The Telling

retreating gasps and sighs as she settled back to sleep.
    I didn’t sleep again. The dark was pixellated, swimming, like a television screen when the sound’s turned down and the signal’s gone. On Sunday, with the car crammed with Mum and Dad’s stuff, I’d be following the rump of the silver Mazda down the M6, and the cottage would settle into bright dusty emptiness again. I lay watching the shadows in the bookcase shrink, its shape become definite as the room filled with morning light. The air seemed to seethe, to swarm like bees. I turned to look at Mark, his face soft with sleep. How could he sleep, how could anyone sleep through this?
    It was bright full day and I had been lying awake for hours when he stirred and reached for me. I huddled close, lay with my cheek pressed to the warm cotton of his T-shirt, my bare leg slipped between his legs. I felt him breathe. No alarm clock, no sound from Cate. No hurtling rush towards the day. The scent of his skin, warm and sleepy. He shifted on to his side, his arm laid loosely over me, and I looked at him, his long lashes, the grey shadows underneath his eyes, the still-faint lines at their corners. The slight fall of flesh towards the pillow, his skin loosening already with the years. He used to be such a boy. I leaned up and kissed him on the lips. I retreated, but his arm squeezed tighter and held me there. He kissed me back. We shifted together, pressed close, him waking into the kiss, me forgetting the static, forgetting the room, forgetting that Cate was just across the landing; I was lost in the tender wet of inner lip, the graze of a tooth that made me push harder against him, kiss him harder.
    The way his nails grazed my ribs made me stretch. My hand cupped his hipbone, where it surfaces to press against the skin. His fingertips scraped across my belly, slid down to my underwear , then underneath. His fingertips dipped into me, and the kiss ended, and his face was pressed into my neck, and he was murmuring something I couldn’t hear. Then the heel of his hand pressed down on to my lower belly. It pushed against the scar. I went still and was back in it; beyond being touched. I was crouched at the side of the bed, gripping the cold metal frame, a strap around my belly just where the contractions are, and I’m desperate to move it because if I move it it will hurt slightly less, but every time I touch it she shoves my hand away, resettles the strap back over the crushing pain. There’s a phrase from a poem I’ve half-forgotten, it’s going around and around in my head, and I know it’s not the right words but I can’t shake the real ones clear:
    just the worst time of the year
for a baby, and such a cold baby
     
    The baby’s heartbeat stutters on the monitor, it stammers almost to a halt, kicks up again. And the midwife, who I’ve never met before, says You have to let yourself give birth, you have to give yourself over to it, you have to give yourself completely, and I know what she means; she means, You won’t let this child be born. I want my mum, I really want my mum. And I am failing. Failing before I’ve even begun.
    ‘Mark,’ I said.
    ‘Dad-ee!’
    ‘Shit.’
    ‘I’ll go.’
    His hand slipped out from my underwear. I rolled out of bed.
    ‘You make the coffee,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to use the teapot.’
    Cate was straining for the door, leaning against the side of the travel cot, her face pink, yelling for her daddy. Her face softened when she saw me and she reached her arms up for me to lift her. I swung her up and set her on my hip; she glued herself to me. I carried her through, her nappy damp against my arm.
    We got back into bed. She settled into the dip between us, made staccato observations, pointing at the bookcase, the window, tracing the blue mountains and valleys of the bedspread with her hands, tapping on my arm when she felt my attention was drifting. Her hand on my arm was pale, plump, almost luminous . Mark brought up two mugs of coffee, and Cate’s blue spouted cup half-filled with milk. We sat in bed, propped up against the headboard; me, Cate, and Mark, facing out across the room at the bookcase. Mark hadn’t commented on it, seemed hardly to have noticed it. Cate’s nose was squashed against the lid of her cup. I could hear her muffled breathing, her sucking and swallowing.
    ‘So what’s the plan?’ Mark said.
    Sleep had crushed his hair on one side, pressed it upwards against his skull. He smiled,