Lifesaving for Beginners

touch my hat. It’s a Fedora. I’m wearing my Fedora. Nonchalant chic, Minnie calls it. I don’t know what I was thinking.
    Faith stands at the door. I see her deliberating. It’s in the way she shifts her weight from one bare foot to the other. Her toenails are a metallic blue but the toes, the toes themselves, they are all mine. Long, skinny things with a slight bend along the second one. The one beside the big toe. At the top, just before the nail. That’s where the bend is. I used to think it was something to do with all the unsuitable shoes I ever wore. Now I know it’s not. It’s hereditary. Genetic. The thought gives me a jolt that seems physical. I feel like I am being felled. Like a tree. In my head, a lumberjack is shouting. ‘TIMBERRRRRRRR!’ as I topple. I put my hand on the glass pane of the porch, to steady myself.
    The man says, ‘I wouldn’t put your hand there, if I were you, love. You’ll leave prints and Celia is just bursting at the seams to find someone to go through for a shortcut, if you get my drift.’ He smiles at me as if I know exactly who Celia is and why she should be bursting at the seams for someone to go through for a shortcut. He leans towards me and whispers, ‘Hormones,’ with one of those winks that some men favour when trying to induce empathy.
    Faith opens the door a little wider. She says, ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’
    Suddenly I am glad about the man. The exhausted-looking man with the winky eye who smells of curry. I am glad that he is here. I step inside.
    The house is a study in modernity. Everything is huge and shiny. You can see your face reflected in most of the surfaces. Where there should be walls, there are either empty spaces or glass. It’s open plan gone feral. There is nowhere to hide in a house like this. I follow the man, who follows Faith. We’re in a room now that spans the width of the house. I don’t know what to call it, this room. It’s got a kitchen, a dining-room table, several sofas, a couple of flat-screens, a sideboard and a dresser. In the corner, a woman with an enormous belly rocks back and forth in a chair. Her legs are stretched in front of her, covered with a tartan blanket, which is the only piece of fabric in the entire, gargantuan room. Her feet are bubbling in a foot massager, like two enormous joints of meat.
    She says, ‘You’re the lady on the telly. You’re Faith’s mother.’ Her voice echoes round the room, bouncing against the chrome and the marble and the glass.
    You’re Faith’s mother . . . Faith’s mother . . . mother . . . mother . . . ther . . .
    I look at her belly. It seems impossible that I was once like that. That the angry young woman in this gigantic room that doesn’t know if it’s a kitchen or a dining room or a sitting room, was once inside me. Was once part of my body. Part of me.
    I hear Minnie’s voice in my head and she’s saying something like, ‘Would you ever cop onto yourself ?’
    I cough. Stand up straight. Extend my hand. ‘Hello, I’m Kat Kavanagh. It’s lovely to meet you.’
    The woman with the enormous belly has the two must-have qualities of ‘the other woman’. She is both pretty and young. Not much older than Faith, I’d say. Late twenties. Thirty, tops. Her prettiness is of the generic variety. Blonde hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones, creamy skin.
    She sits up a bit straighter and holds out her hand and I stretch my hand across her belly, careful not to touch her bump. She shakes my hand and shakes her head, all at the same time. She says, ‘Celia,’ like it’s an order rather than her name.
    I’m about to say something, I don’t know, like, ‘When is your baby due?’ but she cuts me off with: ‘You wrote all those books. And nobody knew who you were.’ She drops my hand but she is still shaking her head from side to side. ‘What a strange thing to do.’ She has a curious look on her face. As if I’m something the cat has dragged in and she’s trying to work out what it is. I find myself thinking about what the man said. About the handprints on the porch window.
    When it is quiet in a room like this, it is exceptionally quiet. Deathly quiet.
    I say, ‘When are you due?’ Are you due . . . you due . . . due . . . due . . .
    ‘I’m overdue, can’t you tell?’ Overdue . . . can’t you tell . . . you tell . . . tell . . . tell . . .
    She sighs. ‘I thought the stress of having this lot up for Christmas would do the trick. But it hasn’t