The Making of Us Read Online Free PDF Page A

and permanent about which Lydia was obliged to say something positive and encouraging. She set her face to soft and eyed the contents of the car seat. ‘So this is little Viola?’ She smiled.
    ‘Vee-ola,’ Dixie corrected.
    ‘Sorry, Vee-ola, yes, I did wonder. Vee-ola. Well, hello, aren’t you small?’
    Dixie snorted. ‘You wouldn’t say that,’ she began, ‘if you’d had to push her out of your body single-handedly. Without any drugs, of any description.’
    ‘Well, no, I’m sure …’ Lydia wrinkled her nose and trailed off. This was exactly the sort of thing she’d been worried about. Talk of pushing and drugs and, soon, no doubt, of bowel movements and putrid milky burps.
    The baby appeared to be involved in a very vivid and involving dream, her eyes pressed shut as though against her will, her face twitching occasionally, her hands held out claw-like in front of her body. Lydia remembered that she was supposed to say something complimentary. ‘Well,’ she said after a moment, ‘she’s sleeping, that’s good.’
    Clem smiled and eyed the infant fondly. ‘That’s all she does,’ he said, ‘sleeps. Dreams, feeds, shits, sleeps. She’s an angel.’
    For a short while all three adults sat and smiled fondly at the oblivious Viola until eventually they recovered themselves and Lydia turned her mind towards drinks and snacks.
    Dixie, she was surprised to notice, as she handed her a glass of sparkling water, still appeared to be pregnant. She was dressed in a kind of smock top and narrow-legged jeans and, as far as Lydia could tell, didn’t look all that different from how she’d looked the last time she’d seen her, two weeks ago, before they had their baby. Lydia wondered about this, and felt worried for a moment that maybe her friend had something wrong with her, a tumour perhaps, but thought better of asking about it.
    She passed Clem a can of Grolsch and a glass and poured herself one and then sat down with her friends.
    ‘So, is this the first time you’ve been out, since she was born?’ Lydia began.
    They both nodded and Dixie said, ‘I mean, I’ve taken her out to the corner shop, but this is officially her first car ride and her first dinner party.’
    ‘Well,’ said Lydia, ‘I must say, you both look great. I mean, a bit tired, but still, great.’
    She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting; skulls for faces, sick-splattered clothing, empty expressions, drained of anything that had previously made them what they were. But, no, they seemed jolly and bright and reasonably normal.
    ‘Knackered,’ agreed Dixie, untying the laces of some rather battered Converse plimsolls and kicking them off beneath the table, a relaxed and somewhat untidy gesture that betrayed their previous incarnations as flatmates. ‘Though she’s in our bed so at least I’m not getting up and down in the middle of the night to feed her.’
    ‘And it is rather brilliant for me,’ agreed Clem, ‘as I don’t have to wake up at all!’
    Dixie threw him a withering look. ‘Your time will come,’ she said. ‘Once she’s off the boob, you will be getting very familiar with the bottle steriliser and the Cow and Gate, I can assure you.’
    Clem smiled wanly and stroked his beer glass. Lydia got to her feet and lit the gas beneath the two woks on the hob, as per Juliette’s instructions. ‘Well,’ she said, smiling across the hob towards her friends, ‘haven’t we all come a long way? Seems like only yesterday we were all squashed into that little flat together, and now you two are parents and I’m over here in this huge place. Is this it?’ She smiled. ‘Are we grown-ups now?’
    Clem and Dixie laughed. ‘Never,’ said Dixie, ‘perish the thought. I keep thinking someone’s going to realise how immature we are and come and take the baby away from us. I’m sure the midwife thinks we’re a pair of losers.’
    Clem and Dixie laughed and Lydia glanced across the hob at them again. Her friends. Clem