When the girls fight, we fight.

We take sides, we have to. There are two of them and only one each of us. We have made our choices, and resent the other for having done so. I’ve got Big. Certainly that is how things are playing out at the moment. We spoke about it the other night, a night of fury and panic and fear.

It happened like this.

Little loves to put her feet on the table when she’s eating. Little loves to see her little toes on the table as she spoons, badly, her food to her mouth. Distracted by food, and this habit is not problematic. On Wednesday, I put her in her chair too soon, placed the promise of food too quickly in front of her. She thought I was teasing, she thought I was being mean. I needed her corralled, needed her confined and controlled, whilst I did my thing with the boiling pan and the pasta, the finishing touches to the food we would eat. I didn’t see it happen, didn’t see the foot on the table or the kick away in frustration, in desperation. First I heard was the chair crack against the cold tiled floor, first I heard was the absence of sound after that.

Then came the screaming, the shouting and shushing. We ran to her, both, raced to be the first to reach her. I don’t remember who was the first to hold her, was the first to feel the swelling rising on her head. But I remember that when I held her, the bump was massive, was large enough to be gripped — to be grabbed, had I wanted to, to be held firmly enough to have tried to lift her.

She was going to hospital.

We have friends here, friends for whom we have done the same. So, Big was dispatched to theirs and we took Little to the doctors. She was calm by now, the screaming stopped, the fear subsiding as she disassembled the shock. The Bump, though, was huge.

We waited. Out here, out here in the ‘burbs, there is an outpost of a Big City hospital. We made it just in time to see a doctor, and just in time for her head to be X-rayed. From there, there would be a CT scan, the fear of bleeding too big to ignore. None of this could happen now, of course. We had no appointment, and would have to wait. As we did so, even though Little normalised, regained her ways of mischief and mayhem, of jokes and joviality, we worried. We worried, I think, about different things.

For me, I was worried about Big being alone, of not knowing what was going on, and not having anyone that she really knows to try and explain it to her. Silly really, as we later found out: she asked not for us once, was too busy watching her favourite film and relishing the fact that she was getting to have a sleepover, her first ever one. But I saw Little, and felt that she was fine. She was running and talking and smiling, everything that she always does and always is. Except when she is tired, or hungry: things that she currently was. She had missed a meal and it was getting late. Further, given that she looked fine, was acting fine and full of beans, I thought the following things: that, by being here, Little was preventing me from seeing that Big was too; and that hospitals that see insurance cards and adoptive parents have their own circle of hell marked out for them.

My wife saw this, or I think this is what she saw; we’ve spoken about it a little, but we tread carefully when it comes to discussing the fact that none of this is easy, none of this is how we imagined it to be. And I can’t speak for her here, we don’t talk about my tapping, this mission of words. We tread carefully, or we don’t talk at all. So the details are sketchy, but this is what I know. She saw fear, and knew the nature of it, knew that it went beyond just the physical possibilities, (even I knew that), the potential for damage to a baby’s brain. She saw a banged head and knew that if anything happened, it could come back on us. If Little had been hurt, really hurt, and we had only discovered in the night, or the next morning, she saw that people would use that against us, would use it to hurt us and take her away. She saw danger that I couldn’t see.

I couldn’t see it then, and still struggle to see it now. I saw only Big. I saw only Big at bedtime in a strange bed, with no story, no milk and none of the things that we always say. I saw Little, fine but grumpy, saw Little stopping me from comforting Big.

When they told us that we would need to go downtown, I assumed, I was sure, that she would do it alone. That we would divide our responsibilities equally. It wouldn’t be nice, not easy, but that is how it would have to be. When I realised I was wrong, it silenced me for much of the rest of night. Not fair, not even approaching fair. But I felt that she had chosen a side, had chosen a side that was actually a child. I was angry. I was muted with anger. How dare she, how dare she make me chose?

I’m not in this for sides, for turf war and battles of affection. If we’re doing this then everyone has to be equal. I felt then, that not everyone was equal, and that Big was becoming the collateral damage in our skirmishes over Little. I said nothing. I said nothing beyond civilities most of the rest of the night. She asked me: you hate me don’t you? I said nothing, and was thankful when a nurse came and interrupted our less than comfortable silence.

Little, meanwhile, would only settle on me. Or that’s how it felt. I think she responded to my resolute dislike for the situation, my frustration and fear, far better than she did to her mummy’s nondescript and generalised agitation. The CT scan, by the way, was utterly inconclusive as to whether the nick the X-ray had revealed was anything to worry about at all. Certainly there was no swelling, no bleeding on the brain.

I said, at some point, screamed it really: You have chosen Little, everything you do is all about her, and you do it to the detriment of Big. She always has to be the one to give in, has to be the one that loses out. And by choosing Little, you have forced me to choose Big. No wonder you think she doesn’t like you.

Not a nice night.

Everything is now fine, better at at least. We’ve spoken about that night, our respective fears and how we could have handled them better. We’ve been talking a lot of late, have been trying hard to ensure that we always do. We have been ticking a long nicely, taking time for ourselves and communicating. But those lines have been drawn in the sand, I fear, the sides chosen.

We spent today up to our necks in warm water. Beijing is filled with hot springs and, the school closed for the week, we decided to steal a day. It was time for us, and deservedly so. It was lovely.

But because it was lovely, we came back to chaos. Tears and tantrums and everything else. The two of them were fighting; Big put out by Little’s very existence, it seemed, and Little on finest floundering form. They were fighting over my lap. We separated them, taking Big outside, whilst Little stayed with me. It was precisely the wrong configuration, or so it seemed to me. I was left with Little who had caused none of this, and was precluded from dealing with Big (but from calming and consoling her too, from letting her know that everything is going to be all right).

We need to talk more. I need to judge less. We need to trust that other has got our back. We need to think more closely, more carefully, about what the other might be thinking, what the other might be feeling, and respond less quickly, but more precisely. We need to give the other a break, we need to know that no real harm will come from our mistakes. We need to relax, to calm it down. Just one day at a time.

She woke up last night, Little, when she never usually does. She woke up last night, quite unbelievably early for her. And instead of finding mummy or daddy, the shoulders upon which she is used to settling, the arms in which she is used to being held, she found instead a babysitter. She wasn’t happy. She cried, I’m told, screamed as well. Screamed so loud that Big joined in, climbed out of her cot, and tried to help. The babysitter called, she had tried so hard, and instructions given, all calm was restored.

A babysitter is not equipped to deal with Little, not on her first night in charge of her sleep. We should have known this, and should have said no to our questioning minds that wondered: can we go out, together, alone; for the first time in nearly four months. Can we? We should have said no, because, of course this was going to happen. We should have known. We should have said no because ‘how can you leave such a small baby alone, one that though older is only three months home?’

I’ve heard this, even if only inside my own head. And it’s right. Living so far away from from family and friends, we have no easy familial babysitters, no extended family that are always on hand, a call away and a pint down the pub, a drop in, a drive-by and a familiar hug. We have raised Big, largely on our own, and Little is being afforded the same treatment. There has been, just us. We are their worlds because we have separated ourselves from our worlds in order to better provide them with better worlds. Or at least that’s the plan: our intention, whenever we see fit to verbalise such a thing.

There has been us and Big, and there is now the three of us and Little.

As I think of it now, I’m pretty sure we didn’t leave Big on her own when she was as young as Little has been home. But Little’s actual age, I’ve realised, is immaterial. It matters not a jot, when she was born. Certainly we’re talking about deferring her schooling, not keeping her back, but keeping her with babies until she she is big enough, can hold her own, verbally as well as physically, and will suffer less at the questions she’ll slowly realise she cannot answer, cannot compute. And will run the risk of responding badly to.

We have to think of her as a new born, the clock starting on the day we met. So, even though she is very big, is very fast and very smart, in terms of us, of our cuddling and collusion, she knows us not, and trusts us to a similar degree.

We needed to go out, wanted to as well. It’s important that we can function as a couple, not just as parents. It wasn’t flash, or far away: just a drink and a burger in the local pub. But it was nice, and needed, to be away. We donned our gladrags or, at least, an effort. We wore the same scents as our wedding day. We held hands on the way there, and tried not to talk too much about about the kids. There was band warming up that we would like to have seen. We ate burgers and ribs and too salty chips, we looked into the other’s eyes and shared the occasional kiss.

Two hours was all we asked for, two hours to be on our own.

But Little woke up and the babysitter called, and my wife went running to answer that call. By the time she’d got there, Little had found her slumber, and she came rushing back to hear the band’s first number. There was rugby on, her homeland in triumphant mood, and lager and busy and ok-ish food.

It was too short a night, that could have been longer.

She woke up this morning, Little, and was unsettled. She was unsettled and uncalm, a tempest released that we haven’t seen in weeks. It was hard: uncompromising in its accusation — you have lied to me, told me lies and made me believe them — and relentless in its coming — a tide, a torrent, a lava flow of illiterate anger that writhed and wailed and sought immediate answers. It would not be calmed this fear-fest, this anxiety, this test of everything that we have done. It would not go, this warning, this threat. You do that to me again, and I’m gone.

She has been difficult today, Little. And me and my wife, and everyone else. Big has been difficult too. It’s as if we all know that an experiment failed, that the results we were sure of have been sadly withheld. It’s like grief, it’s like mourning. A black flag flies over this, a black flag flying over a black tie event: it’s special, it’s exclusive, but the meaning is still elusive.