The Nanny Read Online Free

very difficult to summon even a shred of affection for my son.
    Then, when he’s three weeks old, he develops colic.
    I’ve read about it, of course, but the first time Rowan shrieks in agony, cramps twisting his tiny stomach, his little legs pulled up tight against his frail body, I have no idea what is
wrong. Marc and I are frantic with worry, imagining twisted bowels, peritonitis or worse. When the paediatrician tells us the next day it’s colic – ‘Hundred-day colic,’ he
says cheerfully, ‘never lasts longer than that’ – I cry again, this time with relief.
    But that night, Rowan screams solidly from eleven till four. I give him his useless medicine, rub his back, massage his tummy, stroke his bare toes. He doesn’t stop screaming. I take him
downstairs so he doesn’t keep Poppy and Marc awake too; we eventually collapse into an exhausted sleep on the sofa together, both of us cried out. I never even hear Marc leave for work the
next morning. The following night, at Fran’s suggestion, Marc takes him for a drive; Rowan falls asleep when the car is moving, and wakes up the second Marc steps back inside.
    Marc and I are both shattered, but, as he says, he has a full-time job to hold down. One mistake could cost his company billions. I tell him to sleep in the spare room to get some rest, and then
resent him furiously when he agrees.
    By the time the twins are six weeks old, I’m a zombie. I’m dizzy from lack of sleep and weak from having no time to eat. I cry all the time. All I care about is the next pocket of
time in the day when I can snatch a few moments of sleep. The second the twins close their eyes, I close mine. I wake when they wake. I have no life outside their needs.
    There’s no one I can talk to. Everyone thinks I’m coping marvellously; they’ve no idea that inside I’m falling apart at the seams. Marc’s mother had six children in
seven years; how can I admit to him I can’t handle two? Fran’s sympathetic, but she’s got her own life. I can’t burden her with my problems.
    I could manage, if it was just Poppy. She sleeps through the night already. If it was just Poppy, I wouldn’t be so tired; I could catch up with things, pick up the reins at work
(Craig’s stopped bothering to leave messages, since I never return them). I’d be a better mother, a good mother: the kind of mother who plays peek-a-boo with her new baby and blows
raspberries on her tummy, instead of slumming around the house in a stained nightdress at three in the afternoon. If I didn’t have Rowan, I could enjoy Poppy. She’s such an easy baby.
She goes four hours between feeds; she gurgles with pleasure whenever I walk into the room. But I’m so tired and anxious, I’m a nervous wreck. I’m short-changing them both.
    If something should –
happen
– to Rowan . . .
    Not that I’d ever want it to. He’s my son.
Of course
I don’t want anything to happen to him. But . . . but if it did . . .
    For a brief moment, as I pace the floor in the soulless small hours one night with my screaming son, shivering with tiredness, I give in and allow myself to picture life without him. Just me and
Marc and Poppy, a perfect little family. Going on outings, feeding the ducks, walking in the park. Simple, ordinary things that are beyond us now.
    Poppy deserves better. It’s not that I don’t care about Rowan. But I have to think of what’s best for Poppy. It’s only because I love her so much I’m thinking such
unnatural, terrible thoughts.
    The clock in the hall chimes twice. I stare at the wailing infant in my arms with curious detachment. I feel nothing: sadness or pleasure, grief or anger. I’m at the bottom of an abyss
deep below the dark ocean. Nothing reaches me. I sit on the sofa and place him carefully next to me, wedging a cushion on either side of him so that he doesn’t fall. I know even as I do it
that it’s pointless. Unless I pace with him in my arms, he’ll scream himself