Mama Thames rose from the river at the end of the pool and came gliding towards us as if she was carried along by an invisible current. She had black eyes set in a smooth round face, pinked at the corners like her daughters’, broad shoulders, strong arms and wide hips. Her skin was as dark and as smooth as a young child’s. She was dressed identically to my mum – the same iridescent headdress and shift with the colours rippling like wavelets across the fabric. The only difference was an old-fashioned nurse’s watch pinned upside down to her breast.
‘About fucking time,’ said Beverley.
My mum waded past me and joined Mama Thames in front of Beverley, the senior sisters stepping in to form a half-circle.
Mama Thames took her daughter’s hand.
‘Whenever you feel ready,’ she said.
‘Actually,’ said Bev, ‘I think I could go for some breakfast – fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!’
There was a lot of panting and shouting and swearing, and I like to think I carried off my very minor role in a properly supportive manner. Literally supportive when the first twin crowned and Beverley flung herself back against me, her feet leaving the bottom of the pool. It felt good to be doing something useful that didn’t involve fishing out floaters.
Then Beverley gave a shudder that seemed to run down her body from head to hips. Mama Thames stooped to lift the first twin clear of the water. Then the baby cried and my mind went completely blank with the enormity of it all.
‘Peter,’ hissed Beverley, ‘we’re not finished yet.
Mama Thames held up the first twin and spoke in a voice loud enough to cause noise complaints across the neighbourhood.
‘Taiwo,’ she called. ‘Mamasu Rose.’ The last being my mum’s two first names.
She passed the baby – umbilical still attached – to Tyburn, who looked down at her, then blew a raspberry and stuck out her tongue.
‘Fuck!’ shouted Beverley.
She tensed again, made a terrible face and then relaxed and slumped back against me. I heard another baby cry and Mama Thames held up another glistening, squirming infant.
‘Kehinde,’ she said, and then looked at me, the power of her regard fixing me in place. She raised an eyebrow.
‘Beatrice,’ I said.
‘Beatrice?’ asked Beverley.
‘After Betty Carter.’
‘Yes,’ said Fleet. ‘The one and only.’
‘Yes,’ said Mum.
‘Yes,’ breathed Mama Thames, and her affirmation was like the wind bellying out the sails of a clipper turning for home.
In films and television they always gloss over the messy bits that come next, the umbilical cord cutting and afterbirth disposal – the alarming pink cloud that briefly suffused our end of the pool.
And so will I.
All through the later stages of the pregnancy I’d imagined the twins as already sly and mischievous, but instead I was entrusted with a pair of wrinkly faced gnomes – albeit with curly mops of black hair and black eyes that pinked to the sides like a cat’s.
‘Yes,’ I said, as I waded out of the pool with the twins in my arms. ‘You are mine.’
‘You’ve got that the wrong way round,’ said Lady Ty behind me.
I woke the next morning to the sound of the foxes begging my mum for snacks and then running around yelping because they were too spicy. Beside me, Beverley stifled a laugh, but when we heard Abigail chasing after the foxes and trying to get them to eat white bread, she couldn’t keep it in any more. The laugh woke the twins, who immediately wanted feeding.
I helped Beverley get into position for tandem feeding and watched as her face took on an expression of pained surprise as the twins clamped on.
‘OK, girls,’ she said, ‘there’s enough for everyone.’
About a minute after feeding, I got my first taste of nappy changing. I don’t know what people complain about. I’ve cleaned up much worse than that. It didn’t even smell that bad.
‘That’s because they’re yours,’ said Auntie Ty when she visited that afternoon. ‘For everyone else, the shit stinks just the same.’
Obviously, the world does not stop just because you’re on paternity leave. Fortunately, between Bev, my mum, Maksim and, disconcertingly, Lady Ty, I managed to carve out enough time to finish up the paperwork. Nightingale, Guleed and Danni handled the inquests and the legal aftermath without me, although the DPS called me in for an interview. I took the twins with me, so it turned out to be quite short.
One thing I did early on was prepare an official briefing document for Special Agent Reynolds, and a definitely unofficial document for the secret branch of the New York Libraries that deals with dangerous magical artefacts. My hope was that they would send someone after Brian Packard and Lesley May to try and secure the lamp. To ginger them up, I may have exaggerated its significance as a magical artefact – just a tad.
‘Is that wise?’ asked Nightingale at the next weekly conference call. ‘We hardly parted on good terms.’
‘We’re all too separated,’ I said. ‘And these informal links are OK, but what if something happens to me and you?’
‘You think we should formalise our association with the FBI?’ he asked.
‘And with the Dutch,’ I said, ‘and the French, and anyone else who wants to talk. Magic has never been purely local, has it? We’ve just done a case from the Middle Ages which extended from Seville to Manchester.’
Nightingale agreed that greater formal co-operation was desirable, but added that the Home Office was still opposed to any such links, and we hadn’t even broached the idea with the Foreign Office.
‘We have potential allies with influence,’ I said.
‘You’re thinking of Lady Ty,’ he said. ‘Not someone who has shown us much goodwill in the past.’
‘Ah, but we’ve got family connections now,’ I said. ‘And baby diplomacy.’
Nightingale remained sceptical, but less than a week later Grace and Caroline came down from Glossop to visit.
I offered them a twin each to hold, but strangely they said no.
‘Not everybody wants children, you know, Peter,’ said Caroline.
‘And it’s hard to talk with your hands full,’ signed Grace.
Since the twins were doing their rare impression of sleeping angels, I made coffee and put some biscuits out. Grace had taken the opportunity to nose around the living room, and when I got back she was having what looked like a heated discussion with Caroline. I was definitely going to have to pick up some British Sign Language soon – if only so I could eavesdrop on those two.
The discussion wound down and the two accepted coffee. Unfortunately, Beverley and Abigail had eaten all the Molly-supplied biscuits and we had to make do with the ones donated by the local Waitrose.
Grace and Caroline had brought a hanging mobile for the twins – carved wooden figures interspersed with moons and stars and capering kitchenware. The figures were traditional fairytale witches wearing pointy hats and riding brooms, although at least one of them was brandishing a hammer, and they had foxes as familiars, not cats.
The foxes puzzled me a bit, but before I could ask about them Grace presented me with another gift. This was a tooled leather smartphone case – the type with a flap that protected the screen.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
When I took it, it seemed to be much heavier than it needed to be. When I opened it I saw that gold threads had been inlaid into the leather in looping knots and curls. When I looked back at Grace and Caroline they wore identical grins.
‘Magic-resistant,’ signed Grace.
‘Nice,’ I said. ‘Stay here a moment.’
I went and fetched an Airwave handset from my office and showed it to Grace.