Emma waved chubby fists and grinned up at her mother. Zoe sighed but stretched out to smooth back wisps of golden hair from the baby’s forehead. ‘At least you look like someone really loves you.’
Zoe loved her. She did. The only problem was that the realisation was in her head and not in her heart. She knew she loved her daughter. She just couldn’t feel it.
There was no time to change her own shirt. Zoe dabbed at the milky stain with a wet cloth and then abandoned the attempt. Emma had an appointment at the paediatric clinic for a routine check-up. Zoe had an appointment with her psychologist, John Allen, which was hopefully also routine but being late for either appointment was not an option. She had to convince everybody that things were going brilliantly on the home front otherwise John might change his mind about it being a good idea for her to be back at work part time.
And it might have been only a few days since she’d started work again but Zoe already knew that it was the way forward for both herself and Emma. She wouldn’t survive being a full-time mother on her own. Not now, when she’d been reminded of the person she’d once been. Not while the memories were still so fresh of how hard it had been in the mothering unit when she’d had support available 24/7.
With the confidence that stepping back into her old life for limited periods was providing, she was getting stronger. She could leave her failures behind her when she was on the road and, when she was at home, she could go through the motions of being a perfect mother and only she knew that she was counting the hours until she could be away from her child again.
Besides, she wanted to be a mother that someone could be proud of. There was nothing wrong with that, was there?
Emma’s car seat had a handle with several brightly coloured toys attached by elastic cords. When the soft toys were tugged they made noises. The yellow duck quacked and the lime-green frog croaked. The cow bell was proving popular this morning and it jingled at regular intervals as Zoe drove towards Sydney Harbour Hospital. The noise could have become irritating but Zoe had other things to worry about.
Pulling up at a set of traffic lights, she checked the nappy bag on the passenger seat beside her. Had she remembered the bottle of formula? After spitting up half her breakfast, Emma could well be hungry again by the time they got to the paediatric clinic’s waiting room. The last thing Zoe needed was having to try and cope with a fractious baby under the watchful gaze of all the other mothers who would be there.
Mothers who would probably all be like that dreadful support group John had talked her into going to on one occasion. Women who adored their babies and knew what they were doing. Women who never ever felt an inkling of the panic and despair that Zoe had lived with every day since Emma’s birth five months ago.
Before that, even. Well before that. Right back in the earliest stages of this whole nightmare when she had agonised over whether even to continue with the pregnancy or not. And when it had all become too much and James had simply walked away. Not that she could blame him. They’d been doing no more than dating casually when she’d become pregnant and while they’d tried to make a go of a relationship, there had been no way James was cut out to deal with the emotional wreck Zoe had morphed into.
Just like her mother.
Oh … rubbish. Zoe parked the car and made a determined effort to park that train of thought at the same time. If she didn’t she might blurt something out in her session with John and that would be worse than having Emma screaming inconsolably in the waiting room. She wasn’t going to discuss her mother with anyone. She wasn’t even going to allow herself to think about her.
The waiting area was packed to the gills this morning. The place was cluttered with prams and strollers, toddlers fighting over the rather sad collection of toys available and babies crying. One distressed infant was pacified quickly by the offer of a breastfeed and Teo smiled at the mother.
Another baby was crying more loudly. Teo took a glance over his shoulder before he disappeared into the examination room.
And then he paused with his hand halfway to pushing the door open and took another look.
It couldn’t be.
But it was.
Zoe Harper was in the waiting area and it was her baby who was distressed. Zoe was pacing back and forth, with the infant upright in her arms, tucked against her shoulder. Her head was bent, almost as if she was shielding the baby from view but Teo could see the way Zoe was scanning the area in an oddly furtive manner. She seemed embarrassed that her baby was crying but why? That’s what babies did. It was part of their job description.
Maybe Zoe wasn’t, in fact, the mother.
Teo dismissed the thought as he entered the examination room. Either the woman he’d seen in total command of a major incident the other day had an identical twin or Zoe had been left in charge of someone else’s baby. Her sister, or a friend perhaps, who’d ducked off to go to the loo. That would explain the total lack of confidence he had sensed.
It took only a minute or two to confirm that his registrar had, indeed, picked up an abnormal murmur in a toddler’s heart sounds. It took several more to reassure the parents that it wasn’t necessarily anything to panic about but then Teo was able to leave the room, confident that his registrar could arrange the urgent tests needed so they would know exactly what they were dealing with. He knew he’d been a little abrupt compared to the time he would normally have spent on a consult like this but he would see the parents again as soon as the results came in.
And he had the strongest desire to check the waiting room again on his way back up to the ward.
This was Zoe’s worst nightmare.
The clinic appointments were running late, the area was getting more and more crowded and she just couldn’t stop Emma crying. It felt like it had been going on for hours now and the looks she was getting from other mothers had gone from sympathetic to pitying to frankly annoyed. Emma’s shrieks had changed as well and the wails were now interspersed with that hiccupping sort of sound that advertised pure misery.
She’d changed her nappy, cuddled her, walked her up and down and now she was trying to feed her with the bottle of formula she’d mixed before leaving. Emma was having none of it. Her tiny hands were shoving at the bottle containing milk that had a totally unacceptable lack of warmth and small legs were kicking in outrage. Zoe could feel herself being watched. She could feel her face flushing and her shoulders hunching.
‘Please, Emma,’ she whispered. ‘Please have a drink.’
Her baby’s face took on a deeper crimson hue as Emma went rigid in her arms, arching her little back to produce the loudest crying Zoe had ever heard. What was wrong with her? What was she doing that was so wrong? Despair was enveloping her now and, to her horror, Zoe felt tears slipping down her own cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut as she sensed someone approaching. A staff member, probably, coming to take her child away and give it to someone who could be a better mother.
The touch of a hand on her shoulder was so unexpected that Zoe’s eyes snapped open. And then she blinked. Crouched in front of her, so that he was on the same eye level, was Teo Tuala. He wasn’t looking at her as if she was some kind of a monster mother either. He was smiling.
‘Someone’s not happy,’ he said. ‘Maybe I can help?’
Zoe had noticed what a big man Teo was but having him hunched in front of her like this made him seem like
