Page 47 of The Trouble With Love

‘Yeah, he’s building them a Stickle-brick house, and as soon as he’s potty trained they’ll all live together in it.’

‘Holly . . .’ Kai poked me with his elbow. ‘We’ll be off then.’

‘I’d better go too.’ Isobel pulled her knitted coat from under a cat. ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right, Vivienne?’

While they were making their farewells, and after I’d instructed Isobel to put my keys back through my letterbox once she’d released Aiden, Kai and I dragged our damp coats on again and started out into the snow. It was even harder this time because we were walking into the wind and it found every pre-soaked crevice and dug its nails in.

‘Come on Holly.’ Kai stopped to let me catch up.

‘Oh sorry, am I holding you up?’ I panted. ‘That’ll be on account of me being normal sized and you having legs that can step over fallen trees.’

‘I’m worried about Cerys.’ The wind boomed and roared like a train passing three yards away and the rest of his sentence got lost.

‘First babies take ages to arrive. And second ones too, if you ask my mum; I think she wanted to put me off ever having any of my own. Apparently she nearly split in two.’

‘Yes, well, Cerys isn’t an amoeba.’ Kai set off again. ‘And if Isobel can’t get through to the hospital . . .’

‘Don’t worry, I bet you Cerys’ll still be in early labour this time tomorrow.’ I tried to copy his easy jump over a snowdrift but landed unceremoniously half in it. Snow seeped into my underwear. ‘It might not even be labour, she might just have indigestion.’

‘I knew I should have sent her back to Peterborough,’ Kai groaned. ‘I don’t have any baby stuff.’

I rolled my eyes at him, although he probably didn’t notice because my eyebrows had icicles, and plodded on.

As it happened, I was one hundred per cent wrong about the indigestion thing. When we finally struggled back to the Old Lodge, Nicholas was hovering in the hallway. He’d obviously had his face pressed to the front window waiting to catch sight of us, there was a big smeary mark where he’d been blowing on the glass.

‘Cerys is . . .’ he said, and then performed a complicated mime which seemed to indicate that she was struggling to lift a very heavy weight. ‘In her room.’

All three of us dashed up the stairs. Kai and I stripped off soggy outer layers as we went.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Cerys was crouching on her bed, knees drawn up to her belly. ‘Is the ambulance coming?’

Kai and I looked at each other. ‘Yes,’ I said firmly, before he could do the fatherly thing and tell her the truth. After all, it wasn’t a lie, more of a time-dependent falsehood. ‘How are you doing?’

Nicholas rubbed the bit of her back he could reach, as she rolled and gyrated her hips. ‘She keeps making really weird noises.’

As he finished speaking we got a practical demonstration, as Cerys rose suddenly onto all fours and let out a huge groan, which went on far longer than I would have thought she had breath for. ‘Oh my God,’ she said, collapsing back onto the bed again. ‘I thought there would be pethidine. Or morphine. Instead I’m going to give birth in a house where there isn’t even any aspirin.’

‘The doctor is on his way,’ I crossed my fingers behind my back. ‘Make yourself comfortable and he’ll be here before anything happens.’ I started eating her glucose tablets. I was going to need all my energy, and some of someone else’s.

‘Comfortable!’ Cerys gave an outbreathed kkkkrrrrrrrrr kind of noise. ‘I haven’t been able to make myself comfortable since June.’ Then she did the rising groan noise again, which went on even longer this time. I looked at her bedside clock.

‘That was only a minute or so.’

‘What?’ Kai was looking a bit helpless and lost.

‘Between contractions. I’ve got a feeling . . .’

‘Fuck the ambulance,’ shouted Cerys suddenly. ‘I want to push!’

I stared. Nicholas bolted for the door. ‘We have to boil water,’ he said, grabbing Kai by the shoulder. ‘Boiling water. I just watched an episode of Tracy Beaker with birth in, and that’s what they had to do.’

‘When Cerys was born, they told us to boil scissors? And string?’

‘I’m having twins, Kai, not a fucking parcel,’ Cerys said, between gritted teeth.

‘For the . . . you know, cord and stuff . . .’

‘Look . . . just go and boil everything you can find, all right?’ I said.

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