CHAPTER 22
It wasn’t that easy, of course, as over the next few months our boy developed from what Elaine called ‘shit machine’ (“What? Not me! A friend said it, and she’s got three”) to someone more fully human.

That sounds callous, unmaternal, evil, pick your adjective; but I have heard it said that mother-love is nature’s way of stopping the new person from being smothered at birth, or at least at the first nappy change.

I never got used to the smell, but at least my nose got over its initial state of shock and accusation. Not only that, Rhodri Adam wasn’t as bad, in the end, as Blake and I had dreaded, and after a very few months he found his sleep pattern and drifted to align it with our own. Well, almost. I expressed milk when I could, and it was ready in the fridge for one of us to make the emergency bottle. By ‘one of us’, of course, I actually meant Blake; I would tend to plug Rhod onto my breast if it was that early, and fall asleep in a chair. For those first few months, I nearly forgot what sleep was like, or at least what it was like to experience it in a bed.

It got better, for he was soon able to respond in ways other than a screwed-up face and a scream, and as the first smiles and laughter appeared along with his personality, I was lost. I will not give out any of the traditional rubbish about completion and fulfilment, but as I came to love my boy I saw more and more clearly how my good fortune wounded others.

One thing, though, was a pain in itself, and that was the passport. Everyone has to have one now, if they wish to travel, and infants are no exception. Dad volunteered to take the photos, which was far from easy. We ended up waving something just to one side of the camera, so that Rhod would look that way, rather than spend five years of his life with a passport photo showing him either sleeping or screaming. In the end, the picture was a little over-exposed, but I didn’t care. Blake took the new passport into work to show the team, and reported back that the Office Blonde had said that our bald little man reminded her of a ‘white Malteser’.

I started keeping notes for later retribution. Her time would come.

The passport wasn’t the only thing that raised issues. If we were going to fly off to some sunny Greek island, I fully intended to go swimming, and my little treasure had left quite a mark on me in terms of that ‘mummy belly’. I will be the first to admit that I am not exactly the fair flower of the West, but I will admit that those months with Bridget had included an awful lot of men who had seemed to find me attractive. My job kept me fit and trim, but I would never match up to other women. Siân’s amazing hair, for example, or Candice’s stunning figure, or Ellen’s beautiful eyes…

In the end, I don’t believe Blake fell for me because of my looks, but until I have settled a bit more in the gut area, I am not wearing a bloody bikini. I looked online for swimming costume ideas, and realised I was far from the only woman bothered about her midriff. There were vast numbers of items with ‘tummy control bands’, just for starters, as well as many more with chest boosters. Sod that; I settled on a cossie that looked like racing kit, just with an elastic squeezy bit round the middle. It did the trick, it fitted, and I liked the colour. I did the retail therapy part of my shopping, rather than the utilitarian, by picking out some nice things for my men. A flower needs a decent setting. Besides which, I could use whatever I got them as Christmas presents.

Before we rolled up to Christmas, though, I had another surprise, and that was something I nearly missed. I was out with the boy and a gaggle of young women, sitting in a coffee shop bear the Pierhead, and as they passed round my treasure I was catching up on Paula’s latest instalment in the Graun. It was turning into a real eye-opener as her story progressed, and I was engrossed, Deb leafing through the rest of the paper as I discovered how easy my life had really been.

“Di?”

“Um?”

“This your mate?”

“Uh? What?”

“Here. Page six, review of the year, down the bottom”

I took the folded paper from her, and there, in full colour, was Annie, smiling with real joy and wearing what looked like full posh uniform, including a hat. The hat was a woman’s, and I had to assume that the rest of what she was wearing, outside the framing of the picture, included a skirt. I skimmed quickly over the article, and found my heart rate increasing.

“That is Annie, Deb. Spot on!”

“Aye. Queen’s award for gallantry stuff. That’s Buckingham Palace behind her, or at least the gates”

“How did I miss that? Shit! She deserved it, though”

“You going to look her up?”

I thought that one through as I folded the paper again. I really did not want to relive that story, and that was my answer.

“I don’t really think so, Deb. Said it all before, about old ghosts, but it’s more than that. She’s got a new life over there, in all sorts of ways, and some bloody good friends. People I don’t know”

Deb sat silently for a little while, looking out of the window and over the Bay. When she spoke again, her mood was almost distant.

“Aye, I see your point, girl. I have had a little of that myself, with the trial and that. I can remember Benny, as a kid, and it was great… It was necessary to see him again, see that he’s still there, still fighting, but it’s not the same. He’s not the same”

“You regret seeing him again?”

She turned back to me, her smile recovered.

“No, love. Not a bit. They are coming down for Christmas, staying up to Castle Street, behind the Stadium. Can’t have them in the house. No. What I meant was that it’s not the same thing when you meet again. Sometimes you can catch up, make it as if you’d never lost contact. Sometimes it’s like making a new old friend. Sometimes… Well, sometimes it’s like that old saying, you can’t go back”

“Which one is it with your friend?”

“Ah, second one, really. So much has happened to both of us, but we’re still the same people, just new ones. Same underneath, I mean; new skins? New scars?”

I nodded, and she took my hand.

“You are worried you’ll throw a spanner into it with Annie, aren’t you? Getting her life on track, and you walk in. You think she’s still the same person in all ways”

“I don’t know, Deb. I just think, you know: I was really getting a bit stuck on him, as she was, and she’s got a really good man now, or so I am told. No. Not fair. I saw him once, you know?”

“Sneaky style? When you went blonde?”

“Yeah. What I was going to say is that he IS a good man, but he must have some issues with, you know. Not saying he’s got the problem, inside sort of thing, isn’t it? But he’ll have friends, colleagues, and you show me this, and she’s not exactly out of the public eye. Can’t be easy for him”

She smiled at me, in an almost motherly way.

“Paul tells me you have a reputation, Di. No, not like that! He says you have a name for seeing how things fit together. Detail, aye? I can see what he means. Don’t change, girl. Don’t ever lose that”

She suddenly screwed her face up.

“But I do think your young man needs a bit of s change. What the hell has he been eating?”

I grinned, but it came with a wince of my own.

“Me, mostly”

I took Rhod from Charlie’s ginger hold, her own nose wrinkled in disgust, and to my surprise Tiff asked if she could come and help, which brought a guffaw from her friend.

“Take some tissues to stuff up your nose, Tiff!”

The single toilet in the café had a drop-down baby-changing platform, which I gave a wipe down with some anti-bacterial stuff from the Baby Bag I had to carry everywhere, and once I had his bottoms off, I unclipped the tags and…

“Sure you can cope, Tiff?”

“Is he always this smelly?”

“Oh yes! Open that bin for me?”

I dropped the offending item into the sanitary waste hopper, extremely grateful it had a secure lid that held the smell of any earlier deliveries, and began the clean-up of Rhod’s rear. He was giggling as I worked, and just as I got the area clean he let out some more wee.

I looked down at him, practising my Mother Stare.

“I could fall out of love, you know!”

Tiff’s eyes were wide in adoration as she looked down at my baby.

“No she couldn’t, little man!”

I turned the stare on her, and she simply gave it back until we both started to giggle. I gave her a careful one-arm-and-no-hands hug.

“Pass me a fresh one, love. Unless you want to put it on?”

“Wouldn’t fit me, would it?”

“You know what I meant!”

She smiled, nodded, and with careful instruction from me secured Rhod’s danger area, her grin a mile wide. We washed our hands, my son secure in the platform’s harness, before I gathered Tiff to me for a proper hug.

“Thanks, Tiff. Having friends is something I missed out on for a few years”

“Besties, yeah?”

“Besties. Now, back to the rest, and perhaps some chocolate fudge cake?”

“You are one sick puppy, Mrs Sutton!”

We walked back to the table grinning, and as I put the order in, Charlie got the joke immediately. Tiff just brought her slice of cake up to her nose, inhaled deeply, and said,

“Looks the same, but I think I can tell the difference!”

The pattern of my life, in one day. I had read so much about motherhood, and I suppose I take after Dad a bit in that I dive deeply into what some might consider trivia. Where he prepares for a trip with piles of maps and guide books, I trawl the net, and one thing that had jumped out at me was the risk of isolation. Too many new mothers, it seemed, saw nobody except their child for long periods, sometimes seeing no other humans for days. I had so many friends now, all of whom seemed to want to see my child (even if the number willing to follow Tiff’s lead was rather lower), that I was rarely on my own.

Christmas would have been more of the same, but we naturally spent it at the old house with Mam and Dad, and once more I found myself having to explain what it was I found funny, to my mother this time.

“Just realised, Mam, when Rhod starts talking, innit?”

“What exactly have you realised?”

“Well, you’re both going to be out of a job. Me and Blake, yeah? We’ll be Mam and Dad. Dunno about you two”

Dad looked up from yet another book on Venice.

“Bamps’ll do me, love. Ask your Mam what she wants”

I looked at her, and she giggled as she struck a pose.

“World peace and working with children, isn’t it?”

I raised an eyebrow, finding an ideal occasion to practise my Mother Stare again.

“And how many glasses have you had so far, young lady?”

She laughed so hard she started coughing, and pulled me over for a cuddle.

“Nana will do me fine, love. Now, shush. Time for the Queen”

I had consumed my own share of alcohol over our dinner, and as one old woman said worthy things to her nation, I thought of another woman who had stood before her, and sent her my happiest thoughts. Two smiles, one being that at her man’s arrival, the other from a page in the Guardian.

Never lose that joy, Annie.