Anouska Knight - A Part of Me

A bustling through the front door and my brother’s cheerful voice throbbed through the open hallway. ‘Hey, hey! Somethin’ smells good! Sam … don’t push ! You’ll knock somebody over.’ Sam scrambled into the kitchen making a beeline for the biscuit jar.

‘Oh no you don’t,’ Mum warned, leaping from her chair to intercept him. A waft of cool air came in with them as Guy plonked Harry’s car seat down on Mum’s pine kitchen table.

Lauren followed them all in, rosy cheeked, puffing mousy-brown strands of hair away from her face, arms full of the things Harry couldn’t possibly need in just a couple of hours. She dumped her bags and came straight over with an embrace, then reassuringly rubbed my arm. ‘Hey. How are we doing?’ I smiled crookedly letting her hug me for a second time. ‘I’m so sorry, Ame.’ I shrugged my shoulders. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t blub in front of the kids.

Guy scratched his short-cropped curls and threw me an unimpressed look. I glared back at him, in case he was under any illusion that dealing with Mum’s counsel wasn’t taxing enough. He arched his eyebrows and held his hands up briefly in submission. He wouldn’t say anything about James, for now. I let out a breath as he came over and planted a kiss on my cheek. ‘Just say the word,’ he said quietly. ‘He needs his arse kicking.’

‘Samuel Alwood! What on earth have you done to your face?’ Sam peered wide brown eyes out at Mum from underneath the hood of his duffel coat, a strange purplish bruise beneath his eye.

Lauren huffed as she pulled him from his coat. ‘He stuck a Tic Tac up his nose, didn’t you, buddy? Pushed it that far up there, burst a blood vessel.’

Sam grinned at his achievement. ‘I made Mummy’s legs go funny!’ he said triumphantly. Lauren was squeamish, which made it all the more baffling to understand how she’d had not one, but two children with my heathen brother.

I bent down beside Sam. ‘Let me see, Curly.’ He lifted his chin to allow me a better look. ‘Ew, gross. At least you’ll have minty fresh nostrils for a while, kiddo.’ I stole a kiss before he could make his escape.

‘Daddy said I can’t put anything else up my nose now, Aunty Ame. Not even my fingers.’

I ran my hand over the softness of his curls. ‘Good to know, kid.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s good advice.’

‘I’ve got some advice for you too if you want to hear it?’ Guy asked me.

The timer on the oven began bleeping urgently, answered with a grizzled response from the kitchen table. I ignored Guy as Lauren peered into Harry’s car seat and groaned. ‘ Harry! We can’t spend all day in the car! It’s not practical.’ She began to unclip him from the seat harness as Harry’s protestations grew. ‘Guy’s taken to driving him around the estate to get him off!’ she said, scooping him from the chair.

‘You’ll want to get out of that habit, Guy,’ Mum warned, repositioning the oven trays. ‘He’s got to learn to settle himself sometimes, or he’ll grow up expecting the world to do it for him.’ She looked over at Lauren peeling Harry like a banana from his snow suit and completely lost track of what she was doing. ‘He is scrumptious, though,’ she cooed. ‘Here, I’ll get him off for you.’

Something began boiling over on the hob, sending a crackle of spitting water everywhere. Mum looked over at the veg.

‘I’ll take him,’ I offered. Harry bunched into himself like a hedgehog as Lauren handed him to me. I settled him into my chest and grazed my nose over his downy dark hair. He was going to be curly too. I took the deepest lungful of air I could manage. He still smelled of that something only new babies did. Of softness and milky cotton.

‘So? Have you seen him since you moved back?’ Guy asked tartly. Harry grunted softly next to my ear. I nuzzled into him, into all that cotton-softness and rocked him gently, unsure as to who was really comforting who.

Mum began mashing the potatoes with unnecessary vigour. ‘Have I mentioned the parish meeting at the community centre to you both yet?’ It was a transparent attempt to change the subject.

‘I haven’t moved back, Guy,’ I said, rubbing my cheek against my little friend’s. ‘I just needed some breathing space.’ I knew it wasn’t me Guy was angry at, but the situation. He was friends with James, he had him down as a good guy too. Guy was always going to struggle with that. He was black and white that way, always had been, but I had other things to consider – a whole spectrum of grey.

I walked away from my brother and lifted Harry’s tiny hand to my lips to press a kiss there. There was a reason new babies’ hands were sized to match an adult mouth. Kisses were meant for tiny fingers. Tiny, delicate fingers, so perfect it was almost inconceivable that they could be created so easily. So easily for so many. I held Harry’s hand against my mouth.

We’d never meant to fall pregnant. I hadn’t even missed a pill. It had just happened, and everything had changed, irrevocably. The doctor had told us ours was a determined little egg, the one in a hundred to outwit the advances of contraceptive science and bed down for a chance at life. By some twist of fate, we’d been shown something wonderful, and then, once we’d fallen in love with our tiny stowaway, fate had seen fit to take him away again.

Mum intensified her attack on the spuds. I indulged in another hit of Harry’s inimitable scent. ‘Come on, handsome.’ I clucked, strolling towards the conservatory windows. ‘Let’s see if we can find that little robin.’

THERE WERE MANY days I’d have rather forgotten during my career as lead designer at Cyan Architecture & Design, but this one was already shaping up to go straight to the top of the leader board. A cyclist with a death wish had just committed the cardinal sin of cutting us up and Mum was still growling at his disappearing reflection in her mirrors. ‘Sunshine always brings the idiots out,’ she huffed, catching up with the traffic ahead. I was making a point of not looking up there: the city buses were all running the same campaign, posters plastered above their bumpers showing three beautiful children in a tricolour of races, begging the question, Could you adopt?

‘Stop fiddling with your ear, sweetheart.’

‘I’m not fiddling with my ear. Watch the road.’

Mum threw me a sideways glance. ‘You’re bound to feel nervous, Amy.’

‘It’s not my first day at school, Mum. Thank goodness . Could you have bought a more obscenely coloured car?’

‘You’re supposed to be a designer – embrace the alternative. Anyway, madam, there’s always the bus.’

The bistro-lined streets were already alive with coffee-wielding officebots on their way to work as Mum pulled us over into the bus lane. I eyed the small private car park over by the biscuit factory. James’s car wasn’t there. Good. Thoughts of what our first encounter might hold had me turning myself in knots. It had been the same for days now, I’d try to work out what I was going to say to him, but even within the controlled parameters of my own mental monologue, it all got messy and jumbled. First the hurt of what he’d done would hit all over again, then the anger at his timing (because if your boyfriend feels the need to bonk one of your colleagues, timing made all the difference, of course). Thinking of James and Sadie together had invariably been enough to trip off further unsightly bouts of snotty crying each time I’d played it through my head. Not being able to remember the last time I’d driven James wild with a single kiss, or was woken in the morning with a kiss of his own, triggered my growing sense of inadequacy just as effectively.