Julie Shaw - Blood Line - Sometimes Tragedy Is in Your Blood

Decided, Annie moved towards the cot. She had to nurse her. And quickly, before the next contraction came – she knew only too well that it might be hours before she was fit enough to do it later. Groaning with the effort, she hauled her daughter from the cot, bringing the blankets with her, then settled into the big chair, better to get her breast out from under her pinny. ‘Come on, baby,’ she soothed to the semi-conscious toddler. ‘Shh, there, come on. Time you had your tea.’

Margaret was angry. And so she would be. She’d been disturbed from her slumbers. She kicked and fussed, at first refusing to take the breast. ‘Come on, you little bugger,’ Annie soothed, wincing as Margaret’s teeth clamped round her tender skin. ‘Make the most of it. You’ll be having to share it soon. Either that, or it’ll be down to the wet nurse with you,’ she gently joked. ‘And knowing her, it’ll come out sour!’

Margaret relaxed eventually and started to suckle, but as the pain started building again Annie knew it wouldn’t last – and, sure enough, as Annie writhed beneath her, Margaret snapped her head back angrily. ‘Mammy, no!’ she yelled, smacking Annie’s breast hard and kicking her. ‘Want bread! Want bread !’

‘Hush, Margaret,’ Annie soothed, trying to keep her voice from rising. The pain deep within her was becoming unbearable. If she didn’t coax her daughter down now, she’d end up falling off anyway. It was just so hard to sit, when she felt compelled to bear down. It was coming. There was no doubt. It was coming.

‘Down you get,’ she said, gently urging Margaret to climb off of her. ‘Baby’s coming now. Remember Mammy’s baby in her tummy? Baby’s coming now –’

‘Baby?’ Margaret’s glass-blue eyes widened. ‘Baby, baby, baby!’

She shuffled down now, energised, and ran towards the cold hearth. ‘Baby!’ she squealed, picking up a stray piece of coal, scribbling on lino with it as Annie convulsed in pain again.

She needed to be down there with her daughter, Annie realised. There was no point in even thinking about her bed now. She needed to be down on the floor where Margaret was. And quickly.

This wasn’t the way I’d planned it! she thought irritably, lifting her skirt.

Agnes and the midwife rushed into the living room together, just at the point when Charles Hudson made his entrance. He slithered out, huge and glistening – a ten pounder, it turned out – and with a pair of lungs any town crier would have been proud of.

‘Oh! It’s a little boy, Annie!’ Agnes cried, her voice breaking. ‘A little gift from God to replace your Frank.’

Agnes had never known Frank. She and Stan had moved into their house in Broomfields a while after he’d died, but Annie knew her neighbour’s emotion was genuine, and felt an unexpected rush of warmth towards her. She felt like crying too, her eyes filling with tears as she held both her babies, wishing above all that Reggie were home to hold his son. She gazed down at the angry pink bundle swaddled close to her chest. He’d be the light of Reggie’s life, she just knew it.

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