‘If you can, please. We had one session with a lady at the Repair Shop Café. You know how they do drop-ins with experts now and again?’
Alice had to admit she didn’t know anything about that.
‘She was great. I’d hoped we’d be getting to the top of her referrals list by now though.’
Alice’s computer screen didn’t have much in the way of good news in that regard. ‘Tell you what, I’ll send them a note letting them know we’ve seen you both again, see if we can hurry them along,’ she said, not feeling hopeful.
‘All right, so I noticed Jolyon arrived in a pushchair today,’ Alice continued when she finished typing. ‘Is that typical?’
‘He doesn’t tend to walk far,’ the woman explained. ‘He often just drops to the ground and cries. Life’s easier with the buggy.’
Alice typed this into the little boy’s notes while the woman talked on.
‘It’s not as though there’s some kind of discipline issue, if that’s what you’re typing.’
Alice let her hands fall from the keys. ‘I wasn’t…’
‘“Mum gives in to tantrums too easily”,’ Mhairi said in air quotes, turning red-faced. ‘I’ve heard that one before, sometimes from my own sisters-in-law, to make it worse.’
‘No, no… I’m just recording our consultation.’
The mum sat back, hands clasped between her knees, giving her the same look she’d seen many times on the wards. Was she thinking how young Alice seemed? How inexperienced? Unready for this kind of responsibility, and certainly way too unworldly to know much about parenting?
Alice reached for her water bottle and took a swig to hide the lump in her throat.
No, there was something kind about Mrs Sears, and even though she was married with a kid, she was only a little older than Alice. Plus, she seemed too weary to go interrogating Alice like some of the patients had back in Manchester as she followed the consultants on their rounds.‘How old are you then?’they’d ask while she nervously changed catheters and fitted cannulas and the nurses tried not to roll their eyes (the nurses were always a million times better at those things and not afraid of anything at all).
She needed to focus.‘Where is your head, Alice in Wonderland?’she heard Bastian saying.
‘And… he likes to eat?’ Alice said. ‘Is he putting on weight?’
‘I’ve tried him with different solids for years now. Spag bol, steamed veg, fish fingers…’
Alice tapped softly at the keys, hoping not to spook the woman again.
‘…but he only really eats plain pasta, breadsticks and Greek yoghurt. The occasional iced biscuit.’ Mhairi’s shoulders slumped in defeat.
‘Doesn’t like fish fingers?’ Alice repeated, still typing. Her nephews adored them. She thought all kids did. Though, looking at Jolyon now, he wasn’t all that much like her boisterous, chatterbox nephews; boys who, if anything, could do with a lesson in self-contained peacefulness from Jolyon Sears.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Mhairi said, the words tumbling out in self-defence. ‘I’ve seen that look before.’
Alice wiped her face blank.
‘I’ve seen it over and over, since he was about six months old and that Baby Tambourine Jamboree leader mentioned Jolly wasn’t meeting expected milestones.’ The mother’s eyes stayed fixed on the boy, who was very busy straightening out a paperclip he’d found on the floor.
Alice tried a sympathetic smile. If she could only read minds, she thought – and not for the first time.
If Alice couldhave dug inside Mhairi Sears’s brain at that moment, she’d have been confronted with a big angry, messy knot of memories and indignation She’d uncover how the young mum had stopped going to the stupid Baby Tambourine Jamboree classes after that. She’d know what it felt like when the nursery assistants had said the exact same things about Jolly’s milestones and how it had become increasingly hard to dismiss their concerns the older he got. She’d feel the burning anxiety when half the mums at the Health Visitor’s weigh-in mornings had made similar remarks. She’d hear the endless crowing chorus of,‘Has he not moved on to baby rice yet?’ ‘Not even crawling? Goodness!’ ‘My Skye was on the move at nine months, she was into everything!’ ‘Of course, my Henry’s taking swimming classes now!’
‘Have you tried introducing a multivitamin?’ Alice tried, shut out on the other side of the wall.
‘He gets liquid vitamins added to his bottle,’ Mhairi said.
‘His… bottle?’
There they were. The big round eyes of a patient feeling judged. Alice quailed. She’d have said something consoling if Mhairi wasn’t now hurriedly defending herself.
‘He doesn’t get his mouth round a cup, somehow. It spills everywhere… I tried giving him cups, hundreds of pounds worth of fancy toddler cups off the internet, all shapes and sizes, he didn’t get to grips with any of them. It’s not as easy as just giving him a cup and making him drink… and I can’t let him go thirsty, can I? What mum would do that? So he still has his bottle…’
