Page 71 of Always Alchemy

There’s definitely something in the water at Alchemy.

25

AND THEN THERE WERE FOUR

DARCY

Ithought there could be nothing scarier than a group of medical staff who really ought to know better discharging you from their lovely, serene, staff-heavy private hospital with a real live baby and just expecting you to waltz off into the centre of London with no instruction manual.

I was wrong.

It’s even scarier when your husbands drive you home, and you walk through the front door of a house that was your sanctuary when you left it but now feels like a foreign land, and one husband ushers you gently into the living room and plumps up some cushions before you gingerly ease your banged-up vagina down on the sofa while the other places the car seat carrying said baby on the floor in front of you.

Because then what the ever-loving fuck are you supposed to do?

And this is coming from someone who has not only staffon hand buttwo actual husbands.How the hell are you supposed to cope if there are only two of you?

And how do single mothers survive even a single day? Dear Lord, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

I stare down at Baby Charlie, fast asleep and so tiny and perfect and astonishing that it hurts my heart. He had very mild jaundice when he was born, an ailment that the hospital managed with light treatment, but he still looks slightly suntanned. His hair is dark. It may be sparse, but it’s the silkiest thing I’ve ever felt.

He smells like vanilla, he’s hungry alot, and I wouldn’t have needed a paternity test to establish which of my husbands was his father, because the moment he fixed those huge, dark-blue eyes on me, I knew.

Biologically speaking, this is Dex’s son.

Dex settles next to me now, wrapping his arm firmly around my shoulders and tugging me towards him as he gazes down at our son. Max, meanwhile, squats next to the car seat.

‘Do you want to hold him?’

‘Please, honey.’

I don’twantto hold him. Ineedto hold him like I need my next breath.

Max unbuckles the harness and lifts Charlie out by the armpits, his fingers long enough to support his head. He hands him to me, and Charlie instinctively snuggles inwards with a farmyard snuffle, a soft little comma with his tiny nappy-clad bum under my palm and his breaths feather-light against my neck.

I’m not sure people would describe me as a peacefulperson. I tend to beona lot of the time. But here, in this quiet living room, with the three men I love more than Iwould ever have thought possible, I may as well be floating in a Caribbean lagoon for the serenity I feel.

Dex has his head on my shoulder. Charlie is snuggled right where he should be, on my breast. I glance up to find Max staring down at the three of us, the love in his blue eyes fierce.

‘Photo?’

I smile. ’Go for it.’

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and aims it at the three of us. I look like shit. The skin on my face is still so red and blotchy. I have burst blood vessels on my eyelids from when I threw up after Charlie came out, and my lips are all chapped. But clearly beauty is in the eye of the beholder, because Max says in a choked voice, ‘I’ve never seen a more beautiful sight in my life than the three of you.’ He puts his phone away. ‘I’ll go put the kettle on.’

‘Stop.’ I hold out my free hand and clasp his. ‘It can wait five minutes. Come and sit with us for a sec.’

I already know Max will be the person who tethers the four of us together, who keeps our heads above water when we’re so sleep-deprived and hormonal and terrified that we don’t know which way is up. His love language is serving, but I don’t want him serving us so hard that he loses a single chance to justbewith us.

He hesitates, then sits down on my other side, so gently that the sofa cushions barely shift under him, turning his entire torso towards me. His arm snakes over the sofa back, over Dex’s, their bodies cradling me and Charlie. I let my head drop back against their arms and shift my poor, sore undercarriage further forward so I’m reclining, our baby still curled up against me.

Only then do I let out a sigh. A long, exhausted, contented sigh. I glance at Max to my right, then Dex to myleft, and I chuckle. ‘Holy crap. We’ve survived the first five minutes.’

‘You’re doing great, angel,’ Dex says before leaning in to kiss me on the lips.

‘Thanks.’ My voice is shaky. I let my hand do a lap of Charlie’s back. His pale blue and white striped onesie is made from the softest bamboo. His tiny lungs rise and fall under my palm. The speed of his breathing is astounding, as is the fact that he can keep himself alive like this.

Max ducks his head so he can peer at our son’s face, currently nestled into my neck. ‘He has three adults shitting bricks here, and he’s totally oblivious.’

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