Jemma’s Version
I know that I’ll die. A human being can’t survive all this pain.
The midwife doesn’t seem to agree. “All right, from now on, try to push whenever you feel a contraction, okay?”
To be honest, I’m no longer able to distinguish when I feel a contraction from when I don’t. “I caaan’t.”
I don’t know how long I’ve been like this, with my feet in the stirrups and spread legs, without making any progress.
I’m exhausted.
The last thing I needed was to know that Ashford is here. Yes, at a certain point, a nurse approached my mother saying that a certain Ashford Parker had arrived, and claimed to be the father.
I looked at my mother through tears and just shook my head to say ‘no’, before another contraction made me cry out in pain.
Now the doctor announces: “The dilation won’t go beyond five centimetres, and the contractions are already too close together. Prepare the operating theatre, we’ll do a Caesarean section.”
My mother goes out to inform Dad and, when she comes back, she immediately understands what I want to know. “Yes, Ashford is outside with Dad.”
“He shouldn’t be here.”
She holds my hand while the midwife pushes the wheeled stretcher towards the operating theatre. “Don’t think about it now. Just go and make me a grandma.”
*
It’s incredible. I look at my baby in the hospital cot next to my bed, and I’m mesmerised. He’s perfect. I’m knackered, but the more I look at him, the more I think I would do it again.
When I told the nurse, she replied: “We’ll talk about it when the anaesthetic wears off.”
“Hello, Mummy.” It’s Cécile, who’s just outside the door. “Can I come in?”
I nod. I feel guilty about her. She was amazing with me, yet I disappeared without saying a word. I was so upset, so mad at Ashford and so disgusted by everything and everyone, that I left her behind with my past.
“I would have liked to call you a thousand times, Cécile. But I couldn’t.”
She stops me by raising a hand. “I know everything. You don’t owe me any excuses.” She looks down into the cot, curious. “Thank God he takes after you.”
“You can’t even imagine the pain. At times, I thought I was dying.”
“That’s impossible. I saw you survive worse things,” she replies. “Delphina, to name one.”
“Please, don’t remind me of her.”
“She’s out there, too. She’s been breathing down the necks of the hospital staff, to examine their professionalism and efficiency. It’s pure chance she hasn’t been kicked out by security.” Cécile reaches out a hand and touches the baby’s tiny nose. “Hi, I’m Aunt Cécile.”
“Do you want to hold him?” I ask her.
She looks at me in terror. “No, no, no. I could break him. I totally lack maternal instinct.”
“And what will you do when you have one of your own?”
“I won’t. I don’t want a committee of nurses to examine me naked, with open legs, waiting for something as big as a watermelon to come out of my vagina.”
Cécile is a good laugh. “I’m happy to see you. I missed you.”
“You just missed me?” She asks.
“What do you mean?”
“Ashford.”
“Please no. Don’t do it,” I beg her.
“Listen to me, if I stand up for him even though I can barely stand him, maybe you should listen to what I have to say.”
“Only if you want to insult him.”
“Ashford is totally in love with you. Since you left, he’s been a shadow of himself and he just thinks about you.”
“You didn’t see him, I did! He kissed Portia,” I growl. My anger has just given me back the strength that labour had drained from my body.
“It was that bitch, Portia, who kissed him, he rejected her. Don’t you understand that he doesn’t want that psychopath? He wants you.”
“He wasn’t able to prove it to me.”
“Because you’re damn stubborn and you didn’t let him. You just see what you want to see, and if you hadn’t fled in such a hurry, leaving everyone behind, perhaps we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.”
“It’s a conversation I don’t want to have.”
“Your child has got the right to be loved by a father, and let me say that I’ve never seen Ashford so much into something in all his life. You worked a miracle, you made him a human! Besides, dare you tell me that you don’t love him? Why did you keep his son, then?”
I look away without answering and, before she goes out, she strokes my hair and says: “I’ll be out there.”
*
I must have fallen asleep for a short while, and I wake up hearing the baby gurgling.
There’s someone in the room, standing in front of my bed with his back to me. I recognise that silhouette. It’s Ashford. When he turns towards me, my breath fails me.
He holds my baby in his arms, looking at him with a dreamy expression.
“Your mother let me in,” he says, without taking his eyes off him.
I stare at him without knowing what to say.
“A boy. If he’s got your personality, he will probably rule the world.” Then he looks at me. “What would you like to call him?”
“Brandon,” I reply. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I believe I should. Of all the places on Earth, I think this is exactly where I should be, right now.” Then he sits next to me, handing me the baby. “We have made a real masterpiece.”
“We have? I have. You show up after nine months and you want to get some merit?”
“I think you forgot to tell me.”
I’m no longer listening, though. I’m totally captivated by that little face with perfect lips, a tiny nose and that thin messy hair that forms a soft veil all over his head. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.”
“Neither have I.”
“I’ll let you visit him sometimes, if you want,” I say, softened by that tender sight.
“Are you serious?” He looks shaken.
“It’s quite a lot already, considering that I didn’t want you to know.”
“Jemma, I don’t want to see our son sometimes. I want to raise him, and I want to do it with you. We’re not perfect and we’ll never be, but all I know is that you’re the only one I want to spend my life with. Normal people usually fall in love, get married, have a child, and, in the worst cases, they start hating each other and get divorced. You and I did everything upside down: we hated each other, we got married, we fell in love, we got divorced and, now, we have a son. We’ve never been normal. What would be the point in following the rules now?”
“In love?” I ask.
“Yes, in love. Or at least, I’m in love with you.”
“When did you realise it?”
Ashford smiles. “I think it all started at the charity fashion show, when you came out on that catwalk half naked, in front of the entire high society. That’s when I realised that there’s no other woman like you.”
I bite my lower lip, trying to hold back a spontaneous smile.
“Hey, I can see you’re smiling.” He lifts my face with a hand to make me look into his eyes. “When did you realise?”
I gulp, then start confessing, embarrassed. “Perhaps it was on the very first evening, at the restaurant, when you thought I was the waitress.”
“I was an arsehole,” he admits.
“Yes, you were.” I say, and then I can’t help but ask him that question. “What about Portia?”
“Portia was a misunderstanding, and I’m sure you know I don’t want her, you just don’t want to admit it. You can’t accept that, for once in your life, someone might choose you. You’re afraid of being hurt, and you don’t want to delude yourself by thinking that everything will be okay. Let me tell you something: these months during which I knew nothing of you and I spent my days looking for your ghost all over Denby, well, they tore my heart in two and bled me out.”
“Don’t you think that I suffered as well?”
“Then why should we leave each other?”
I shake my head, lacking conviction. “Trusting someone else is always a free fall.”
Ashford takes my hand. “But I’m jumping with you.”
The door bursts open with a violent thud, and Delphina enters the room, shouting: “An heir!”