Beckett carefully took the infant and strapped him back into the car seat, then did what he’d been wanting to do since Mary had opened her front door, several hours ago. He gathered her into his arms and held her while she sobbed.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mary said for about the hundredth time as she used the last of the box of tissues on the chipped coffee table to blow her nose. ‘I guess it’s the hormones. I’ve cried more in these past few months than the rest of my life put together.’
Beckett suspected there were other reasons for that apart from hormones, but what did he know? He waited while she sat back, straightened her T-shirt and tucked her long hair behind her ears.
‘I just… I can’t remember the last time someone asked me what I needed. And, to be honest, the answer to that is so terrifyingly overwhelming, I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Okay. Let’s start with the essentials.’ Beckett nodded at the car seat, then got out his phone and pulled up an NHS list of newborn-baby equipment. ‘What on this list do you have, and what do you need that I can find at 1 a.m. in the middle of Sherwood Forest?’
It turned out Mary had nothing on the list apart from some blankets. However, after managing a sort of breastfeed while he’d been eating pizza with Pastor Moses, she’d decided that all she needed urgently was more nappies, cotton wool or non-scented baby wipes and maybe a spare sleepsuit.
‘What about a cot?’
‘I was going to order one online, but, you know, there are so many to choose from. All these options. They’re so expensive I was worried about getting it wrong.’
Beckett got off the sofa and pulled a drawer out of a cabinet on the other side of the tiny living room. He was going to empty it out, but there was nothing in it. ‘Apparently this was good enough for me. So, I’m sure that, for now, it can be good enough for… Does he have a name yet?’
Mary looked as though she was going to start crying again.
‘It doesn’t matter. You have weeks, don’t you, to decide?’
She nodded, mutely.
‘Had you narrowed it down to a shortlist?’
‘I didn’t know if I was having a girl or a boy. So when I talked to them, I called them Blob.’
‘Yeah. Probably best not to go with that in front of the midwife.’
They looked at baby Blob for a few moments.
‘Could do Bob? As a temporary thing while you decide?’
Mary glanced up. ‘That would work. Thank you. For this, and everything else. I can’t even imagine what would have happened without you. And I’m sorry I’m being so useless and pathetic. I’m not normally like this. Well. Until last March I wasn’t. The last few months have been a lot. I think I’m still in shock. That, and totally knackered.’
‘Mary, you just pushed a human being, who you grew yourself, out of your body. With no pain relief and only a horse vet to help. I think that’s as far from useless as it gets.’ He put the drawer down on the coffee table. ‘Let’s see if this works, then I’m going to find some nappies.’
Mary fetched her baby blankets from upstairs, and they fashioned a bed in the drawer using a thick towel as a mattress, then Beckett left her to it, wondering whether Mary’s life wasn’t the only one that had changed for good that night.
3
MARY
Now that I was alone in my cottage again – well, obviously not alone, I reminded myself as Bob gave an unexpectedly loud sigh from the drawer-cot – I found it impossible to even think about sleeping. The enormity of what had happened reverberated through my system like the after-buzz from an electric shock. I had a baby. He was here. I was completely unprepared, practically, mentally and emotionally. Both besotted and utterly terrified. The past few hours were mostly a jumbled haze, yet the reality of the present moment filled my vision like ultra-high definition.
I had been a capable, confident person, not so long ago. A company director, managing both a team of other people and my own life. Every day an exhilarating juggle of meetings, deadlines and social events, around which I occasionally squeezed in luxuries like the gym or a hair appointment.
The past few months had been filled with empty time, and no clue what to do with it, even if I had summoned up either the motivation or the mental energy.
And now, everything was him. This seven pounds one ounce of snoozing, snuffling, wondrous life was it.
Time to get my crap together. Once I’d figured out how the hell to do that, of course.
But first, who was Beckett, and what on earth was I thinking, inviting a man into my house, and then blubbering all over him?
My head was blaring a warning siren that a taxi driver claiming to be rather coincidentally trained as a doctor had somehow inserted himself into my highly vulnerable situation. Surely the safe, sensible thing to do was to lock my door and hope he never showed up at the cottage, which was starting to seem like the perfect setting for a horror movie.
My shattered heart, however, had trusted him the second I’d looked into those mahogany eyes and seen something there it recognised. Loneliness. Suffering. Desolation. I don’t know. I supposed stalkers and serial killers felt lonely and sad as much as anyone.
