Christmas in the Boss's Castle

‘I’ll go,’ Josh said. ‘I needed to get some bread and milk anyway. I’ll pick up nappies, some clothes and some formula milk.’

The panicky look was back on Amy’s face. ‘What if the baby starts crying again while you’re gone?’

‘Pick her up and cuddle her. If all else fails, sing to her,’ Josh said. ‘That usually works.’

‘That sounds like experience talking.’

‘I’m an uncle of three,’ he said. Though he was guiltily aware that he hadn’t seen much of his nieces and nephew since his divorce. His family’s pity had been hard enough to take, but then he’d become very aware that most of his family saw him as a failure for letting his marriage go down the tubes—and he really couldn’t handle that. It had been easier to use work as an excuse to avoid them. Which was precisely why he was working at the hospital over Christmas: it meant he didn’t have to spend the holiday with his family and face that peculiar mixture of pity and contempt.

‘Any songs in particular?’ Amy asked.

‘Anything,’ he said. ‘The baby won’t care if you’re not word-perfect; she just wants a bit of comfort. I’ll see you in a few minutes.’ He scribbled his mobile phone number on one of the spare pieces of paper from their makeshift ‘crime scene’ barrier. ‘Here’s my number.’

‘Thanks. I’ll text you in a minute so you’ve got my number. And I’d better give you some money for the baby stuff.’

‘We’ll sort it out between us later,’ he said. ‘Is there anything you need from the supermarket?’

‘Thanks, but I did all my shopping yesterday,’ she said.

If Josh had done that, too, instead of feeling that he was too tired to move after a hard shift, then he wouldn’t have been walking through the lobby when Amy had found the baby, and he wouldn’t have been involved with any of this. Though he instantly dismissed the thought as mean. It wasn’t the baby’s fault that she’d been abandoned, and it wasn’t the baby’s fault that caring for a baby, even for a few minutes, made it feel as if someone had ripped the top off his scars.

‘See you in a bit,’ he said, relieved to escape.

* * *

Amy looked at the sleeping baby.

A newborn.

Eighteen months ago, this was what she’d wanted most in the world. She and Michael had tried for a baby for a year without success, and they’d been at the point of desperation when they’d walked into the doctor’s office after her scan.

And then they’d learned the horrible, horrible truth.

Even though Amy hadn’t had a clue and it hadn’t actually been her fault that her Fallopian tubes were damaged beyond repair, Michael had blamed her for it—and he’d walked out on her. She’d hoped that maybe once he’d had time to think about it, they could talk it through and get past the shock, but he hadn’t been able to do that. All he could see was that Amy had given him an STD, and because of that STD she was infertile and couldn’t give him a baby. He wouldn’t even consider IVF, let alone adoption or fostering. Even though Amy hadn’t had any symptoms, so she’d had no idea that her ex had given her chlamydia, Michael still blamed her for being too stupid to realise it for herself.

The injustice still rankled.

But it wasn’t this baby’s fault.

Or the fault of the baby’s mum.

‘Life,’ she told the baby, ‘is complicated.’

And then she wished she hadn’t said a word when the baby started crying.

Pick her up and cuddle her—that was Josh’s advice. Except it didn’t work and the baby just kept crying.

He’d also suggested singing, as a last resort. But what did you sing to a baby? Every song Amy knew had gone out of her head.

It was Christmas. Sing a carol, she told herself.

‘Silent Night’ turned out to be a very forlorn hope indeed. It didn’t encourage the baby to be quiet in the slightest. ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ was more like ‘Hark the Little Baby Screams’.

This was terrible. She really hoped Josh came back with supplies soon. There was bound to be a massive queue at the checkouts, and what if the supermarket had run out of nappies?

Maybe a Christmas pop song would help. She tried a couple of old classics, but the baby didn’t seem to like them, either.

If only Josh had let her toss a coin. As a maths teacher, she knew the probability was fifty-fifty—but she also knew that actually there was a tiny, tiny weighting in favour of heads. She would’ve called heads and could’ve been the one to go out for supplies. And Josh, who seemed far better with babies than she was, would’ve been able to comfort this poor little girl much more easily than Amy could. And how could someone so tiny make so much noise?