Strange Sally Diamond

My biggest fear was that Lindy would die giving birth. I did my best to pretend to be happy about it and I think Lindy did her best to believe me. She speculated endlessly, deciding one day that it was a girl and then another day she was sure it was a boy. She talked about the days when we could take the baby to the hot pools together and the nursery rhymes we would teach him or her. All the time, the pain in my chest got tighter and tighter.

It was late August 1996 when Lindy went into labour. Her waters broke conveniently while she was in the shower. I was staying around as much as possible because I was afraid of what might happen if she had to cope alone. When I walked into the barn and found her squatting on the bed on all fours, I knew exactly what was happening. I tried to block out the memory of my mother going into labour in that dingy room twenty-two years earlier. I was too young to understand what was happening then.

Now, I was prepared. I had a kitbag ready and waiting. I used the sterilizing fluid on everything; spread plastic sheeting on to the bed while Lindy huffed and puffed during a contraction. In between times, she turned over on her back but found that more painful. There seemed to be no position in which she could get comfortable. Eventually, she settled on her side until the next wave of pain broke and a film of sweat covered her whole body. ‘This is normal, right, Stevie? All this is normal?’ I tried to assure her that it was.

Seven hours later, as dusk was falling on that late winter evening, Lindy gave a final push and a scream that was unlike any I had heard before, and I had heard plenty. The baby’s head was forced out. I delved my hands inside her and managed to place them around its tiny shoulders and the rest of the baby plopped out on to the plastic sheet. A perfect girl. She was covered in a film of almost violet slime. I had been expecting this, or so I thought, but nothing can prepare you for the reality.

Lindy was almost delirious with pain and fear and joy, and reached for the child. ‘Is she breathing? Is she breathing?’

I couldn’t tell. The baby was squirming and shuddering in my arms. I wanted to wipe her clean, but Lindy reached greedily for her daughter. At the moment when I placed the little girl on Lindy’s chest, her tiny mouth opened and she squealed like a kitten. I was overcome with wonder and awe. I snipped the cord with the sterilized scissors. Lindy and I both cried. She shuddered with more contractions until, with a final push, the placenta was ejected. I made her some tea and began to clean up the bloody mess. I helped Lindy into the shower and together we washed our daughter in a large basin of water. I washed Lindy too, delicately. She was exhausted.

I waited until Lindy and the baby were asleep and then I lifted the tiny girl from her mother’s arms and crept out of the barn, locking it quietly behind me. It was past midnight. I took her into the house and wrapped her tightly in the blankets I’d bought from an op-shop in Auckland and placed her in the wooden crate I had thickly lined with old newspapers. I took the crate out to the car and placed it in the footwell of the passenger seat where nobody ever sat and drove to Auckland. She didn’t stir.

Part III

47 Sally

Everything was back to normal in the village. And I had a job that was perfect for me. At weekends, I would drive out to Farnley Manor and play the piano. Sometimes on weekdays too, if there was a wedding on. I also got unlimited tea and coffee and dainty sandwiches and pastries during my breaks. I couldn’t have asked for a better job.

By mid-November, I had over €2 million in my bank account from the sale of Conor Geary’s house. It would have been €3 million, if it hadn’t been for the taxman. Geoff Barrington urged me to seek financial advice regarding how best to invest it, but it felt like dirty money to me. I made a large anonymous donation to Stella’s homeless charity and to the young people’s mental health charity that Aunt Christine had been involved in and left the rest in the bank until I could think how to deal with it.

Mark found it hard to settle back into the village. Despite my assurances, both Martha and Angela regarded him with suspicion. Tina was shocked when I brought him to our next therapy appointment but, once I explained, she said she would help us both. Mark cried a lot in that first session. It was distressing to me, and we all agreed that Mark and I should see Tina separately for a while before we did a family meeting again.

Mark was obviously distressed, particularly when I handed over all the files and he saw those photos of his emaciated, toothless sister for the first time. Tina told me to be honest with him, but to give him time to come to terms with his own feelings. She warned me that he might be angry. But I knew that, and I understood. He loved my new home and soon became my most regular visitor.