‘Since you graduated. When “life had other plans”, as you put it.’
‘Yeah, well. I’m guessing you didn’t plan to end up here, either. Life happens to all of us.’
‘Life, death, and a whole lot of fun and games in between.’
‘That’s one way of looking at it.’
The doorbell rang, catching them both off guard, and Beckett had to do a few seconds of readjusting and shushing before Bob settled back against his chest with a sigh that made Beckett’s throat ache.
‘The midwife!’ Mary whispered, eyes darting around the room in panic. ‘Look at this place. Look at me! What the hell am I going to do?’
5
MARY
By the time Beckett left, two hours after scaring the life out of me, I’d have more easily believed he was a bona fide angel than any sort of danger. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call him charming, he’d certainly won the community midwife over as he’d hauled in more bags from the car, made her a drink and told the story of how Bob had almost been delivered in the back seat of his car, making me out to be some sort of superwoman, and him the bumbling best friend. Because, yes, in this version Beckett was my bestie. Which I initially felt guilty about, until I realised that at this point in my life it was the genuine truth.
He made a vague excuse about why some equipment had only arrived today while unwrapping a Moses basket and setting it up, then proceeded to convert a small chest of drawers into a nappy changing station. Following that, he unpacked more tiny clothes, muslin cloths, breast pads and a papoose.
‘Is there anything else we’ve forgotten?’ he asked with a nonchalance implying everything was under control and always had been.
‘I spotted the car seat,’ the midwife said, ignoring Beckett and speaking directly to me. ‘Are you getting a pram?’
‘Yes, absolutely,’ I stammered.
‘Well, as far as I’m concerned anything else is simply over-expensive clutter. I mean, I was bathed in the sink, my mum used an old shawl as a makeshift sling. I slept in a drawer, for pity’s sake! Can you imagine? They’d want a referral to social services if I found that happening these days.’
After she’d completed all the basic checks and declared everything ‘tickety boo’, which had me fighting back the tears because, honestly, if this was tickety boo then motherhood sucked, Bob started wailing again. The midwife offered to check how feeding was going, which apparently turned out to be ‘beautiful!’, so in this alternate reality I’d stepped into, ‘beautiful’ now had a whole different meaning, too.
I did start crying then. Woeful, silent tears that dripped onto Bob’s head as I rubbed his back in the hope of producing a burp.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whimpered. ‘It’s all been a bit of a shock.’
‘Darling, if he’d been a planned C-section two weeks after your due date, this would still be a lot of a shock. Don’t worry. You’re doing great. It’s the mums who don’t cry that make me nervous. Besides, this fella clearly has you well looked after. You’ll be fine.’
I briefly imagined how it would go if I told her I’d met this fella less than twenty-four hours earlier, which threatened to turn my sobs into a bout of hysterical laughter, so I instead asked her a nonsense question about the umbilical cord.
As soon as she’d left, Beckett ushered me upstairs to where he’d run a bath, which I only dozed off in once, and when I came back down, he handed me an omelette stuffed full of bacon, mushrooms and tomatoes, which was quite possibly the best meal of my life.
Even if he did have to go before I’d finished eating.
‘I’m sorry, I have to get back.’
‘Of course. I wouldn’t want Tanya upset with you again.’
He gave a sheepish shrug. ‘Tanya’s gone. It’s Sonali this evening.’
‘Okay. Wow.’ Nothing about Beckett so far had made him seem like the type of man who had multiple women waiting about for him. But, then again, my track record proved that I was about as hapless at sussing out men as I was at parenting.
‘Yeah.’ He ducked his head. ‘It’s really not wow.’
His phone rang, preventing him from saying any more. ‘Sonali. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes… Okay. Twenty at the most.’
Giving me an apologetic wave, he backed out of the room, before running back in thirty seconds later and handing me a scrap of paper with a mobile number on, his own phone still held to his ear.
‘Call if you need anything,’ he mouthed, then left us to it.
I didn’t call, however much I longed to over the next few weeks, where feeding, wailing and pacing up and down in exhausted desperation blended together in what appeared to be my life now. I laughed pitifully at the thought that I’d viewed living alone as a negative thing, back in the days when no one demanded to gnaw at my nipples or peed in my face the second I took their nappy off.
