Chapter 11
BECKETT
After spending most of Monday in a foul mood, Beckett woke up at five-thirty on Tuesday to hear Gramps clattering about in the kitchen. With a resigned sigh, he slid out of bed, threw on joggers and a jumper and went to start breakfast.
By the time he’d chugged down his first coffee and plate of scrambled eggs, the weariness had been replaced with a welcome prickle of anticipation, given how the day before had worn him down.
Gramps had been especially cantankerous, feeling drained by Sunday’s exertion, and after barely any time to search for a stand-in carer, Beckett had endured a five-hour shift in the pouring rain, chugging through roadwork jams and rush-hour snarls.
He’d had a middle-aged woman stumble into the front passenger seat, and then proceed to put her hand on his thigh every few seconds, despite him swatting if off every time.
At a set of traffic lights, she’d leant over and blown tequila fumes in his ear before telling him that her destination had changed to a five-star hotel ten minutes away, if he’d like to join her.
He’d declined her invitation and dropped her off at her original destination, where she’d promptly thrown up on the pavement the second she’d got out of the car.
It wasn’t Beckett’s responsibility to clean up his client’s vomit, but it had been right outside a primary school, and no one else had been going to do it.
He’d half carried, half dragged her inside her huge house, borrowed a bucket and a brush and then, instead of accepting her continued offer of ‘fun times’, he’d left her sprawled on the sofa with a glass of water, now eight precarious minutes late to get back to relieve Sonali.
There’d been scarcely a second to form a coherent thought before he’d collapsed into bed, let alone a plan.
Although, the truth was, every one of those spare seconds had been spent thinking about one thing. One person.
And it wasn’t a new carer.
* * *
By the time they’d set off to pick up Mary, stopping at a supermarket on the way because they’d run out of milk, and Beckett was worried Mary had run out of everything, the flutter in his stomach was something he hadn’t felt in years.
Not because of Mary, specifically, he kept reassuring himself. It was only natural to look forward to hanging out with a friend, especially after such a long time. Especially when it was a friend who made him feel so positive. Unburdened. As if he wasn’t a pathetic failure.
Even Gramps behaved less contrary about another outing, as if he could remember how his previous adventure with Mary and Bob had lifted his spirits.
They pulled up outside her cottage at five minutes to nine, and Beckett quickly grabbed the shopping bags from the back seat and went to knock on the door, which whipped open the second he reached the porch.
‘Hey,’ Mary said, with a slightly manic smile.
‘Bad morning?’
‘That obvious?’ she said, her eyes dropping to her torso, seeming to realise her shirt was buttoned up wrong and a tiny nappy dangled off her hip. ‘Oh. I stuck that there because I was changing Bob and needed more cotton wool, and… I can’t remember why.’
She gave a half-hearted laugh. ‘It’s clean.’
Beckett leant forwards and gently plucked a large crumb of toast from her matted hair.
Mary’s eyes widened. ‘I’m a wreck.’
‘Hey, I tried to microwave my wallet this morning. My barely lucid grandfather had to intervene.’
‘Do two knackered, floundering, possibly inept people make one half-competent one?’
‘I guess we’re about to find out.’
Beckett put the shopping away while Mary got Bob ready, and he felt a ridiculously warm twinge at seeing she’d eaten the food he’d bought last month.
Gramps wandered around the house pointing out its more obvious defects, and promising Mary that next time he’d bring his tools over and get them sorted.
Beckett did wonder for a moment if this might not be a terrible idea – Gramps had been employed as a handyman a few times over the years and had used to complete their own DIY with skill and diligence.
He then saw his grandfather’s hand trembling as he poked at a patch of crumbling plaster, and stopped wondering.
* * *
‘Are we going back to the café with the lunatic women?’ Gramps asked, once they were back in the car.
‘We’re going home,’ Beckett said. ‘And that’s really not a nice thing to call someone.’
‘If they don’t want to be insulted, then they shouldn’t behave like imbeciles.’
‘Also not an okay word.’
‘Why are the woman and the baby here? Have we kidnapped them?’
‘We invited them over for the morning.’
‘What, to our house?’ Gramps sounded incredulous, and then he did something Beckett hadn’t heard in, well, hardly ever. Gramps started to laugh. Not the reluctant chuckle Beckett had occasionally heard in the past. A full-on, belly-shaking, rip-roaring guffaw.
‘Um, why is that so funny?’ Mary asked from the back seat.
‘I have no idea,’ Beckett answered, knowing Gramps would lose control of his bladder if he didn’t calm down.
‘You finally meet a woman worth impressing, and you bring her to our hovel to hang out with a grumpy old codger.’ Gramps wheezed. ‘I thought doctors were supposed to be smart.’
‘Okay, so since we’ve brought up kidnapping, am I allowed to know where we’re going? Or do I need to memorise landmarks en route, because, due to barely going out since I moved, I’ve no clue where we are?’
‘We’re in Bigley,’ Beckett said, nodding at the sign up ahead.
Gramps’ house was on one of the more respectable streets of a large village that had long been the butt of local jokes thanks to the unfortunate name of Bigley Bottom.
This scorn had the advantage of meaning that, back in the golden years of the housing market, Gramps had been able to afford a mortgage for a 1950s semi with two reasonable-sized bedrooms and a boxroom, plus a kitchen-diner and living room on the ground floor.
Beckett had always considered it to be modest, yet adequate. It was only now, as he stopped the car beside their rickety fence, that he saw it through Mary’s eyes.
It was a hovel.
As she followed him inside, it only got worse.
‘Now this makes me feel better about the toast in my hair.’
How had Beckett not appreciated the level to which a house could fall into a complete state without Tanya?
Although, while the grotty mess was recent, the mounds of clutter and random junk had been building up for years.
It was the total opposite of Mary’s sparse cottage.
The kind of house that, when he’d been shadowing an occupational therapist as a student, had made him feel appalled at the conditions some people allowed their elderly, ill relatives to live in.
‘Yeah. It’s been…’ He had no excuse.
‘It’s been impossible,’ Mary said, firmly. ‘Trying to keep earning, taking care of Gramps, sourcing Tanya’s replacement… it’s been impossible not to drop some balls under those circumstances. Most people wouldn’t have made it this far without cracking under the strain of it all.’
She looked at Beckett, shaking her head as if baffled. ‘And you found the time to stop and buy me groceries. You found the energy to even care that I might need some.’
‘You can see why I’d find a trip to Tesco more appealing than trying to tackle this.’ Beckett gripped the back of his neck. Any lingering shame Mary might have felt after the birth had to be eclipsed by this disgrace. ‘I’ll take us back to your house.’
‘What? Why? My house is hardly any better.’
Beckett simply looked at her.
‘Okay, it is better, but the whole point of me being here is to help.’ Her face softened as she leant in to whisper, ‘Beckett, I’ve spent only a few hours with Gramps, but it’s enough to understand how all-consuming that must be.’
‘This isn’t a fit place for a baby.’
Mary rolled her eyes. ‘Really? Then how did our ancestors survive slums, and shacks, and caves?’
‘I’m not sure many of them did…’
‘He’ll be fine in his car seat. Germs can’t crawl that fast. I don’t think.’
Gramps, who’d wandered into the living room, stomped back into the corridor. ‘Where’s the baby? I want to hold him.’
‘There you go. Looks like Gramps is cleaner than me. Bob’ll be fine with him.’
Beckett didn’t want reminding of the wrangling it had required to get Gramps presentable. Mary unclipped Bob while Gramps shuffled into the living room, where he happily collapsed into his recliner, arms outstretched for the baby.
‘You’ll have to hand him back when I bring you a cup of tea, mind.’
He gave an absent-minded nod, already engrossed in tenderly stroking the black wisps on Bob’s crown with a gnarly finger.
‘Are you sure?’ Beckett asked, the apprehension clear in his voice.
‘Stay with him if you’re worried. I’ll make you both a drink.’ Mary grinned as she waltzed out of the room.
‘Once I’ve decontaminated the kitchen,’ she called a couple of seconds later, prompting Beckett to trust Gramps for a few seconds and hurry after her.
‘Mary, you said yourself you’ve had a rough morning. There’s no way I’m going to be the ass who lets you clean my kitchen.’
‘Um, what, like you cleaned mine?’ She twisted around from where she was already running the hot tap.
The kitchen was a dump. Pots piled up everywhere because the slimline dishwasher was full. Empty food cartons, the lingering smell of eggs from breakfast. Sticky worktops, hob, tiles. He could only bear a split-second glance at the floor.
‘I’ve had no one to take care of but myself for a long time.’
‘You’ve got Bob.’
‘That’s different. I would happily die for Bob. I’m biologically programmed to look after him. I haven’t been able to do anything nice for anyone in months.’
Beckett didn’t ask if this was because of lack of opportunity, or because she’d not been up to it.
‘I’ve been pickling in my own problems for far too long. Being able to do this for you isn’t a chore, it’s a pleasure. I’m actually being quite selfish. So, how many sugars is Gramps allowed?’
* * *