Junk - Melvin Burgess [96]
What was scaring me was, that little blob of jelly inside me seemed like the only thing worth anything I had in the whole world.
Much later I heard Lily moving around in the sitting room, so I got up, too. She was wandering around with the baby on her arm looking for something in the drawers.
‘Hi.’
She looked at me. She looked awful. ‘Yeah.’ Sunny was snuffling on her arm, half moaning. ‘He won’t sleep, I’m looking for his dodee,’ she said. She yawned and smiled at me sleepily.
‘Let me hold him for a bit.’ She let me take the baby off her. She doesn’t often let me hold Sunny, she clings on to him. I touched the folds of white cloth around his face. He was so sweet. Holding babies always makes me feel broody.
‘I wanna have one,’ I said.
‘Yeah, you will one day, Gems, you deserve it.’
Lily sat down. I put the baby on the settee next to her and made a cup of tea. The lights were on a dimmer switch, very low. It was cosy. The embers were still in the fire. I made a pot of tea and we sat and drank it.
‘How’s your neck?’
‘It hurts.’ Lily smiled. I smiled back at her. She looked really motherly and warm in her gown. Sunny was making gurgling noises. I took advantage of Lily being okay about it and had another hold. He ponged.
‘I think he’s filled his nappy,’ I said.
Lily yawned. ‘I’ll finish my tea first,’ she said. ‘He might’ – and she tipped back her head in a great big yawn – ‘he might do some more…’
‘I’ll do it,’ I offered.
‘Nah, I’ll do it.’
Lily sipped her tea and began to doze. She was so tired, I thought I’d change Sunny for her anyway.
I took him over to the mat by the fire and undid his nappy. It was a mess. He really did some monsters in there, that baby. He bent his legs back the way babies do and gurgled and cooed and held his feet and tried to eat them. I wiped him clean. Then I let him try and suck my nose.
There was a voice behind me. ‘You didn’t have to do that, Gems.’
I cried, ‘Ah!’ Lily had crept up behind me to see what I was doing. She scared the life out of me. There was something strange in her voice. I spun round. She was staring at my hands on her baby.
‘You fell asleep,’ I said.
She brushed past me and picked up Sunny. She looked at me as if she didn’t know who I was or what I was doing there and said, ‘No one’s ever gonna take my baby off me.’
I was just shocked. I said, ‘I never said that, I never said that.’ It never occurred to me. She was looking at me like I was some kind of monster come to steal her baby away. And I felt as guilty as hell because now she’d said it it was obvious that she thought it should be taken off her.
‘No one’s ever gonna,’ she said, and she turned away with the baby. She sounded like she was going to cry.
The whole room was buzzing in my ears. I don’t know why it was so powerful. I think it was because the mask slipped. I thought, My God, she’s completely out of her depth. And we both knew it, we both knew she’d shown something she never ever showed to anyone, because suddenly she gave me this little glance over her shoulder. Her face was so scared. She was like a baby herself she was so scared. Then she cradled her head against Sunny, and rubbed her cheek into him and kissed him and loved him.
‘He’s a lovely baby, Gems,’ she said. She tried to smile at me. She was just trying to be normal, but it wasn’t normal. She stood there staring at me, trying to keep her face straight, and as I watched, her eyes filled with tears. Her mouth opened and I knew what she was going to say. She was going to say, ‘Help me.’ Don’t ask me why but I just knew. I could see her reaching for the words, but she couldn’t do it. I reached out to hold her but she just shook her head, a stiff little shake.
There was a horrible few seconds in which I thought she was going to break down and cry. But Lily turned away and went back to the kitchen. She walked around the room a few times. She sat down on the settee. I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what to do. I thought she might suddenly jump up and… and stab me or something. I was sure she was going to be angry the next