Finn pushes his knuckles into my shoulder as I lie on our bed in the Annexe. The iPad reads 5.17 a.m. The slow, pulsing thrum of a knot woke me up, and I woke him in turn. ‘Harder,’ I say. He does his best, but just can’t undo what’s trapped deep under the surface.
On the bedside table is a framed 4D scan taken a fortnight ago to mark our thirtieth week. It’s remarkably detailed. You can make out the cupid’s bow of our son’s lips and cleft of his chin. I’m as nervous as hell about being a mum, but so excited at the prospect of meeting our little miracle man.
As Finn works his way around my shoulders and back with the precision of a man much more experienced with a pregnant woman’s body than he should be, I remain lying on my side, propped up with an elbow and putting this early wake-up call to good use. I’m scrolling through Excel spreadsheets, prioritising which bills to pay first. I can never find time to chill out like my midwife advises.
It hasn’t been the easiest pregnancy, especially now I’m a month into the last trimester. Aside from the haemorrhoids, swollen ankles, bladder the size of a marble and the fact that it looks as if I’m smuggling a hippo under these pyjamas, the hospital’s Maternity Assessment Centre has me recording my rising blood pressure twice a day and going for baby scans once a fortnight. I keep telling them,
after three miscarriages, it’s the waiting that’s making me a bundle of nerves and encouraging its climb. But they’re having none of it.
I should be cutting down my working days but that’s out of the question now that mine is the only wage coming in. Finn is working sixteen-hour days, installing two new bathrooms and helping his dad outside with masonry repairs and the removal and installation of windows. Their work has saved us a small fortune. But we’ll be living on our credit cards if I go on maternity leave now.
Even Debbie is making an effort, which is disconcerting. She left a vase of yellow lilies in the Annexe kitchen for me last week, along with a pregnancy pampering kit containing moisturisers and a scented candle. It almost feels as if we might’ve drawn a line under everything that came before the pregnancy. Either that or she’s hired a bloody good surgeon to repair the bite marks in her tongue. I can’t lie and say a small part of me isn’t waiting for her to slip up.
She’s only irritating when she insists on being involved in everything baby-related. Again, Finn thinks I’m exaggerating, but she invited herself along when we went shopping for nursery furniture and had an opinion on each cot, changing table, baby sling, monitor and pushchair. Then when Finn spotted one too many of my side-eyes, he interjected, supporting me over her on my choice of breast pump.
I’ve stopped telling my friends on our group WhatsApp chats about how she irks me because they think I’m ungrateful. Even when I recall the passive-aggressive things Debbie’s said, such as ‘I wish I could eat like you without feeling guilty’ or ‘It’s nice to see a girl of your age who’s not obsessed with her appearance’, they tell me I’m reading too much into it. And the friends who’ve also been pregnant tell me she sounds like a godsend for wanting to be so involved. Anyway, it will be impossible to finish the whole house before the baby arrives two months from now, so we have
split it into sections. Phase one is the lounge, kitchen diner, downstairs cloakroom, office, upstairs main bathroom, our bedroom, the nursery and rear garden. When we can afford it, we’ll make a start on the rest.
‘Ow! That hurts!’ Finn’s knuckles have finally pinpointed the exact location in my shoulder causing me the most angst.
‘It’s supposed to,’ he says, digging deeper and moving the knot in a circular motion until it eases. Then he starts massaging my shoulders before his lips brush against my neck and ear. I’m tired and I ache and I want to protest but he knows exactly the right buttons to press no matter how shattered I feel. And before I know it, the iPad falls to the floor and, despite my considerable size, I’m straddling him and my hips are moving like Shakira’s.
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I have the day booked off work, so after breakfast I grab a lift to the house with Finn. On our way he talks about what else the nursery needs, suggesting stuff I’d never considered like a thermometer for the bath, a nappy bin, brushes to clean out milk bottles, Sudocrem for nappy rashes, never-ending packets of wet wipes, muslins and a blackout blind. How does he know all this stuff? He must have done his research. He’s going to make a fantastic dad.
As our due date approaches, I’ve found myself missing my own parents. We have never been as close as he is to his, which is not necessarily a bad thing for me as I couldn’t stand an overbearing mother like Debbie. But there have been occasions when I’ve quietly envied what the three of them have. Finn and I are both only children but I was raised to be independent from an early age. I’d make my own evening meal before Mum and Dad returned from work; they didn’t chase me to do my homework and allowed me
to pick my own clothes. For the last five years of my education I chose to go to boarding school and got the attention I needed from those I surrounded myself with. I didn’t rebel in my teenage years because I had nothing to rebel against. Soon after Finn and I married and Dad won his prostate cancer battle, they announced an around-the-world sailing expedition. ‘It’s our time now,’ Dad explained. I resisted asking, ‘When wasn’t it?’
When they failed to return after my first two miscarriages I didn’t bother telling them about the third. And while they were delighted to be told via Skype that I was pregnant again, they failed to commit to a date on which they’d be coming back to meet their only grandchild. Sometimes I worry if their apathy might shape my attitude to parenthood.
Finn pulls up outside the house next to two vans. Dave and Debbie are already here. We really aren’t far from the finishing post of this phase of work. Am I actually starting to see it as our home? An unexpected warm flutter appears in my stomach. It’s either the baby moving or something inside me is shifting when it comes to this house.
I make my way upstairs to what will be the nursery. A painter-and-decorator friend of Finn’s is coming tomorrow to strip the walls of this 1970s-style brown and yellow patterned wallpaper and to sand the floor and skirting boards. I have the new wallpaper picked out and some glow- in-the-dark stars to arrange across the ceiling.
The vibrations coming from the hammering downstairs go straight through me so I close the door, which mutes it slightly. The carpenter has done a great job of restoring the door’s broken lock and handle. The sun pours through this window and is now able to bathe every nook and cranny in light since we had the apple trees pruned and conifers removed. It really is quite beautiful.
I suddenly remember the curtain fabric swatches I left in the back of Finn’s van, but as I make my way towards the
door, ripped wallpaper by the skirting board catches my eye. I get the urge to tear off a strip and it’s as satisfying as pulling off sunburned skin. There’s more wallpaper underneath it so I tear off a little more from down by the skirting board.
It’s then that the sun highlights something I hadn’t noticed before. There are lines, etched into the skirting board’s paintwork. I move closer and it looks as if they make up the letter W. I rub a little of the dust off with my hand. There are more letters. There’s a backwards S and a P. Actually, it’s a word – it reads ‘Save’.
Outside, a cloud appears and the room darkens. With the sleeve of my jumper, I hesitantly wipe more of it away until, eventually, I see a whole sentence. The letters are childlike in their appearance.
I squint just as the sun blooms and now I can read the whole thing.
