The Two of Us Read online

  Ten hours later, I wake in an empty bed to the gentle sound of a teaspoon stirring milk into a mug of coffee. Ivy is sitting at the living room window, reading a novel, sunlight blowing out through her bed-tousled hair.

  I fetch a mug and sit opposite her. ‘Hey, you.’

  Ivy reads on for a few seconds while I pour myself a coffee. She glances up from her book. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Do you know what today is?’ I ask.

  Ivy nods, smiles. ‘Sunday.’

  ‘Not just any Sunday, it’s Mother—’

  ‘Don’t say it.’

  ‘What? I’m just saying i—’

  ‘Please! Sorry . . . I’m nervous enough, babes, I don’t want to tempt . . . let’s just let it happen, yeah?’

  I feel stupid sitting there in my underpants, squinting against the sunlight. My instinct is to say something smart and petulant, but the smart part eludes me so I say nothing and sip my coffee.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ivy says.

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’ My mind flashes to the car boot full of premature, fate-tempting Mother’s Day paraphernalia. ‘What time we leaving?’

  ‘As soon as you get out of the shower.’

  Driving the width of the country to give Ivy’s mum her flowers, and heading straight back after lunch, takes around ten hours and puts four hundred miles on the Volvo’s clock. We could have stayed the night but Ivy is thirty-four weeks pregnant, and determined to have the baby in ‘her own’ hospital. Ivy’s sense of practicality is marginally stronger than her fear of fate, so her ‘birth bag’ is now packed and standing by the hallway door and we have installed the twin car seats into the rear of the Volvo. I keep catching the seats’ reflection in the rear-view mirror, and their presence gives me a pleasant sensation of butterflies in my stomach. It feels real now, and frighteningly imminent.

  As we pull into our street my eyes sting, my brain is fuzzy and my legs ache from a day behind the wheel. I turn off the engine, kill the lights, crick my neck and go to open the door.

  ‘Babes?’ says Ivy.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Can we go to the hospital?’

  Panic!

  ‘You’re not . . .’

  ‘No no no’ – a hand on my shoulder – ‘I just want to check the route, see how long it takes.’

  ‘Like a test run?’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Well, I am kind of completely, utterly and thoroughly exhausted.’

  She does the look. ‘Please? Just a couple more miles?’

  It takes twenty-three minutes to drive from our front door to the hospital.

  It’s past ten on Sunday evening, the sky is clear and dark and the car park is largely empty. We’re too tired to talk, so we relax in the warmth of the large car, listen to the radio at a low volume and soak up the surprising calm of St George’s Hospital.

  ‘Soon,’ I say.

  ‘Soon,’ says Ivy.

  As well as her scheduled appointment with the midwife, Ivy had a check-up with a paediatrician last week and everything is ‘perfect’, the twins are healthy and in a good position and Ivy, despite her swollen ankles, is in great shape. In less than three weeks we will be a family of four and this car will be full of noise and the smell of dirty nappies.

  I’m debating how to dispose of the Mother’s Day contraband in the boot, when a battered Ford Focus pulls into the car park. Approximately three-quarters of a second after the car comes to a stop, a man practically falls out of the driver’s-side door and sprints around the vehicle to the passenger’s side.

  Ivy reaches across and takes hold of my hand.

  The man pulls open the passenger’s door and leans inside. After maybe a full minute, but it feels like five times that, a heavily pregnant woman emerges. She is no sooner out of the car than she drops to her hands and kneels on the tarmac. The guy turns around in a full clockwise circle then rotates back the other way before crouching down beside the woman. He places his hand on the small of her back, and although they are fifty or sixty metres away, we hear her bellow at him to ‘Get off me!’ The guy stands, rotates another one and a half circles and crouches again. Despite myself, I laugh, and Ivy squeezes my hand hard enough to make my fingers throb.

  The man helps the woman to her feet and they begin shuffling towards the hospital entrance.

  ‘Should I go and help?’

  ‘And do what?’ Ivy says.

  After only four or five steps the couple stop again and the woman bends double at what was once her waist. Even from this distance, you can see the man struggling to support her. She shouts out in pain and the man lowers her to a kneeling position. He looks around as if for assistance, and suddenly sprints into the distance leaving the woman alone, kneeling on the pavement.

  ‘Maybe you should go,’ Ivy says.

  ‘Yeah, but you’re going to have to let go of my hand first.’

  ‘What?’ Ivy looks at my hand; her expression suggests she is surprised to discover her own wrapped around it. ‘Oh, right, yes.’

  But as she releases her grip the man comes sprinting back into view, pushing a wheelchair he has acquired from God knows where. He eases the woman to her feet, manoeuvres her carefully into the wheelchair, and hurries off in the direction of the hospital building.

  And all of a sudden, the car park is quiet again.

  ‘Did that just happen?’ Ivy says after a minute.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘My thoughts exactly.’

  ‘Take me home,’ says Ivy.

  The engine starts with a reassuring, confident rumble; I put it into gear, and begin reversing out of the parking space.

  ‘Blimey,’ says Ivy.

  And as she hits the second syllable there is a loud, heart-jolting Bang!

  Ivy screams.

  ‘What was that? Did we hit something? Did so—ooh . . .’ She puts both hands to her bump.

  At thirty-four weeks, our babies are the size of a pair of butternut squashes, around eighteen inches in length and weigh approximately five pounds each. Their brains and nervous systems are fully developed; our babies will dream when sleeping, and they may even have developed a preference for certain flavours (although I struggle to believe that amniotic fluid comes in more than a single variety). Their lungs are almost completely developed, and if the twins were born now, in the front seat of an XC90, there is a good chance they could breathe for themselves.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I ask, my nerves vibrating like power cables in a high wind.

  ‘I think so, just had a bit of a Braxton Hicks thingy. What was that bang?’

  ‘I have no id—’

  Unless . . .

  ‘What?’ says Ivy.

  I look at Ivy, bite my bottom lip and widen my eyes in what I hope is an expression of lovable incorrigibility.

  ‘What! I’m freaking out here.’

  ‘It might . . . have been a balloon.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Promise not to get mad?’

  ‘No!’

  I shrug, get out of the car and walk around to Ivy’s side and open her door.

  ‘Fisher, will you just tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘Easier to show you,’ I say, helping her from the car. ‘Come on.’

  Reluctantly, Ivy follows me to the boot, which I click open revealing a card, chocolates, wine, a bunch of thorny roses, one inflated balloon and various fragments of one burst balloon. Ivy retrieves the remaining balloon; printed across its surface are the words ‘Happy Mother’s Day’.

  ‘You shouldn’t have,’ Ivy says. ‘Really.’

  ‘I know . . . I bought them yesterday, while you were sleeping. Didn’t have a chance to dispose of them. Sorry.’

  ‘I’ll keep the flowers,’ she says. ‘And the chocolates.’

  ‘Can I have the wine?’

  ‘Only if you give me a sip.’

  ‘Only if you give me a chocolate.’

  ‘Only if you g
et rid of the card.’

  ‘It’s a deal,’ I say, leaning in to kiss Ivy.

  She lets go of the balloon and we stand watching as it floats away into the night sky.

  Chapter 30

  We’re shooting on a rooftop overlooking an industrial estate in south-east London. We’re miles away from any residential properties, but when I shout, ‘That’s a wrap,’ I shout it quietly; and the applause that follows is restrained. Standing here with Suzi, Joe, two actors and eleven crew, I should feel exhilarated. But the sun is still several hours away from rising and my predominant feeling is one of deep, cellular fatigue.

  We have tweaked, re-tweaked, finessed and polished the script, but still I’m not convinced it’s as good as it can be. There is an inbuilt distance with commercial shoots: you are given the script and you do the best you can, knowing you can blame the agency if the finished product stinks. Not so with this, it’s all on us, which is scary and exciting all at the same time. The schedule is erratic and protracted to accommodate everyone’s schedules and day jobs, and it will take us another four weeks to get through the remaining two shoot days.

  Two runners do as their job title dictates and run towards our naked actors, draping them with thick blankets. I’m sure my phone could give me an accurate assessment of the temperature, but going by the chill in my neck and knees, I’d guess it’s in single digits. As with so much else in my life, the narrative is out of sequence, and we are – for logistical reasons – shooting the rooftop love-making scene before the couple, Mike and Jenny, have been introduced in story-time. In real time, of course, the actors have met and we have rehearsed this scene a few times. They work well together in front of the camera, projecting a sexual chemistry between the characters that doesn’t appear to exist between the actors themselves. On the other hand, there does appear to be something between Chris, our male lead, and Suzi, and I can’t help but wonder whether they will now go to one or the other’s home and make love for real, in a bed and without a dozen crew watching from the wings.

  ‘Good job, buddy.’ Joe puts a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Woohoo!’ says Suzi, going up on tiptoes to kiss me. ‘Amazing.’

  I force a smile.

  I don’t know why I’m not more excited. I’ve wanted and planned this for a long time and everything went perfectly. The actors were brilliant, so was the cameraman, and – the big worry – it didn’t rain. But even so, where I should feel buoyed, I simply feel deflated. Maybe it’s the story. On paper it looked good, but now, committed to film, I don’t feel so confident.

  We aren’t scheduled to shoot again until late April. Watching the film, viewers will see seamless chronological continuity, but in the space between this scene and the next, I will have become a father. Maybe that’s why I feel so disorientated.

  ‘Next time I see you . . .’ says Suzi, widening her eyes. ‘Here,’ and she hands me a large yellow Selfridges bag. Poking their heads from the top of the bag are two teddy bears, each one surely (I hope, for Ivy’s sake) twice the size of my soon-to-be babies.

  ‘Good luck,’ Suzi says, and something about it makes my stomach clench.

  Chapter 31

  Ivy is awake when I get back to the flat.

  She is sitting on the sofa, an open book splayed face down on the floor.

  ‘Hey, babe,’ I say, going to her and kissing her on the forehead. ‘What you doing up?’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ she says, and as she looks at me her expression collapses as if she has been holding back an enormous weight of emotion and can contain it no longer. She screws her eyes tight and starts weeping in great racking sobs.

  ‘Honey, what’s up? Are you okay?’

  ‘The baby hasn’t moved all day,’ she says in between the tears.

  I pull Ivy to me and hug her gently. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Tops,’ she says, putting her hands to the top of her bump.

  ‘Tops never moves much.’

  ‘That’s the other one, this one’s always wriggling.’

  ‘Have you seen any blood?’

  Ivy shakes her head and seems to regain a little composure. ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe he . . . she . . . maybe it’s asleep?’

  ‘Not all day.’

  ‘Are you sure it hasn’t moved?’

  ‘I don’t think so; I mean . . . sometimes it’s hard to tell with both of them. But . . .’ she starts crying afresh.

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  We drive slowly and in silence but the air in the car is dense with a kind of deliberate, determined non-thought. Ivy, slumped sideways in her seat, stares straight ahead, and I focus my attention on the road and the steering wheel and the lights and the hairs on the back of my fingers. The doctors will talk in facts, but before they do we exist in a small cocoon of will, denial, hope and fear. While we are inside this silent bubble, the world is on pause and there is a chance that, when it starts again, everything will be as it should. Until then, it feels that by speaking, or even thinking about . . . it . . . we risk breaking the fragile barrier and letting something terrible inside. And so I stare straight ahead, and try to control my pulse and my breath.

  We pull into the hospital car park at seven minutes past one on Saturday morning. Ivy waits in the car while I go around to the boot to collect her overnight bag. Ivy is thirty-five weeks and one day pregnant; she is not in labour and not due to give birth for another thirteen days, and I hesitate before removing her bag because it feels like the kind of presumption that might provoke fate. Standing in the cold, my eyes adjusting to the weak light, I notice several spots inside the boot that look like dark spilt liquid – like blood. I go to touch one and realize it’s a fragment of burst Mother’s Day balloon. Unwittingly I have parked in the same spot, beneath the same lamppost where – just six days ago – Ivy let the remaining balloon drift into the night sky.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ivy says from the front seat.

  ‘Nothing,’ I tell her, gathering up the scraps of burst balloon and slipping them into my pocket.

  The hospital is still and quiet; the fluorescent-lit corridors all but empty. We pass a man polishing the floor with a whirring machine. He stands aside and nods at us with a small smile, which I can’t return. There is more noise in the delivery ward. Not the howling and crying and cursing that I had been fearing, but the calm conversation and efficient bustle of staff reading notes, making phone calls and going about their work. There is one other couple in the waiting room – the woman appears to be in early labour, measuring her breath, wincing, gasping periodically. Her partner is playing a game on his iPhone.

  Ivy sits with one hand over her eyes and the other resting on her bump. I put my arm around her shoulders but she doesn’t seem to notice. I pull her towards me and she resists, leaning away. It’s almost an hour before one of the midwives takes us through to a small room.

  She asks questions: has Ivy had a fall, has she been in pain, has there been any blood? Ivy answers no. She says nothing has happened, she tells the midwife she is expecting twins and one of her babies has stopped moving. The woman asks when is Ivy’s due date and is this her first pregnancy. April, Ivy says. Yes, she says. The midwife asks have Ivy’s waters broken, has she had cramps, has labour started. I already told you, Ivy says, nothing has happened, my baby is not moving. The woman asks when was the last time your little one moved and Ivy shakes her head and breaks down crying.

  The midwife lies Ivy down on an examination table and asks her to lift her top. She presses her hands against Ivy’s stomach, working methodically around the bump. Next she uses a hand-held device to listen to the babies’ hearts. It emits a clear fluid beat when she holds it to the bottom of Ivy’s belly, but when she slides the device to the top of the bump, all I can hear is white noise and static.

  I ask, ‘Can you hear anything?’

  ‘Something,’ the midwife says, but her tone does nothing to reassure me. ‘I’ll be right back,’ she says. ‘I’m just g
oing to find the doctor.’

  I hold Ivy’s hand and she squeezes it back. I open my mouth to ask if she is okay, then close it again and make a silent wish.

  The midwife returns with a young woman who she introduces as Dr Edwards. Dr Edwards asks Ivy all the same questions she already answered. She listens to Ivy’s abdomen. She pushes on her belly, shifting the bump to either side. Something – maybe a knee or a fist or an elbow – moves inside Ivy’s stomach. The doctor pushes the bump again, the top this time, kneading the flesh with the heel of her hand.

  ‘The baby at the top doesn’t appear to be moving,’ she says. ‘I can’t hear a heartbeat there.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been telling you,’ Ivy all but shouts. ‘I told you this. Why isn’t anybody listening to me?’

  ‘Try and stay calm,’ the doctor says. ‘The other one is responding well.’

  ‘Is my baby dead?’ Ivy says. ‘Please tell me. Please. Is my baby dead?’

  The midwife puts her hand on Ivy’s forehead.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says the doctor. Her tone is neutral and I hate her for it.

  The doctor turns on a monitor, picks up a tube of gel and tells Ivy, ‘This might be a little cold.’

  We’ve been here before: the monitor, the white crescent of light, the image of two babies cuddled together inside their mother’s womb. Ivy looks away from the screen, staring straight up at the ceiling.