Read Online Sun at Midnight by Rosie Thomas - Free Book Online Page A

Jo’s.’
    She was dry-eyed and her voice sounded level, but she didn’t feel in control. Her stomach churned with nausea and the palms of her hands were wet. Then she turned round and walked out through the studio. The polystyrene head was still gently turning on its thread of wire. She had never understood Peter’s art, she thought. She had longed to, had dragged her mind and her senses to contemplation of it overand over again, but she had never been able to make sense of it. She was like Trevor and Margaret, really: just a literal-minded scientist.
    Unable to think clearly, she cycled back to her office, combed her hair and drank a glass of water. Then she sat through a long discussion with five of her colleagues about grant allocations for the coming year. She took the minutes, concentrating on noting everyone’s different points with meticulous accuracy. Once or twice, though, when someone spoke to her, she found herself staring at them and struggling to inject meaning into the babble of their words.
    ‘Are you all right, Alice?’ Professor Devine asked as the meeting broke up. David Devine was the head of her department and an old friend of both of her parents.
    She smiled straight at him. ‘Yes, thanks, I’m fine.’ In fact, she felt sick.
    From her office, she called Jo. ‘Are you in? Can I drop in after work?’
    ‘Of course I’m in. I’m always in. The babies are having a bit of a crap day, though.’
    ‘I’ll give you a hand.’
    Jo and Harry lived in Headington. Alice cycled slowly up the hill, buffeted by the tailwind from passing buses, her legs feeling like bags of wet sand. She rang Jo’s doorbell and leaned against the wall of the porch while she waited for her to come to the door. How many times had she stood here?
    Jo opened the door with one of the babies held against her shoulder. She cupped the back of his head with one hand and kept him in place with her chin and forearm. There was a bottle of formula in her free hand. Alice kissed her, smelling baby sick and talcum powder.
    ‘Come through,’ Jo said. She edged past the double babycarrier that blocked the hall and led the way to the kitchen. The second twin was in a Moses basket on the table. Hewas awake, his black-eyed stare fixed on the shadows moving on the ceiling above him. ‘Cup of tea? Wine?’
    ‘I’d love some tea, please,’ Alice said. She didn’t think she could keep a glass of wine down although she would have welcomed the bluntening effect of alcohol. ‘Can I hold him?’
    Jo handed the baby over at once. He frowned and squinted up at Alice, who knew that she handled him with that stiff, alarmed concentration of the utterly unpractised. He responded by going stiff himself and puckering his face up, ready to start crying.
    ‘Here, plug this in,’ Jo said, handing over the bottle of formula. Alice poked the rubber teat into the baby’s mouth and he began to suck. She eased herself into one of the chairs at the kitchen table, the Moses basket and a packet of Pampers and a pile of baby clothes at her elbow. Through the open doors into the garden she could see leaves and the ragged, dirty-pink globes of mophead hydrangeas. Getting into his stride, the baby snuffled and sucked more vigorously.
    ‘How are you?’ Alice asked and Jo half turned from the sink. She looked, as she so often did nowadays, on the verge of tears.
    ‘I’ve had to start bottle-feeding in the last couple of days. I just can’t go on feeding them both myself. This way, they sleep a bit longer between feeds and I can sometimes get as much as two hours myself.’
    ‘That’s much better, isn’t it?’
    Jo nodded, but without seeming convinced. She wanted to be a good mother, as well as a good girl, and that meant breastfeeding. Alice knew this without Jo having to say as much.
    ‘Look at me, Ali,’ Jo said quietly.
    ‘I am looking.’
    She was wearing a shapeless shirt under which her breasts swam like porpoises. Her skirt hem hung unevenly