Amanda stood with her fists clenched atop the gnarled table, scraping them across the nicks in the wood. The air of the tiny room was stale and the phone still hung from its cord, swaying slowly. From the next room, a wail began to rise.

"Stop." Amanda whispered as she pressed her forehead against the cool wall. "Please, please stop." The cries of her three month old son simply began to grow louder. "Fuck it."

Crossing into the room they shared, she picked him up and started to cradle him, cooing softly as she rocked him gently back and forth. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror; her blonde hair disheveled and the bags under her eyes dark. She was so, so tired. Being a teen mum was hard. Amanda let out a sardonic chuckle. She should have known, she thought. He was so handsome. And he could sing. She should have used protection or whatever shit they taught you about in health.

The baby boy had stopped crying and she peeled him slowly away from her body to look into his little face. He had her blonde hair that stuck up in little tufts and his- well, father's summer sky blue eyes.

"You okay, Will?" She smiled softly. No matter how much Amanda hated his father, she would always love her little boy. She had known the minute she first laid her eyes on his squirming frame in the hospital bed, dazed with tiredness. Despite the fact that her family had cast her out for choosing to keep the child, she would still love him.

She was his mother, after all.

So she lay Will back into his cot, drawing the blanket gently over his small body.

"Miss Solace, what would you like to name him?"

It was her favourite poem, the one her grandmother would read to her as a child, with her voice rustling and her velvet hands soft on her face.

Though the water swells and the sun falls

From the skies and we lose her grace

He will hold you and he will keep you

Safe and he will bring you solace

She had always thought that the old woman had been talking about her father; her real father, the one who'd died when she was young, not the bastard her mother had remarried.

"Will." She smiled.

"Will as in William?"

"No. Just Will."

It was true, Amanda thought, as she stared lovingly into the face of her sleeping sun. A sliver of cool midnight air rustled in through the open window and blew her hair back from her face. She felt a little less tired.

He will bring you solace.