OMG Baby! (28 page)

‘
T
hat doesn’t even scan
.’

‘I don’t care Max, I was moved to write something.’

‘Will you be wanting to get her foot prints done in clay? Shall we listen to ‘Isn’t She Lovely?’’

‘Open the door and put it on!’

‘O-kay. We’re home!’ Max calls as he opens our door, throwing in the bags. Dave tiptoes to greet us, curling round our legs. Max squats down with baby Angel in her papoose tied to his great frame.

‘Dave, this is Angel. Angel, this is Dave,’ Max introduces them. Angel blinks once at the cat and screams her head off. Max gets to his feet and walks bouncily around the living room, murmuring, ‘Don’t you like the puddy cat? Aw, he’s OK. He’s a funny puddy cat. He wants to be your friend.’

Dave wears his usual ‘fuck you’ expression and wanders off to stare at his bowl.

‘She’s hungry, I think,’ I shout above the wailing. ‘But I’m just going to get changed; then I’ll take her.’

I go to our bedroom. It’s our bedroom again: Rainey is gone. I feel calm, awake and aware, like I’ve come round from an anaesthetic, snapped out of hypnosis, shaken off a spell. I’m home with Max, and, I have to keep reminding myself, we have a baby! Each time I think of it, I feel a fresh jolt of excitement and terror. I slump on the bed and let out a huge sigh. We are starting a whole new chapter, Max and I, and it’s going to be a happy one. I notice a vase of pink roses on the bedside table.

I get out of my maternity jeans and accidentally look left to the mirror, seeing the wreckage of my belly, the skin hanging like a deflated football. I turn away – I’ll deal with that later: a few sit-ups, power-walking with the Bugaboo. Hold on, where is the Bugaboo?

I pull on the expensive pyjamas that Lucy bought. Seriously nice. The top has these cool flaps and press studs so you can breastfeed discreetly, although it looks very wrong with the flaps down and no baby. I go to the bathroom. Angel has moved up an octave with the screaming. Beside the sink is a jug of stunning white freesias. The Bugaboo isn’t in the hallway either.

I go through to the living room, where Max is bobbing about and struggling to dock his iPod into the speakers. On the coffee table there are three jam jars packed with roses and anemones.

‘I’ll just get some water and I’ll take her,’ I say, nipping into the kitchen where there’s a cut-off water bottle full of daffodils. I run the tap and find a glass. Next door I hear the intro of ‘Three Little Birds’ playing – that tune again. When I go back into the living room, Angel is quiet. She’s blinking and listening.

‘She likes this one,’ whispers Max, rocking backwards and forwards.

I put the glass down and go to them. I kiss him and then I kiss her. She turns her face to me with her tiny wet mouth on my nose. Then we dance, the three of us, all around the living room with Angel sandwiched in the middle.

‘You put flowers in every room, didn’t you?’ I say.

‘I bet your Harold Pinter didn’t buy out all the flowers from Tesco Metro, did he?’

‘No.’

‘That’s not all,’ he says, and he produces a homemade card, a photo of his grinning face next to Angel, who’s staring blankly from beneath her ‘I love Daddy’ hat. I open it and there in Max’s scrawled capital letters in blue biro, it says:

W
E ARE YOUR HAPPY ENDING
.

A
nd standing
in that room at that moment, listening to that song with my loves, I’m so happy I almost feel guilty.

‘You are my happy ending,’ I say as the song ends. There’s one second of silence while Angel turns from snuffley to loudly furious. I take her from Max, feeling the buttons of her tiny spine, which we made, holding her miniature feet, feeling her heart beating like a little bird’s, and then I look up at Max, picturing him the first time we met in our university halls of residence. ‘Nice legs. Shame about the face,’ his first words to me. He was scruffy and skinny and funny, and now I’ve just had his baby, this old friend, this smiling guy I’ve known half my life, my best love, Max Kelly, and his daughter, Angel. My little family.

‘No, no. He said a happy ending! Happy!’ I shout above the rhythmic screaming, trying to undo press studs in these complicated bloody pyjamas, feed Angel and balance on my doughnut cushion at the same time.

I look at her slate-grey eyes, the sweep of lashes, her round soft cheek, and I wonder what she’d look like dressed as a bee. Hell, it’s very clear that I have no idea how to be a mummy. None of it makes any sense at all. I’ll just start by loving her and cuddling her a lot, and then I’ll get by with the kind of seat-of-your-pants reasoning I’m known for. I’ll research online. Maybe start a blog called ‘The Clueless Mother’. What I know about parenting could be written on a postage stamp. It’s all to do with patience and kindness and playfulness, I think. I can do that. I look at Max as he tries to untangle himself from the baby carrier.

‘Jesus, what kind of crazy bastard designed this?’ he shouts, stepping out of the arm loops.

‘You just have to unclip it, you fool.’

He holds it in the air like Houdini. ‘I’ve a fuck of a lot to learn,’ he says. ‘I’ll get the champagne.’

I look at Angel. She’s struggling to keep her eyes open. I hear the pop of the champagne cork from the kitchen and a cheer from Max. ‘Are you and Daddy my happy ending, baby?’ I say to her in the sudden quiet of the room. I stroke the wisp of dark hair at the back of her neck. She’s asleep. I kiss her ear. ‘My happy beginning more like.’

V
ivienne Summers

Baby Angel Evelyn Kelly was born at 11 p.m. on Tuesday 5 March weighing 6 pounds. Baby doing well, Mummy still walking funny, Daddy delirious.

Sunday at 6.20 p.m.

L
ucy Bond

Well done, Max and Viv – she’s gorgeous! I’m going to be the best godmother ever.

Sunday at 6.25 p.m.

D
amon Spyrou

May she bring joy to your life in ways previously unimagined, Vivienne.

Yesterday at 12.45 p.m.

M
ike Clarke

Vivienne, pet lamb, I’m not being funny, but in that second shot your baby looks like she has foreseen the Apocalypse and that massive cat next to her is plotting the downfall of humanity. Angel, tiny girl, I’ll teach you to space hopper out of there.

Yesterday at 12.50 p.m.

C
hristie Thompson

Awww, I know I said I’m never ever doing the baby thing because it wrecks your body and your life, but she is so cute! #secondthoughts

Yesterday at 12.55 p.m.

V
ivienne Summers

Christie, I know, and she’s powerless, so I can dress her up as anything I like. I already ordered a butterfly costume it has a matching antennae headband. Michael, she was filling her nappy, and the cat is her bodyguard. Lucy, you are already the best fairy godmother. I’m so tired and overexcited about being a mummy. #bestthingintheworld

Yesterday 1.07 p.m.

E
ve Summers

I’ll ring you tonight to hear all about it, but huge congratulations, darling! She looks so tiny and perfect and beautiful. I’m so glad she arrived safely. Clever girl, Viv, and welcome to the world, baby Angel. We just can’t wait for a cuddle. Reg and I are returning to England next month. Of course, when I heard from Max that you were in labour, I wanted to cut the trip short and get straight back to you, but you wouldn’t believe who just turned up in India and is staying with us here at the house since she has nowhere else to go! Rainey has broken the heart of a powerful Colombian drug baron and now he’s hunting her down? Did she tell you this? She needs to lie low for a while. #likelystory! #bloodyinconvenient

Yesterday 3.10 p.m.

I
’m absolutely delighted
that you chose to read
OMG Baby!
and I really hope that you got as wrapped up in Viv and Max’s lives as I did.

If you did enjoy it, I would be forever grateful if you’d consider writing a review on Amazon. I’d love to hear what you think, and it can also help other readers discover one of my books for the first time.

If you’d like to keep up-to-date with all my latest releases, just sign up at the link below.

Until next time!

Emma x

A
cknowledgements

T
hank you
, Steve Garcia, for tirelessly being my muse and making me write this.

I’m extremely grateful to my agent Madeleine Milburn for all her encouragement and wheeling and dealing. Thanks to everyone at Hodder, especially Isobel Akenhead for her hawkeyed editing and her lovely assistant Harriet Bourton, who is not at all like Christie. Thanks to Charlotte Maslen, Tessa Ditner and Danielle Shaw for repeatedly reading my writing and being so cool, clever and honest. Thanks to everyone who ever broke my heart and apologies to all my funny friends whose one-liners I’ve pinched. Thanks, Mum and Dad, for everything.