going to be horrendous breaking it to them. They’ve grown so used to the idea that this was James’ baby, and they keep feeling my bump, Julia especially. Really, you’d think it was hers the way she just assumes she can touch me.’
He felt a stab of regret, because he’d wanted to ask if he could feel it, felt a crazy need to lay his hands on the beautiful, smooth curve that held his child, but of course he couldn’t. It was far too intrusive and he had no right to touch her. No rights over her at all. Lord, what a crazy situation.
‘So what do you do? When she does that?’
‘I let her. What can I do? She smiles this proud, secret little smile, as if it’s all her doing, and she’s constantly buying things—the nursery’s so full I can hardly get in there.’
‘And they’re all things for James’ baby, not mine,’ he murmured, realising that this mix-up was going to have a devastating effect on so many people.
She nodded.
‘That’s right. And they need to know.’
She swallowed. She couldn’t put this off any longer, and she needed time alone to think. Sam sitting there simmering with anger and some other emotion she couldn’t get a handle on wasn’t helping at all. ‘I ought to get back and tell them.’
‘Do you want me to come?’
She stared at him, wishing he could, knowing he couldn’t, and he realised that, obviously, because he went on hastily, ‘No, of course you don’t. Sorry. You have to tell them alone, I can see that, but we need to talk sometime, Emelia. This won’t go away.’
She nodded. ‘I know—but not yet. I need time for it to sink in, Sam. Give me a while. Let me tell them, try and explain, and let me think about my options, because this changes everything. My whole future.’
Sam searched her soft, wounded eyes. She was being so brave about it, but what if it wasn’t what she wanted? What if, when she’d considered her options—?
‘If you don’t want to go through with this, if you want to take the clinic up on their offer—it’s your decision,’ he said brusquely, a painful twisting in his gut as he said the words—words that could end his child’s life. Words he’d had to say, even though they went deeply against his every instinct.
Her eyes widened, her hand flying down to cover the little bump that he so wanted to lay his hands against, and she stood up abruptly.
‘No way. This is my baby, Sam,’ she said flatly. ‘I haven’t asked you to get involved in its life, and I don’t expect you to if you don’t want to, but there’s no way I’m taking them up on their “offer”, as you so delicately put it. I’ll have it, and I’ll love it, and nothing and nobody will get in the way of that. And if you don’t like it, then sue me.’
And lifting her chin, she scooped up her keys, grabbed her bag off the other chair and walked swiftly out of the café, leaving him sitting there staring after her. The relief left him weak at the knees, and it took him a second, but then he snapped his mouth shut, got up and strode after her.
‘Wait!’ he said, yanking open her car door before she could drive off. ‘Emelia, that’s not what I was trying to say. I just thought—’
‘Well, you thought wrong,’ she retorted, and grabbed the door handle.
He held the door firmly and ignored her little growl of frustration. ‘No. I thought—hoped—you’d react exactly as you did, but you needed to know that you have my support whatever course of action you decide to take. This thing is massive. It’s going to change the whole course of your life, and that’s not trivial. You have to be certain you can do this. That’s all I was saying—that it’s your call, and for what it’s worth, I think you’ve made the right one, but it’s down to you.’
He thrust a business card into her hand. ‘Here. My contact details. Call me, Emelia. Please. Talk to me. If there’s anything you need, anything I can do, just ask. If you really are going to keep the baby—’
‘I am. I meant everything I said. But don’t worry, Sam, I don’t need anything from you. You’re off the hook.’
Never. Not in his lifetime. He hung on to the door. ‘Promise me you’ll call me when you’ve spoken to them.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged, reluctant to let her go like this when she was so upset. Concerned for her. Nothing more, he told himself. Just concerned for her and the child. His child. His heart twisted. ‘Because you need a friend?’ he suggested warily. ‘Someone who understands?’
Her eyes searched his for the longest moment, and then without a word she slammed the door and drove away.
He watched her go, swore softly, then got into his car and followed her out of the car park. She’d turned left. He hesitated for a moment, then turned right and headed home, to start working out how to fill his brother in on this latest development in the tragic saga of their childless state.
Better that than trying to analyse his own reaction to the news that a woman he found altogether too disturbingly attractive was carrying his child—a child he’d never meant to have, created by accident—that would link him to Emelia forever…
‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘Well, before you do, come and see what Brian’s doing in the nursery,’ her mother-in-law said, her face beaming as she grabbed Emelia’s hand and led her through the door.
Why not? she thought bleakly. Why not do it there, amongst all the things gathered together to welcome their new grandchild? The child they’d thought they might never have.
The child they never would have. Not now. Not ever.
She sucked in a breath and stood there in the expectant silence, aware of their eyes on her face, their suppressed excitement as they eagerly awaited her reaction. And then she looked at the room.
He’d painted a frieze, she realised. Trains and teddies and alphabet letters, all round the middle of the walls. A little bit crooked, a little bit smudged, but painted with love. Stupidly, it made her want to cry.
She swallowed hard and looked away. Oh, this was so hard—too hard. ‘I had a letter—from the clinic director,’ she said bluntly, before she chickened out. ‘I had to go to there and talk to him. There’s a problem.’
‘A problem? What kind of problem? We paid their last bill, Brian, didn’t we? We’ve paid everything—’
‘It’s not the money. It’s about the baby, Julia.’
Her mother-in-law’s face was suddenly slack with shock, and Emelia looked around and realised she couldn’t do this here, in this room, with the lovingly painted little frieze still drying on the walls. ‘I need a cup of tea,’ she said, and headed for the big family kitchen, knowing they’d follow. She put the kettle on—such a cliché, having a cup of tea, but somehow a necessary part of the ritual of grief—and then sat down, pushing the cups towards them.
They sat facing her, at the table where James had sat as a boy, where they’d all sat together so many times, where they’d cried together
