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childcare book into the bin and carrying Robbie into her room.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    When Sarah left me that night I brought Robbie into the bed with me. I felt guilty. I would try harder, I told myself. Okay, so the first day of my attempt to be a good mother had been a disaster, but I shouldn’t give up. I decided as I lay there that I would hang out with him more, play with toys on the living room floor with him, make Santa beards in bubble baths, don clever voices at story time. I would do all of these things, selflessly and with great pleasure.
    I gazed at him breathing gently beside me on the bed – so wee, so perfect, so helpless – but then I worried I’d smother him, like Fraser’s mum said, so I lay rigid, my right arm tingling with pain, listening to the hours click over on my alarm clock.
    *
    I still had a week to go before the holiday. On the first morning, I woke to a wonderful five-secondoblivion, where everything was numb and painless. Then with a stretch I remembered what I’d done the night before. I’d left Robbie alone to shag an idiot neighbour. And that was me trying! That was me being a good mother! I sighed as I looked at him gurgling beside me on the bed, completely dependent, completely at my mercy.
    It took me two hours to get us fed and dressed. I then bumped the buggy down four flights of stairs, one slow step at a time. My back was aching when I reached the bottom. I opened the heavy front door but it swung shut before we’d managed to get out. I spent several minutes trying to extricate us, to the amusement of several unhelpful passers-by, and then walked in the rain along three main roads filled with pot-holes and students who seemed physically unable to see babies. Drenched and exhausted, I dragged the pram backwards up the steps into Kyle’s surgery.
    Kyle looked different there. Official and serious. I’d never seen him at work and his stiff-backed awkwardness would have made me laugh had I not been there to talk about my terrible failings.
    ‘Postnatal depression is not a failing,’ Kyle said. ‘It’s very common. And it’s good you’ve recognised it.’
    He printed out a piece of paper and I have to admit that the whole thing did make me feel better, knowing I wasn’t alone, that there was help, that I deserved and needed a break. Even the paper itselfwith its lovely little druggie words made me feel better.
    The day after that, Robbie and I made play dough. It would be lying to say I enjoyed it, especially cleaning up afterwards, but I started to understand that there was something dreamlike about slowly kneading flour, salt, oil and colouring, and something funny about having your nine-month-old baby squash your yellow elephant.
    The next day I lay on the living room floor beside the baby gym, looking up at the squeaky bright things Robbie was chuckling at, his wet mouth wide open, before I drifted off to sleep.
    The day after, I pushed Robbie’s swing and then jumped on the one next to him, and I may have even felt a tinge of joy when our eyes met.
    But there was no understanding and no joy the next day, because I had to pack Robbie’s things, and this daunting task had expanded in my head to the point that it was oozing out my ears. I was sweating and shaking by the time I was ready to take him over to Mum and Dad’s.
    ‘Have you brought his formula?’ asked Mum.
    ‘Has he had a morning nap?’ she asked.
    ‘Has he tried solids yet?’
    Has he got a good Mummy?
    I kissed them all goodbye. As they shut the front door a mixture of guilt and relief overwhelmed me. By the time I got to my car, the guilt was gone. I wasgoing to have some adult conversation. I was going to get some fresh air. I was going camping!
    *
    Camping! I loved it. Loved the baked beans, the smell of the campfire, the scary stories and the huddled stinky sleep. As I drove home I remembered the last time I went camping with Kyle. I’d come home from lectures one evening, sick to death of sitting in