The Art of Unpacking Your Life by Shireen Jilla

Author:Shireen Jilla
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

A loud noise. Connie rolled over. Julian was snoring. She closed her eyes again. A thudding sound was coming from their sitting room. She panicked. Perhaps some kind of antelope had got inside? She stumbled out of bed. The banging was coming from the other side of their front door. Had they overslept? It was still dark. Her feet flinched from cold on stone floor blasted by the air-conditioning. She fumbled with the vast iron key attached to an equally vast wooden key ring carved into a rhino head. She managed to heave the door open. Dan was luminous in the dark in steel grey boxer shorts and a white T-shirt. He held up Matt, though she would have imagined it was a physical impossibility. Matt’s shoulders were slumped forward, parallel to his waist.

She reached for him. It had to be the baby. She took him in her arms as she did with her children when a crisis shrank them back down to needy toddlers. Matt allowed them to lead him to the sofa. They placed him down gently. He didn’t speak. The noise he was making was eerie. It was hard to believe that it wasn’t coming from outside on the reserve.

‘Dan?’ she looked anxiously at him for answers.

He spoke gently. ‘I don’t know exactly, but Dawn was rushed into hospital for an emergency C-section last night.’

She nodded. They were both silent, sandwiched on either side of Matt, trying to relieve his pain by shouldering his bulk. He was wailing in anguish.

‘Katherine?’ she mouthed to Dan over his hunched body.

‘I don’t know. He banged on my door.’

‘Matt,’ she tried to lift his shoulders. Failing that, she lifted his head holding his face in her hands. His cheeks were red hot. ‘Please, Matt, talk to us.’

Matt’s face was scrunched up; his fingers dug mercilessly into his palms, as if he was trying to transfer his internal pain outside of himself. ‘Isobel, Isobel.’ Once he started, he seemed unable to stop. ‘Isobel.’

‘Isobel?’ Connie asked quietly, deeply disturbed to see Matt cry.

‘We were going to call her Isobel.’ He looked down at his clenched hands, shaking his head vigorously. ‘She was stillborn.’

They didn’t move. Tears came to Connie’s eyes, and she and Dan squeezed Matt, both equally determined to hold him together. No one spoke. Matt was numb, shivering and slumped. Connie gently extricated her arm and reached across to the other sofa and grabbed the throw. She wrapped it round Matt’s shoulders. He leant back against it. They moved to the edge of the sofa to allow him to lie down. He curled up into the foetal position. His eyes closed. They stood up. Dan gestured her towards the terrace. The air was starting to warm up, even though it was pitch black.

‘It’s awful,’ Connie mouthed. ‘Poor Dawn, can you imagine. The pain she must feel, poor woman.’

‘Horrendous,’ Dan sighed. ‘I’m worried for Matt. How can he cope with another divorce?’

‘Do you think that Katherine will leave him?’ Connie was horrified.

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