Theo, only a terrible helplessness. Once I tried to explain to him what it was like, how I felt as if I were only babysitting someone else’s child, someone who’d be furious with me if I screwed up, and he looked at me, baffled.
“But of course he’s our baby. Who else’s could he be?”
“I don’t mean I think he’s someone else’s baby. I mean I feel as if he is.”
Nor did I tell him that the exhaustion, the chapped nipples, the emotional numbness, felt like my punishment for not being a good mother. Pete so clearly adored his son, I’d have felt disloyal even bringing it up.
Sometimes he’d start to say something about the NICU—“Do you remember when those other parents…” or “Wasn’t it weird when that doctor said…”—and I’d cut him off.
“I don’t really want to think about all that. Let’s put it behind us, shall we?”
“Of course. That’s a really healthy attitude, Mads. Let’s look to the future.”
I’d read that, for some women, the maternal bond came slowly. So I assumed that was what would happen in my case. And it did start kicking in more when Theo was about three months. I’d gotten used to the half smiles and grimaces he made when he was trying to poo—Pete always seized on them as evidence of his affectionate nature, though to me they were simply an indication that Theo found pooing very satisfying. But one time, after I’d given him a bath, I’d wrapped him in a towel and laid him on the floor as usual when he looked up at me and grinned. A part of me knew he was just pleased to be warm and dry again, but that look, the mischief and contentment in his little blue-gray eyes…For the first time, I felt a relationship with him. I wasn’t just a milk machine. I was the center of his universe, and even if he wasn’t yet the center of mine, we were definitely in some kind of planetary orbit, locked into a relationship that would last forever. I thought: When I am old and gray, you will be my adult son, and the sudden sense of permanence made me gasp.
Looking back, it wasn’t surprising it took so long. I’m not someone who falls in love at the drop of a hat. It took me almost a year to fall for Pete—we used to joke that he didn’t so much date me as lay siege to me. Why would I fall in love with a stranger in a plastic box, one who was probably only passing through my life for a few short weeks? If there had been any maternal reflex in me at all, it was the one telling me not to risk getting emotionally involved. I had to wait for him to move on from being in danger, to become a person with a future, before I could allow myself the luxury of loving him.
12
Case no. 12675/PU78B65, Exhibit 14B: Email from Peter Riley to Miles Lambert.
Dear Miles and Lucy,
First, thank you for your email, Miles, and for coming to see me in person before that, which can’t have been an easy thing to do. As you say, this is a very difficult situation that none of us chose to be in, but we really appreciate that you’re trying to deal with it in a civilized way. We fully intend to do the same.
Having discussed it, we would be very pleased to take up your offer of getting together at your house, and we think it would be good for Theo and David to meet as well. Maddie remembers Lucy from the NICU and says hello.
We’re free all day Saturday. Theo tends to be at his best in the mornings, so shall we aim for about 10:30?
Best wishes,
Pete
13
PETE
COME SATURDAY, WE PACKED Theo into the back of our Golf and headed over to Highgate. I’d allowed plenty of time to find somewhere to park, but as it turned out, I needn’t have. Where we lived, it was always a scramble to find a space, but the roads in Miles and Lucy’s neck of the woods hardly had any cars parked in them at all. It was because the houses were so big and far apart, I realized—fine, wide Victorian villas, with large sash windows and raised ground floors. Very few had been turned into flats, either, which meant even fewer vehicles competing for spaces, while some, like the Lamberts’, had off-road parking. We pulled up