The Weaning E-Book

Hannah Vincent

• Herausgeber: Salt
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

For childminder Bobbi, it's all about keeping your babies safe When professional couple Nikki and Rob uncover their childminder Bobbi's secret everything changes. Bobbi has a child-shaped hole in her life that her 'silver fox' lover can't fill. Now she is seeking out children once more. Troubled young couple, Kim and Connor are battling with social services to keep their baby, Jade – but they needn't worry, Bobbi soon arrives to help solve all their problems.

Leseprobe

THE WEANING

by

HANNAH VINCENT

For childminder Bobbi, it’s all about keeping your babies safe

When professional couple Nikki and Rob uncover their childminder Bobbi’s secret everything changes. Bobbi has a child-shaped hole in her life that her ‘silver fox’ lover can’t fill. Now she is seeking out children once more. Troubled young couple, Kim and Connor are battling with social services to keep their baby, Jade – but they needn’t worry, Bobbi soon arrives to help solve all their problems.

PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS WORK

‘Alarm Girlis quite a short read at just under 200 pages but it is packed with drama and emotion as the story of Indigo and Karen unfolds. The book switches between Indigo’s recount of her South African holiday and Karen’s story, detailing her past and her relationship with Ian as well as her death. I loved the childlike voice of Indigo and felt for her as she struggled to come to terms with the loss of her mother as well as trying to adjust to her father’s new life… A compelling read I enjoyed immensely.’ —Jennifer Joyce,Novelicious

‘The South African setting is exquisite, and the contrast between the wealthy neighbourhood and the slum-like dwellings is stark and pulls no punches and hides nothing. I am incredibly impressed by this fabulous little novel. It’s short, but deals with so many issues, and the story unravels slowly but quite perfectly.’ —Random Things Through My Letterbox

‘Alarm Girlis concerned with themes of mental health and grief, as well as the relationships between parents and children. Vincent writes convincingly in both a pre-adolescent and an adult voice and there are some powerful scenes in this promising debut. I look forward to reading whatever she does next.’ —The Writes of Women

‘You cannot miss out this coming-of-age story that will only arrest your mind and soul with intrigue and compassion seen through the eyes of an 11-year old girl.’ —Book Stop Corner

‘A book of heat, loss, wit and aching tenderness.’ —Tim Crouch

‘Rarely has a child narrator been written so convincingly, and with so much obvious (and deserved) affection from its author… a novel slender in form, it’s a hugely sating read.’ —Book group info

‘Beautifully written, the heat and landscapes of South Africa leap off the page as Indy’s story unfolds.’ —Bella Magazine

‘Perfectly evoking the South African setting and written with such emotional intelligence that the characters are entirely real.’ —Spirit FM

‘Sensitively written, this is a heart rending tale of a young girl trying to make sense of her life.’ —We Love This Book

‘In tone and content I could compare it to Nathan Filer’sThe Shock of the Fall.’ —Writer’s Hub: Ten Books to Read This Summer

‘Readable holiday fiction with a literary edge.’ —Turnaround: Book of the Month

‘I am incredibly impressed by this fabulous little novel.’ —Ann Cater

‘Beautifully paced […] compelling but never sentimental.’ —Karen Rose, Sweet Talk Productions

The Weaning

Hannah studied Drama & English at UEA and gained her MA in Creative & Critical Writing at Kingston University. Her first novel Alarm Girl is published by Myriad.

Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

All rights reserved

Copyright © Hannah Vincent,2018

The right ofHannah Vincentto be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

Salt Publishing 2018

Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out,or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-78463-121-5 electronic

To Fox and cubs

§

The brass doorknockeris shaped like a hand. I take the hand in mine and knock.

I have an interview with ‘Nikki’ who needs a childminder. My First Aid training and child safety certificates are in my bag.

No answer. I knock again then check my phone to make sure I have the right house.

M sleeping so pls don’t knock – ring when u get here thanx

From somewhere inside, a door bangs and footsteps sound. A woman opens the door. Her dark hair is cut into a neat, geometric style and contrasts with her white linen dress. She wears Kohl eye make-up, silver bangles and a plain silver necklace.

‘I’m Bobbi,’ I say. ‘Sorry, I didn’t get your text till after I knocked. Did I wake him?’

She tells me it’s alright, the baby’s still asleep and to come on in. I wipe my feet on the doormat, which has the word ‘Enter’ written on it in black letters.

‘Take them off if you like,’ Nikki says.

‘Shall I?’

She has bare feet.

‘If you like – whatever makes you feel comfortable.’

She waits while I take off my shoes. I remove my socks too and stuff them inside my bag alongside my certificates.

‘Come through, we’re in the garden.’

I am barefoot like her. The black and white tiles of the hallway feel cool. She ushers me down a corridor lined with framed black and white photographs on the walls. One of the photographs shows an exotic looking beach, another is of a wedding and there is a large close-up portrait of a baby. Nikki pauses at the end of the hallway while I study the portrait.

‘That’s him,’ she says.

‘He’s beautiful.’

‘He’s going to be a heartbreaker, that’s for sure.’

The baby looks at me with a serious expression. He has the dark hair and dark eyes of an Indian prince or a 1940s cinema idol. I hold his stare while his mother waits.

At the end of the hallway, double doors lead onto a pretty walled garden. Toys are laid out on a rug and a woman sits at a patio table, eyes closed, her face lifted to the sun.

‘My health visitor,’ Nikki explains.

‘I’m just going,’ the health visitor says, but she doesn’t move.

Nikki’s bracelets jangle as she pours me some water from a jug.

‘That’s pretty,’ she says, noticing the tattoo on my wrist of a Russian doll, cheerful and rosy-cheeked. I hold out my wrist and Babushka smiles at us.

‘It must have hurt,’ the health visitor says. ‘Having it done there where the skin’s so thin.’

Her eyes are still closed so I don’t know how she has seen my tattoo.

I get my certificates out of my bag. One of my socks tumbles onto the wrought iron table and I quickly pocket it. An electronic baby monitor in the middle of the table crackles and lets out a sigh.

‘We’ll go and get him in a bit,’ Nikki says.

But this baby is eager to meet me – the monitor lets out a yelp and the lights on its display bounce. The health visitor opens her eyes at last and scrapes her chair away from the table.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she says.

We follow her to the front door where she reminds Nikki of their next appointment. Nikki writes the date in a thick desk diary on the hallway table. Once the health visitor has left, Nikki turns to me.

‘I’m struggling, to be honest,’ she says. ‘I’m just not confident I know what I’m doing.’

‘I’m sure you’re doing everything fine,’ I tell her.

‘One of the reasons I thought you might be suitable,’ she says, ‘is that you’re a bit older and a mother yourself.’

She lays her pen down on the open diary. ‘Is it a girl or a boy you’ve got?’

‘One of each.’

‘Nice. That’s what I want.’

We climb the stairs and outside a closed door on the uppermost landing Nikki holds a finger to her lips. She opens the door and we move into the room. I can hear the baby breathing. He stirs. Soft carpet presses between my toes. Nikki opens the curtains a chink and a bar of sunlight reveals him lying in a cot in the centre of the room. He turns his head to follow his mother. In the womb he would have been sensitive to shifts from dark to light, from asleep to awake, and now here he is, outside of her body, waiting to see what will happen.

‘I like him to have a gentle waking rhythm,’ Nikki whispers.

The baby lies still, trying to decipher the sounds his mother is making. I take a step closer and he hears me, turns his face. His dark eyes hold mine and the rest of the world falls away. I have never met this child but I know him. I know him, and I feel sure he knows me – the intelligence in his eyes tell me so.

‘Hello, Pickle’ Nikki says. ‘Hello, Babu.’

She lifts him out of his cot, carrying him to the window where she opens the curtains fully. He blinks in the sunshine, twisting in her arms to look at me.

‘Who’s this, Marcel? Who’s this, eh?’

She bounces him on her hip.

‘Hello, Marcel,’ I say, and I take his hand to save me from drowning in the dark of his eyes.

‘I’ll show you around,’ Nikki says. ‘Come.’

Still holding her child’s small warm hand, I follow her out of the room. On the landing, his mother opens another door.

‘Guest room.’

We stand on the threshold, poking our faces into the room, which has sloping eaves and a tiny fireplace, like a doll’s house.

‘I guess if we have another baby this will be his or hers,’ says Nikki.

‘Are you planning to have another one?’

‘Oh yes, but not for a year or so – give this little monkey some time of his own first.’

His fingers are tight around two of mine as we move downstairs to the second floor. His dark head bobs against Nikki’s white linen shoulder.

‘Our room,’ she says, holding open a door.

A smell of lavender hangs in the air and there are more black and white photographs like the ones downstairs, including a framed contact sheet on the wall above the marital bed which charts the pregnancy of a faceless, naked woman.

‘My husband took those,’ Nikki says, following my gaze.

‘Is he a photographer?’

‘Writer. You’ll meet him.’

‘What kind of things does he write?’

‘Oh, it’s ghost-writing projects mainly – that’s where the money is. But there have been a couple of novels.’

She rearranges some necklaces that lie on the top of a chest of drawers. Marcel watches her movements and lets go of my hand to reach for the jewellery.

‘Not those,’ she says. ‘They’re mummy’s.’

‘And what is it that you do?’ I ask.

‘I’m a PR officer for a charity campaigning to raise awareness of modern-day slaves,’ she says.

‘Are there still slaves, then?’ I ask.

‘You’d be surprised. And not just overseas. There have been prosecutions in this country.’

She turns and leads the way across the landing to a white-tiled bathroom. The window is open and looks out into the tops of trees. Their fresh green smell fills the space and mingles with the perfume of expensive soap – sandalwood and cinnamon. A white painted washstand holds a changing mat printed with yellow ducklings.

‘He’s in washable nappies,’ Nikki says. ‘Trying to do our bit.’

She opens an airing cupboard that is neatly stacked with nappies, flannels and towels.All three of us stare at the clean linens. Then she wrinkles her nose and sniffs.

‘Have you done something?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Not you. He’s terribly constipated – just the tiniest nuggets but no real issue. Would you mind? It’s a two-man job.’

She lays Marcel on the duckling changing mat and asks me to hold down his arms. He stares at me as his mother pulls off his clothes and inspects the contents of his nappy. I smile at him, but he remains solemn.

‘Poor lamb, you really are bunged up, aren’t you,’ Nikki says.

She holds both his ankles, lifting them in one hand to clean his bottom with the other, wiping, then releasing his ankles and dabbing quickly at his penis with a fresh wipe. Then she fastens a new nappy and asks if I will take him. My fingertips scrape against the cool plastic of the changing mat as I pick him up and I can’t help rocking from one foot to another – as if his weight sets off a rhythm inside me. I kiss his hair. He smells of warm bed.

‘I can see you two are going to get along,’ Nikki says, glancing at us in the mirror above the sink where she is washing her hands. Then she turns to face me.

‘I don’t suppose you could spare an hour or two now, could you? I could get some work done while you hang out in the garden.’

‘Of course,’ I say.

‘Wonderful! Thank you so much!’

We go downstairs with me treading oh so carefully, imagining how his little body would thud and bounce if I dropped him.

‘Lounge.’

This room is large and airy, furnished with leather sofas, Indian rugs, and an old-fashioned writing desk in one corner. The walls are hung with large abstract paintings.

‘Who’s the artist?’ I ask.

‘My father-in-law,’ Nikki says. ‘He was quite famous in his day. I’m not sure I like his work much, but there you have it.’

She gazes at the canvases and so does Marcel. He has the poise of a miniature Maharajah surveying his estate, but I feel him tense with excitement when Nikki pulls out a crate from the bottom shelf of a bookcase.

‘Toys.’

She shoves the crate back into place and our tour of the house ends in the basement kitchen where I am shown bottles and teats in a state-of-the-art steriliser.

‘He usually has a bottle around now,’ she says.

‘Would you like me to feed him?’

‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’

‘Of course not.’

‘And this would be gratis?’

‘Sorry?’

‘A free trial, as it were.’

She fixes me with her brown-black eyes.

‘Yes,’ I say.

She makes up a bottle and watches me settle with her child on one of the dining chairs, which are transparent, made from clear Perspex or fibre glass.

‘Give me a shout if you need anything,’ she says.

‘We won’t need anything,’ I say.

Marcel watches her go out of the room as I tilt the bottle to his mouth. The gesture, the angle, everything about this movement is as familiar as if I were tilting it to mine. He begins to suck but keeps his gaze fixed on the space his mother has left. When he realises she isn’t coming back he turns his eyes on me, staring into my face. I pretend not to notice his interest, looking around the room to allow him to study me while he feeds.

The kitchen cabinets and surfaces are white and everything gleams. The black and white floor tiles are like a giant chessboard. An old-fashioned clock hangs on one wall, while on the other a poster shows a friendly nurse in a starched white head-dress. She holds a tray on which there is a packet bearing the same image, of the benign-looking nurse with rosebud lips and shiny cheeks, holding her tray which carries the same packet with the same image, and so on into infinity, it seems. I stare and stare at the poster, trying to locate the tiniest nurse, losing myself in her labyrinth, while Marcel’s head, with its dark, soft hair, weighs against my arm. We are mother and child. The fibre glass of the chair, the plastic of the bottle, the metal of the microwave, kettle, toaster – these things are manufactured while this baby and I, we are flesh, we are Nature. I close my eyes. The clock sounds its soft, steady tick and Marcel sucks to the same rhythm. A bird is singing and I can hear train announcements coming from the nearby railway station.

When he has finished his milk, Marcel pops the teat out of his mouth and straightens his little legs, straining his body forwards, trying to sit upright.

‘Shall we go in the garden?’ I ask him.

We rinse his bottle at the sink, then go outside where the air is warm after the cool basement. I lay Marcel down and he bats my hair, which I swish to and fro in front of him. He manages to catch a fistful and when I loosen his fingers there are a few strands left in his grip. I sprinkle these onto the grass for some bird to collect for its nest. After hair swishing, we lie side by side looking up into the branches of an overhanging tree, the coolness of the ground seeping through the rug. He doesn’t have the strength yet to roll onto his front, so I push his little body, showing him how it will feel when he can do it for himself. I roll him over and then back again, and then, because I like the weight of him against my hand; the resistance of his little body as it tips from one position to another, I do it again and again until he complains. Then I hold him upright and he paddles his little feet in my lap, marching on the spot to my rendition of ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’.

Some time later, Nikki sticks her head out of an upstairs window.

‘It’s time for his lunch,’ she calls, ‘ but can you give me five more minutes? I’m waiting for an ebay bid’

I give her a thumbs-up and wave Marcel’s hand in reply, but she has already disappeared.

‘Have you had a lovely time?’ she asks when she joins us.

She holds out her arms for Marcel and kisses him loudly when I pass him to her. We return indoors where she fastens a plastic bib around his neck and straps him into a high chair. She takes an ice-cube tray out of the freezer.

‘For his lunch, just pop one of these into a bowl and zap it for thirty seconds,’ she says.

All three of us wait for the microwave timer to ping.

When it is ready, she stirs the food and makes approving noises. But Marcel doesn’t want the purée. He turns his face away and when she tries again he cries out and thrashes his body from side to side to avoid the spoon.

‘Everything’s a battle,’ Nikki says.

‘Shall I have a go?’ I ask.

Nikki hands me the dish and I touch the spoon to my own lips.

‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t do that,’ she says, fetching a replacement from a drawer.

She watches me dip the clean spoon into the food and hold it out. Marcel arches his body away from me.

‘This isn’t working,’ Nikki says, getting him out of the high chair.

‘He’s probably not that hungry,’ I say. ‘He drank a bottle fairly recently, after all.’

The baby flails in his mother’s arms, crying now. I try to catch his hand and soothe him by singing some of the songs he enjoyed in the garden, but he is wailing and can’t hear me.

My time is up. Nikki leads me to the front door with Marcel complaining in her arms. She jiggles him up and down, shushing him while I sit on the stairs to put my shoes and socks back on.

‘Sometimes I wonder if it would be different if he was a girl,’ she says.

She opens the door and Marcel grows calmer. Nikki plucks a leaf from a bay tree that stands on the top step, holding the leaf under her nose before allowing it to flutter to the ground.

‘Thank you for your time,’ she says. ‘How would you feel about working for us?’

‘That would be wonderful,’ I say.

A tear trembles in Marcel’s eyelashes. I lean forward to kiss him goodbye, but Nikki is surprised by my gesture and steps backwards on to the ‘Enter’ door mat, stumbling slightly. To cover up any awkwardness I kiss her too.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ she says.

A smell of dust rises off the pavement and the sky darkens behind the tall white houses. By the time I am halfway down the hill, big spots of rain hit the pavement and there is a rumble of thunder. A bus slows to a halt, its brakes whining, and as I hop on there is a loud crack and a torrential burst of rain.