Loving Amélie (5 page)

They alighted at Paddington,
wove their way through the Saturday travellers and headed across the footbridge
that led to Sara’s hotel.

“I need to contact Miss Sara
Glover,” he said to the receptionist.

“Is she expecting you? Your
name, sir?”

“Chris Skinner.” At that point
he texted his friend, and mentally crossed his fingers.

He sat down in a seat shaped
like a carved barrel, upholstered in a nasty fabric that he deemed could withstand
a baby stain or two, and hoped that Sara would come to his aid. She would no
doubt go ballistic – which was, thankfully, normally as brief as it was
loud – but she could
surely
not forsake him at this desperate time? After all they had
been through…

The lift doors opened into the
lobby and hotel guests moved in and out. There was no sign of Sara; but a lone
man broke away from the group and made his way to where Chris was cradling his
baby.

“You must be Chris?”

“Ah! Rick?!” Chris got to his
feet, without elegance. “Has she sent you down to stone me away from the door?”

Rick gave a friendly, relaxed
laugh. He was – to Chris’s hidden surprise – completely bald, or,
rather, the little hair he had left had been shaved down to the shadow of his
former hairline. He was a runner: Sara often mentioned, boasted even, that he
had represented his county in his youth; and he clearly maintained a well-toned
physique. And perfect teeth. She mentioned them a lot too. Chris was assessing
that some of the boasting was probably to make up for lack of hair; but was
saying:

“Look I’m so sorry to interrupt
your..thing, together...”

“She said I should come down
and bring you up,” Sara’s lover replied; and they headed for the third floor.

While Rick had managed to don
trousers and a t-shirt, in the confines of her hotel room Sara was still in her
underwear, covered up casually by what he presumed was Rick’s striped shirt.
Chris glimpsed black silk edged with gold lace, and thought how different from
the boxer shorts and sweat pants she wore while she shuffled around his flat!

“So, my dearest friend,” she
said. “You are in the midst of my once-in-a-blue-moon Saturday haven with what
looks like a very peaceful baby.”

“She was screaming her head
off, throwing up and not taking her feed,” said Chris. “I didn’t know what else
to do. I haven’t got the first idea how to look after a baby. I’m sorry, Rick,
for ruining your day, but I think I need Sara more than you do.”

Sara bustled into the loo. Rick
said nothing while he poured Chris a glass of wine and put it near his elbow.

“Take her out of there,” he
said, indicating the baby carrier. Chris duly unclipped it to release Amélie
from his sweaty chest. She stirred and grunted. Rick deftly removed her from
her suit and held her at arm’s length like an oversized, curled up prawn.
“Yikes, she’s pretty wet and smelly. Did you bring a change of clothes?”

“Erm, only a bottle,” he
replied, not daring to look at Sara - who had emerged from the bathroom -
fearing she would be thunderous.

“Great.”

Rick handed Amélie to Sara and
applied himself to the hotel telephone. He organised a bottle warmer for the
milk and, with some persuasion, sent out for some nappies, wipes and a babygro.

“Can you go down and fetch
them, Chris, when reception rings up?” Rick was a director of Human Resources:
the organisational impulses of his “day job” were no doubt hard-wired somewhere
under that shiny, capable cranium and ready to kick in any time.

“What am I, a
complete
fuck-wit?!” said Chris, with weary good humour. “Sorry...sorry,
again
. I
didn’t mean that like it sounded. But I’m
not
completely stupid: I’m just currently out
of my depth.” He held out his hand. “I’m Chris Skinner. I’m actually really
pleased to meet you, at last.”

Rick laughed again; and shook
Chris’s hand.

“I’m Richard Gale; but Rick, to
my friends,” he said. “I have heard a great deal about you. You are in love
with a woman who has run away.”

Chris took a grateful gulp of
his wine.

“In a nutshell,” he replied.
“And this is her –
our
- baby.”

“She’s a little smasher,” said
Rick. He was kneeling at the foot of the dishevelled, standard issue double
bed, while Sara nestled baby Amélie – now in the protective wrapping of a
hotel towel – in the cradle of her crossed legs. She smiled at her
boyfriend: a little bit amazed by the ease with which he had received these
strange interlopers into the room where they had been making love not half an
hour ago.

When the phone buzzed, she got
up and pulled on her jeans.

“I’ll go,” she said. “Maybe
you
can get
the lowdown from Uncle Richard on looking after a baby.”

Chris watched while Sara’s
lover changed Amélie from her wet clothes into something new and clean, and
settled down to feed her the warmed bottle of formula. Rick had removed her
nappy and carefully cleaned the crevices of her tiny legs and buttocks, all the
while talking to her quietly and calmly.

“So, you’ve done this once or
twice before?” said Chris with irony.

“Just once or twice,” Rick
replied. “Like anything, it’s easy when you know how.”

Chris stared at a second glass
of wine:

“My God, I mustn’t drink any
more tonight; I’m shattered and it’s not even six o’clock!”

“No, best not,” said Rick. “She
will sleep well after this, but you should get her back home. Try and keep to a
routine while she’s with you: feed, change, sleep. Lots of cuddles, too. How
long will she be with you?”

Chris looked at Sara who looked
blankly back at him.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Before the impact of this truth
had the chance to seep too far into his consciousness, Rick was adding briskly:

“Can I treat you to a taxi,
Chris?”

“No! No, but thank you. Thank
you, both. You have helped.”

The tube train lumbered home:
Chris and baby Amélie set against the tide of people heading out on the town.

So that was Rick.

 
Being ‘allowed’ to meet Sara’s man would have been momentous
in its own right, had it not happened on the day that a baby had arrived on his
doorstep, making anything crazy a possibility. He hoped she was alright about
it all. She declared she loved Rick; and regularly congratulated herself on the
“dream ticket” of their casual, convenient arrangement (sometimes too loudly,
which made Chris feel even more beleaguered by his hopeless attachment to
Amélie; and, occasionally, mindful that his best friend might be trying to
convince herself, as well as him, that what she had with Richard Gale was
enough). He had three children: he had had a vasectomy to set the seal on his
unwillingness to bring forth any more.
 
But it could not have been lost on Sara - as it hadn’t been on Chris -
that her man was an instinctive and loving father: a role he played with
someone else.

Chris was relieved to be back
in his flat, where he knew he had boxes of baby “props” to hand. As Rick had
predicted, Amélie slept for a further four hours, allowing him to have a bath,
load the washing machine and organise his surroundings into something that
resembled more of a baby-friendly zone than a bachelor’s hovel.

He watched an old film –
the one with Kristin Scott-Thomas that Sara had ribbed him about earlier
– but found himself preoccupied with when Amélie might wake up for her
bottle; so that he could show her, and himself, what he had learned and that he
wasn’t totally clueless. He might have fussed a little, causing her to rouse before
her hunger pangs had set in, because she rested calmly in his arms: awake, and
concentrating on his wristwatch with her chocolate brown eyes, as dark and deep
as her mother’s. She eventually took her night time feed slowly and patiently;
and made no complaint when he changed her nappy and settled her back down to
sleep. He took her Moses basket into his bedroom and slept with his light on.
He was woken by her needy spluttering at four o’clock, just as he had been
thinking favourably – or, more likely, dreaming – of the delicate
wisps of downy hair on the crown of her head, and the marshmallow softness of
her new skin.

In the lounge, they yawned and
squinted at each other in the creeping daylight of Sunday morning.

“My word,” said Chris, looking
down at the baby, his breath coming hot and yeasty from broken sleep. “Those
are
my
eyes.”

Chapter Five

He was sleeping the deepest
sleep of his life.

He felt as though he were being
dragged down into deep water, through reeds and riverbank vegetation into a profound
dream. His limbs were heavy, his hair lifted from the roots; and yet his lungs
– often so useless on land – were buoyant and filled with air:
illogical, underwater air.

Questioning voices were all
around him, penetrating the waves, and making conflicting demands on his
waterlogged, stupid brain. They were mostly women’s voices, like sirens
tempting him through sea fog. There were occasional deeper, male tones –
less chatty, but more insistent – urging him to follow
their
direction. He was aware of faces that he identified as Amélie, Sara, Peter.
There was a bald man with a flawless smile that didn’t quite look like Rick,
but was him. They all had things to say; and were beginning to shout so that
one of them would triumph over the others. A woman was the loudest; and she was
shaking him by the shoulders:

“Chris. Chris! You need to wake
up.”

Sara.

Twenty four hours on, they had
come full circle, back to a rude awakening.

 
The day in between had been – in the scheme of things
– monumental.

“I’ve brought you a bath.”

“A bath? I have a bath,” Chris
said groggily. “I had one last night..”

“A
baby
bath,” said Sara. She was sitting
on his bed, wafting outdoor London into his near space from her voluminous hair
and Bedouin scarf. She was dressed and decent: but Chris wondered, in spite of
himself, whether she might still be sporting her lacy playtime undergarments.
“Rick said you should use one while she is so tiny. She’s awake. Shall I do the
honours?”

Chris rolled from his bed. It
was gone eleven on Sunday morning. The book he had been attempting to read the
night before (struggling to give Kristin Scott Thomas his full attention) had
been tucked away amongst the packets of nappies and vests: it had said babies
of around three months should feed on demand, which was usually around every
four hours. Amélie had taken her last feed at around four a.m. Where was she?
Was she OK?

“She needs a bottle. She needs
me,” he said, getting to his feet in a purposeful stupor.

“Relax,” said Sara. She saw Chris
as a vision of his former drunken self: legless, but determined to rise from
the sofa and do something heroic, like confront her neighbours about their
noise, or embark on a quest for a booze when the pubs were shut. “She is quite
happy. You both needed a good sleep. Why don’t you make us some coffee while I
do her a bath?”

Chris sought the kettle, having
glanced into Amélie’s crib and seen her blanket rising and falling in small
peaks of wakeful but contented activity.

“How come you know so much? Is it
actually a woman’s instinct?”

“Probably not. Rick has, of
course, done all this before. Three times. And there are my sister’s kids.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Chris.
“Jacqui.” He remembered talk – endless talk – of babies, when
Sara’s younger sister had her succession of pregnancies and births. How many
were there? Two? Three? They had been inconsequential events in his life
– even though he had been to at least one of the christenings to buoy up
his friend as godmother or candle carrier or whatever it was Sara had been
called upon to be that day. And now he was realising what a flesh and blood
responsibility it all was: life-changing, relevant.

He stared out across Sunday
London where people would be buying newspapers and croissants and doing their
routine day-off things. The kettle clicked off as he pondered how deceptively
calming devastation could feel.

“Have you spoken to Amélie?”
Sara’s voice came from the bathroom, where water was splashing into the little
plastic bath: she must have purchased it as soon as the shops had opened that
morning.

“No. Just Peter. He’s arranging
cover for today”

Sara appeared with the bath
held wide in front of her: the surface of the water laced with delicate
bubbles, refreshing the flat with a benevolent, floral scent.

“I expect this is just a test
for you, Chris. One way or the other, Amélie will be back.”

“You reckon? You haven’t spoken
to her have you?”

Sara flashed her eyes at her
friend’s impertinence:

“Of course not! But I was
thinking, after you left the hotel last night, about what you were going to do.
Then it occurred to me: she has done this on purpose. She wants to see how you
will cope. And if you do, she will come back to you.”