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Maternity leave is bullshit, as far as Barbara Havers is concerned.
Oh, it’s a societal good, she’ll give you that. It’s great for other people and babies and, you know, the world in general. But for her, in specific—right now—it’s absolutely maddening.
She’d left work one week before her due date. Her latest murder case had ended with a good result, and she’d decided trying to solve another one before the next heir to Asherton arrived might be a little too ambitious, even for her. Tommy had given up begging her to stay out of the field months ago—she’d outlasted him on the stubborn front, the way she always could—so he’d been thrilled when she finally left the office and dumped the next murder on him.
She’d lasted two days at home with nothing to do but watch crap telly on the sofa with their dog, and now here she is in his incident room, sipping at the herbal tea his rather hapless but otherwise very sweet DC insisted on making her and nibbling on the biscuits her husband had hidden away in his top drawer. Jaffa Cakes—her favorite. Tommy doesn’t go in for sugar, as a rule, not unless it’s wet, fermented, and preferably old enough to drive in most European countries, so she knows the cakes are just for her. It makes her feel a little warm and fuzzy inside.
The DC—Liam—he’s been hovering around trying to get her to sit in a chair for the last quarter of an hour, but she’s happy enough perched on Tommy’s desk, staring at the board waiting for something crucial to jump out. She’s been having cramps all day, and the elevation sort of helps keep the worst of it at bay.
“Please, your ladyship—” Liam says again, wincing at her sharp look. “I mean, Inspector, marm—does the other Inspector know you’re here? Should I call him, like? Would that be good?”
“Nah,” she says, taking another bite and sip. “He’s out talking to the mum, yeah? Best to leave him be. Walk me through the case, Liam. What’s himself think?”
Liam sighs and gives up the hovering, turning to look at the board with her. He's a good lad, Liam. Not her Winnie, of course, but her team's been reassigned while she's on leave. Tommy always jokes that she got Winnie in the divorce when she first got promoted, but he's built himself a solid new crew in her absence.
“Boyfriend,” Liam says, surrendering to the inevitable in the face of his DI's missus. “He wasn’t too keen on the new baby at first, and he had a row with the victim about her going back to work a couple hours before her death.”
“Right. A knife was it?”
“Lafferty says no. Something sharp, pointed, and curved, more like.”
“Like a hook, you mean?”
“Sure, it’s possible, marm.”
“What’s the boyfriend do?”
“Telesales.”
“No hooks there. And the victim? Sally Miller. What did she do for work?”
“Actress. Local stuff mostly, but she’d just landed the role of Tinker Bell in a big production starting tech next week.”
“Tinker Bell?” She looks up at Liam, eyes narrowed. “As in Peter Pan? That Tinker Bell?”
“”How many Tinker Bells are there?” Liam wonders, and then he blushes at her raised eyebrow and nods. “Sorry—yes, marm. Peter Pan. That’s odd, though. Isn’t Tink usually just a flashing light on stage?”
“That’s not the only odd thing. Peter Pan?”
“Sorry, marm, I’m not following.”
“Captain Hook, Liam. Find me that damn hook.”
Liam clears his throat and then says, delicately, “It’s, um, it’s not your case, marm.”
She rolls her eyes and sighs. “All right, find the damn hook for the other DI Lynley, then.”
“Don’t be fooled, Constable,” comes a warm, posh voice from behind her, “she’s only DI Lynley when it suits her. It’s Havers, otherwise.”
He slides onto the desk beside her, nudging the empty packet of Jaffa Cakes out of the way so he can slide a hand around her back, leaning in to press a kiss into her hair. He’s been very tactile since they got together—very affectionate. It used to drive her wild, back when she cared about hiding their change in relationship status around the nick. Then they got married, and she got pregnant, and there didn’t seem to be much point in hiding it after that.
“How are you, Havers?” His voice is soft in her ear, tickling her skin with his breath.
“Bored,” she tells him, “and you’re out of cakes.”
That makes him smirk—that little quirk of his lips that she’s spent years seeking out. It still makes something flutter in her stomach, even now.
“How thoughtless of me,” he says, staring into her eyes with a heat that makes her want to squirm in a very pleasant way. “Sergeant, take a note. More Jaffa Cakes for the lady wife, please.”
Priyanka, his saint of a DS, just nods and writes it down.
He winks at Barbara and then turns to the board, all business again.
“So, have you solved my murder for me, yet?”
“Maybe,” she says. “The murder weapon. Liam says it could be a hook? And the victim was in a production of Peter Pan, so I’d say you’re looking for someone in the production with access to Captain Hook’s costume.”
“You’re very good.” This comes from behind again—another posh voice with none of the warmth of Tommy’s. They all turn to look and find a slight man on the other side of the desk, well dressed in a suit and a great coat, shaking a little with his hands in his pockets.
Barbara is the first to move, sliding off the desk and rounding it to approach the man. His small tremors are more exaggerated now, more violent.
“Hello,” she says, “who are you?”
“Michael Chambers,” he says. “I wrote the play—rewrote it, really—for her. For Sally.”
“Yeah? Why don’t you have a seat, then? Tell us all about it.”
“She was going to throw it all away—going to leave me. She said being a mother was more important than a stupid play. My play! My masterpiece!”
“Havers—” Tommy’s voice is tight—sharp—but she takes no notice, she’s too busy guiding their new suspect into the chair, and she nearly misses it—the glint of silver in his hand as it finally leaves his pocket, slashing out at her precious bump.
Her reaction is immediate—she jumps back and with the same momentum throws her hot tea into his face. The hook clatters to the floor, and he tips over in the chair and goes down like a rock while half the nick rushes in to handcuff him, but she doesn’t have time to deal with that because Tommy is at her side in the next second, screaming her name.
She’s always Barbara, when she’s in danger. Always.
“It’s all right,” she says, trying to calm him down and reel him into her arms. “I’m all right, Tommy. The baby is all right.”
He won’t be calmed—won’t be reeled in—and finally she gives up on the niceties and just yells:
“Sir!”
He stops immediately. The whole nick does. Priyanka and Liam and the rest of the uniforms all frozen with the suspect well subdued now in his cuffs. They’re all staring at her and the 8th Earl of Asherton, who abruptly collapses into her neck and starts to sob.
“Priyanka, book the suspect, please,” she says calmly over the sobs, stroking his soft, dark hair. “Let Liam sit in on the interrogation. DI Lynley is going on paternity leave.”
“Yes, marm,” Priyanka says, turning to take over the incident room with the kind of cool headed efficiency neither she nor Tommy have ever really excelled at. They’ve always been outsiders, even when they’re leading a team. A closed unit very much in their own little world. Priyanka doesn’t have a little world. She makes the whole wide world her own, and just now, Barbara is very grateful to her.
“You heard the Inspector,” Priyanka says to the assembled mob. “Everyone back to business. Constable, you’re with me.”
And just like that the whole room empties out, until all that’s left is Barbara, cradling her husband and whispering reassurances into his hair.
“We’re all right,” she tells him, over and over again. “We’re all okay.”
The tears slow eventually, at the same time she starts to register something else. A pressure in her belly—worse than the cramps she’s been fighting off since this morning—a contraction, maybe. He’s sniffling when he finally pulls away from her neck, and it should be annoying really, how pretty he still is with a snotty nose, but, as she goes looking for his handkerchief in his jacket pocket, all she feels is the kind of overwhelming love that makes her daft little heart clench.
“I made quite a scene, didn’t I?” he asks later, after the handkerchief’s been found, and he’s had a chance to blow his nose.
“A bit of one, yeah,” she says, a smirk of her own just barely contained. There’s another contraction—much more painful, all of a sudden—tighter somehow. “They’ll all know, now. Just how barmy you are for me.”
He laughs—a huff of air against her lips while he cups her cheeks in both his hands.
“Absolutely barking,” he says, leaning in for a kiss. “God, I love you. I’m not losing you. Not ever.”
The again goes unsaid. They both know what it is that set him off, and while he always gets a little wild when she’s in danger, it's the shadow of the last baby he lost that hangs over them today.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she says. “Not without you. But I think maybe we should go to hospital, yeah? I think the baby might be coming soon.”
The smile that breaks out on his face—she’ll always remember that smile. Shock and awe and absolute love shining from every pore. She used to think he wasn't built to smile beyond a wry smirk, but since they finally got together, she’s seen more and more of this side of him. The young man he used to be—full of joy and energy and so much love it’s damn near blinding. She wonders how he might have been, if his father hadn’t died when he did. If he ever would have found his way to the police—to her. She probably never would have stood a chance with that young man—the one born with a birthright and nothing but endless possibilities ahead of him—but even so, she loves to see him now, in moments like this.
“It’s started?” His voice is all wonder, and she kisses him again, just because she can.
“Yes,” she says. “I think maybe it’s been going on for a while, and I was just too desperate for a case to notice. Let’s go find out, yeah?”
They take a cab to the hospital. He’s in no condition to drive, and there’s no force on earth strong enough to convince him she’s fit to drive while she might be in labor. She wonders, teasingly, if it’s her he’s worried about or the Bristol. He doesn’t deign to respond, which tells her it’s a bit of both.
Things move quickly, once they arrive at A&E. There are tests to be done and centimeters to be measured, and the doctor takes one look at her cervix and wonders why she waited so long to come in. She doesn’t tell him that she was self-medicating with a murder investigation and Jaffa Cakes. Somehow she doesn’t think that’s the answer he’s looking for. Tommy keeps mum, too. They’ve always closed ranks in the face of adverse authority. It’s no different today.
Their son arrives before midnight. They name him Terrance, after her brother. She tries to think what he would say—what her mum and dad would say—if any of them were alive. What would they think about their grandson being the heir to an Earldom? They probably wouldn’t even believe it. God knows, she barely does, and she’s the one who married an Earl herself.
“It’s hard to believe,” she tells Tommy when they’re all curled up together in the hospital bed—him and her and their newborn, swaddled and sleepy against her chest. “He’s got so much going for him already. A title, a stately home—”
“Us,” Tommy says, stroking Terry’s chubby little cheek. “That’s the most important thing. The title, the land, it’s not worth it if you don’t have love like this. I’ve been avoiding my title for years. It doesn’t mean anything—it doesn’t make me happy. Not the way the two of you do.”
She snorts. “That’s a beautiful thought, dear, but some of us grew up without the title or the land, and let me tell you, love and no dosh doesn’t make for very happy families, either.”
Tommy sighs and rubs his eyes. They’ll never stop having this conversation. They never have. It’s the cost of the divide between them—the class system that’s always threatened to break them apart. It won’t though, she knows that now. Their son will grow up knowing where both his parents came from. Cornwall and East London. The Earldom and the Estuary. He’ll have to take that history and forge his own path forward. With any luck, he’ll be the best of both of them.
“Well,” Tommy says finally, filling the same old silence that invariably opens up between them whenever they brush up against this. “I guess we’re lucky to have both. Love and dosh. The best of both worlds, eh?”
She looks up at him—his dark eyes tired but warm in the harsh overhead light of the hospital room. They’re both so much older than they were, all those years ago. They’ve both come so far. They both have so much further to go. Together. They’ll make their way forward together, just like they always have.
Lady Asherton—the Dowager Lady Asherton—is in residence when they finally get discharged and sent home. Tommy had managed to keep her out of the birthing suite, but she’d come up to London and refused to leave once she heard her grandson had finally made his first appearance. It’s a relief, actually, to come home and find everything taken care of—all the food in the cupboards and the bottles prepared and the dog walked and fed. Her mother-in-law has run a country estate for over twenty years—she can get a London townhouse in top shape in less than twelve hours, and in their absence, she’s clearly risen to the challenge. When they walk in the front door, she takes one look at both of them and sends them straight up to bed.
Barbara has no qualms about handing Terry over to be properly doted on by his grandma, but the ringing doorbell calls them all back downstairs. There’s no one on the doorstep, but there is a box. A case, more like, of packets upon packets of Jaffa Cakes and a note that Tommy reads with a grin on his face.
“Priyanka says thanks for the collar. She’s nailed the bastard.”
“Good.” Barbara yawns. “Let’s go to bed and celebrate with a nap.”
“You know,” he says, following her back up the stairs, “only you could catch a killer in the middle of ignoring that you’re in labor, Havers.”
“That’s why you love me, sir.”
He pulls her to him at the top of the stairs, swooping in for one more kiss.
“You’re not wrong about that. That among many other wonderful things.”
“Good,” she says with a grin all her own. “You can tell me all about them later, then. Over cakes.”