Page 6 of The Work Husband

‘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.’