Читать книгу William’s Progress - Matt Rudd - Страница 21

The health visit is compulsory. Society does not allow people to vanish into domestic anonymity without first double-checking that they are not doing horrible things to their newborn children.

This is unfortunate because the bruise looks epic this morning. It looks like I’ve punched him. I look like a heroin addict because I haven’t slept for three nights. We will be flagged as an abusive family. Jacob will be taken away from us and raised by horribly strict foster parents who, at least, will never try to stuff their faces with pasta while holding an eight-day-old infant. Years from now, Jacob and I will be reunited, perhaps on a television show presented by Esther Rantzen. And I will try to explain that I hadn’t meant to bang his head on the table, I just hadn’t realised how floppy a newborn child’s head could be. And the crowd will boo. And Jacob will tell Esther how, despite his strict Christian upbringing, he finds it hard to forgive me.

‘Morning. I’m the health visitor.’

‘Morning. Hi. Come in, come in. How are you? Can I get you a cup of tea? Or something stronger? No. Silly. Of course not. Don’t know what I’m saying. Tea? Yes, right away. Isabel and Jacob are in the front room. Okay. Fine. Right. Okay.’

Brilliant. The same guilty ramblings I spout when I’m going through customs. Which is why I always get searched. And now why this health visitor is going to take Jacob away from us.

‘Here’s your tea. Hahahaha. Can’t remember if you said white. Or black. So I’ve brought both. I mean milk. I’ve brought milk.’

Calm down, you idiot.

The health visitor tells Isabel that she shouldn’t co-sleep. It’s dangerous.

Isabel tells the health visitor that it isn’t and that it’s up to her how she raises her own child.

The health visitor makes a note.

This is going badly. I explain, apropos of nothing, that the bruise was an accident. She makes another note. Isabel rolls her eyes really theatrically at me, as if to say, ‘Why on earth have you mentioned the bruise?’ I throw back a ‘What?!’ face, as if to say, ‘What?!’ The health visitor makes another note, so I pretend I have some e-mails to answer.

Ten minutes later, the coast is clear and Isabel reveals that the woman asked if I was abusing her. Apparently, they have to ask. Apparently, Isabel saw it as a good opportunity to make a joke about our marriage. ‘Only mentally’ she had answered, laughing. And instead of laughing, the health visitor had made another note.