‘Take a leaflet,’ Murray told Atholl, proudly handing over a sleek pamphlet boasting the unique qualities of their locally sourced, ethically produced and tested products.
‘Will you put aside a box of the baby soaps for me?’ Beatrice asked Nina, who told her she would.
Nina wasn’t too busy to stop Murray from pulling her close to kiss her and wish her luck. She brushed her lips across his and told him she already counted herself very lucky indeed.
Beatrice was outside in the sunshine happily adding the last tick to her clipboard as Atholl cleared the hall and tied the red ribbon across the outer doors ready for the grand opening when it happened – and because he was right by her side, Echo was the first to know.
The dog howled as Beatrice cried out, wracked by the deep, throbbing pain radiating from her spine and all down her legs. She doubled over, trying to get onto her knees.
Atholl was on the move through the crowds already. ‘Beattie!’
‘No, no, no, no!’ she cried, holding her stomach.
‘Hospital!’ Atholl said.
‘What? The festival!’ she said through gritted teeth, her breathing entirely getting away from her as though it were being controlled by some other thing.
Atholl was resolute. ‘The festival’s underway and happening now with or without you. We’re going!’
She was crying now. ‘But I’m only thirty-one weeks. This isn’t right, Atholl!’
‘Ambulance is on its way,’ Murray shouted over the crowd and Atholl gathered Beatrice up and led her slowly across the church green where everyone in Port Willow stood watching, some with their hands over their mouths, some looking away so as not to distress her further. Beatrice, unable to prevent herself, screamed her heart out as she folded onto her knees on the grass, half in fear and half in agony.
Chapter Forty-one
Journey’s End
There followed: one hour, six minutes and eleven seconds and thirty miles of frantic ambulance dash, one waiver signed, one anaesthetist and two surgeons prepped, a careful incision, so many tears cried, and two-and-a-half agonising minutes of utter silence while the nurses attended to the bundle.
Not even a beep from one of the many, many machines in the operating theatre sounded, and the whole time Beatrice’s eyes were fixed on the nurses’ backs and she didn’t breathe once. Atholl rattled from head to toe, utterly undone with the panic of it all, until tiny Willow Fergusson took her first breath and proceeded to wail like a siren from the sea until she was placed onto her mother’s skin and the pair of them were wrapped under blue hospital blankets and Beatrice’s heaving, silent sobs rocked her daughter straight to sleep.
That had been six days ago and Atholl finally had his colour back.
Beatrice and Willow had spent many silent hours on the ward examining each other in wonder while she thanked her baby for coming to her and kissed her little fists and velvet head, utterly in love and in perfect peace.
There had been tests and watchfulness and all manner of charts and results coming back from labs, until finally Willow was declared by the registrar to be ‘fit and well, only very wee’, and they were allowed to leave.
Now they were in the back of a taxi with their daughter in a hastily obtained car seat.
‘She looks tiny in this thing,’ Beatrice remarked for the third time. Atholl sat in the front, staring down the cab driver, telling him to take it easy every time he dared to drive over thirty miles an hour, even on the dual carriageway.
‘We’ll have to get a pram that takes this car seat attachment,’ Beatrice said, her eyes fixed on her sleeping baby.
‘We havenae a car of our own to put it in,’ Atholl told her from between the seat backs.
‘Well then, we’ll have to get a car as well.’
Atholl smiled, and told her he’d look into it.
‘We don’t have anything, Atholl. How can you be so calm? Who was it that said a baby comes into the world with everything it needs? Because they lied. I’d have been very surprised if Willow had popped out holding a tube of Bepanthen and a packet of Pampers.’
Atholl laughed, but Beatrice was serious and, ever so slightly, losing it. ‘Ten nappies a day for twenty-four months is…’ She tried counting in her head and, finding it fogged with hormones and spiralling panic, she gave up, blurting, ‘I don’t know how many, but a lot. I don’t have a thing organised!’
‘Don’t worry,’ Atholl told her again.
‘Where will she sleep? Oh God, I should have gone to that baby superstore or at least had an online splurge. What was I thinking? I’ve heard of babies sleeping in drawers but that was in, like, the nineteen-fifties! And in some Scandi countries they sleep in cardboard boxes at first, don’t they? Like a veg delivery from the greengrocer. Atholl, why are you laughing? I’m serious. I didn’t even get her any clothes.’
By the time they pulled up at the kerbside by the inn door, Beatrice was deep inside a planning vortex. If she got online right away maybe she could have some clothes and baby gear delivered by the end of tomorrow? They’d need a baby bath too, but could probably use the washing up basin for a night or two…
