Starting very early with changing nappies, if the class was anything to go by!
They spent a few hilarious minutes trying to get a nappy on a doll, and he found himself hoping that Emelia opted for disposables, because sticky tabs looked like the way forward to him. Sticky tabs he could cope with. Maybe.
There were things that weren’t relevant to him—things like massage and using oils and preparing the body for birth—some really quite intimate things. He tuned them out, trying not to think of her body in that way, trying to forget what it had been like, for those few short hours, to have been granted the licence to touch her in such intimate and personal ways, to learn the secrets of her body.
The body of a woman was a miracle, he was discovering, and he felt oddly dislocated by his role simply as father of the baby and not as her partner. Excluded. He wanted to share that miracle, to have the right and the privilege to see this thing through with her, to be there when the child was born.
Even though it terrified him.
But, fortunately or unfortunately, it wouldn’t happen, because he wasn’t going to be there. Her mother would have that privilege, and no doubt she’d be far better at it than him.
But he felt a real sense of regret.
They talked about nursery equipment on the way home.
‘We ought to start thinking about this,’ she said. ‘I’m getting closer—only another eight weeks to go. And it could be early.’
She thought his fingers tightened on the steering wheel. She could understand that. It filled her with an element of panic, too.
‘Want to go shopping tomorrow?’ he offered.
‘Can you? How about the builders?’
‘I can bunk off.’
They shopped for hours.
He left Daisy in the care of the builders, and they went to the retail park where they’d shopped for the garden furniture and her clothes.
There was a huge choice. Bewildering, Emelia thought. So much stuff, and it was so horrendously expensive. With Alice in the back of her mind, she was wary about running down her fantasy wish list and ticking all the boxes, but after an hour of studying the various ways of moving babies around the world in safety, Sam ground to a halt.
‘What’s your ideal?’ he asked. ‘Of what we’ve seen, which would do the job best for you?’
She thought, and pointed one out. ‘It looks well made, it’s easy to operate and switch from one mode to another, it’s light enough to lift—’
‘So what’s the problem? Don’t you like the colour?’
She laughed softly. ‘I don’t like the price.’
‘Don’t look at the price. Look at the safety, look at the ease of use. Those are the key things.’
It was much, much easier after that.
They chose the bulky, expensive items of kit, arranged for them to be delivered and then moved on to the accessories. And on. And on.
They’d stopped for lunch, but by three-thirty she’d had enough.
‘I need to go and rest,’ she told him, and he frowned and ran his eyes over her, his mouth in a hard line.
‘Why didn’t you say something?’
‘I just did.’
‘You look shattered.’
‘It’s just come on suddenly. It does that.’
‘Does it?’ he growled, looking unconvinced. ‘Stay here, I’ll get the car.’ And he strode off, pulling up alongside her just a minute or two later. ‘Right, home—unless there’s anything else you want to do today?’
She shook her head and fastened her seatbelt. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You’d better be,’ he muttered, and set off at a nice steady pace. Daisy was waiting for them, lying down on the step by the front door and watching, and she ran over, tongue lolling, and greeted them as they pulled up outside the little shooting lodge.
‘You need to sleep.’
‘Actually, I’m fine,’ she told him, for the second time. ‘I thought maybe we could sit here and talk about the other things we’ll need while we trawl the net and drink tea?’
He eyed her searchingly. ‘OK. I ought to go and check on the builders, and feed Daisy, and at some point I need to order more food or I won’t get a delivery tomorrow. Why don’t I go and do that and you can wander over when you’re ready and we’ll sit in the rose garden and do it.’
She crumpled. They’d spent hours sitting in the rose garden. It was where she’d grown to love him, and the temptation to go back there, to sit with Sam surrounded by the scent of the roses and the sound of the birds, just overwhelmed her.
‘OK. You go and I’ll join you in a while.’
He nodded and drove off, and she walked into her little house and closed the door and leant against it. She’d lied. Well, not really, she was fine. But she was also emotional. It had been hard shopping with Sam, doing all the things that normal couples do, getting ready for their first baby.
But they weren’t a normal couple, and they never would be, and today had just rammed it home. Not that it needed ramming. She was more than aware of it, more than conscious of the gulf between them, and she wondered now if she could do this, if she could live so close to him, alone, loving him, wanting him, needing him, with him wanting and needing her but refusing to love her, and neither of them able to walk away because of Max.
She plopped down onto the sofa and picked up a cushion, hugging it. It felt so inviting. Too inviting. She snuggled down on her side, tucking the cushion under her head, and closed her eyes. She’d just lie here quietly for ten minutes, gathering her thoughts, and then she’d go over…
CHAPTER NINE
SHE was lying on the sofa, curled on her side, her head resting on her hand, and he stood there for a moment by the window, watching her.
Wanting her, in so many ways, and yet so unsure of the way forward. He thought of all the things she’d said, all the ways in which he should want her. He wanted her in all of them, but this—this was so hard. Could he do it? Keep a safe distance, be there for his child, offer Emelia support and yet still feel as if he was locked in an emotional wasteland, so near and yet so far?
He closed his eyes and rested his head against the glass. He didn’t know. Sleeping with her had been a huge mistake. Even so, he’d do it again, just for the memories that haunted him now day and night.
The feel of her skin, like silk beneath his hands. Her body, soft yet firm, supple, warm, welcoming him. The soft cries. The gentle touch of her hand against his skin, the urgency, and then the boneless relaxation, the utter contentment of repletion.
Never before had it been like that, and with an instinct born of bitter experience, he knew it never would be again.
And there was guilt, now. Guilt that he’d taken something that hadn’t belonged to him, and overlaid her memories of her beloved husband with a lie.
Was it a lie? It had felt more true, more honest than anything in his life before, but behind the door he dared not open was a deep, dark void of bitterness and regret that had stopped him from believing in it.
Still stopped him believing in it.
He tapped lightly on the window, and she opened her eyes and struggled upright. She’d been asleep, he realised, and wished he’d left her there. His cowardice would have been happy at that.
‘Come in, the door’s not locked,’ she said, and he went in, pausing in the doorway.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were asleep. The builders have gone, and I’ve put the kettle on. I wondered where you were.’
‘Worrying about me again, Sam?’ She shook her head and gave him a smile that twisted something inside him. ‘You don’t need to.’
Oh, I do, he thought, but he didn’t say so. Instead he said, ‘Do you want to do this another time?’
She shook her head again and got to her feet. ‘No. Let’s do it now. In fact—while we’re ordering stuff, why don’t we have a look for things for the nursery in the house? It would make sense, and you never know, I might want the odd night off.’
Her smile was gentle this time, and he realised she was holding out an olive branch. Desperate for a way forward, at a loss to achieve it alone, he took it.
‘Sounds good to me. Shall we?’
Daisy came running up to Emelia as they left the cottage, and she bent to stroke her and caught a look on Sam’s face—a look that puzzled her.
‘Faithless hound,’ he said, and she frowned.
‘Are you jealous?’ she asked, and he chuckled, feeling some of the tension leaving him.
‘I might be. She’s supposed to be my dog, but she just adores you. I don’t know if I want to share her.’
She stopped walking and looked at him seriously. ‘We’re going to have to share the baby,’ she said, and he felt the tension coming back and tightening his chest.
‘It’s not the same, Emelia. I don’t care if Daisy loves you. I could easily love you if things were different. But the baby—it’s not so much a timeshare as each of us having an opportunity to give something to him. It’s different.’
He could easily love her? She smiled, her brow smoothing. ‘Yes, it is. We’ll get there, Sam. We have to.’
He nodded, and pushed open the kitchen door. The room was full of steam. ‘I think the kettle’s boiled,’ he said wryly, and made the tea. There were biscuits on the table on a tray, and a cake, and he put the teapot there with the mugs and milk jug.
‘Are you trying to fatten me up?’ she murmured, and he chuckled.
‘Don’t think I need to. I think nature’s got her own way of doing that.’
She tilted her head and gave him a funny look. ‘Do you think I’m fat?’
He thought of her body, sleek and smooth, the firm swell of her pregnancy extraordinarily beautiful. Mother Earth.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I don’t think you’re fat. I think you’re perfect.’
Their eyes clashed, and he felt his throat tighten with emotion.
‘Right, you bring the laptop, I’ll bring the tray,’ he said hastily. ‘Daisy, come on.’
They sat under the arbour, Sam trawling comparison websites and checking out all sorts of equipment she hadn’t even thought of getting, and she ate cake and drank tea and let him play.
He was getting into it, she thought, but wondered if he was latching on to this with such enthusiasm because it was something he could safely get involved in. Maybe that was all she needed to do—let him do the things he could, and not fret for the things he couldn’t. She didn’t need a man in her life. She’d been planning to bring this baby up alone, with the support of relatives. This, in a way, was exactly the same—except, of course, the relationship was closer, massively complicated by its accidental nature and further complicated by her own emotional involvement.
‘Finished your tea?’
She nodded.
‘Come and see the nursery.’
They went in through the French doors, and up to the newly finished suite of rooms which overlooked the rose garden. She hadn’t been in here since the day he’d shown her around, and it had changed hugely.
‘It’s lovely,’ she said approvingly, looking round his new bedroom. ‘Oh, Sam, you’ve done a fabulous job. I love the colour.’
‘I wanted something soft that reflected the rose garden,’ he said, ‘but not pink. I thought the creams and blues would pick up the lavender.’
They did, the gentle blue grey and cream restful and calm, and she loved it.
Her eyes were drawn to the beautiful old mahogany half-tester bed, huge and solid and inviting. It was the bed in which he’d made love to her just a few days ago, moved into here now, and it seemed like a lifetime since that night. She dragged her eyes away.
‘So what have you done in the nursery?’
He gave a wry smile. ‘Blue. Sorry.’
‘I’m sure Max won’t mind blue,’ she teased.
He gave a short laugh and led her through a doorway into a small room that must have been at one time the dressing room for the master bedroom.
‘So, what do you think?’ he asked.
She looked around the empty, freshly decorated room and her eyes filled. He’d started painting a frieze. Not like Brian’s smudged, stencilled little train, but a row of alphabet letters with animals climbing through them—an anteater, a bear, a ginger cat, a black Labrador like Daisy, an elephant—all exquisitely hand drawn and painted in soft pastel shades for his baby. She turned to him, swallowing down the lump in her throat. ‘You’re going to struggle with the X,’ she said, and he smiled wryly.
‘Yes. I thought of that the other day. The only X I could think of was extinct. I think he’ll be a bit young for the issues of deforestation and global warming.’ He shrugged. ‘Oh, well, it was just an idea, I probably won’t get round to finishing it,’ he said dismissively, and then took a deep breath and looked around. ‘So—equipment. What do we need?’
They were building bridges.
Slowly, day by day, as the birth approached and the equipment they’d ordered appeared, they prepared the two houses for the baby’s arrival.
He missed a couple of the classes because he was away in London attending business meetings, but he asked her about them and she found a book on pregnancy and childbirth lying on the coffee table in the sitting room a few days later, open at a relevant page.
Interesting, but not surprising. He’d researched old roses when she’d told him a little about the ones in the garden, and it seemed he tackled everything in his life in the same way.
She spent a few days in her own garden, when there were just two weeks to go, doing a little tidying. It was hard, though. The ground was just too far away, and she was glad when in the middle of the week Sam said he’d come and cut the grass for her, because she was beginning to realise that it was all too much for her at this stage in her pregnancy.
She’d wanted it tidy, though, before the baby was born, and now it was, but she was paying the price. Her back had been aching ferociously all day, and even lying down hadn’t eased it.
So while he cut the grass, she went into the baby’s room and looked around. Just checking, for the umpteenth time, that everything was ready. Her mother would be sleeping in there because the baby would be in with her at first, of course, but the bed was made, the room was squeaky-clean and she should really shut the door on it and stop fussing.
She leant over to tug a minuscule crease out of the quilt cover, and her back started to ache again. Damn. She’d been overdoing it, she realised, but there was no way she’d admit it to Sam.
She opened the back door and leant against the frame to ease the ache. ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ she asked, and he nodded.
‘That would be good. I’ll just finish this. Two minutes.’
She left him in the garden and went back to the kitchen, leaning on the worktop and breathing slowly and deeply. That was better. Focus on something else. Distraction. It would be good practice for labour—
‘Ahhh!’
She sagged against the units, her eyes flying open and her lips parted, taking little panting breaths and trying to find that safe place they’d talked about in class.
It was nowhere to be seen, and she felt a tide of panic sweep over her. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this! Her mother wasn’t coming until the weekend, and it was only Wednesday! She couldn’t be in labour—
Another wave hit her, and she slumped forward, crossing her arms on the worktop and resting her head on them, trying to find the zone. Ride the wave—think about something else. Anything else! Think about the fridge. What’s in the fridge that’ll go bad while I’m in hospital? And where’s my bag? Half-packed. ‘Oh, rats!’
It wasn’t helping. She was supposed to be thinking about lying on a palm beach, her skin fanned by soft, warm breezes, her feet washed by the slow lap of the sea…
Better. Better because it was easing off. She straightened up, stared at her watch and checked the time, then she felt the tightening again. Three minutes. Three minutes? Already?
&nbs
p; But she’d had backache all day…
‘Stupid, stupid woman.’
‘Who’s a stupid woman?’
‘I am,’ she gritted, and dropped her head forward again onto her arms.
She was in labour.
Sam felt the blood drain from his head and leave him cold with fear. She couldn’t be in labour! Her mother wasn’t due for another three days, and that meant he’d have to help her.
If she’d have him. He laid a hand on her back, the heel of his hand rubbing firmly over her sacrum where she’d been pressing her fingers.
She groaned softly, and he stopped.
‘Don’t stop!’ she ordered, so he started again, slow, rhythmic circles, and gradually he felt her relax.
‘OK,’ she said, straightening. ‘I need to ring the midwife and talk to her. I think I need to go in.’
‘Already?’
She looked up at him, her soft green eyes shadowed with uncertainty. ‘They’re every three minutes.’
Hell.
‘I’ll get the car,’ he said, and ran.
Her waters broke on the way in, but luckily Sam had had the foresight to scoop up some towels on his way, so she didn’t have to feel guilty about his upholstery.
Just as well. She didn’t have the energy or reserves for guilt. Her world had narrowed right down, her focus absolute. As if he understood, Sam said nothing, just drove her to the hospital, took her in and left her in the care of a midwife and went to park the car. Within a very few minutes, they’d examined her and she was settled in a side room.
‘You shouldn’t be too long now, you’re almost there,’ the midwife told her.
Almost there, but no sign of him, she thought with a flutter of nerves, and she needed him.
But he wouldn’t be with her. He’d had umpteen opportunities to offer, if for any reason her mother hadn’t been able to make it, and he hadn’t. He didn’t want to be there for the birth.
Sam arrived back as she had another contraction, and she rolled to her side with a tiny noise of distress.
He swallowed. He had no idea how he was going to do this, but he couldn’t leave her. He went round to her side, crouched down and watched her face as she concentrated.
The Baby Swap Miracle Page 14
