Free Emma Donoghue Two-Book Bundle by Emma Donoghue

about adults poisoning babies for their own convenience.
    ‘Sweetheart,’ Rose burst out finally, ‘I don’t mean to play the interfering granny, I really don’t, you’re doing a marvellous job’ – Moya made a choking sound and brought up white curds on Una’s sleeve – ‘I just can’t stand seeing you in this state. Don’t you think you’re being a bit hard on yourself, playing the martyr?’
    Una’s eyes were huge. With fury? Or just exhaustion?
    ‘Babies are tougher than they look. I didn’t run to pick you up every time you opened your mouth, and you grew up all right, didn’t you?’ There was a pause.
Didn’t you,
she wanted to ask again.
    Nobody quite understood, Una thought, and her mother least of all. Hadn’t she chosen to have Moya, planned it, wanted it for years? So she just had to do it the best way she could, even if she felt tangled in a nightmare that wouldn’t let her wake up. From the sound of it, her mother’s generation had ignored all their instincts when it came to looking after tiny, vulnerable human beings. They’d smoked and drank through pregnancy and labour, bottle-fed their babies and left them dangling from doors for hours, dosed them with alcoholic gripe water, jammed plastic pacifiers in their mouths, left them in barred cots to cry it out … Of course they needed to believe that they’d done what was right, instead of just what was handy. But who could say how much of the fucked-up state of so many of Una’s friends might not be due to buried memories of wailing away alone on those long-gone nights?
    ‘Darling, it’s just that you’re in such a bad way,’ Rose was saying. ‘Tonight, why don’t I stay up with the baby for an hour or two?’
    But could I trust you to bring her in when she’s hungry?
Una wanted to say. Instead she forced a smile and said it was OK, she was feeling not too bad this evening.
    It was quite pleasant to have company while Silas was out, she supposed, but on the other hand, guests always needed looking after. And Rose, with her dry-clean-only cashmere, after-dinner cognac, and shivering smoke breaks on the porch, seemed such an irrelevance. Shouldn’t Moya have brought them closer together instead of the opposite? To avoid discussing the contentious subject of the baby, Una would raise some topic of the day – airline security or pensions or the Atkins diet – but of course all she cared or knew about at the moment was the baby, so all she could contribute was the odd robotic syllable.
    Rose, for her part, seemed to be learning to resist the temptation to give advice – which left her with nothing but platitudes. ‘Hang on in there,’ she’d say, squeezing her daughter’s shoulder. ‘It’ll be different when she’s more active; she’ll suddenly get the hang of day and night, wait till you see. One of these mornings you’ll wake up after a good night’s sleep, you’ll hardly believe it!’
    Una nodded, as if talking to a mad person at a bus stop.
    The morning she was to fly back to Dublin, Rose woke early, for her, and pulled out her earplugs. She lay listening to the beautiful silence till she heard Silas pulling the front door closed behind him. She put her dressing gown on and peeped round the other bedroom door. There lay the baby, in the cot attached to her parents’ bed, and there was Una, flat on her back, her arms uncurled, as if drifting down a stream. Her face was peaceful, almost young again.
    Rose must have stood on a creaky floorboard as she backed out, because suddenly Una was bolt upright, eyes wild. She snatched up the baby, who began to shriek.
    ‘Good morning,’ said Rose, like some nervous chambermaid. She rather wished she’d stayed in bed.
    ‘Jesus. Jesus Christ,’ Una said into Moya’s fuzzy scalp. ‘It’s light out.’
    ‘It certainly is. Twenty past seven.’
    ‘I thought she’d died in the night.’ Una’s face was contorted with tears again.
    Rose suppressed a sigh. ‘She’s grand.