‘Gave it!’ A brogue I instantly recognised boomed back. ‘It’s Bill, and I told you I’d be offended if you tried to give it back.’
He wagged a faux-angry finger as he slipped through the gathering crowd of interested onlookers to join us. ‘I’ve made my speciality carrot cake for pudding. I’d be genuinely insulted if you rejected that as well as the car seat.’
‘I like carrot cake,’ Marvin announced. ‘I’m staying for lunch.’
‘What?’ Beckett turned to his gramps, looking the most stressed I’d seen him, and that was saying something considering how we’d met. ‘No, we’re going to give Bill the car seat back, and then go.’
‘Then where will the baby sit on the way home?’ Marvin retorted. ‘Are you giving this Bill the baby, too? I wouldn’t,’ he said to me. ‘He looks shifty.’
I turned to Beckett. ‘Whoops.’
Beckett took a moment to catch up. ‘You didn’t bring another car seat to take Bob home.’
‘I don’t have another one, yet. I completely forgot.’
Beckett looked at me. I thought I spotted a twitch of amusement at the corner of his mouth, but his overriding expression was one of discomfort. He leant close enough for no one else to hear. ‘What do you want to do?’
I shrugged. After my hermithood of the past few months, it was overwhelming enough being in this busy car park, with random curious people clustering around, and now we’d turned up with a car seat that we had to take back again.
But. I had a baby now. I had to break out of my self-imposed incubation and start living again. For Bob’s sake, if not mine. Bob shouldn’t have to miss out on one bright, beautiful day this world had to offer because of his mother’s broken heart. I might as well give it a go when I had Beckett here to provide moral support. Although, Beckett looked as though this was as big a step beyond his comfort zone for him as for me. All the more reason to try. It wasn’t as though we were going to see any of these people again.
8
BECKETT
Once Mary had accepted the invitation, they were sort of swept into the building like geese in the middle of a small gaggle, ending up in the room where people had been eating pizza on the night of the snowstorm.
With lots of ‘here we go’, and ‘make yourselves at home’, ‘let me take your coat’ and other chatter that made Beckett’s head swim, he found himself sitting at a large table, while three extra places were hastily set and a mug of tea thrust into his hand. He turned to Gramps, who was being helped into the chair beside him.
‘Okay?’ Beckett braced himself for the inevitable onslaught of verbal venom that accompanied his grandfather feeling harried, confused or in any way expected to do something he didn’t feel like.
‘I’m famished. When do we get food?’
Beckett tried to feel reassured that Gramps seemed reasonably content for now, but it was hard not to feel anxious, knowing this could change in an instant.
‘Can you wait ten minutes while we round up the stragglers?’ Sofia asked, appearing at Gramps’ shoulder and gently handing him a mug. ‘Coffee with milk and four sugars, as requested.’
To Beckett’s growing astonishment, Gramps not only said thank you, but he winked.
‘Four sugars?’ Beckett asked him.
‘And?’ Gramps huffed. ‘I’ve taken coffee like this since rationing ended. Are you going to start policing this now, along with everything else I find remotely pleasurable?’
Gramps had stopped taking sugar in his hot drinks after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, almost a decade ago, but Beckett merely sat back and decided to try to enjoy their first joint social outing in at least that long.
‘Is Mary okay?’ She wasn’t amongst the dozen or so people now milling around or taking their places at the table.
‘She’s gone to feed Bob,’ Sofia said. ‘Obviously it’s totally fine for her to do it wherever, but she preferred somewhere quieter.’
‘She said enough people here have seen her never reasons, she didn’t want to risk flashing them her blistering nipples, too,’ Sofia’s boy, Micah, said, with enough relish for everyone to stop talking and turn to look.
‘She should show them to my grandson,’ Marvin said, taking a loud slurp of coffee and smacking his lips. ‘He’d know what to do with a blistered nipple.’
Once the smatter of shocked laughter had faded into loaded silence, Beckett then felt compelled to clumsily explain to a bunch of strangers that he’d qualified in medicine, although he was no longer practising as a doctor. He hated telling people this. It came across as trying to impress them, as if he considered his current job to be lesser, while at the same time inviting questions that he never felt like answering. Mercifully, as soon as he’d stumbled to a stop, a hatch opened at the back of the room and Moses announced that once he’d said a prayer of thanks, it was time to eat.
‘What is this?’ Gramps asked the older teenager sitting on the other side of him. ‘It looks like something my old mutt threw up.’
Before Beckett had time to apologise, Gramps carried on. ‘But it tastes delicious. My compliments to the chef.’
