I waited almost a month, until I’d started to get the hang of the baby bath and sleepsuit poppers, how to make toast and tea one-handed and navigate the aisles in the local farm shop with a sling on my chest. I began to know this tiny person, what his cries were telling me, how best to soothe or stimulate him, when to panic – which, after a few false alarms, I discovered was pretty much never. In our newborn bubble in the forest, I relearned how to get up, even when every muscle begged me for five more minutes of sleep, and keep on plodding through the next twenty-four hours. As I fell more fiercely in love with my son – even as, during a few dark and desperate hours, I felt like I couldn’t stand the sight of him – my broken heart continued to mend.
I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed at, apart from pale-blue eyes, how little he looked like his father.
Eventually, on a Friday evening towards the end of November, I showered, put on a relatively clean pair of pre-pregnancy yoga pants and brushed my hair before sending a message I should have sent weeks earlier, but simply didn’t have the mental energy to muster up the courage.
Mary
Hi, this is Mary – the woman who went into labour in the back of your taxi
I wanted to say thanks so much for the food and baby things
I don’t know how we’d have got through that first week without it
I waited an anxious few minutes, but there was no reply, so I sent another one.
Mary
I’m so sorry it’s taken me this long to say thank you, I hope you understand things have been full-on
I spent a fretful couple of hours still waiting to hear back, imagining Beckett was far too distracted with Sonali, or whoever it was this evening, to read it. He was probably right this moment showing his gorgeous date the messages arriving from the hopeless woman who’d been so abysmally unprepared he’d felt compelled to help her. They’d be in a lovely restaurant somewhere, or cosied up on his sofa with a takeaway, shaking their heads in sympathy at this sad single mother who didn’t realise that Beckett had been simply doing the decent thing for a stranger in distress, and of course he’d never meant for her to actually contact him.
Bristling with indignation, I picked up my phone the second Bob dropped off again. Yes, it had taken childbirth to force me into acknowledging to what extent I’d dropped the ball this year, but I was a strong, independent, capable woman. I didn’t need Beckett, or anyone else.
It only took me about half an hour to come up with the perfect message to convey that I was, in fact, a thoroughly competent human being who was smashing new motherhood.
Mary
If you let me know your bank details, and whether there were any other receipts apart from the ones you left on the coffee table, I’ll sort the money for all the stuff
Sorry again for the delay in getting around to this – like I said, I’ve been rather busy, ha ha!!
It was almost eleven when a reply pinged through.
Beckett
Genuinely pleased I could help. Don’t worry about the stuff.
Okay, so now I was even more irritated. That message was verging on dismissive and the full stop downright snarky. Plus, I wasn’t worrying about the stuff, I was a successful businesswoman who paid her debts.
Mary
The receipts add up to £315. If you don’t want me to have your details, I’ll round it up to £400 to cover anything else and leave cash at the Sherwood Taxis office.
Dr Beckett Bywater wasn’t the only person around here who could do snark.
This time, I didn’t have to wait for a reply.
Beckett
Please don’t do that. The office is in Bigley. You can’t get there without a car.
Mary
I can hire a taxi!
I did a quick maps search.
Mary
