Page 92 of So Thrilled For You

The sirens can be heard in the distance, but they’re background noise, undistracted by Lauren having a chance to say it and have someone listen. She talks us through her birth, in explicit detail, weeping as she details the agony and fear.She details the days left alone in hospital afterwards. The helplessness. The feeding issues. The sleeping issues. The tongue tie issues. The everything-but-nowhere-to-get-help issues. She tells us how she hurts herself sometimes so she doesn’t hurt Woody when he wakes. All of it’s a horror story and yet I’ve heard it all before from other mothers. I’ve just not wanted to listen because it wasn’t happening to me, and I was too jealous. They’ve tried to tell me that birth is terrible, that services are broken, that husbands are useless, that babies don’t sleep and society still expects you to function like they do. I know that breastfeeding is incredibly difficult. I know that everyone hates mothers – the space they take up, the way they sag, their prams in our way, their children ruining the nice dinner you’re paying for. I know that childcare is cripplingly expensive and oversubscribed. I know post-natal depression is incredibly common. I know all this. They keep trying to tell us. But I haven’t listened or tried to see it properly – for my own reasons. But, today, I stop wishing Lauren would shut up and be grateful. I stop secretly thinking ‘well you chose this’. And I try to listen instead. I let her cry on me instead.

Lauren details every meltdown, breast infection, failed attempt to improve Woody’s sleep, failed attempt to improve Woody’s feeding so it might improve the sleep, every argument with Tristan, every person tutting at her in public for not controlling Woody or leaving the pram in the wrong place. Every strange physical symptom of severe sleep deprivation – the eye twitches, the hallucinations, the intense tempers, the endless tears. She details every call to the health visitors’ centre thatnever gets returned, the blocked accounts on Instagram for accusing others of misinformation, the ‘car crash’ of her postpartum vagina and how she once dared look at it and vomited. She detailed every full-on minute of the never-ending process of growing a baby and birthing a baby and then keeping it alive and happy. Feed by feed, nap by nap, wonder week by wonder week, tooth by tooth, developmental leap by leap, health scare by health scare, play group by play group, nursery rhyme by nursery rhyme, tidy-up by tidy-up, bedtime routine by bedtime routine, night wake by night wake. The sheer, audacious, everyday relentless effort of motherhood – such an exhausting, all-encompassing ‘gift’. One I’m still desperate for, but, for once, I’m looking at the mother and feeling something more than jealousy. I’m ready to try and understand.

‘In that moment on the sofa, all I wanted was for someone to take it all away,’ Lauren says. ‘To just have it taken away so I could be me again, just for a second.’ Her voice goes up. ‘And now this has happened and they really will take him away . . . I can’t . . . I love Woody so much, I promise.’ The sobs explode out of her. ‘I know that makes no sense with everything I’ve just said, but I love him . . . I can’t bear . . .’ She reaches towards me and pulls him into her lap and he nestles into her neck. I marvel at what a happy baby he is, the love so evident on his face. A safe baby. A secure baby. Lauren’s somehow doing such abrilliant jobthrough all this, if only she could see it, believe it, get some help, have a break, be seen, be heard, be listened to.

She rocks with him, presses her nose into him, and takes deep sniffs of his scent. ‘I know what I’ve done . . . Just lookat what I’ve done . . . Neglect . . . I . . . Social services. Prison. They can’t take my baby, can they? Will they take my baby for this?

‘No,’ I shout. ‘They won’t take him. I won’t let them.’

I know there’s due process. I know there’s law and order. I know a valley is burning to ash, but no. I love due process.

I love law and order. But no. It’s not right, or fair, and I refuse for my friend to be punished.

‘Me neither,’ Steffi adds, hugging both Lauren and Woody at the same time, like she’s throwing herself in front of them as a car heads right for them. ‘We’ll think of something,’

‘We will,’ Nicki adds, joining the hug as much as she can. ‘We will.’

I push myself into their mass of bodies and we huddle together on the hill, breathing in each other’s breath, painting each other with our sweat. I clutch tighter and they all copy, and, for a quiet, perfect moment, we are one organism – a fusing of womanhood and the love we have for each other. A new thing I know for certain arrives in my head. Today wasn’t about making the baby shower perfect. It was about protecting Lauren. Rescuing Lauren. Loving Lauren. If I protect her as a mother, then I’m going to be OK. If I make Lauren alright, then my baby will be alright. If Lauren’s alright, then I’ll be alright. And Nicki will be alright. And Steffi will be alright. Woody starts laughing at being the centre of a human sandwich, clapping his hands. His laughter is the most precious sound I’ve ever heard, and it carries out over the vista.

Together, we’re all going to be alright.

As the horizon burns, we make our plan. We will tell the same story. We will protect our own. None of us will break.None of us will give her up. They can’t prosecute all of us. We are together in this, as it should be. I see that now.

‘You can’t do this,’ she keeps saying. ‘If you’re caught lying . . .’

‘We won’t get caught lying,’ Nicki says. ‘We’re in this together.’

She has her hand on her stomach, and Lauren reaches out and puts her own hand on top of it. Steffi follows and then I, until our fingers build a tower and Woody laughs again and reaches out to join in. Too much time has passed already and we break apart and make our way back to the car, our thighs sticky on the seats, the stench of smoke on our hair as it lifts on the breeze as we drive towards the hospital.

In hushed voices, we start to tell each other the truths we’ve been hiding. And, under the hum of the car engine, and the hum of our confessions, Woody finally falls asleep in his car seat.

Transcript: Inspector Simmons

interviewing Nicole Davies, Lauren Powell,

Steffani Fox, Charlotte Roth

Simmons: So, who was responsible for the fire?

Nicki: None of us. All of us. It was an accident.

***

Lauren: Nobody. It was awful, but none of us meant for it to happen.

***

Steffani: All of us, I guess? But it was just a terrible accident.

***

Charlotte: God?

NO CHARGES PRESSED FOR ‘BLAZE-IC BITCH’

BABY SHOWER FIRE

Police have dropped the arson investigation against the four women involved with a baby shower inferno, citing insufficient evidence.

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