Christmas-Eve Baby (4 page)

‘And what was I supposed to do?’ she asked, her eyes flashing sparks again. ‘We weren’t seeing each other. We’d agreed.’

‘But this, surely, changes things? Or should have. Unless you just weren’t going to tell me? It must have made it simpler for you.’

She turned away again, but not before he saw her eyes fill, and guilt gnawed at him. ‘Simpler?’ she said. ‘That’s not how I’d describe it.’

‘So why not tell me, then?’ he said, his voice softening. ‘Why, in all these months, didn’t you tell me that I’m going to be a father?’

‘I was going to,’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘But after everything—I didn’t know how to. It’s just all so difficult…’

‘But it
is
mine.’

She nodded, her hair falling over her face and obscuring it from him. ‘Yes. Yes, it’s yours.’

His heart soared, and for a ridiculous moment he felt like punching the air, but then he pulled himself together. Plenty of time for that later, once he’d got all the facts. Down to the nitty-gritty, he thought, and asked the question that came to the top of the heap.

‘Does your father know it’s mine?’

She shook her head, and he winced. ‘So—when’s it due?’

‘The end of January.’

‘So you’re—’

‘Thirty weeks. And two days.’

He nodded. That made sense, but there was another question that needed answering. ‘You told me you were on the Pill.’

She bent her head. ‘I was, but because it was only to regulate my periods I probably hadn’t been as punctual all the time as I should have been. I used to take it in the morning, but I didn’t remember till the Tuesday, by then it was too late.’ Because she’d been crying since the moment she’d closed her front door behind her on Sunday morning and retreated into the sanctuary of her little home, wearing his shirt day and night until she’d had to take it off to shower and dress to come to work after the bank holiday, and then she’d found the pills…

‘So why not take the morning-after pill just to be safe?’

Why not, indeed? She shook her head. ‘I didn’t have any, and by the time I was able to get them from the pharmacy it would have been too late. And anyway, I thought I was safe,’ she told him, and wondered, as she’d wondered over and over again, if there’d been a little bit of her that had secretly wanted to have his baby. And when her periods had continued for the next two months, she’d put it out of her mind.

Not for long, though. Eventually it had dawned on her that things were different, that the lighter-than-usual periods had been due to the hormones, and she’d kept it a secret as long as she could. Eventually, though, the changes to her body had become obvious, and her father had been shocked and then bossily supportive.

And he hadn’t asked about the father, not once she’d told him that he was out of her life for good and she didn’t want to think about him any more. Not that she had wanted Ben out of her life, but he was, to her sorrow and regret, and she didn’t want to think about him any more. She’d been sick of crying herself to sleep, missing him endlessly, wishing he
could be with her and share this amazing and fantastic thing that was happening to her body.

Her stomach rumbled, and she gave the biscuits a disinterested glance. OK, she could eat them, but she really, really wanted something healthy, and if Dragan was held up…

‘Have you had lunch?’ she said suddenly.

‘
Lunch?
’ he said, his tone disbelieving. ‘No. I got held up in Resus. There wasn’t time.’

‘Fancy coming back to my house and having something to eat? Dragan can ring when he’s on his way back and we can meet him here. Only I’m starving, and I’m trying to eat properly, and biscuits and cakes and rubbish like that just won’t cut the mustard.’

‘Sounds good,’ he said, not in the least bit hungry but desperate to be away from there and somewhere private while he assimilated this stunning bit of news.

She opened the door, grabbed her coat out of the staffroom as they passed it and led him down the stairs. ‘Kate, we’re going to get some lunch. Can you get Dragan to ring me when he’s back?’

‘Sure,’ Kate said, and if Lucy hadn’t thought she was being paranoid, she would have sworn Kate gave her and Ben a curiously speculative look.

No. She couldn’t have guessed. It had been months since she’d seen them together.

Six months, one week and two days, to be exact. And Kate, before she’d become practice manager, had been a midwife.

Damn.

They walked to her flat, along Harbour Road and up Bridge Street, the road that ran alongside the river and up out of the
old town towards St Piran, the road he’d come in on. It was over a gift shop, in a steep little terrace typical of Cornish coastal towns and villages, and he wondered how she’d manage when she’d had the baby.

Not here, was the answer, especially when she led him through a door into a narrow little hallway and up the precipitous stairs to her flat. ‘Make yourself at home, I’ll find some food,’ she said, a little breathless after her climb, and left him in the small living room. If he got close to the window he could see the sea, but apart from that it had no real charm. It was homely, though, and comfortable, and he wandered round it, picking up things and putting them down, measuring her life.

A book on pregnancy, a mother-and-baby magazine, a book of names, lying in a neat pile on the end of an old leather trunk in front of the sofa. More books in a bookcase, a cosy fleece blanket draped over the arm of the sofa, some flowers in a vase lending a little cheer.

He could see her through the kitchen door, pottering about and making sandwiches, and he went and propped himself in the doorway and watched her.

‘I’d offer to help, but the room’s too small for three of us,’ he murmured, and she gave him a slightly nervous smile.

Why nervous? he wondered, and then realised that of course she was nervous. She had no idea what his attitude would be, whether he’d be pleased or angry, if he’d want to be involved in his child’s life—any of it.

When he’d worked it out himself, he’d tell her. The only thing he did know, absolutely with total certainty, was that if, as she had said, this baby was his, he was going to be a part of its life for ever.

And that was non-negotiable.

What on earth was she supposed to say to him?

She had no idea, and didn’t know how it could be so hard. When they’d worked together, he’d been so easy to talk to, such a good friend, and they’d never had any tension between them. Well, that was a lie, but not this sort of tension.

The other sort, yes—the sort that had got her in this mess.

No. Not a mess. Her baby wasn’t a mess, and she wasn’t ever going to think of it as one.

She put the sandwiches on plates, put the plates on a tray with their two cups of tea and carried them through to her little living room. ‘Sit down, Ben, you’re cluttering the place up,’ she said softly, and with a rueful little huff of laughter he sat, angled slightly towards her so he could study her.

Which he did, with that disconcertingly piercing gaze, the entire time she was eating her sandwich.

‘We could get married,’ he said out of the blue, and she choked on a crumb and started to cough. He took the plate and rubbed her back, but she flapped him away, standing up and going into the kitchen to get a glass of water.

And when she turned he was right behind her, so close that she brushed against him, her bump making firm and intimate contact with his body. For a moment he froze, and then his eyes dropped and he lifted a hand and then glanced back up at her, as if he was asking her permission.

She swallowed slowly and nodded, and he laid his hand oh, so tenderly over the taut curve that was his child. Something fierce and primitive flickered in his eyes, and then he closed them, and as the baby shifted and stretched she watched a muscle jump in his jaw.

His hand moved, the softest caress, and he opened his eyes, lifted his head and met her eyes.

‘I felt it move,’ he said, and there was wonder in his voice, and joy, and pride.

And for the first time she felt the tension ease and some of the dread fade away.

‘It’ll be all right, Lucy. Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.’

‘We aren’t getting married, Ben.’

‘Don’t close your mind to it,’ he said softly.

‘It’s too soon.’

‘Of course it is—but it’s one of our options.’

Ours?

She would have moved away from him, but he had her pinned up against the sink and in the narrow kitchen there was nowhere to go. So she turned her back to him, but it didn’t help because he simply moved up closer, sliding his arms around her, resting both hands on her tummy and drawing her gently back into his warm embrace. ‘Don’t be scared.’

‘I’m not scared,’ she lied. ‘I just don’t like you turning up out of the blue and telling me what to do.’

‘Out of the blue? I hardly abandoned you, Lucy. The last conversation we had, you told me it wasn’t going to work. Too much baggage.’

‘And you agreed.’

‘So I did,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But that was then, and this is now, and things are different. The baggage certainly is. I can’t let you face your father alone.’

‘And you really think you being there, telling him you’re the baby’s father, will help?’

He sighed and moved away at last, giving her room to
breathe, to re-establish her personal space and gather her composure around her like a security blanket.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You haven’t finished your sandwich. Come and sit down and put your feet up and tell me what you were planning.’

She laughed wryly. ‘I didn’t have any plans,’ she confessed, feeling suddenly lost again. ‘I was just winging it, getting through a day at a time. And Dad hasn’t really asked very much about the baby’s father. Just how could I have been so silly and that I’d have his support. He wants me to move back in with him, but I don’t want to.’

‘Lucy, you can’t stay here,’ he said, his voice appalled, and she felt her mouth tighten.

‘Why not? Don’t come in here and start insulting my home, Ben.’

‘I’m not insulting your home, sweetheart, but look at it. It’s tiny, and it’s up a steep hill and a narrow flight of stairs, with no parking outside—where do you keep your car? The surgery? That’ll be handy in the pouring rain when you’ve got a screaming baby and all your shopping.’

She bit her lip, knowing he was right and yet not wanting to admit it. Of course the flat wasn’t suitable for a baby, and she’d been meaning to find somewhere else, but anything rented was usually in holiday lets in the summer, and she couldn’t afford those rates, not unless she went back to work, and buying somewhere in the village on a part-time salary probably wasn’t an option either.

‘I don’t suppose he’s any nearer to accepting that I wasn’t to blame for your mother’s death?’ he suggested, and Lucy shook her head.

‘I don’t think so. He wasn’t very pleased this morning when Kate announced that it was you coming.’

A frown pleated his brow. ‘Really? But it was decided weeks ago. Kate said everyone was fine with it. I assumed he must know.’

She met his eyes, and realisation dawned. ‘She’s worked it out,’ she said slowly. ‘She knows you’re the father. Well, at least, she knows I don’t have a life outside Penhally, because she can see the surgery car park from her house up behind it, and she’ll know my car’s always there unless I’m out on a call or visiting friends, and she can see my window here—that’s her house over there,’ she said, pointing out to him the pretty little cottage tucked against the hillside above the surgery. ‘So there’s nothing I can do without her knowing, and if I had a man, believe me, Penhally would be talking about it. And the last man I was seen with was you, and of course she knows we’d worked together, that we were friends.’

‘I don’t know how you can stay in this place,’ he said gruffly, and sighed. ‘You reckon she knows?’

‘I think so. She gave us a look as we left the surgery.’

‘A look?’

‘Yeah—one of those knowing ones.’

He grinned a little crookedly. ‘Ah. Right. And do you think she’ll tell your father?’

Lucy felt a little bubble of hysterical laughter rising in her chest. ‘I wish. Maybe that way he’d calm down before I had to talk to him about it.’

‘You really think it’ll be that bad?’

She stared at him blankly. ‘You don’t have any idea, do you? Because you haven’t seen him since Mum died, apart from the
lifeboat barbeque. Ben, he—’ She broke off, not knowing quite how to put it, but he did it for her, his voice soft and sad.

‘Hates me? I know. I’ve already worked that out. And I can see why.’

‘But it wasn’t your fault!’ she said, searching his face and finding regret and maybe a little doubt. ‘Ben, it wasn’t. The inquiry exonerated you absolutely. Mum died because she didn’t tell anyone how sick she was until it was too late. I wasn’t there, Dad was too busy setting up the practice with Marco, and she downplayed it just too long.’

‘Lucy, she died because when she arrived in the A and E department she didn’t check herself in straight away, so nobody flagged her up as urgent, nobody kept an eye on her, nobody realised she was there until they found her collapsed in the corner. There’d been a massive RTA, there were ambulances streaming in, we were on the verge of meltdown— I don’t have to explain it to you. You know the kind of mayhem I’m talking about, you’ve seen it all too often. I was trapped in Resus, the walking wounded were way down the list. Too far. And the other people waiting just thought she was asleep, instead of which she’d all but OD’d on painkillers and by the time we got to her it was too late.’

‘They said her appendix had ruptured. She must have been in so much pain. I knew she’d been feeling rough but I had no idea how rough. It must have been agony.’

‘Yes. Hence the painkillers. She’d obviously had a hell of a cocktail. We found codeine and paracetamol and ibuprofen and aspirin in her bag. The codeine must have knocked her out, but it was the aspirin that killed her. By the time she arrived at the hospital, she was too woozy to talk to anyone. The CCTV footage shows her stumbling to a chair in the cor
ner and sitting down, and because she didn’t check in or tell anyone how bad she felt, she was overlooked until it was too late. You know how aspirin works—it’s an anticoagulant, like warfarin, and it stops the platelets clumping to arrest a bleed in the normal way. And with the rupture in her abdomen, she just bled out before we could get to it. If your father hadn’t phoned her mobile, she wouldn’t have been found until she was dead. It was only because the phone kept ringing and she was ignoring it that the alarm was raised. And we did everything we could at that point, but it just wasn’t enough, and everything we touched was breaking down and starting another bleed. And I can tell you how sorry I am for ever, but it won’t bring her back.’