The Book of Love. Fionnuala Kearney

she said, curling her hair around her ears, already practising her best poker face.

      Having spent a perfect, lazy day with Dom, Erin leaned against the back doorway and tried to swallow a sense of unease. Her natural anxiety was, of late, worsened by pregnancy hormones.

      ‘You don’t understand,’ she whispered, her hand making tiny circles around her navel.

      ‘So, explain it to me.’ Dom stopped her hand moving by taking it in his.

      Her voice faltered, unsure. ‘I suppose I’m afraid.’

      ‘Of what? I mean tell me exactly what you’re afraid of.’

      Erin lowered her eyes. Just outside the door by her stockinged feet lay a cluster of late-blooming crocuses still not quite ready for spring. Maybe the next day, she thought, maybe the next day the purple and golden yellow flowers would open and flash their bright stamens proudly. She watched her bump rise and fall with the pull and push of her lungs. And maybe once her baby was born she would feel ready to become a mother.

      Sometimes she couldn’t believe that there was another human being alive inside of her. Other times, the ones when the child kicked and complained in the confined space of her stretched womb, she was acutely aware of it. And tonight, as her insides tightened with more Braxton Hicks contractions, ‘teasers’ that could only have been named such by a man – she wondered if now would be a good time to tell Dom that she wasn’t doing this ever again. The thought of having someone else taking over her body again …

      ‘Talk to me,’ he pressed her.

      She closed her eyes, conscious that if she said how she really felt, was truly honest with him, Dom would only worry. She could have confessed she was afraid that becoming parents would change them, that their love might not have space for another person. She might have told him that her hormones seemed to play havoc with old anxieties, fears that had been prodded and poked awake. She might have told him she was afraid she was going to die in childbirth. The sensible part of her brain knew there was nothing logical about the panic that set in when she thought about giving birth, but … She batted away the scary thoughts.

      ‘Erin?’ Dom said.

      Raising his hand to her face, she angled it to cup her cheek, leaning into it. ‘I’m just being silly.’

      She felt his lips on her forehead – a kiss that confirmed he was right there with her, that he would listen to her ‘silly’ if she wanted him to. But Erin remained quiet, unable to speak her doubts to her waiting husband who believed he could kiss her fears away.

      Four days to go to her due date and the thoughts lined up now, colliding anxiously with one another. What if, she asked him silently in her frightened head, what if I die and leave you alone? What if I live and we have a beautiful child and I can’t love it? What if I love it more than you? What if I stay this weight – will you ever fancy me again? What if we’ve forgotten how to make love? She thought of earlier when he’d beaten her at strip poker and they had lain in the bed naked, just holding each other. She gripped her tightening stomach and breathed through the discomfort.

      ‘You got those false contraction things again?’ he asked, and she nodded, thinking he too could probably feel them as he held her. ‘Must be the weirdest thing.’

      ‘Yep,’ she pulled away from him and doubled over placing her hands on her knees. ‘Though these ones haven’t gone away,’ she said, one hand straight away steadying herself in the doorway.

      ‘Breathe.’ Dom rubbed her back. ‘Slowly.’

      And that’s what she was doing, breathing away the uncomfortable ‘teasers’, feeling Dom’s hand massaging her back gently, when she felt a small pop and watched water trickle down her legs onto her socks.

      ‘Shit!’ Dom reared upwards. ‘Is that …?’

      Erin straightened. ‘Get the bag, love.’

      ‘Right,’ he was staring at her.

      ‘Dom, the bag?’ She closed the back door, turning the key in the lock, moving the handle up and down to make sure.

      ‘You alright?’

      She nodded. ‘The—’

      ‘I know, the bag.’ Dom patted his pockets as if the ordered holdall she’d packed six weeks ago could be found in one, and Erin reached for his hand.

      ‘I’m okay,’ she said, and in that same moment recognised all her own worries in his darting eyes. Of course. Of course, he was frightened too. ‘I’m okay.’ She squeezed his hand.

      He nodded before moving at speed to their bedroom.

      ‘Get me some clean knickers and leggings,’ she called after him.

      ‘Right.’

      She heard him in the next room pulling out drawers, muttering to himself, and she began to peel her lower clothes from her body. With the leggings she’d been wearing, she wiped the tiny puddle of water from the floor, ignoring the thought that she’d expected a torrent, a waterfall, and that if that was all the amniotic fluid in her, it could only mean the rest was all baby. ‘Shit,’ she whispered to no one but herself.

      She was stood at the sink, filling the plastic basin with hot water and swishing her soiled clothes with her hands when Dom was suddenly by her side.

      ‘Okay, let’s get going,’ he laid a gentle arm around her shoulder.

      Erin gripped the sink, a wave of pain and nausea overcoming her. ‘Knick-ers,’ she panted.

      ‘Yes, sorry, I put them in the bag.’ Dom unzipped the bag and bent down, sliding the knickers up over Erin’s legs. She winced as she felt pinching lace and realised he’d obviously picked a pair from the pre-pregnancy drawer she hoped to return to someday.

      ‘A thong?’ she asked as she felt the useless triangle of material sit somewhere on her lower bump and a thin elastic line wedge between her bum cheeks.

      ‘God! Sorry.’ He was already pulling her foot through one leg of a pair of black leggings and began to peel it from her again.

      Erin tried to smile. ‘Leave it – it’s fine,’ she said gripping hold of his shoulder just as another contraction threatened. ‘It’ll give the nurses a laugh. Now, hospital,’ she said as she pulled the leggings up as far as they would go. ‘And step on it.’

      ‘Nooooooooo!’ Erin cried out as Susan, a heavy-set midwife from the west of Ireland, whom they had met nine hours earlier, now mentioned the word ‘doctor’. She had read the books, heard other women’s stories. A doctor meant a caesarean. She could do this. Her eyes fixed on Dom’s – deep brown – set beneath a sweaty, worried brow and above a surgical mask. ‘Tell them I can do it.’ She gripped his hand. ‘Ple-ea-se …’

      Dom stood, not letting go of her. ‘She says she can do it,’ he announced to the room in some weird ‘I’m in charge’ voice that she had never heard before but loved him for.

      ‘Okay, Erin,’ Susan looked up at her from between her legs. ‘We’ll give it one more go. Breathe now … then wait for this next one before pushing,’ she said, glancing at the screen to her side. Erin had just a few moments to catch her breath before she could feel it rolling inside her; another pain that would gather speed like a determined tide. She tried to control it, watched the monitor strap across her middle stretch and breathed into it just before a torturous tightening racked her body. Without waiting to be told, Erin pushed to the point that she felt as if her head might explode. This was nothing like any book had told her; nothing like the classes she and Dom had practised simple breathing exercises in. And as she screamed into the final thrust that would give birth to her child, she felt sure her body would snap in two.

      ‘Push, love, push,’ Dom urged, and she wanted to thump him. She wanted to yell at him; ask him how exactly he’d shit a melon, but she needed any energy she had and the only sound