Free What Goes Around... by Carol Marinelli

and is so incredibly beautiful, new and innocent.
    ‘We’ll keep h er in the nursery for the night,’ the midwife offers later when we’re moved to the maternity ward. ‘Eleanor's been through a lot today. We’ll put the baby under a warmer…’
    ‘Can we have her in with us?’ I ask , because Eleanor needs to be near her baby. ‘I’ll stay…’ The midwife nods and they set up the cot and the warmer and I put the baby down now and have a rest in the chair but I'm not tired any more and I just sit there.
    I’m not even thinking.
    I just sit there, not thinking.
    It’s too hard to think sometimes.
    But then I do.
    I stand up and I go to the window and I look out to the night , but there’s no solace there, because my eyes are drawn to the outline of the hospital mortuary. I can’t really fathom that he’s in there.
    So I go and sit down and I turn on my phone and Paul ’s replied.
    Call me, doesn’t matter what time.
    It’s almost midnight, I can’t call him now.
    But I do.
    He’s nice.
    He says that he knew something must have happened when I didn’t show up but I’m not to worry about that. He’s only worried about me. How I’m doing.
    I’ve never really had that.
    He’s taking a taxi over to the hospital to get me at seven. He’ll drive my car and me home and, when I’m there, he’ll make me a cup of tea.
    It helps.
    I see the baby stir and even though she’s sleeping I pick her up. Maybe I shouldn’t, I don’t want to get her into bad habits but she deserves to be held surely – her mum hasn’t so much as looked at her. I guess I need a cuddle too. She wakes up but doesn’t cry, she just stares up at me.
    ‘You look like your gra nddad,’ I say, because she does. She’s got his chin and that sparkle in her eyes, that sparkle that could melt the hardest heart – it melted mine once and then it melted Lucy’s. ‘Use it for good,’ I say, because her Granddad certainly didn’t.
    The midwife comes in and I give the baby a bottle and change her nappy and , as I go to wrap her back up, I look at her ears and around her nails. I remember Rose taught me that years ago. The baby’s as white as snow at the moment but I see the lovely coffee colour that she’ll one day be, and no, she’s not Noel’s.
    But she’s a part of me.
    Of him.
    I walk back to the window with her and I don’t look to the mortuary, instead I look at the stars and the moon and I wonder where he is.
    Wonder how I feel.
    Wonder how we will be.
    Then I look down at the baby and she’s gazing back at me and all I can do is smile.
    Smile in wonder.
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    Lucy
     
    ‘When can I see the baby?’
    It’s the only thing Charlotte stops crying long enough to ask.
    God, she just lost her pony last week and now her dad – I know it seem a bit cruel to compare the two, but Noodle was everything to her. I was just starting to see a glimmer of light when her dad went and died. Now her tears and questions and grief are so constant and for the last two nights she’s wet the bed.
    I honestly don’t know what to do.
    ‘I want to see the baby.’
    ‘Soon, ’ I say.
    I’m up in her bedroom and she’s face down on the bed and I’m sitting on it rubbing her shoulder and, very annoyingly, Mum’s standing over me, rubbing mine.
    Mum’s even offered to take her to see the baby.
    Believe me, that is so not going to happen.
    I just don’t know what to do.
    Normally he’d have taken her to see the baby. I hardly ever see his family. Eleanor, I see a little bit and Noel a bit more lately, because he’s doing Charlotte’s braces, but I have nothing to do with the rest of them. Except these past few days I seem to be dealing with them more and more. Bonny rang this morning demanding to know when the funeral will be held and what’s holding it up? As if it’s my fault that the coroner hasn’t released the body. Wouldn’t they all love it if I told them what was holding things up?
    The Coroner’s Office h