The Fiancé He Can't Forget

by Caroline Anderson

  He gave a soft sigh and leant back. ‘I’m sorry, I should have called you, but I thought you’d probably tell me to go to hell.’

  ‘So why come?’

  His smile was wry and rather sad. ‘Why do you think, Amy?’ he asked softly, and she swallowed.

  ‘I don’t— Matt, I told you before…’

  He sighed softly. ‘I know. That night was just for old times’ sake. Laying our love to rest, I guess. I’d hoped it might turn out to be more than that. Might still turn out to be more.’

  Oh, so much more. You have no idea.

  ‘Matt, we’ve talked about this. We clearly didn’t have what it takes, and if—’

  She broke off, wary of straying into dangerous territory, but Matt had no such fear.

  ‘If you hadn’t got pregnant, our relationship would have fizzled out?’

  Fizzled out? She’d said she couldn’t cope with the wedding so soon after she’d lost her baby, and he’d heaved a sigh of relief and cancelled their entire relationship, so—yes, clearly he would have lost interest sooner or later, if he hadn’t already done so.

  She shrugged, and he shook his head slowly and gave a rueful smile.

  ‘OK. I get that you think that, even if I don’t agree, but—you seemed keen enough at the wedding, so what changed?’ What changed?

  What changed? She nearly laughed out loud at that. ‘At the wedding I’d had a bit too much to drink,’ she said bluntly, ‘or I wouldn’t have done anything so stupid. I would have thought better of it.’

  ‘I’ve thought about very little since,’ he said softly, and her heart contracted.

  Oh, Matt.

  She opened her mouth to tell him, but bottled out and changed the subject, asking instead how his parents were.

  He gave a knowing little smile and let it go. ‘Fine. They’ve got snow up there at the moment, but they’re OK, they’ve got plenty of food in and Dad can still get to the farms for emergencies, but it’s supposed to be thawing this week.’

  Oh, for God’s sake, just tell her you love her! Tell her you want her! Tell her you want to try again, and this time you’ll make it work. She’s said we didn’t have what it takes, but does anybody? For what happened to us, does anybody have what it takes?

  He was opening his mouth when there was a sharp knock on the door. She got up and opened it, and he heard her murmur his name as Ben strode in.

  ‘You were going to phone!’ he said, hugging him and slapping his back. ‘Come on, let’s get you out of Amy’s hair and you can give me a hand to unload the car. Daisy’s been shopping with a vengeance.’

  Maybe he didn’t want to go? Maybe Amy was happy with him there? Maybe he hadn’t finished what he’d come for?

  But then he looked at her, composed, controlled but not exactly overjoyed, and he let out his breath on a quiet sigh and moved towards the door.

  ‘Sure. Thanks for the tea, Amy. It was good to see you again.’

  She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. ‘Happy New Year, Matt.’

  And she shut the door gently but firmly behind them, and went back to the table, her hands shaking.

  She had to tell him sometime. Why not now? Why on earth hadn’t she taken the opportunity?

  She sighed. She knew why—knew that until this week was over, at least, she couldn’t share it with him, but she would tell him. Ben was right, he needed to know, and she wanted their child to have him in its life. He was a good man, and he’d be a wonderful father.

  What she couldn’t deal with again, if anything went wrong, was his grief on top of her own.

  No. Better not to have told him yet—and Ben had promised not to. She just hoped she could rely on him.

  He was there until the following evening, and she spent as much time as possible at the hospital.

  It wasn’t hard. They were busy and short-staffed, and delighted to have her.

  She’d put herself down for the night shift on New Year’s Eve—better to keep busy, because she was eighteen weeks on that day, and if she hadn’t been busy she would have gone out of her mind.

  Her phone beeped a couple of times—Happy New Year messages from people, she thought, but she was too busy to check it, so she carried on filling in the notes and went back to her mums to check on them.

  But when her night shift finished and she went home in the cold, bright crisp air of the morning, she finally checked her phone and found a text from a friend and a voicemail message.

  From Matt.

  ‘Hi, Amy, it’s Matt. Sorry to miss you, I expect you’re working. I just wanted to say Happy New Year, and it was good to see you again the other day. I’m sorry it was so brief. Maybe next time…’ There was a pause, then he added, ‘Well, you know where I am if you want me.’

  If she wanted him?

  She sat down on the sofa in her sitting room, and played his hesitant, reluctant message again and again and again.

  Of course she wanted him. She wanted him so much it was unbearable, today of all days, the exact stage to the day that she’d lost their first baby. She laid her hand over the tidy little bump—hardly a bump at all. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t guess, but assuming it made it, and it was a big assumption, this baby was going to cause havoc in her life.

  And in Matt’s.

  She had to tell him. Ben was right, she couldn’t just keep relying on them, and he had the right to know about his child. She took the two-week-old scan photo out of her bag and stared at it, tracing the tiny face with her finger. It would be bigger now. As big as Samuel…

  Lord, even the name hurt. She sucked in a breath, the images crowding in on her—the midwife’s eyes so full of compassion as she wrapped his tiny body in a blanket and placed it in Matt’s arms. The tears in his eyes, the searing agony she could see in every line of his body as he stared down at his son.

  He’d lifted the baby to his lips, kissed his tiny head, shuddered with grief. It had broken him—broken both of them—and their relationship, like their son, had been too fragile, too young to survive.

  She almost rang him. Her finger hovered over the call button, but then she turned the phone off and told herself to stop being so ridiculous. She’d decided not to tell him until after the twenty-week scan. Maybe longer. Maybe not until it was viable. He’d been so gutted last time, so deeply distressed, that he’d been unreachable, and she knew—she just knew—he’d be a nightmare if she told him. He’d probably have her admitted so he could scan her three times a day, but she wasn’t having any of it. It was utterly unnecessary, and thinking about it all the time just made it all so much worse.

  So she didn’t ring him, and then she was past the time of the miscarriage, into the nineteenth week. Then the twentieth, and the big scan, which she could hardly bear to look at she was so nervous.

  But it was normal, and it looked much more like a baby now, every feature clearly defined. It was sucking its thumb, and Amy felt a huge tug of love towards this tiny, vulnerable child—Matt’s child. ‘Do you want to know what it is?’ the ultrasonographer asked her, but she shook her head.

  ‘No.’ Knowing would make it harder to remain detached, and she’d been careful not to look—but the baby was moving vigorously, and she could feel it all the time now, so real, so alive, so very, very strong that finally, at last, she began to allow a tiny glimmer of hope to emerge.

  Was it possible that this baby would be all right?

  She wanted to share it, to tell everyone in the world, but she was still a little afraid she might jinx it, so she took the photo home, propped it up on the bedside table next to her so she could see it when she woke, and fell asleep with a smile on her face and her hand curved protectively over her child…

  She went shopping the following week with Daisy, and she talked Amy into getting some pretty clothes.

  ‘You can’t just wear scrubs and jog bottoms and baggy jumpers for the rest of your pregnancy,’ she scolded, and handed her all sorts of things, all of which Amy thought made her loo
k shockingly pregnant.

  Shockingly, because she’d still not really taken it on board. It was still too early, the baby wasn’t yet viable, and she felt a little quiver of nerves.

  ‘Daisy, I really don’t think—’

  ‘No. Don’t think. You think altogether too much. You’re fine, Amy. You’re well. Everything’s OK.’

  ‘I was well last time,’ she said woodenly, and Daisy dropped the clothes she was carrying and hugged her.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart, you’ll be fine. Come on, Ben says everything’s looking really good. It’s time to be happy.’

  Happy? Maybe, she thought, as Daisy took her to a café and plied her with hot chocolate and common sense, and gradually she relaxed. She was being silly. She could buy a few clothes—just enough. That wasn’t tempting fate, was it? And her bras were strangling her. They finished their hot chocolate and went back to the shops.

  And gradually, as the weeks passed and she got nearer to her due date, she began to dare to believe it might all be all right. She was beginning to feel excited, to look forward to the birth—except, of course, she’d be alone.

  Unless she told Matt.

  She felt her stomach knot at the thought. It was the beginning of April and Daisy had just started her maternity leave, five weeks before her baby was due, and nine weeks before Amy’s. Gosh, 31 weeks, Amy thought, stunned, and bit her lip. There was no excuse now not to tell him and she was being unfair. He’d need time to get his head round it, and he was going to give her hell for keeping it quiet, but it had gone on for so long now that she wasn’t sure how to broach the subject.

  The baby was kicking her vigorously all night now. She’d never felt Samuel move—well, maybe a flutter, just before the end, but not like this, not so you could see it from the outside.

  Matt would love to feel it…

  Oh, how to tell him? Because she knew she had to, knew he had a right to know, and she was sharing the things she should have been sharing with him with Ben and Daisy, so much so that it was unfair.

  Just how unfair was brought home to her two weeks later, when she was in their nursery looking at all the baby things and she’d jokingly talked about Ben delivering her and asked Daisy if she could borrow him. They exchanged a glance, and Ben sighed softly. ‘Amy, I’m not my brother,’ he said, his voice gentle. ‘I’m happy to help, you know that, but it isn’t me you need, and I can’t take his place. And it isn’t fair of you to ask me to. It isn’t fair on any of us, especially not Matt.’

  She felt hot colour flood her face, and turned blindly and went out of the room, stumbling downstairs and out into the garden. She hadn’t thought of it from his side, but of course it was an imposition, and she’d been thoughtless, taken Ben and Daisy for granted, cheated Matt—but—

  ‘Amy, wait!’

  He stopped her just before she went through the gate in the fence, his hand on her arm gentle but firm.

  ‘Amy. Please don’t walk away. I don’t mean to hurt you, but it’s not my baby, sweetheart. Your baby needs its proper father—and he needs to know.’

  She nodded, scrubbing away the tears. ‘You’re right. I know you’re right. I’ll do it soon, I promise. I’m just being silly. I just don’t know how…’

  ‘Do you want me to help you?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I’ll do it. I’ll call him.’

  ‘Promise me?’

  She nodded, swallowing a sob. ‘I promise.’

  She escaped then, and let herself into her house and cried her heart out in the conservatory where they couldn’t hear her through the wall.

  She was mortified, but more than that, she was afraid. She’d been leaning on Ben, she realised, not only because he was Matt’s twin, but because he was reliable and kind and generous and decent, and because he’d let her.

  And all the time it had been Matt she’d wanted, Matt she’d needed, Matt she still needed and always would. But this baby was going to make life so complicated, and it dawned on her in a moment of clarity that she’d been stalling because the status quo was far easier to deal with than the reality of sharing a child with a man who didn’t really love her, even if he liked to think he might.

  And that, she realised at last, was at the heart of her reluctance. They’d had a great time together at first, and the sex had always been brilliant, but Matt didn’t love her, not enough to cope with the worst things life could thrust at them, and she didn’t want him doing what he’d done before and offering to marry her just because they were having a child.

  No, that was wrong, they’d already talked about marriage last time, made half-plans for the future. He hadn’t officially proposed, but they were heading that way, drifting into it, and she wondered if they would have drifted all the way to a wedding if she hadn’t got pregnant. But she had, of course, because they’d been careless with contraception on the grounds that it wouldn’t have been a disaster if she’d got pregnant, at the time they’d both been anticipating a future together

  Except it had been—a disaster that had left shockwaves still rippling around her life now over four years later.

  She went round to see Daisy the following day and apologised for being an idiot, and they both ended up in tears. She talked about Matt, about how she felt, and then looked at all the stuff in the nursery and felt utterly overwhelmed.

  She was having this baby in just seven weeks, maybe less, and she’d been so busy fretting about Matt she’d done nothing to prepare for it. ‘I need to go and buy some basics,’ she said to Daisy, and she rolled her eyes.

  ‘Finally! Otherwise you know what’ll happen, you’ll have it two weeks early and you’ll have no baby stuff at all!’

  She was wrong. It wasn’t Amy who had her baby two weeks early, it was Daisy herself.

  She’d come into the hospital on Wednesday morning to see them all because she was bored and restless and sick of housework, and she was sitting in the office chatting to Amy in a quiet moment when her eyes widened and then squeezed tight shut.

  Then she gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Oh, I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid! I had backache all day yesterday, but I’ve been cleaning. The kitchen was absolutely pigging, and—Amy, this isn’t funny, stop laughing at me and get Ben!’

  ‘Get Ben why?’ Ben asked, walking in, and then he looked at Daisy and his jaw dropped.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Amy teased with a grin. ‘Never seen a woman in labour before?’

  It was a textbook labour, if a little fast, and Amy made it quite clear to Ben that she was in control.

  ‘You’re on paternity leave as of now, so don’t even think about interfering,’ she told him as she checked Daisy between contractions. Her body was doing a wonderful job, and Amy was happy to let nature take its course.

  It was just another delivery, her professional mask was in place, and she was doing fine until the baby was born, but once she’d lifted their son and laid him on Daisy’s chest against her heart, she let Ben take over.

  It was Ben who told her it was a boy, Ben who covered him with a warmed towel as Daisy said hello to their little son, Ben who cleared his mouth of mucus with a gentle finger and stimulated that first, heart-warming cry, because Amy was transfixed, her eyes flooded with tears, her whole body quivering.

  She wanted Matt with her when she gave birth in a few weeks, Matt to take their baby from the midwife and lay him—her?—on her chest, and gaze down at them both with love and wonder in his eyes. If only things were different…

  But they weren’t different, they were what they were, and she’d be alone, not only for the delivery but for the whole business of motherhood, and her confidence suddenly deserted her.

  I can’t do it alone! I can’t be that strong. I’m not that brave. Matt, why can’t you love me enough? I need you—

  No, she didn’t! She stopped herself in her tracks, and took a long, slow, steadying breath. She was getting way ahead of herself. One day at a time, she reminded herself. She was getting through her pre
gnancy like that. She could get through motherhood in the same way. The last thing she needed was a man who didn’t love her enough to ride out the hard times, who when the crunch came would walk away, however much he might think he wanted her.

  And right now, Daisy and Ben and their new little son were her priority.

  ‘Let’s give them a minute,’ she said to Sue, the midwife assisting her, and stripping off her gloves, she turned and walked blindly out of the door and down the corridor to the stairwell.

  Nobody would find her there. She could hide here for a minute, get herself together. Think about what Ben had said.

  Should Matt be there with her when she gave birth? Even if they weren’t together?

  Yes, if it was like this, but if anything went wrong…

  He’d been there last time, distant and unreachable, his eyes filled with pain. She couldn’t cope with that again, couldn’t handle his pain as well as her own. The last thing she needed during her labour was a man she couldn’t rely on if anything went wrong, a man who couldn’t talk about his feelings or hers.

  But she needed him…

  No! No, she didn’t! She was made of sterner stuff than that, and she could cope alone. She could. She knew all the midwives here, she’d have plenty of support during her labour. She didn’t need Matt.

  She got to her feet and went back to them, to find Ben sitting in the chair cuddling his tiny son with a tender smile on his face that wasn’t going to fade any time soon.

  Lucky little boy, she thought. So, so lucky. Her baby would have a father who loved him like that, she knew, but it wouldn’t have two parents sharing its life on a daily basis, supporting each other through thick and thin.

  Her hand slid down over her baby in an unconscious caress. If only…

  She helped Ben get the house ready after her shift finished at three.

  He was bringing Daisy and Thomas home that evening, and they were almost done.