘What happened?’
On the television, a woman was weeping, obviously making an appeal. James turned the sound up. ‘Please,’ the woman wept, ‘please, if you have my baby, please don’t hurt him. ’
‘I suppose she put him down while she was getting her ticket,’ Lily said, tight-lipped. ‘Stupid cow!’ She felt quite irrationally angry: why, she’d never leave her darling unattended for even a second in a public place.
‘Now, don’t upset yourself,’ James said, looking a bit alarmed. He switched the television off again.
Lily sat staring at the blank screen for a few minutes, while he went to the kitchen to make a pot of tea, returning with a cup for each of them. Lily put hers on the table, and her eye fell on the letter from the hospital. She handed it to James.
‘What’s this? What do they say?’
‘I didn’t dare open it.’
‘I’m sure everything’ll be fine.’ James unfolded it, and read, ‘Dear Mr and Mrs Potter, I am glad to tell you that you have been accepted for our IVF programme - ‘
Lily squealed like a young girl. ‘Really? Let me see.’ She devoured the letter, her eyes shining, then put her arms round James and hugged him. ‘Oh, God. I don’t know if I’m scared or excited. ’
‘Excited,’ James said. ‘It’ll be great having a kid.’
‘It’s all very well for you to be excited,’ Lily said. ‘You get the dirty magazines and the test tube. I get the needles and a lot of prodding. ’
‘Well, it’ll be worth it, won’t it?’ James said. ‘I’ve been worried about you. And I know it’s been even harder for you since Dudley was born.’
Talking of Dudley, Lily thought she’d better excuse herself and nip upstairs to check on her own boy. It was now fully dark outside, and she decided that she must buy curtains tomorrow, plain blue, or perhaps yellow, maybe with a pattern of ducks. She didn’t like the thought that anyone passing by would be able to see the nightlight shining through the window. Still, she was pleased to find that her angel was sleeping peacefully, his tiny hands still clutching the bunny rattle, a thin film of milk on his lips. Rather belatedly, she realised that he should have had a bath, of course, with all that baby soap and talcum powder she’d bought earlier on. Never mind. He’d have a bath tomorrow.
She put her ears to his lips to make sure he was breathing, prodded him just a tiny bit to see his reflexive jerk, then whispered, ‘Goodnight, darling’ and went back down.
James was opening a bottle of wine. ‘We must have a drink to celebrate,’ he said, then, all concern, ‘I should have asked. How’s your headache?’
‘Oh, it’s gone now.’
She was suddenly worried that she might have woken her boy when she prodded him, though there was no sound from upstairs. She imagined, for a terrified minute, that she could hear him crying, and the scene unfurled in her head: James’s ‘What the hell?’; the police pounding on the door; the press camped outside the house; the tears and recriminations...
But all was quiet for now. She raised her glass and clinked it against James’s, toasting babies past, and babies present, and babies yet to be.
End
By minnow_53
Disclaimer: Lily, James et al belong to JK Rowling.
Pairing: Lily/Baby, Lily/James
Summary: Lily finds that looking after a baby can be hard work.
Genre: AU
Rating:PG
Now crossposted to hp_whatif and genfic_hogwarts.
Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the everywhere into the here.
George Macdonald
Baby Dear
Babies really were bloody difficult.
First, there was the drama with the mashed banana. Babies loved mashed banana, yes, they did. Dudley, Petunia always boasted, could eat two mashed bananas and still cry for more, though Lily thought that was downright greedy.
Well, her boy was that bit younger than Dudley, and a lot more abstemious. She held him on her knee, supported in the crook of one arm, while she tried to feed him with the other. But he shut his mouth tight when the plastic spoon appeared, sailing through the air like a spaceship, like a plane, like a streaking comet.
‘Who likes his yummy dinner, then? Who wants to grow big and strong?’ Lily held the spoon to his lips again, but he turned away disdainfully. When he did finally open his mouth, it was simply to emit a series of loud screams. He flailed out at the dish, knocking it to the floor and splashing banana puree over her best skirt.
Fuck.
Lily made herself smile, and bounced him on her knee a few times. He cried louder. She got up and paced from one end of the sitting room to the other, the howling bundle held tight against her chest.
‘Come on, sweetheart! Please don’t cry. ’ She sang, ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star,’ with no discernable effect.
‘I think somebody needs a good, long sleep!’
She laid him in his blue carrycot, and the howling, if anything, just got louder.
Perhaps he was cold. The January morning was crisp and clear and the radiators were on, but babies did have different needs. She covered him with his blanket. He kicked it off, momentarily distracted, then started to howl again.
‘Oh, no!’ Lily went upstairs to the bathroom and grabbed a towel, one of the white guest towels that guests didn’t dare use because they looked so clean and new. She spread it on the sitting room floor and retrieved her baby, singing ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ again. He didn’t seem impressed, though he stopped crying for a moment, gazing up at her with big, clear eyes, before scrunching them up again, opening his mouth and letting forth more cries.
Lily unpeeled his fuzzy all-in-one yellow suit. His nappy was drenched. His nappy. Nappies.
‘Shit.’
‘Well, not shit,’ she corrected herself, laughing a bit. ‘Come on, baby! Isn’t Mummy funny? We’ve got to go to the supermarket.’
She buttoned him into his suit again and put him back in the carrycot. ‘It’s a lovely ride in the car for you, young man! Won’t you love it? Won’t you? Won’t you?’
She put the carrycot in the back seat and secured it as best she could with a seatbelt. Dudley had a car seat, of course. Actually, he had two car seats, one fixed permanently in the back of the Dursleys’ Rover and one that could be detached and carried.
All too aware of the precious bundle behind her, Lily set off at a crawl to Sainsbury’s, braking whenever the speedometer crept past twenty. A couple of cars tooted as they overtook her, and Lily tooted back, annoyed. She really should have one of those Baby On Board stickers! She was so flustered that it took her a few minutes to notice that the crying had stopped.
Oh, my God, he’s dead. He’s dead. The carrycot got jolted and I’ve killed him!
She put her foot down on the accelerator and sped the rest of the way to the supermarket, not letting up until she was safely in a parking space. Her heart was beating so hard that she could actually hear it. And, now the car was stopped, she could also hear her baby again. Crying. Not howling this time. A plaintive, fretful wailing that set her teeth on edge, and made her want to sit down and wail too.
But she couldn’t. She undid the seatbelt and plonked the carrycot directly into a trolley, weaving her way skilfully to the Babycare aisle. Nappies. Sweet lord, how did you choose a nappy round here? Pampers, that was it. Pampers were good. And nappy sacks were good too, and baby soap and talc. Might as well stock up for the long haul. She also caved in and got a tin of formula and a couple of bottles. If he wouldn’t eat his banana, she had no choice but to regress to bottles, though really he should be weaned by now. Dudley was weaned at three months, but Lily privately thought Petunia had started far too early. He was already decidedly chubby. She didn’t want her boy to be chubby.
She queued at the checkout where, unfortunately, the salesgirl knew her, and a look of faint surprise crossed her face, before she said politely, ‘Hello, Mrs Potter!’
Lily said ‘Hello,’ as coldly as she could without sounding downright rude, to discourage any further conversation. She busied herself packing bags, not meeting the cashier’s eye, and paid by card, to avoid the interplay of change-getting with its inevitable chitchat.
Back home, Lily found the postman had been, bringing two bills and a letter from the hospital. She put the letter carefully on the dining table, where James would see it as soon as he got in. She didn’t want to open it right now. And anyway, she had more important things to do: a soaking wet nappy to change, a bottle to prepare, a baby to cuddle. Dry, full of milk and exhausted by his earlier tantrums, he fell asleep almost as soon as he’d finished. Lily was worried that she hadn’t even had time to burp him. What if he threw up in his sleep and choked? What if he choked anyway? She hovered uncertainly beside the carrycot, not liking to leave him, even to make a cup of tea.
Her boy. Her baby. He was sleeping on his back - oh, God, that was bad, wasn’t it? Or was it good? - with his tiny fists clenched, his mouth a plump rosebud, his long eyelashes still wet with tears. Lily’s heart filled with such emotion that she actually groaned out loud. She wanted to pick him up and hug him, hold him close and never let him go.
Petunia often said, ‘They’re most adorable when they’re asleep’, and though Lily didn’t always see eye to eye with Petunia, she had to agree. Funny how her stress and annoyance at his mammoth screaming session had completely evaporated, and all she could feel was this frightening, overwhelming love.
Eventually, Lily managed to tear herself away. She got up and made herself a ham sandwich, going back from time to time to check that everything was all right, then sat on the sofa with the carrycot at her feet, watching him sleep. The house had never felt so quiet, and Lily was so tired that she could hardly keep her eyes open.
She was woken by a motorbike revving in the street outside: the baby was woken too, and looked round startled, flailing with his arms. Lily yelled, ‘Shut up!’ at the bike, and took the baby in his cot to the kitchen, where she prepared another bottle. ‘Are you ready for a feed, my darling? Look, lovely milk. No horrid banana.’
He gulped it down hungrily, then burped of his own accord and started to cry again.
Lily sniffed and furrowed her brow. Damn. ‘I think you need a clean nappy, sweetheart. Come on, let’s get you changed.’
It took her a good ten minutes to get the baby cleaned up, and another five to wash herself afterwards. When she’d got the last vestiges of anything remotely resembling baby poo off her hands, she took him on her knee and looked at him a bit helplessly, not quite sure what to do next. It was still only two o’clock: a whole three and half hours until James got home. Perhaps they could go out for a while, stroll down to the local shops, and Lily could buy a couple more babygros.
But he gave a surprised little whimper and then sneezed, and sneezed again. Oh, God, he’d got a cold! Or maybe he’d got pleurisy, or even pneumonia. Lily wiped his nose with a tissue, her hand shaking. Well, a walk was out of the question then. You couldn’t expose a baby with a cold to a winter afternoon. And anyway he’d already been out in the car.
While she was racking her brains, he sucked his fingers and then gazed up at her thoughtfully, wistfully even, as if to say, ‘Can I have a little play now? ’ Lily had to laugh at the look on his face, and she hugged him, and kissed the top of his head and cooed, ‘Course you can play, course you can, course you can.’
Dudley had a playpen full of soft toys and squashy bricks that Petunia swore he could actually build with: ‘But then, my Dudders is exceptional.’ Dudley had a bouncing chair, though Petunia confided that he didn’t really like it much. He preferred to lie on his mat, a proper changing-mat with stars on it, not a white guest towel that had now been consigned to the washing machine, together with Lily’s best skirt. Dudley had a string of rattling clowns across his cot, which he batted with his fat hands. Petunia even read to him, Peter Rabbit and Thomas the Tank Engine, though surely seven months was a bit early to understand them, even for an ostensible genius.
Her boy also had a rattle, which had fallen into his carrycot, a blue rattle shaped like a rabbit, or should one say bunny? Lily fished it out from under his blanket and he reached for it eagerly, clutching it with a big, gummy smile, before putting it in his mouth and chewing it. Lily hoped he wasn’t teething. But no, she wasn’t even going to worry about that. Teething was perfectly natural. She placed him on the blanket on the floor so he had some room to move. With any luck, he’d tire himself out a bit.
He made a sound like a chortle that melted her heart, then lay there quite happily, kicking his little legs, rolling over off his blanket from time to time so she had to put him back. After a while, she started to suspect he was doing it on purpose: and he began to grizzle and whimper when she ignored him, so she propped him up beside her on the sofa with a couple of cushions. Her eyes felt heavy again in spite of her nap; she had never known a day go so slowly. Nevertheless, she forced herself to get up and switch on the television, flicking through the channels until she found a children’s programme. He sat on her lap as they watched Teletubbies and Postman Pat and a cartoon that seemed to be about sheep in space. She would have sworn he was taking in every word and action, even babbling ‘Baba ba’ when Tinky Winky pranced across the screen.
At five, the programme ended. It was starting to get dark, and Lily felt justified in saying, ‘I think it’s nearly bedtime, precious.‘ When he stared at her reproachfully, she added, ‘I want to take you up before Daddy comes home. You know he likes a bit of quiet time to unwind.’ She prepared yet another bottle - was he drinking too much? - then changed his wet nappy. Heaving a sigh of relief, she laid him back in the carrycot and took it upstairs to the nursery, where she put it down gently on the floor by the window. The nursery wasn’t quite finished yet - honestly, James was so slow with that lick of paint! - and she looked at it critically. There was meant to be a stencilled chest, and a mobile hanging from the ceiling, and a Disney frieze, but again, somehow neither she nor James had got round to them yet.
‘Shhh. Sleepy time now. Be a good boy, darling. Not a sound, okay?’
She did make the room look as nice as she could, stacking the nappies in a corner, and putting the rest of the new baby paraphernalia into a drawer. Tomorrow, she’d put a square of carpet down for the carry-cot, so it wasn’t lying on bare boards. Not that he seemed to mind. He gazed at her placidly, and she could have sworn he gave a little smile. And at least he’d have a night light: she didn’t want her baby to lie alone in the dark. It wasn’t a fancy nightlight like Dudley’s, just an old bedside lamp that James had taken against for some reason, but it shed a cosy glow over the little room.
He really should have a bedtime story like Dudley did, but she had no idea what to read. She mentally ran through the contents of their bookshelves. James liked anything about sport, and she went for biographies. She was currently struggling through a manual on interpersonal skills, required reading for work. Better leave it for today.
Lily was just about to go downstairs when she had a sudden vision of him rolling over in his carrycot, upsetting it, hitting his vulnerable, downy head on the floor. She pinched herself hard to dissipate the image then placed two old sofa cushions on either side of him.
He wasn’t asleep yet, but he was lying placidly enough, gazing up at her with those wide eyes. She squatted down to watch him for a while, singing ‘Bye Baby Bunting’ under her breath.
The front door banged, and Lily jumped up, literally jumped, adrenalin pumping round her body. ‘Now shush!’ she abjured her baby, putting a finger to her mouth. ‘I’ll be back up later.’
Downstairs, James was reaching for the television remote. He jumped in his turn when Lily came up behind him and put her arms round his waist.
‘Hey! You’re back early, Lily. Isn’t the big meeting this afternoon?’
‘It was cancelled. And I had a headache, so I thought I’d just go home. ‘
James put on Sky news. ‘Guess what? There’s a camera crew outside the station. Some poor woman had her baby snatched at the ticket office this morning. ‘
‘Oh, how awful!’ Lily said. ‘What happened?’
On the television, a woman was weeping, obviously making an appeal. James turned the sound up. ‘Please,’ the woman wept, ‘please, if you have my baby, please don’t hurt him. ’
‘I suppose she put him down while she was getting her ticket,’ Lily said, tight-lipped. ‘Stupid cow!’ She felt quite irrationally angry: why, she’d never leave her darling unattended for even a second in a public place.
‘Now, don’t upset yourself,’ James said, looking a bit alarmed. He switched the television off again.
Lily sat staring at the blank screen for a few minutes, while he went to the kitchen to make a pot of tea, returning with a cup for each of them. Lily put hers on the table, and her eye fell on the letter from the hospital. She handed it to James.
‘What’s this? What do they say?’
‘I didn’t dare open it.’
‘I’m sure everything’ll be fine.’ James unfolded it, and read, ‘Dear Mr and Mrs Potter, I am glad to tell you that you have been accepted for our IVF programme - ‘
Lily squealed like a young girl. ‘Really? Let me see.’ She devoured the letter, her eyes shining, then put her arms round James and hugged him. ‘Oh, God. I don’t know if I’m scared or excited. ’
‘Excited,’ James said. ‘It’ll be great having a kid.’
‘It’s all very well for you to be excited,’ Lily said. ‘You get the dirty magazines and the test tube. I get the needles and a lot of prodding. ’
‘Well, it’ll be worth it, won’t it?’ James said. ‘I’ve been worried about you. And I know it’s been even harder for you since Dudley was born.’
Talking of Dudley, Lily thought she’d better excuse herself and nip upstairs to check on her own boy. It was now fully dark outside, and she decided that she must buy curtains tomorrow, plain blue, or perhaps yellow, maybe with a pattern of ducks. She didn’t like the thought that anyone passing by would be able to see the nightlight shining through the window. Still, she was pleased to find that her angel was sleeping peacefully, his tiny hands still clutching the bunny rattle, a thin film of milk on his lips. Rather belatedly, she realised that he should have had a bath, of course, with all that baby soap and talcum powder she’d bought earlier on. Never mind. He’d have a bath tomorrow.
She put her ears to his lips to make sure he was breathing, prodded him just a tiny bit to see his reflexive jerk, then whispered, ‘Goodnight, darling’ and went back down.
James was opening a bottle of wine. ‘We must have a drink to celebrate,’ he said, then, all concern, ‘I should have asked. How’s your headache?’
‘Oh, it’s gone now.’
She was suddenly worried that she might have woken her boy when she prodded him, though there was no sound from upstairs. She imagined, for a terrified minute, that she could hear him crying, and the scene unfurled in her head: James’s ‘What the hell?’; the police pounding on the door; the press camped outside the house; the tears and recriminations...
But all was quiet for now. She raised her glass and clinked it against James’s, toasting babies past, and babies present, and babies yet to be.
End