Who Loves You Best (2 page)

“But my private room! My doctor! Everything’s arranged—”

“Darling, our babies are coming! Isn’t this exciting?”

“You fucking try it!” I yell.

Marc, sotto voce: “Christ, it must be bad. My wife
never
swears.”

“You might want to let that pass for now, mate.”

“I could see the baby’s head during that contraction, Clare. When the next one comes, I want you to push—”

“Just get this thing out of me!”

Suddenly I have a desperate need to bear down, as impossible to ignore or control as the urge to vomit. It feels like a huge iron fist is trying to punch its way through my rectum. It can’t be the babies, I think stupidly, it’s in the wrong place, I’m going to shit myself, everyone will see but I can’t help it, I can’t stop it,
I have to push—

I feel a burning, tearing sensation, as if I’m splitting open like a ripe melon.

“One more push—”

This isn’t right, it can’t be, I’m not big enough, something is
wrong—

“The baby’s beautiful, Clare, beautiful,
push
!”

“I
am
fucking pushing!” I scream.

There’s a sudden rush and slither, and the pressure has gone.

“Open your eyes,” Marc whispers.

My baby is placed in my arms. He isn’t crying. I open my eyes and look directly into his, deep blue like mine and already questioning. His skin and hair are still waxy with vernix.

Minutes later, his twin sister is born. She yells her fury at the indignity of her arrival immediately. Dimly I register that my son still hasn’t drawn his first breath.

I hear the sound of sirens, and a paramedic thrusts her way towards us.

“Tell them not to worry, I think I’m getting the hang of this,” I say; and promptly black out.

Our daughter, Poppy (named for the qualities I see in her: pleasure, consolation, and peace) takes after Marc. A vital, vigorous baby you want to devour, with smooth honeyed skin, thick dark hair, and lashes like Dusty Springfield.

Rowan is pale and blond like me. I hope by giving him a name associated with potency and magic, it will somehow keep him safe.

For two weeks, Marc shuttles heroically between home, where Poppy is thriving, and the NICU of the Princess Eugenie Hospital where Rowan clings precariously to life. Meanwhile, in a different hospital on the other side of London, their hormonal, humiliated, and exhausted mother is confined to bed by a virulent infection picked up giving birth in the streets like a gin-soaked whore in a Hogarth print.

Davina doesn’t visit, of course. I didn’t expect her to.

I’m astonished by the apparent ease with which Marc has taken to fatherhood. I’m the one biologically programmed to bond with my young; and yet, even as I struggle to adjust to the idea that I’m now a
mother
, he’s the one who seems to find it as natural as breathing.

———

Marc Elias didn’t seem promising parenthood—or marriage—material when we ran into each other at four
A.M
. one foggy February morning over eight years ago. Literally: I didn’t even see his gray BMW until it slammed into the side of my van.

“I’m
so
sorry,” I apologized, as only women do when they’re clearly in the right. “But it’s one-way.”

The driver buzzed down his window. “You didn’t signal—”

“As I said,” I repeated, rather less politely, “it
is
one-way.”

“Look, it’s only a dent. You’ll be able to—”

If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a man who won’t take responsibility.

I held up my hand to silence him. “That really isn’t good enough,” I said coolly, “is it?”

It didn’t occur to me to be nervous till he got out. At five-ten, I’m tall, but he towered over me. It was still dark, and the streets of New Covent Garden were deserted; most stall-holders and early-bird wholesale buyers like me were already inside the covered market, out of the wind and sleet. No one would hear me scream.

I stood my ground and wondered if my knee would even reach his groin.

He caught me completely off guard.

“How about lunch?” he said.

Later, as I sat at the Oyster Bar and toyed with my shellfish, I’d wondered what he wanted. I hadn’t been fool
enough to think he’d been mesmerized by my beauty. I’m no oil painting at the best of times, and seven years ago, my life had been as far from the best of times as it was possible to be. I’d foolishly overextended myself buying up shop leases across London as if I was playing Monopoly; regularly putting in twenty-hour days just to keep PetalPushers afloat. I was running on empty, and it showed.

With the benefit of daylight, I could see that Marc, on the other hand, looked good enough to eat. Skin the color of caramel, eyes like bitter chocolate. (I learned later he owed those smoldering Omar Sharif looks to his Lebanese father, who’d emigrated with the family to Canada when Marc was four.) He was witty, charming, and well-read; he even had a sexy foreign accent, somewhere between French and North American, thanks to his upbringing in Montreal.

He was also, at twenty-three, eight years younger than me.

He asked me out to lunch again; I said no. As if following a woo-by-numbers rule book, he sent me books of poetry, chocolates shaped like lilies, tickets to
Madame Butterfly;
I thanked him and went with my brother, Xan. Of course I didn’t take Marc seriously; despite the millions he traded daily at a Canadian bank in the City, as far as I was concerned he was still barely out of short trousers. I was thirty-one; I needed an older man, an equal, someone I could look up to (metaphorically, rather than literally.)

But despite—or perhaps because of—his youth, he continued to pursue me with a level of ardor and persistence I’d never experienced before. Most men were put off
once they discovered I had a First from Oxford and earned well into six figures. Marc was different. He wasn’t fazed by any of it. I’d put it down to the fact that he was so much younger; maybe this generation of New Men really
did
see women as equal.

Even so, I might never have returned his calls had he not found my website and started emailing me.

At first, his emails were the kind of casual notes you’d send a friend; I’d thought (with a surprising pang) that he’d given up on the romance idea. He sounded off about global warming (ah! his age was showing
there)
, and debated the wisdom of remaking classic movies. Then gradually he started to tell me about his life; he discussed his five older sisters in such detail that I’d felt as if I’d stepped into an Austen novel. He told me how he’d felt when his best friend shot himself in the head at the age of seventeen, and wondered if he’d ever have a marriage as strong as his parents’. It was less what he said, of course, but that he said it at all: For a woman used to dating emotionally constipated toxic bachelors, nothing could have been more seductive than a man who told me, without asking, what he was thinking. For six months, he emailed me pieces of his life, and before I knew it, he was a part of mine.

When he asked me to marry him, a year after we met, I still had no idea what he saw in me. I sucked in my stomach as I gazed up at the shining young knight standing beside me at the altar, and prayed he loved me for my mind.

“Tell me,” my mother, Davina, said, “has he ever asked you what
you’re
thinking?”

———

“She’s doing it wrong!” I wail, as Poppy squirms and screams, red-faced and hungry, in my arms. “She’s got to open her mouth more!”

I’ve read about the difficulties of breast-feeding and latching on, of course, but nothing has prepared me for the reality of the two hot, painful, misshapen bombs strapped to my chest. The slightest brush against them is torture. Poppy’s suckling isn’t the tranquil, bonding experience I’d imagined, but a violent wrestling match with an incubus I can never satisfy.

“Clare, you need to relax. The more upset you get, the more you upset her.”

“She’s not getting anything! She’ll starve! Davina was right, I’m going to be a terrible mother, I can’t even feed my own baby—”

Marc perches on the hospital bed and reaches around me, cradling us both in his arms. “She’s just getting used to it, same as you. Look, stroke her cheek, so she turns her face towards you. There, you see?”

“I’m the one with the breasts,” I sob. “How is it you know what to do?”

“I have five sisters, and seventeen nieces and nephews. You pick up a few things.”

“I should be able to do it. Why can’t I do it?”

“You
are
doing it,” he soothes.

As Marc promised, Poppy soon gets the hang of it, but by then my nipples are cracked and bleeding. On the advice of one of the nurses, he brings in cold cabbage leaves
for me to score and place against my engorged breasts, but nothing helps. Every time Poppy latches on, I want to scream with agony.

But at least I’m managing to feed my daughter. I haven’t even seen my son, fighting for life in a hospital the other side of London, since he was born. Marc takes dozens of photos on his mobile phone, but I ache to hold him. He looks so tiny, though he’s putting on weight faster than Poppy. A nurse with a bottle is nurturing my son better than I can nourish my own daughter.

In the second week of January, Rowan is unexpectedly discharged from the NICU, a healthy six pounds, and Marc is finally told he can take me home.

“I’m not ready.” I panic. “I can’t, not yet—”

“You’ll be fine.” Marc smiles, strapping the twins into the back of the Range Rover. “You’ll feel much better when you get home and everything goes back to normal.”

Normal?
I think. Nothing will ever be normal again.

If I could just get a good night’s sleep. Gather my resources. But the first night home, the twins wake at midnight, at two, at three, three-thirty, four-thirty. Poppy feeds hungrily, but Rowan struggles in my arms, red-faced and frantic, wanting the familiar rubber teat of a bottle in his mouth, not this strange, warm nipple. I’m used to Poppy in my arms; when I cradle Rowan, I feel as if I’m holding someone else’s baby.

Marc sleeps through it all. At six
A.M
., he leans over the bed and kisses me on the cheek. His jaw is smooth and freshly shaven.

Blearily, I push myself up on one elbow. “You’re going to work?”

“I have to, Clare. I’ve already taken too much time off looking after Poppy. There’s a major deal going through in the European—”

To my shame, I start to cry.

“Oh, darling. You’re going to be fine.” He sits on the edge of the bed and thumbs the tears from my cheek. He looks as handsome and carefree as ever. “You’ve just got to get into the swing of things. It’s not that hard once you establish a routine. Fran said she’d pop over later this morning. She’s done this herself three times, remember. She knows what it’s like—”

“But nothing’s organized, we need more nappies, food—”

“Sweetheart, you’ve been organized for months.” Marc laughs. “By the way, can you get me some more razor blades? I forgot to buy some, and I’m out.”

The moment the front door shuts behind him, Poppy wakes. Her imperious cries disturb her brother. Rowan’s sobs are anguished and desperate. I agitate beside their pram, not knowing whom to pick up first. I’ve never been alone with my son before. I don’t know what he wants. I don’t know how to please him.

Feeling guilty, I choose Poppy.

“I can’t,” I plead with my son. “I can’t feed both of you together.”

I wrestle with the buttons on my maternity nightdress and unhook my nursing bra with one hand, fumbling in my haste, petrified I’m going to drop Poppy.

Rowan’s cries redouble. He sucks in a breath, but doesn’t exhale, mouth open and eyes screwed shut in a silent scream. His face and lips turn blue. I tug Poppy off the breast, ignoring her indignant yells. Holding her under one arm, I scoop up Rowan with the other, then stand there with two screaming infants. Tears stream down my own cheeks. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know which mouth to feed.

Somehow, I prop us all in the nursing chair, using two of the ridiculous oversized soft toys the twins have been given to protect their heads from its beautifully carved flame cherry wood arms. (Why didn’t I pick the cheap padded rocking chair? What use is
carving
to a baby?)

I wedge them on each side of me, trapping their small hot bodies against the chair. I push one small face—none too gently—towards each fat brown nipple. Snuffling like a little animal, Poppy latches on immediately. Rowan twists his face away, searching again for the bottle. I yelp with frustration, and rub my milky nipple hard against his mouth. Finally, he starts to suck. I close my eyes. For the first time in my life, I feel a flicker of sympathy for my mother.

Fran is late. My best friend is always late, which usually drives me wild—honestly, it’s just a question of planning ahead—but today I’m relieved at the reprieve. It’s midday, and I’ve barely managed to get dressed. How do other mothers do it? How do they even find time to go to the bathroom?

“Sorry I’m late,” Fran says, kissing my cheek. “I caught Kirsty smoking on the nanny-cam, the little cow. I’d fire her, only she might go running to Rod, and this divorce is bloody enough as it is.” She unwinds her scarf and throws it over the bannister. “Darling, you look marvelous! So
thin!
Where are the twins, I’ve been dying to see Rowan—”

“Upstairs. Sleeping.”

“I’ll be quiet as a mouse!”

She’s upstairs before I can stop her. Reluctantly, I follow her into our bedroom, where the twins are top-to-tail in the very heavy, old-fashioned pram that Marc and I lugged upstairs last night, since they refuse to settle in the expensive matching Simon Horne cribs in their newly decorated nursery. The only way I can get them to sleep is by rocking the pram until my arm aches.

Fran leans over them, and I flinch as the oak floorboards squeak.
Don’t wake don’t wake don’t wake
.

“Oh, Clare. They’re adorable,” she breathes.

“They are now—”

“Oh, dear. I remember that feeling.” Fran sighs. “I know it takes a bit of getting used to, especially with twins, but you’ll soon get the hang of it. And think of the benefits of getting the whole baby thing out of the way in one go, two for the price of one; perhaps if Rod and I had done that—”