My Secret Lover

can see the
head,’ says the midwife.
    ‘Come on, Michaela, you can do it.
Just one more. Push!’
    Suddenly, all of a slither, a little
creature, with a great ugly rope of gore attached, slides out into the
midwife’s hands.
    And then it cries.
    And before my eyes it changes from
something raw and animal into something tiny and recognizably human.
    ‘It’s a little boy,’ says the
midwife, putting him on Michaela’s chest.
    The screaming, blaspheming torture
victim that was Michaela is suddenly a serene mother.
    ‘Hello,’ she says to the baby. ‘That
wasn’t very nice, was it? Never mind. You’re here now.’
     
    Adam, the father, arrives at the same
time as the placenta. He’s white with shock until he realizes that the
paediatrician has got the baby on the scales.
    ‘Have I missed it?’ he asks.
    ‘Only just,’ I say.
    ‘I was playing five-a-side,’ he tells
me, while they’re stitching Michaela’s perineum. ‘They said it might go on for
hours.’
    It is so not the time for
recrimination.
    It is time for me to go.
    No amount of getting warm or cold
drinks, or checking Apgar scores will make me useful now.
    I leave the three of them to it.
     
    Standing in the hospital porch on a
soft underlay of cigarette butts, I breathe the cool air of the early hours of
a summer morning- The grey concrete buildings behind me hum with the timeless
activity of human ends and beginnings.
    I have cried like this, in this same
spot, for life’s unfairness and cruelty. And now I cry, with equal ferocity,
for the miracle of pure human happiness created within the unlikely walls of Northwick Park Hospital.
     
    Then, I pull myself together and walk
across the almost empty car park to A&E.
     
    ‘I feel such a fool,’ says Michelle,
once she’s got over the shock of it being a boy.
    She’s sitting on a trolly with a
bandage round her head.
    ‘It’s different when it’s your own
child. I couldn’t deal with seeing her in pain.’
    ‘The gas and air were meant to be for
her,’ I say.
    ‘It made me a bit giddy,’ says
Michelle. ‘That’s all I can remember.’
    ‘You hit your head on the monitor,’ I
tell her.
    ‘They want to keep me under
observation before discharging me,’ she says.
    ‘You never faint except when you’re
pregnant,’ I say. ‘You’ve been crying,’ she tells me.

44
     
    Are you there? I can't sleep. I saw a
baby being born tonight and my heart is full. I never understood what that
meant before. It means it's full of joy and wonder, and I think it must have
more oxygen in it, or something chemical, because I can't sleep, even though
I'm exhausted. I feel like it's the night before Christmas, or one of those times
at college when you stay up all night talking to someone you've just met and
suddenly realize you're in love. I always thought that Jesus was born in a
stable because there really were no rooms at the Inn, but now I realize that
the Nativity is a symbol of human potential in the midst of adversity. You'd
understand if you'd been in Northwick Park Maternity Unit tonight.
    When I held him (I was the second
person in the whole world!), I had this wonderful feeling that I would do
anything to make him happy. His vulnerability made me strong.
    I think maybe I got an insight into
what your work is like. Isn't happiness in the end something to do with a
willingness to sacrifice yourself on behalf of someone else?
    Or am I just quoting Elton John? I
inadvertently do that sometimes when I think I'm having a profound thought. L
     
    Click SEND.
     
    I wait a little while online, but
there is no reply.
     
    I suddenly feel completely alone in
the world.

45
     
    The whole room is bobbing with
balloons. Blue balloons and pink balloons tied to baskets of blue flowers or
pink flowers and to the paws of blue or pink teddy bears.
    Michaela is sitting up in bed. Next
to her, in a little Perspex pod is a little yellow creature fast asleep.
    ‘It’s a touch of jaundice,’ whispers
Michaela.
    ‘He’s golden for the Jubilee,’ I say.
    ‘He’s small,’ Andy points out.
    I wish I’d left him in the car park.
    ‘He’s a baby, dur brain,’ I hiss.
    Seem to be hissing quite a lot these
days.
    ‘He’s smaller than that one,’ says
Andy, pointing at the next pod.
    ‘If he were any smaller they’d have
had to put him in the special unit,’ says Michaela. ‘But he’s just on five
pounds, so they’re monitoring him.’
    She’s been a mother less than twelve
hours, but