Chapter 3
THREE
‘Georgia, don’t you think we need to leave?’ Sam asked.
It was a Saturday afternoon, almost two weeks after Cormac’s dinner at Ash and Brine.
Sam had been pacing up and down the flat for the past ten minutes, crossing the industrial-style wooden floor from the leather chesterfield I’d found in a skip and come sprinting home to tell him about before someone else took it, to the kitchen counter where I was standing.
‘Hold on.’ I glanced up at him. He didn’t look impatient or annoyed, just excited – like a little kid on Christmas morning. When he saw me looking at him, he grinned and I grinned back, realising I felt the same. ‘I’ll be five minutes, max. I promise.’
‘We were meant to be there by three,’ he pointed out, ‘and it’s twenty to now.’
‘I know! But I can’t rush this – I’ll fuck it up.
’ My lips pressed together in concentration, I piped a swirl of pale blue frosting onto first one cupcake and then another.
‘They’ve got a brand-new baby. Their lives will be utter chaos for months.
They won’t care if we’re five minutes late or twenty-five. ’
‘And they won’t be able to cook a decent meal for months either,’ Sam pointed out, ‘so they’re not going to care if your icing’s wonky or not.’
He paced again, ending up looking over my shoulder.
‘Don’t distract me.’ I finished the eighth swirl, exhaled, put down the piping bag and picked up a canister of blue sprinkles. ‘Too much?’
‘I mean, they look great as they are. But too much is kind of the point of cupcakes, right? And it is a special occasion.’
‘Exactly. I’m going in with the sprinkles, and I’m going hard. You get the champagne and the flowers, and we’ll be out of here in five.’
Almost an hour later (how did that happen?
Was there some rift in the space–time continuum between our kitchen and the front door?), we were approaching the door of Molly and Ben’s flat, which formed the ground floor of a dilapidated Victorian terrace a short bus ride from our warehouse-style apartment in East London.
As the door to the street swung closed behind us, shutting out the roar of traffic from the road, I became conscious of another sound: a thin, high-pitched wail like an alarm going off on a long-forgotten device buried in a drawer somewhere, insistently informing you that its battery was about to die once and for all, but only when it had given you about three days’ warning and wrecked your sleep in the meantime.
Sam and I looked at each other, wide-eyed with apprehension and something else – something almost like wonder.
‘Do you think that’s—’ I began.
‘The baby?’ His voice had dropped to a whisper. ‘I guess. They’ve been known to cry a bit, or so I’m told.’
‘That’s wild,’ I murmured. ‘Imagine hearing that and knowing you’ve got to do something about it, but—’
‘You don’t know what, and there’s no one there to tell you?’
I nodded. We held each other’s eyes for a moment, and it felt almost as if we were holding our breath too.
I wanted to reach out and hug him, let him know that I knew exactly how he was feeling because I felt the same, but I couldn’t because I needed both hands to hold the box of cupcakes.
Then, hearing the volume of the baby’s cries increasing and the thump of approaching footsteps, I composed my face into something I hoped looked less like someone standing on a high diving board waiting to plunge down into the water where other people were already swimming, and more like someone excited to see her best mate for the first time since she became a mother.
Seconds later, the door swung open and there was Ben, clutching a tiny, yelling bundle against his chest.
‘Hey.’ He reached out a hand and half-hugged me and half-fist bumped Sam. ‘Great to see you. Come on in.’
‘Great to see you too!’ I gushed. ‘And to meet… wait, has he got a name yet?’
Following Ben into the flat, I could just see the baby’s head over his shoulder. It was scarlet and wrinkled and furious. Its fists were bunched up on either side of its face. It had a shock of black hair sticking straight up. For something so tiny, the noise it made was astonishingly loud.
As for Ben – well. He’d never been the most polished of men, always seeming to have a hole in his T-shirt or a rip in his jeans, to need a haircut or to have missed a bit when he was shaving.
But now he looked downright awful. His hair was almost as much of a mess as the baby’s.
There was a crusty white stain on the shoulder of his green jumper which I presumed was sicked-up milk.
His face was grey with tiredness, and his eyes were so hollow he looked like he’d come off second best in a bout against Tyson Fury.
Before I could properly take any of this in, he’d led us into the living room where Molly was struggling up off the sofa to greet us.
She, too, looked like the ‘before’ picture in a makeover shoot.
Her long dark hair hung around her face, limp and frizzy at the same time.
She was wearing a waffle dressing gown that had once been white but most certainly wasn’t any more.
It looked like she couldn’t stand upright properly, and she moved across the floor like an old, old woman.
But when she reached Ben and he handed her the baby and the two of them stood there, shoulder to shoulder, looking down at their son, it was like someone had suddenly dragged the slider on an Instagram filter right over to maximum.
Their tired faces were suffused with happiness.
A smile spread from Ben to Molly and back again like a beam of light.
They looked down at the baby – whose cries were beginning to die down – like he was the most magical, precious thing either of them had ever seen, which I supposed he was.
I felt Sam’s warm arm against my shoulder and leaned in to him, hearing the soft huff of his breath as he exhaled at just the same time I did – an identical sigh of something I couldn’t quite name: sympathy, wonder or perhaps even awe.
Then he handed over the fizz and flowers, and I put the cupcakes down on the coffee table, next to a box of breast pads and a half-eaten pack of digestive biscuits.
Ben took Molly’s arms and helped to lower her back down on the sofa, and I flopped down next to her, feeling as if my legs might not be able to hold me upright any longer.
‘Wow.’ I leaned over to look more closely at the baby. ‘Just… wow.’
‘I know, right?’ That look of amazement passed over Molly’s face again. ‘Isn’t he just… I mean, I know we made him and everything, and we’re biologically programmed to think he’s the absolute nuts so we don’t hang him off a tree and forget about him, but he’s pretty good, isn’t he?’
‘He’s incredible,’ I breathed. ‘You guys nailed it. Congratulations. You must be so proud.’
‘Do you want to hold him?’ Molly looked gracious and also concerned, a bit like I imagined Leonardo da Vinci would have if he’d handed over a paintbrush to his apprentice and offered him a go at the Mona Lisa.
‘I…’ What if I drop him? What if he pukes on me? What if I make him cry again? ‘I’d love to.’
Carefully, Molly passed the baby over to me.
I didn’t know what to do with him, so I sort of jiggled him up and down a bit, but his head was so floppy that it freaked me out, so I laid him down on my lap and looked at him, feeling the weight of his warm body – so tiny but also somehow so heavy and real – and wondered how soon I should give him back.
‘So come on then, you two,’ Sam began. He and Ben were emerging from the kitchen, Sam clutching four champagne glasses and the open bottle, Ben holding a plate with the cupcakes on them. He was looking at them in a slightly bemused way, as if they were a gift brought by aliens from another planet.
‘Yes, come on,’ I said. ‘You must’ve decided on a name by now.’
Sam carefully poured champagne into the glasses and handed them round, and we clinked and sipped and congratulated yet again.
‘We couldn’t make up our minds for ages,’ Molly admitted. ‘I wanted Lysander at one stage, but Ben vetoed that.’
‘I mean, come on,’ Ben said. ‘The poor kid. It’s not like we’re going to send him to Eton – he’d have the piss ripped out of him at the local comprehensive with a name like that.’
Molly glared at him. ‘You wanted Clive, though. I mean, seriously. Clive!’
‘After Clive Allen,’ Ben explained defensively. ‘Queens Park Rangers’ best ever player.’
I caught Sam’s eye and knew exactly what he was thinking – we were about to find ourselves in the middle of the kind of row only two exhausted, irrational people who really loved each other could conjure up.
My mind flashed back to the time when we’d got back from a long weekend in New York, dizzy with jet lag, and discovered that the airline had misrouted our bags to Montreal.
We’d stood hopelessly by the baggage carousel, arguing about what to do and somehow blaming each other before realising the futility of falling out over something that was neither of our faults, and dissolving into sleep-deprived giggles.
‘So not Clive and not Lysander,’ I interjected now. ‘But you have made up your minds. I can tell.’
‘We have,’ Molly said, with a little sort of secretive smile.
‘We haven’t told anyone yet,’ said Ben. ‘We wanted to be sure.’
‘You’re going to be the first people to know.’
‘And also, we wanted to ask—’
‘Tell them the name first.’
‘Okay then. It’s…’
‘It’s Arthur,’ they said together.
‘That’s gorgeous.’ I beamed down at the sleeping baby. ‘Hello, Arthur.’
‘Artie for short,’ Molly said. ‘And Art when he’s bigger, if he wants to use that.’
‘Except I call him Artoo-Detoo.’ Ben beamed delightedly.
‘You. Do. Not. Call. My. Baby. Artoo. Detoo.’
‘It’s cute. It suits him.’
‘It’s ridiculous—’
‘You said there was something you wanted to ask us.’ It was Sam’s turn to defuse the threat of a row, and I smiled gratefully at him.
‘Oh. Yes.’ Molly leaned over and picked up her glass, taking a sip of the champagne after staring at it for a second as if she’d never seen such a thing before. ‘Will you be his godparents? I mean, not that we’re planning to have him christened or anything, although my mum wants us to.’
‘It would be more of an honorary title,’ Ben explained.
To my surprise, I felt tears pricking my eyes.
I’d only just met this tiny person – I knew nothing about him, and yet I was being offered this significant role in his life, and being offered it with Sam.
We’d have to remember to send him Christmas presents forever and ever.
We’d take him for thrilling yet age-appropriate days out.
One of us might even make a speech at his twenty-first birthday party.
It felt as if, in those few moments, Arthur had become more than our friends’ baby – more even than a person in his own right. He’d become a chapter in Sam’s and my story, a link in the chain that was our life together.
‘We’d love to, wouldn’t we?’ Sam squeezed my hand.
‘Of course. We’re honoured. Thank you so much for asking us. But are you sure? I mean, who else…’ I couldn’t think of a tactful way of asking whether we’d be job-sharing with other, more qualified candidates, so I let my words tail off.
‘My sister’s going to be godmother too,’ Molly assured us.
‘And my mate Danny from uni,’ added Ben. ‘He’s got four-year-old twins. He got started early.’
On my lap, Arthur stirred, his tiny hands moving up to his face again, and made a sound that I imagined was like the bleat of a newborn lamb – not that I’d ever met any newborn lambs.
‘He scratches his face.’ Molly sprang to her feet. ‘I don’t know how to stop him. His nails are like the world’s tiniest razor blades.’
The bleat turned into a cry.
‘What’s the problem, little dude?’ Ben asked. ‘You’ve been fed.’
‘God, if only there was Google Translate for babies,’ Molly sighed. ‘I mean, how the hell are you meant to know what they want?’
‘You’ll figure it out.’ Sam stood up too. ‘Can I take him for a bit?’
I glanced at Molly, who nodded gratefully. Carefully, I lifted up the tiny body, supporting his head awkwardly with my hand. Sam took him from me and hoisted him up to his shoulder, then began walking slowly up and down.
‘You’re just figuring out the world, aren’t you?’ he soothed. ‘It’s all kind of big and confusing, isn’t it? But you’ll be all right. Mum and Dad have got you, haven’t they, Artoo— Artie?’
As he paced steadily, the baby’s cries tailed off and then stopped. Over his shoulder, I could see Artie’s eyes, fathomless blue, gazing out at the world. I wondered how much he could see and what he made of it all.
But one thing was clear – he knew that Sam’s arms were a safe place to be.
As I watched the two of them, listening to Molly and Ben recounting the horror of the birth, how hours of pain and boredom had ended in the drama of a C-section and then the instant relief and ecstasy of holding their newborn for the first time, I felt something I’d felt an inkling of before, when we’d brought Milton home and he’d curled up on Sam’s lap and gone to sleep.
It was like a place inside me I’d never known was there was suddenly apparent – or not so much a place as a space.
A space that might one day be filled by my child – mine and Sam’s.
It wasn’t a painful feeling, or even a yearning, not yet.
It was just an awareness of something that would one day be an important, missing thing, like when you’ve got the edges of a jigsaw puzzle done and you know that you’ll gradually fill in the middle until there’s only one gap left.
We stayed while Molly gave the baby another feed, finishing the champagne and eating half the cupcakes. Ben changed the baby’s nappy, and Molly started to nod off on the sofa, so we decided it was time to leave.
We walked in silence to the bus stop, holding hands. I didn’t need to ask Sam what he was feeling; I knew. The pressure of his palm against mine, the faraway look in his eyes, the damp patch on his jumper where Arthur had sicked up some milk, all told me.
Then, just as our bus came into view, I heard the familiar beep of Sam’s phone. He fumbled for it in his pocket, glanced without much interest at the screen – and everything changed.