Chapter Text
It was about a week after the funeral, and Jamie was sitting in what was Sarah’s room, absently rocking a definitely sleeping Natalie when Ruth appeared in the doorway. “Hey,” she whispered.
He smiled up at her, stroking the baby’s back. “Hey.”
“I don’t want to pressure you, but have you thought about what you’re going to do?”
He nodded. “So much, I’ve got a headache from all the thinking.”
She smiled as she took a step into the room. “And have you made a decision?”
Another nod. “I’m going to keep her. I’m going to adopt her.”
“You are?”
“Yeah, see, I’ve been thinking about it, right? Sarah wanted to keep her, and she didn’t have much. She worked so hard to have her and to keep her safe, and she didn’t have much at all.”
Ruth came to sit next to his rocking chair. “She had you.”
“Not until too late.”
Ruth put her hands and her chin on the arm of his chair. He knew that intense Kent face too well. “Hey, don’t say that. You kept her safe for six months. If it hadn’t been for you, Natalie wouldn’t be here at all.”
“But I couldn’t save Sarah.”
“You tried harder than anyone had in a long time.”
He smiled faintly. “I just wish I could have done more.”
“Is that why you want to keep Natalie?”
He looked at a vague point over the door frame and shrugs. “Yeah, but also no. It’s like I said. Sarah didn’t have much. She had a shitty boyfriend who had isolated her from pretty much everyone and a crappy childhood best friend who didn’t intervene in her life soon enough.”
“You’ve got to talk to Dr. Sharon about that kind of thinking.”
Jamie smiled slightly at that. “Anyway, I have a lot. I have a lot of money, yeah, but I also have you and Roy and Keeley and my mum and Simon and the lads and Rebecca. There’s all these people in my life who want to help me, who will help me. I can give Natalie a good life. I can buy her what she needs and send her to a good school and all that, but more importantly, I can raise her with a good family around her. She’s two weeks old, and there’s already so fucking many people in my life who love her so much. I could probably leave her in Rebecca’s office every day if I wanted.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Yeah?”
Ruth started tracing Natalie’s back with her thumb. “Roy would get jealous if Rebecca got her all day.”
He smiled at that, the first real smile that Ruth had seen in a while. “I wouldn’t really do that anyway. She’ll go to nursery or have a nanny. I’ll figure it out. But I have to keep her, Ruthie.” His grey eyes are pleading. “I have to do right by her.”
“You can’t do this because you feel guilty about Sarah.”
“I know.” He paused, then continued. “I’m not. I’m really not. I want to do this. I want her. I know that I won’t be a perfect dad, but I want to try to be a good dad for her.” Another pause, and he gulps before speaking. “I understand if you don’t want to help me.”
“What? What do you mean?”
Jamie turned his gaze fully to his girlfriend’s face. “I understand if you want to break up with me. I get that. You didn’t agree to dating someone with a baby. Phoebe is ten. I know that we’ve talked about kids, but that’s having kids together. That’s not me springing a baby on you. And if you’d rather not add a baby into our relationship and your and Phoebe’s lives, I get that. I respect it. I wouldn’t judge you if you broke up with me.”
“Oh, Jamie,” Ruth chuckled slightly as she put her hand over his mouth. “Oh, Jamie, I’m not going to break up with you.”
“But you didn’t sign up for this,” he replied motioning to the still-sleeping Natalie on his chest.
His girlfriend smiled, shaking her head. “Jamie, you forget that Sarah was my friend too.”
“But,” he begins.
She cut him off with a shake of her head. “Sarah was my friend. I didn’t know her for as long as you did, but I knew her. I cared about her. And I care about Natalie. I want what’s best for this little pumpkin. And I think that you are Natalie’s best option right now. You’re a hell of a lot better than being taken into care.”
“That’s fucking certain.”
Ruth smiled. “And given the past seven or so months, I’d say that you and I are something of a package deal at this point. We haven’t made any commitments yet, but I think that we agree on where this is going, yeah?”
He nodded. “I think yeah.”
“So, maybe this isn’t how I’d imagined that I’d have more kids. But being with you apparently now means that having Natalie in my life, and I’m okay with that. It’ll just take some getting used to for me and for you and for Phoebe.”
“Yeah, that’s for sure.”
“But if you can wrap your heart around Phoebe, then I can wrap my heart around Natalie. And I can get used to someone waking me up in the middle of the night wanting to be fed again.”
Jamie’s brow furrowed. “That sounds like you think we should move in together.”
“I do. And that’s not just because of Natalie, but I think that it would be helpful for us to live together.”
“Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to move in with you? Because of Phoebe’s school?”
“We can talk about that later.”
He nodded. “But we do need to figure that out.”
“Obviously, but we also need to figure this out.”
I suppose that for you, the reader, to understand all of this, we need to back the narrative up by a few months in some places and a few years in others. We’ll start with Sarah.
Sarah Grace Fletcher was born in Manchester and grew up next door to Georgie Tartt (later Baker) and her son, Jamie. Her parents, Grace and Alan Fletcher, were good people. They didn’t have much money, but they loved their daughter. She was an intelligent child, and she worked hard. Her parents encouraged this in their only daughter. Alan died of cancer when Sarah was about fifteen. Georgie observed (privately, only to her then-boyfriend Simon) that when Alan died, a light seemed to go out in Grace. She simply seemed less interested in life at all.
She also observed (again, only to Simon) that all of this seemed to light a fire in Sarah, a determination to make her life worthwhile. She threw herself into school, determined to go to university and become a doctor. Simon agreed with his girlfriend (later wife) but he also observed (privately, to only himself until he told his stepson many years later) that the loss of her father seemed to ignite a fire in Sarah for male attention and approval. It was as if the loss of her father and biggest supporter had led her to need to find a man to fill that role.
Sarah went to university, in London like she and her father had always planned, and became a nurse instead of a doctor. Somewhere in her second year of university she’d met a man called Markus, and he’d convinced her that she was in love with him and that it would be better for him and her and their future family if she became a nurse rather than a doctor. (He also posited that it would be more appropriate for her as a woman.) So, seeking to please Markus, Sarah transferred to a nursing course and becomes a nurse. After graduating, she took a job in the A&E department of the Richmond General Hospital and rented a cute (but quite cramped) one-bedroom flat with Markus who had an office job nearby. Markus promised her that “when they were both ready” he’d propose and they’d marry and start a family. But he kept finding reasons why they weren’t ready “yet.” Sarah called her mother every week on Sunday afternoons while Markus was out with his friends.
This continued for three years. Sarah liked her job. It was fast-paced and challenging. She became friends with a few of the other nurses. She got along well with some of the doctors, including a Dr. Ruth O’Sullivan who she occasionally got a drink with when they both had the same evening free and Ruth’s (probably saintlike from what Sarah heard about him) older brother could watch her daughter for the evening. Ruth didn’t approve of Markus, which Sarah told her mother was frustrating. “Just because her ex was a jerk doesn’t mean that all men are jerks,” she’d whined to her mother one night. “Look at her brother. “He has a stable job, and he’s amazing with her kid. He should be living proof that not all men are shit.”
(It should be noted at this point that Sarah had no interest in football. She had once told a nine-year-old Jamie Tartt that it was a stupid game that kept people from reaching their full potential. She didn’t know what Ruth’s brother did for a living, just that he had a stable job. She also didn’t pay attention to her former neighbor’s career. She’d heard from her mother that Jamie was playing football professionally, and while Grace could have sworn that she’d mentioned that Jamie played for Richmond, Sarah claimed to have never heard that.)
This all went on for three years. And then one Sunday, Sarah didn’t call her mother. That Sunday was followed by another and then another. And after about six weeks of this, Grace went next door to ask Georgie Baker for help.