‘No!’
‘It’s just, one of the nurses told me Em’s got two foster-kids she looks after with her mum. If you and she were married, why didn’t you have your own?’
‘Ruby, I think you have quite enough to think about with your own baby, without worrying about other people’s,’ he said, mock sternly.
‘You’re saying butt out?’
‘And let me examine you. Yes.’
‘Yes, Doctor,’ she said, mock meekly, but she managed the beginnings of a cheeky grin. ‘But you can’t tell me to butt out completely. It seemed no one in this hospital knew you guys have been married. So now everyone in this hospital is really, really interested. Me, too.’
After that he was really ambivalent about the babysitting he’d promised. Actually, he’d been pretty ambivalent in the first place. Work was zooming to speed with an intensity that was staggering. He could easily ring and say he was needed at the hospital and it wouldn’t have been a lie.
But he’d promised, so he put his head down and worked and by a quarter to one he was pulling up outside the place Em called home.
Em was in the front yard, holding Toby on a push-along tricycle. When she saw him she swung Toby up into her arms and waved.
Toby hesitated a moment—and then waved, too.
The sight took him aback. He paused before getting out of the car. He knew Em was waiting for him, but he needed a pause to catch his breath.
This was the dream. They’d gone into their marriage expecting this—love, togetherness, family.
He’d walked away so that Em could still have it. The fact that she’d chosen to do it alone …
But she wasn’t alone. She had her mum. She had Mike next door and his brood. She had great friends at the hospital.
The only one missing from the picture was him, and the decision to walk away had been his.
If he’d stayed, though, they wouldn’t have had any of this. They’d be a professional couple, absorbed in their work and their social life.
How selfish was that? The certainties of five years ago were starting to seem just a little bit wobbly.
‘Hey, are you stuck to the seat?’ Em was carrying Toby towards him, laughing at him. She looked younger today, he thought. Maybe it was the idea that she was about to have some free time. An afternoon with her mum.
She was about to have some time off from kids who weren’t her own.
But they were her own. Toby had his arms wrapped around her, snuggling into her shoulder.
He had bare feet. Em was tickling his toes as she walked, making him giggle.
She loved these kids.
He’d thought … Okay, he’d thought he was being selfless, walking away five years ago. He’d been giving up his marriage so Em could have what she wanted. Now … Why was he now feeling the opposite? Completely, utterly selfish?
Get a grip, he told himself. He was here to work.
‘Your babysitter’s here, ma’am,’ he said, finally climbing from the car. ‘All present and correct.’
She was looking ruefully at the car. ‘Still the hire car? Can’t you get parts?’
‘They’re hard to come by.’ He’d spent hours on the internet tracking down the parts he needed.
‘Oh, Ollie …’
No one called him Ollie.
Em did.
She put her hand on his arm and he thought, She’s comforting me because of a wrecked car. And she’s coping with kids with wrecked lives …
How to make a rat feel an even bigger rat.
But her sympathy was real. Everything about her was real, he thought. Em … He’d loved this woman.
He loved this woman?
‘Hey, will you go with Uncle Ollie?’ Em was saying, moving on, prising Toby away from his neck-hugging. ‘I bet he knows how to tickle toes, too.’
‘I can tickle toes.’ He was a paediatric surgeon. He could keep a kid entertained.
But Toby caught him unawares. He twisted in Em’s arms and launched himself across, so fast Oliver almost didn’t catch him. Em grabbed, Oliver grabbed and suddenly they were in a sandwich hug, with Toby sandwiched in the middle.
Toby gave a muffled chortle, like things had gone exactly to plan. Which, maybe in Toby’s world, they had.
But he had so much wrong with him. His tiny spine was bent; he’d have operation after operation in front of him, years in a brace …
He’d have Em.
He should pull away, but Em wasn’t pulling away. For this moment she was holding, hugging, as if she needed it. As if his hug was giving her something …
Something that, as his wife, had once been her right?
‘Em …’
But the sound of his voice broke the moment. She tugged away, flipped an errant curl behind her ear, tried to smile.
‘Sorry. I should expect him to do that—he does it all the time with Mike. He has an absolute conviction that the grown-ups in his life are to be trusted never, ever to drop him, and so far it’s paid off. One day, though, Toby, lad, you’ll find out what the real world’s like.’
‘But you’ll shield him as long as you can.’
‘With every ounce of power I possess,’ she said simply. ‘But, meanwhile, Mum’s ready to go. She’s so excited she didn’t sleep last night. Gretta’s fed. Everything’s ready, all I need to do is put on clean jeans and comb my hair.’
‘Why don’t you put on a dress?’ he asked, feeling … weird. Out of kilter. This was none of his business, but he was starting to realise just how important this afternoon was to Em and her mum. And how rare. ‘Make it a special occasion.’
‘Goodness, Oliver, I don’t think I’ve worn a dress for five years,’ she flung at him over her shoulder as she headed into the house. ‘Why would the likes of me need a dress?’
And he thought of the social life they’d once had. Did she miss it? he wondered, but he tickled Toby’s toes, the little boy giggled and he knew that she didn’t.
They left fifteen minutes later, like a pair of jail escapees, except that they were escapees making sure all home bases were covered. Their ‘jail’ was precious.
‘Mike might come over later to collect Toby,’ Em told him. ‘Toby loves Mike, so if he does that’s fine by us. That’ll mean you only have Gretta so you should cope easily. You
