know whether to switch off the machine. They’d scanned the baby and it was fine, but they didn’t know how I’d feel. I’d just flown in from an earthquake, I hadn’t slept in days and I was exhausted. I didn’t know what to say. I just knew I couldn’t give up on the baby—not after everything we’d been through. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She hadn’t asked for this, and I’ve seen so many children die, Em, and not been able to do anything about it. And here was one I could do something about. I couldn’t let her go. So I asked them to keep Carmen alive, long enough to give the baby a chance. And last week she ran out of time. Her organs started to fail, and they delivered the baby and turned off the machine. I got there just too late to say goodbye.’
He stared down at the baby on his lap, her mouth slack in sleep, her lashes black crescents against her olive cheeks, and Emily’s vision blurred. She felt the hot splash of tears on her hands, and brushed them away.
‘Harry, I’m so sorry,’ she said again, and he looked up, his eyes haunted, and then looked down again at the precious bundle in his arms.
‘Don’t be. Not for me. I know it’s hell at the moment and I feel such a muppet—I’m not used to being so phenomenally incompetent and out of my depth, but it will get better. I’ll learn, and she’s amazing. So lovely. So much perfection out of so much tragedy and despair. And I’m all she’s got.’
Emily wanted to cry. Wanted to go into a corner somewhere and howl her eyes out for him, and for the baby’s poor young mother, and for little Carmen Grace, orphaned almost before her birth.
‘So that’s us,’ he said, his voice artificially bright. ‘What about you?’
‘Me?’ she said, her eyes still misting. ‘I’m, ah—I’m fine. I’m a garden designer—fitting it in around the children, which can be tricky, but I manage more or less. Get through a lot of midnight oil, but I don’t have to pay for my accommodation at the moment.’
Although if her parents did sell their house, as they were considering doing, that would all change, of course.
‘And their father?’
She gave a tiny grunt of laughter. ‘Not around. He didn’t want me to keep Beth. Freddie was the last straw.’
Harry frowned. ‘So what did he do?’
‘He walked—well, ran, actually. I haven’t seen lightning move so fast. I was four months pregnant.’
‘So he’s been gone—what?’
‘Two years.’
Two difficult, frightening years that she would have struggled to get through without the help of her parents and her friends, but they’d all been wonderful and life now was better than it had ever been.
‘I’m sorry.’
She smiled. ‘Don’t be. Things are good. Hang in there, Harry. It really does get better.’
He looked down at the baby and gave a twisted little smile. ‘I hope so,’ he said wryly. ‘It needs to.’
‘It will,’ she promised, and just hoped that she was right…
CHAPTER TWO
FREDDIE’S CUP landed in her lap, dribbling orange on her, and she absently righted it and brushed away the drips.
Finally she looked back at him. ‘So—aren’t the legal ramifications vast? Nationality and so on?’
He shrugged. ‘Apparently not. I was Carmen’s husband, I’m down on the baby’s birth certificate as her father. That makes her British.’
‘But you’re not. Her father, I mean. Couldn’t that land you in trouble, if they ever found out?’
‘How? Are you going to tell them? Because I’m not. I know it’ll be hell, but I won’t be the first father to bring up a child alone, and I doubt I’ll be the last. And if not me, then who? The legalities are the least of my worries. I owe her this. It’s the least I can do.’
The least he could do? Devoting his life to her? He was either even more amazing than she’d remembered, or utterly deluded.
Probably both. Rash and foolhardy, his grandfather used to say affectionately. But kind. Endlessly kind. He reached for his cup, the baby held against his shoulder by one large, firm hand, but her head lolled a little and his grip tightened and she started to cry again.
‘Let me—just while you drink your tea,’ she said, and reaching out, she lifted the tiny little girl into her arms.
‘Oh—she’s so small! I’d forgotten! They grow so quickly—not that Freddie was ever this small. Beth was dainty, but even she—’
She broke off, the baby’s fussing growing louder, and she walked down the garden a few steps, turning the baby against her breast instinctively.
And with the same instinct, little Carmen Grace nuzzled her, then cried again. Oh, poor lamb. She needed her mother!
‘She’s hungry,’ she said, her voice uneven, and he got up and reached for her, but Emily shook her head, curiously reluctant to let the baby go.
‘Bring the bottle. I’ll hold her while you get it, it’s all right.’
He hesitated for a second, then went, squeezing through the gate and returning a few moments later with a bottle. ‘I don’t know if it’s the right temperature,’ he said, handing it over, and Emily tested it on the inside of her wrist and frowned.
‘It’s too cold. I’ll go and warm it. Keep an eye on Freddie for me.’
She went into the kitchen, gave the bottle a few seconds in the microwave, shook it vigorously and tested it again, then slipped the teat into the baby’s mouth, silencing her cries instantly.
Good.
She went back down the garden and found Harry on his knees with Freddie, playing in the sandpit. As she walked down the garden he sat back on his heels and looked up at her with a relieved smile.
‘Sounds peaceful.’
She laughed and settled herself on the bench, watching them and trying not to let her stupid thoughts run away with her.
‘Did you love her?’ she asked, then wanted to bite her tongue off, but he just sat back again and stared at her as if she was crazy.
‘She was a child, Em. I married her for her own protection. Yes, I grew to love her, but not in the way you mean. It was just a legal formality, nothing more. I never touched her.’
She felt a knot of something letting go inside her, but she didn’t want to think about the significance of that. She turned her attention back to the tiny scrap in her arms. The bottle was almost empty, the tiny amount she’d drunk surely not enough to keep her alive, but she was so small, her stomach must be the size of a walnut. Smaller.
She lifted her against her shoulder and rubbed her back, waiting for the burp and watching Harry as he piled sand into the bucket with Freddie and helped him turn it out.
‘Mummy,
