A bewildered grin crept onto Morton’s face. ‘Is that it?’ he asked, swivelling his head to look back at the hospital, half-expecting someone to come rushing out and to declare that a mistake had been made—that they weren’t anywhere near ready to venture out into the world unsupervised with a baby.
‘Yep, that’s it. It’s just the three of us now,’ Juliette confirmed with an uncertain smile on her face.
‘But…’ Morton began, looking back at the doors, shocked at the simplicity of their discharge. She had only given birth last night. Nobody had even asked if they were prepared. ‘How will we know what to do?’
Juliette laughed. ‘A combination of instinct, advice from friends and relatives and the abundance of baby books we’ve got at home. Failing that, there’s always Google if things get really desperate.’
‘Right,’ Morton said, not liking the sound of any of those options. For someone who had spent most of his adult life resolutely vowing never to have children, he wasn’t sure his usually excellent instincts should be trusted. ‘Come on, let’s get it home.’
‘It?’ Juliette begged, as they crossed the car park. ‘That’s our child you’re referring to.’
‘What do you want me to say?’ Morton asked. ‘Albert?’
Juliette rolled her eyes. ‘No, obviously not.’
Albert had emerged as the favourite name, following the twenty-week scan in which a nurse had said that she was ‘pretty sure’ that they were expecting a boy, but that she couldn’t be completely certain. A profusion of baby name books was subsequently dredged, resulting in a short list of five. Having decorated the nursery in various shades of blue, Morton and Juliette had begun to refer to the room and its contents as belonging to Albert. But now Albert didn’t quite fit the child to which Juliette had given birth. ‘It’s a girl!’ the midwife had declared, following a short labour. She couldn’t understand their baffled faces.
‘Are you… sure?’ Morton had pressed.
‘If, after twenty-two years in the job, there’s one thing I can safely say I can do well, it’s to tell the sex of a baby,’ she had answered.
‘Oh,’ Morton had responded.
‘It really isn’t that bad,’ the midwife had replied, her tone suggesting offence.
‘No, I know,’ Morton had begun, realising how his reaction was coming across. ‘I’m very happy—it’s just a surprise, is all.’
The midwife had shrugged and left them alone with their new-born daughter.
They reached the car and Morton carefully set the seat in place, the baby bedecked with an oversized pastel-blue knitted coat. Morton stared at his daughter, a surge of overwhelming pride moistening his eyes. ‘Alberta?’ he suggested, climbing into the driver’s seat.
Juliette shot him an incredulous look.
‘We need to draw up a new short list,’ he said, starting the car.
Juliette closed her eyes and tilted her head back into the headrest. ‘I can’t face it; you can do that,’ she muttered. ‘I need to rest.’
Thirty-five minutes later, Morton, Juliette and the newest member of the Farrier family entered their home on Mermaid Street in Rye. It felt to Morton as though they had been absent for several weeks, rather than just two days.
‘Home sweet home,’ Juliette breathed, collapsing down into the welcome embrace of the sofa. ‘I’m sleeping. Wake me up in time for the child’s first birthday…’
‘I’d better start ringing around and letting everyone know the news,’ he said. The first person whom he wanted to tell was his newly discovered biological father, Jack. Pleasure and pride rose inside him at the thought of informing Jack that he was now a grandfather. Since meeting him for the first time in Boston last summer, they had spoken at least once a week on the phone and had met up once more when Jack had been in London on business. In recent weeks, as they shared the stories and memories from the past that had been denied them, their relationship had felt increasingly like that of a normal father and son. He’d felt guilty at first and would often find himself in a sombre mood following their phone conversations, feeling that he was somehow betraying the memory of his deceased adoptive dad. Long discussions with Juliette had helped and now he embraced the relationship and its accompanying feelings wholly.
He picked up the phone and started a video call. When Jack answered, Morton held the phone above the baby. ‘Meet your new granddaughter,’ he announced.
‘Granddaughter?’ Jack questioned.
‘Long story.’
With the baby asleep in the Moses basket—Albert’s Moses basket, Morton noted with a dry smile—and with Juliette curled into a ball under a blanket, he tiptoed up to his study.
The only wall in the room not to be covered in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves was the wall upon which Morton would usually attach the paper trail of his current genealogical investigations. For the past week, he had been working on a special project: creating a book charting the lives of Juliette’s direct ancestors. He realised, now that he was looking at the complex pedigree charts fixed to the wall, that his idea of providing a fleshed-out account of several generations of her family was an enormous task and his hope of presenting it to her shortly after the birth was impossible now that Albert…the child had arrived two weeks prematurely. His daughter had evidently inherited her mother’s wilful nature.
The name ‘Albert’ was written on a single sheet of paper attached to the bottom of the wall. Morton bent down, scribbled out the word, replaced it with ‘Miss Farrier’ and moved his eyes up the inverted-pyramid-like pedigree chart, the number of pieces of paper doubling with each new generation. At the very top of the wall were sixteen sheets. Some of them—place holders for ancestors as yet undiscovered—were blank. The others contained the names of his and Juliette’s great grandparents.
Reaching up, Morton
