Free The Baby by Lisa Drakeford Page B

her reflection in the darkened window in the crack between the curtains and sees great wet streak marks all the way down her cheeks. She looks outside into the darkness. Sees the drop below. Imagines, in a daze, opening the window and letting Eliza fall. How her blanket would billow to the floor like a parachute after the tiny body.
    The image is shocking. Frightening. It makes her gasp in horror.
    She’s doing really badly. She knew all along that shecouldn’t cope.
    By half past midnight Nicola feels like a corpse in a trance. She’s become so used to Eliza screaming that she can’t hear anything else. She’s made tracks in the carpet from pacing. She needs help but she doesn’t know who to ask. There is, in the early hours of a cold March morning, nobody.
    The collar around Eliza’s babygrow is wet from one of their tears. Her knees are drawn high. Her voice is squeaky from so much screaming. She is starting to sound like an animal in pain. Her skin is hot and damp from her distress.
    Nicola is standing at the window wondering desperately if she should call a doctor. Eliza’s knees bump against Nicola’s ribs as her mum pushes open the door. This is what Nicola has been dreading. She steels herself for the barrage of criticism which is bound to follow. ‘ You can’t cope .’, ‘ Where did you ever get the idea that this would be easy? ’, ‘ You’ve made your bed – now you’ll have to lie in it .’ etc. etc….
    Her mum looks old. She’s wearing a nightshirt which is inside out and has a coffee stain on the front. She’s barefoot and there are lilac veins which stick out at her ankles. Her hair is wild and messy and her mouth is as sour as vinegar.
    â€˜Sorry, Mum – I can’t seem to stop her—’
    But she’s interrupted. Interrupted and shocked when, instead of standing in the doorway shouting abuse, Nicola’s mum takes some steps forward. Forward, towards the baby. Her arms are outstretched and her fingers angle in to slide between Nicola and Eliza.
    Her voice is amazingly kind. Tired, but kind all the same.‘Give her here,’ she whispers. Nicola watches as her mum draws Eliza into her chest like she was used to it.
    Immediately, there’s a softening in the whole of her mother’s body. Her spine seems to sag, her shoulders sink and her face somehow gains curves. Nicola can’t believe what she’s seeing. But she knows she shouldn’t say anything. Nicola’s mum, if nothing else, is a very proud woman and in all her seventeen years of life, Nicola has never known her to admit that she’s wrong or go back on her word.
    So, clamping her mouth tightly shut, Nicola watches wide-eyed as grandmother and granddaughter start to rock to and fro.
    At last there’s a slight rise to Nicola’s mum’s lips. Eliza, surprised at this new pair of arms, begins to quieten down.
    â€˜I think she’s got colic.’ Her mum whispers gently into the face of her granddaughter.
    â€˜What’s that?’
    Another gentle smile. ‘It’s like baby indigestion. You got it all the time when you were her age.’ Her mum offers a smile.
    â€˜Really?’ Her mum rarely talks about when Nicola was a baby. Nicola gets a feeling that this was a bad time for her mum. She thinks it might be because this was when her dad moved out.
    Her mum nods. ‘You’ll need to get some colic drops from the chemist tomorrow. I think she’s old enough to have them. But you’ll have to check.’ She rocks. She coos. She smiles.
    Nicola just stares.
    As the screams turn to murmurs and Eliza’s eyes begin todroop, her mum looks up at Nicola by the window. ‘You look worn out. I’ll take her for a bit. Let you get some sleep.’
    Too shocked to argue, or even to string a sentence together, Nicola nods. She watches as her mum cradles Eliza in one arm and picks up