C-section scar, and all the other scars that weren’t visible as well. Sex meant adrenaline flooding my veins, and a feeling of nameless dread clenching my insides.
But I didn’t tell him any of that, because I didn’t want to talk about it.
* * *
—
“I’M THINKING OF DOING a bike ride for the NICU,” Pete said, not long after my parents had flown back.
“A what?”
“There’s a Facebook group—Dads Behind the NICU. The idea is that we’ll all raise funds for the appeal.”
I didn’t even know the NICU was having an appeal. “Why do they need funds? St. Alexander’s is part of the NHS.”
“Yes, but they have a separate charity for nonessentials—the bits the NHS can’t pay for. The main one is, they want to buy a flat near the hospital for parents to stay in while their babies are in the unit. Bronagh and some of the other nurses did a sponsored fun run, but they’re still thirty thousand pounds short.”
I looked at him, surprised. “Are you still in touch with Bronagh?”
“Well, we’re both members of the fundraising group.” He saw my expression. “It’s a Facebook page, Mads,” he said patiently. “It’s not like we’re meeting up for coffee.”
“I hadn’t realized you missed your nursie groupies so much.” Even as I said it, I wondered at the venom in my voice. What was happening to me?
“Anyway, the dads are thinking of cycling all the way from Edinburgh to London,” Pete went on after a moment. “It’s an opportunity to show our appreciation to the hospital for saving our kids, and do something practical for them at the same time.”
Put like that, how could I refuse? “What about work? I thought you’d used up all your holiday.”
“They’ve offered to convert the time we spent in the hospital to compassionate leave. They’re right behind this. The editor’s already pledged two hundred quid, so everyone else should chip in at least twenty. I’ve been doing some calculations and I reckon I could raise over a grand.”
“Well, that sounds like it’s sorted, then,” I said bitterly. Which was stupid of me, I knew. I could feel myself turning into one of those people who seize any opportunity to make a barbed remark, even when it meant forgoing the chance to tell my partner what I really felt.
So instead of I don’t think I can cope without you, I just said, “Send me a postcard from Scotland, won’t you?”
* * *
—
PETE THREW HIMSELF INTO preparing for the ride. He assembled a bike from parts he hunted down on eBay. He and the other dads met up for several practice rides, all of which seemed to end with them in the pub, slapping one another on the back and telling one another how much their calf muscles ached and how heroic they were.
I was jealous. I didn’t have a group like that, or any group for that matter. The prenatal classes I’d booked started three months before my due date, so of course I’d missed those. There was a support group for mothers of preemies, run by people who’d been through it themselves, but I was still burying my head in the sand and the thought of getting together with other NICU veterans and endlessly rehashing the experience repelled me. I wasn’t dwelling on the past like them! I was looking forward! Before Theo, my social life had revolved around my job—the hardworking, hard-partying world of advertising. Going on shoots meant long hours on location, often abroad—it wasn’t unusual for the call time to be five A.M. or even earlier, but I always had enough energy for drinks in the hotel bar at the end of the day, and the wrap parties after the last day of filming were legendary. I’d made some deep, even intense friendships, but no one in that world really had time for a chat or a coffee with a new mum—they might say they did, and schedule something, but there was always some crisis or other that meant it had to be postponed. And it was an iron rule of advertising that a lunch or coffee rescheduled more than once was never going to happen. After that, it made you look desperate to pursue it. People said it took a village to raise a child, but I didn’t even have a cul-de-sac.
Pete set a goal of twelve hundred pounds on JustGiving and started emailing colleagues. Within a week he’d reached two thousand pounds. He read me some of the comments