| Motherhood She was a honeymoon baby. Her virgin parents believing that week in Eastbourne gave them immunity from conception. Her impression on mother’s figure, a small bulge as if she was digesting a large meal. So pencil skirts and stilettos need not be given up for sensible shoes and smocks after all. Shopkeepers still flirted and business men continued to eye her up in the street. As the screaming ambulance muscled its way through the city’s Saturday traffic , despite the blackened out windows discrete as giant Sunglasses, mother clasped her dressing gown around her and tried to smooth her hair . Brought to a temporary stand still, she peeped out and glimpsed ‘Julie’ wife of her old flame traipsing along in a cream linen dress, swinging a department store carrier bag, and lay back tearfully on the stretcher. Labour was like childbirth in a Victorian novel ; sombre nurses and doctors on standby. Her first public appearance as a mother, the cricket match, where wives sat in cars and waved to each other like passengers on passing trains. Sleeping daughter cradled by the back seat, mother flicked through fashion magazines, suddenly he was at her car window, Prince Charming who had defied Fairy Tale convention by marrying an ugly sister. Come to see the infant, ‘She has her mother’s looks’ his words oozing like syrup down her throat. Afterwards she saw, shameful as incontinence, the dark stain creeping across her navy sweater, the breasts that had so far only produced a drizzle of milk , chose now to express themselves. Fiona Sinclair |
