Page 116 of Carry Me Home

And then – at 6:47, in the golden evening light slanting through the hospital window – a cry. Thin and furious and brand-new.

‘It’s a boy,’ the midwife says.

Kit makes a sound I’ve never heard from him. Not a word. Not a sob. Just a sound – low, broken, the noise a man makes when the world cracks open and rearranges itself around him.

They place the baby on Isla’s chest. She’s crying. Kit’s crying. I’m pressed against the wall with both hands over my mouth, trying to take up as little space as possible, trying to give them this moment that belongs entirely to them.

Kit kisses Isla’s forehead, staring at his son like he’s looking on the universe for the first time and seeing the answer to every question that’s ever been asked. Then he straightens, wipes his face with the back of his hand, and walks to the door.

‘Where are you going?’ Isla murmurs.

‘Brynn and Jude are outside. They should know.’ He pauses in the doorway. Looks back at his son on Isla’s chest. ‘It’s a boy,’ he says again – quietly, to himself this time, testing the weight of it. Then he goes.

I hear him in the corridor. His voice, hoarse and cracking. ‘It’s a boy. We have a boy.’

Brynn, who’d rather kick something than cry, sobs so loud it comes through the wall. Then Jude’s voice, low and warm, and the sound of bodies colliding – a hug, I think, the kind men give each other. A full body hug when words can’t be found.

Isla looks at me. Her face is streaked and swollen and incandescent.

‘Well,’ she says. ‘That was hideous.’

I laugh. It comes out wet.

Isla looks exhausted. Radiant. Wrecked. Her hair’s a disaster and there are shadows under her eyes and she’s the most beautiful I’ve ever seen her.

Because she’s holding her son.

He’s tiny. Scrunched-up face, a tuft of dark hair, the smallest fingers I’ve ever seen on a living thing. He’s wrapped in a hospital blanket, making small snuffling sounds against Isla’s chest, utterly unaware that he’s just rearranged the world.

‘Nina.’ Isla’s voice is rough. ‘Come meet him.’

I cross the room. Sit on the edge of the bed. Look at this impossible, brand-new person.

‘He’s beautiful.’

‘He’s a nightmare. That took forever.’ But she’s looking down at him with an expression that doesn’t need a name. ‘Peter,’ Isla says softly. ‘Peter William Harding.’

She looks up at me.

The room goes very quiet. Or maybe it was already quiet and I’ve only just noticed – the hum of machines, the distant corridor sounds, the baby’s snuffled breathing. My hands are shaking. I press them together in my lap and hold on.

‘Is it still okay?’ Isla whispers. ‘If it’s too much⁠—’

‘It’s not too much.’ My voice doesn’t sound like mine. ‘It’s perfect.’

‘Do you want to hold him?’

I should say no. Should protect myself. Should keep some distance from this beautiful, devastating collision of the past and the future.

But she’s already lifting him, placing him in my arms, and then he’s there – this warm, tiny weight against my chest. Peter. Not my Peter. A new Peter.

He snuffles against my jumper. His fists are curled tight, his eyes closed, his whole body fitting in the crook of my arm as though he was always meant to be there. I can feel his heartbeat – fast, hummingbird-fast – and the rise and fall of his breathing, and the impossible lightness of him, barely seven pounds, the weight of a bag of flour and the weight of the entire world.

My throat locks. My eyes burn. I look down at his face – Peter William Harding, two hours old, who will grow up in Sea Salt Bay hearing stories about a man he’s named for, a man who was kind and brave and loved, who sailed this harbour and fished these waters and who would have held this baby with the same stupid grin Kit is wearing right now if the sea hadn’t taken him first.

I cry. Not delicately. Not the way you cry when you’re trying to hold it together. The tears fall on the hospital blanket and I don’t wipe them and I don’t apologise and I don’t try to stop. Because this isn’t just grief anymore. This is grief and gratitude and terror and love, all of it at once, too much to hold and too important to put down.

Kit stands by the window. He doesn’t speak. He just stands there, this man who pulls boats through storms and barely says ten words a day, watching me hold his son with an expression I will remember for the rest of my life – gentle, steady, the face of someone who understands that some things are too large for language and the only decent response is silence.