‘I can’t, I can’t.’ Flo shook her head as perspiration trickled down her temples into her ears. But she knew they were right. It might seem physically impossible, but somehow, in the next few minutes, she was going to have to give birth to a baby.
The older midwife was checking the monitors. ‘Here we go, here comes the next contraction. Let’s do it now.’
Gathering herself, willing herself on and clutching the younger midwife’s hand, Flo took a huge breath and embarked on the task of squeezing an actual human being out of her own body . . .
And then, in a sweaty blur of noise and lights and hands and pressure and unbelievable pain, it happened in a whoosh of slippery wetness and an outraged wail of just-born dismay.
‘Oh my God . . .’ Flo’s voice cracked as the older midwife cut the cord, gave the baby a brisk wipe with a towel and placed it on her chest. Tears sprang to her eyes and a great sob escaped her lungs, but she was laughing too, overwhelmed with the emotions she’d been warned would swamp her, but which she hadn’t been prepared for because how could you know they’d be this overwhelming?
‘Well done.’ The older midwife was smiling, no longer bossy. ‘You did it. You’ve got yourself a beautiful baby girl.’
And now Flo was crying and laughing in earnest, because the mixture of emotions was truly extraordinary, but the overriding one was joy. Several people had told her over the course of the past months that Zander would be with her in spirit when she gave birth to his child, but they’d just been trying to make her feel better. In reality she couldn’t feel his spirit. He would have loved to be here, but he wasn’t. She still missed him dreadfully, but she would cope alone without him. She wasn’t the first to find herself in this situation, nor would she be the last. But she had Zander’s baby and that was a miracle. In so many ways she’d been incredibly lucky.
And what was breathtaking was the resemblance to Zander. As they gazed intently at each other, Flo was struck by more and more similiarities . . . from the long, dark, spiky lashes to the shape of those cobalt-blue eyes, from the precise angle of the dark eyebrows to the curve of the upper lip.
‘Hello,’ Flo whispered, her mouth brushing the baby’s forehead as she held her close. ‘You’re my baby and I’m your mum.’ She breathed in the smell of her daughter’s newborn skin and examined her tiny, almost translucent fingers. ‘Look at you, you’re perfect.’
The room off the main ward contained just two beds. Flo suspected she’d been allocated it in order to make her feel less left out when visiting time came around and all the fathers trooped in bearing flowers, helium balloons and presents for their wives or girlfriends.
Instead she was sharing with a pretty, down-to-earth single mother of three who’d been let down yet again by the father of her newest baby.
‘Swear to God I thought I’d found a decent one at last,’ Ceecee had already confided. ‘He was good with the other kids, didn’t like football . . . even had a job, which made a nice change, I can tell you. He seemed to be happy enough when I fell pregnant with this one. I was made up, reckoned he was a keeper. Then last month he started going out every night . . . not ideal, but I didn’t nag him about it.’ She pulled a face. ‘But two weeks ago he went out and didn’t come back. Sent me a text the next day saying it was over and he was seeing someone else. Not even a sorry, cheeky sod. So here we are, back to square one again, just me and the kids coping with it like we always do. Still, they’re the important ones, aren’t they? As long as they’re happy, that’s all that matters.’
‘True.’ Flo nodded, impressed by Ceecee’s sanguine attitude. Life might not work out as you’d want it to, but you just got on with it anyway.
‘Look, sorry about your chap,’ said Ceecee. ‘The nurses told me what happened, probably to stop me sticking my big foot in it and saying something awful without realising.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Have you got a photo of him so I can see what he looked like?’
‘I have.’ Flo reached into her bag for her phone.
‘I’ll show you mine and you can show me yours.’ Taking out her own phone, Ceecee began scrolling through a sea of pictures, then came and sat on Flo’s bed, next to her. ‘There he is, that’s Matt.’
Matt was lying across a leather sofa, wearing a pink polo shirt and jeans, grinning cheekily into the camera and making a peace sign. Flo in turn showed Ceecee the photo she’d taken of her and Zander up on the Downs with the suspension bridge behind them and the hot air balloon drifting overhead.