Oliver said—hopefully—and Katy laughed.
‘Hey, I hooked with some weirdos in my time,’ she told the still-glowering Mike. ‘But a couple of them turned into your mates. Just because they didn’t come up to my high standards doesn’t mean they’re total failures as human beings. What do you say, Em? Trust your kids for a few hours with your ex? And him a doctor and all. It sounds an offer too good to refuse to me.’
And they were all looking at her. From what had started as a quiet night she was suddenly surrounded by birthday, kids, mess, chaos, and here was Oliver, threatening to walk into her life again.
No. Not threatening. Offering.
She’d been feeling like she was being bulldozed. Now … She looked at Oliver and he returned her gaze, calmly, placidly, like he was no threat at all. Whatever he’d been doing for the last five years it was nothing to do with her, but she knew one thing. He was a good man. She might not know him any more, but she could trust him, and if a specialist obstetrician and surgeon couldn’t look after her Gretta, who could?
Her mind was racing. Gretta and Toby were both accustomed to strangers minding them—too many stays in hospital had seen to that. Oliver was currently feeding Toby like a pro.
She could take Adrianna for an afternoon out. She glanced again at her mum and saw the telltale flicker of hope in her eyes. She was so good … Without Adrianna, Em couldn’t have these kids.
The fact that she’d once hoped to have them with Oliver …
No. Don’t go there. She hauled herself back from the brink, from the emotions of five years ago, and she managed a smile at Oliver.
‘Thank you, then,’ she said simply. ‘Thank you for offering. Mum and I would love it. Two p.m. on Saturday? We’ll be back by five.’
‘I’ll be here at one.’
Four hours … Did she trust him that long?
Of course she did, she told herself. She did trust him. It was only … She needed to trust herself, as well. She needed to figure out the new way of the world, where Oliver Evans was no longer a lover or a husband.
It seemed Oliver Evans was offering to be a friend.
An hour later she was walking him out to his car. Amazingly, he’d helped put the kids to bed. ‘If I’m to care for them on Saturday, they should see me as familiar.’ The children had responded to his inherent gentleness, his teasing, his smile, and Em was struggling not to respond, as well.
But she was responding. Of course she was. How could she not? She’d fallen in love with this man a decade ago and the traces of that love remained. Life had battered them, pushed them apart, but it was impossible to think of him other than a friend.
Just a friend? He had to be. She’d made the decision five years ago—Oliver or children. She’d wanted children so much that she’d made her choice but it had been like chopping a part of herself out. Even now … The decision had been made in the aftermath of a stillbirth, when her emotions had been all over the place. If she was asked to make such a decision again …
She’d make it, she thought, thinking of the children in the house behind her. Gretta and Toby. Where would they be without her?
Someone else might have helped them, she thought, but now they were hers, and she loved them so fiercely it hurt.
If she’d stayed with Oliver she would have had … nothing.
‘Tell me about the kids,’ he said, politely almost, leaning back on the driver’s door of his car. His rental car.
It had been a lovely car she’d destroyed. That’s what Oliver must have decided, she thought. He’d have a gorgeous car instead of kids—and now she’d smashed it.
‘I’m sorry about your car,’ she managed.
He made an exasperated gesture—leave it, not important. But it was important. She’d seen his face when he’d looked at the damage.
‘Tell me about the kids,’ he said again. ‘You’re fostering?’
‘Mum and I decided … when you left …’
‘To have kids?’
‘You know I can’t,’ she said, evenly now, getting herself back together. ‘For the year after you left I wasn’t … very happy. I had my work as a midwife. I love my work, but you know that was never enough. And then one of my mums had Gretta.’
‘One of your mums.’
‘I know … Not very professional, is it, to get so personally involved? But Gretta was Miriam’s third child. Miriam’s a single mum who hadn’t bothered to have any prenatal checks so missed the scans. From the moment the doctors told her Gretta had Down’s she hadn’t wanted anything to do with her. Normally, Social Services can find adoptive parents for a newborn, even if it has Down’s, but Miriam simply checked herself out of hospital and disappeared. We think she’s in Western Australia with a new partner.’
‘So you’ve taken her baby …’
‘I didn’t take her baby,’ she said, thinking suddenly of the way he’d reacted to her suggestion of adoption all those years ago. It had been like adoption was a dirty word.
‘I wasn’t accusing …’
‘No,’ she said and stared down at her feet. She needed new shoes, she thought inconsequentially. She wore lace-up trainers—they were the most practical for the running she had to do—and a hole was starting to appear at her left big toe. Not this pay, she thought. Maybe next? Or maybe she could stick a plaster over the toe and pretend it was a new fashion. One of the kids’ plasters with frogs on.
‘What do you know about Miriam?’ Oliver asked, and she hauled her attention back to him. Actually, it had never really strayed. But distractions were good. Distractions were necessary.
‘We … we don’t hear from Miriam,’ she told him. ‘But it’s not for want of trying. Her two older children are in foster care together on a farm up near Kyneton—they’re great kids and Harold and Eve are a wonderful foster-mum and dad—but Gretta couldn’t go with them. Her heart problems have meant constant hospitalisation. We knew from the start that her life would be short. We knew it’d be a fight to keep her alive, so there was a choice. She could stay in hospital, institutionalised until she died, or I could take her home. She stayed in hospital for two months and then I couldn’t bear it. Mum and I reorganised our lives and brought her home.’
‘But she will die.’ He said it gently, as if he was making sure she knew, and she flushed.
‘You think we don’t know that? But look at her tonight. She loved it. She loves … us.’
‘I guess …’
‘And don’t you dare bring out your “Well, if she’s adopted you can’t possibly love her like your own” argument to say when she dies it won’t hurt,’ she snapped, suddenly unable to prevent the well of bitterness left from an appalling scene five years ago. ‘We couldn’t possibly love her more.’
‘I never said
