The Single Mums' Secrets - Janet Hoggarth Page 0,123

and Carl was having to constantly mop me with a flannel. I’d discarded all concerns about him seeing me naked, about whether I would do an actual poo in front of him, about anything other than pushing.

‘Christa, I’m in awe of you. Well done,’ he said as another contraction steamed into the tail end of the previous one.

I closed my eyes against the light. Louise had drawn the blinds and switched the mood lights on, but I still wanted to be in the dark. I’d lost track of time. All that existed was pain. I could have been pushing for ten minutes or an hour – I’d no idea.

‘I’m being murdered from the inside!’ My whole body pounded, not one part was devoid of pain.

‘I can see the head, Christa,’ Jade cried joyfully. ‘Pant now, hold, hold. With the next contraction give everything.’ But after every push Valentine seemed to recede back up my birth canal, like a reluctant party guest backing out of the front door. My strength was sagging.

‘Give her some more Coke,’ Jade instructed Carl who offered me a can with a bendy straw inside. ‘They’re both tired now. Almost there though.’

I sucked the fizzy liquid and almost choked as another wave of agonising pain squeezed me inside out.

‘It’s burning!’

‘That’s good!’ Louise yelped. ‘He must be crowning! Carl go and look!’ And you know what, he did!

‘Pant!’ Jade said steadily. ‘And push.’

‘Push!’ Carl cried excitedly. ‘He’s coming, Christa! You’re amazing!’ My body was splitting in two, burning and tearing and desperately exhuming my insides at the same time as spitting out Valentine.

‘The head’s out, next push is the shoulders,’ Jade instructed evenly. ‘You can do it, give it everything.’

The wave hit hard and I swam with the tide, seizing the reins of the contraction and delivering Valentine onto the bed, a slippery baby blue seal.

Louise kissed me on the cheek as I turned to look at my son still attached to my body with his umbilical cord spooling out of me, the bed pad stained with blood and amniotic fluid.

I was stunned; it wasn’t how I’d anticipated it at all. Like the very first time you properly fall in love. Think back to life before you knew what that felt like. How would you have described it to yourself? Everything that supersedes is either painted by the presence of the feeling or by its conspicuous absence.

I turned to look at Carl. He was crying quiet tears, brushing them from his eyes. Louise walked round the bed to put her arms around him.

‘You’re a daddy,’ she said gently.

‘What a legend!’ Jade cried, coming over and kissing me on the cheek. Trisha had swooped in and had started wiping the goo off Valentine with towels, trying to get him to take a breath.

‘Come on, baby,’ Trisha sang to him. ‘Tell us you’re here.’ She pulled his legs down from where they were curled up over his tummy, revealing his gender, making him cry at the same time. I wanted to pick him up and never let him go. I felt a constitutional, fiercely protective insane love I’d never experienced before. If I thought I’d finally come to terms with loving Valentine in the ambulance, this freshly unfurled devotion was written in a language I’d not yet learned.

‘Here we go. Right, who’s cutting the cord?’ Trisha moved the ball so I could lie back against the pillows.

‘He’s beautiful,’ Carl said sounding like he couldn’t believe it. ‘He really is; I’m not even having to lie to you.’

I smiled weakly.

‘We need to give this little man a name.’ He gazed at him like he was Manna from Heaven.

‘He already has one,’ I whispered, exhaustion hitting me like a bowling ball.

‘Meet your mummy, Valentine. She’s a hero.’ And he kissed me tenderly on the cheek.

40

Carl

Carl was well aware he should have had the conversation about Lara well before the lies got out of hand. He’d unnecessarily built the whole thing up in his head to be on a level with God casting Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. He knew he was being dramatic, but the Sunday school image wouldn’t leave his head. What if Christa had drawn flaming swords and blocked the gates? However, she waited until they were safely at home before she broached the subject.

‘I originally thought you’d started drinking again,’ Christa said coolly, her face drawn shut from the inside. ‘You’d been acting so distant.’

Valentine was sleeping in the basinet next to her. His stillness