by Emily Forbes
‘I was waiting for the right time.’
‘We were talking about your nephew, about babies, just yesterday. Why didn’t you tell me then?’
‘Are you upset?’
‘Damn right I am.’ Her brown eyes were wide, worried, but he wasn’t going to pretend everything was fine. ‘I’m upset that you haven’t shared this with me. We were talking about what you’ve been doing for the past four years. You told me about your plan to work for the air ambulance. You didn’t think to mention you’d had a baby in that time?’
‘Are you angry?’
‘Angry? No.’ He was but he couldn’t share that he was mostly jealous that she had this history, a child, with someone who wasn’t him. He thought that would make him sound petty. ‘I’m frustrated that you kept this from me. That you didn’t trust me.’
‘It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you. I didn’t know how you’d feel but I was going to tell you about her last night. I had planned to tell you after drinks but you’d already left.’
‘That’s a convenient story.’
‘It’s the truth. I’m sorry. I should have told you about her. You should meet her.’
She looked close to tears and Xander moderated his tone. He didn’t want to argue. He didn’t have the energy. ‘I’m not saying I have to meet her. I just wish you’d mentioned her.’
‘I think you should meet her. Lily has just turned three.’ Chloe was looking at him as if she expected him to say something. His head was hurting and he couldn’t figure out what response she expected him to make. In his silence, she continued. ‘She’s your daughter.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
XANDER FELT THE world stop.
‘What did you say?’
‘Lily is your daughter. You’re her father.’
He shook his head as the nausea burnt his oesophagus. ‘She can’t be mine.’
An alarm was beeping.
He had forgotten that he was connected to monitors and the rapid acceleration of his heart rate triggered a warning. The young nurse came back into his room.
‘Is everything all right? Do you need to rest?’
‘No. I’m fine. Just switch the damn machine off.’
He saw the young girl glance at Chloe and he wondered if she was going to ask Chloe to leave but she just raised an eyebrow and Chloe nodded once, as if giving her permission to do as Xander said. She didn’t need Chloe’s permission but Xander knew he’d frightened her, given her a story to tell about how doctors made terrible patients, but he didn’t care. The nurse pressed some buttons, resetting the machine, and scurried off.
He stared at Chloe. Waiting for her to speak. Waiting for the truth.
‘I promise you, Lily is your child.’
There was no way Chloe was telling the truth but she couldn’t know how her words pierced his heart. She couldn’t know how he’d wished for a child but knew that wish would be denied him.
There had to be another explanation. He’d known last night that another man had fathered a child with Chloe and he knew that was still the case today. There was another man somewhere in this story.
The question was—who was that man, because he was certain it wasn’t him.
‘She can’t be mine,’ he repeated.
* * *
Chloe listened to Xander repeat his words. Did he think that the more he said it, the truer it would become? Did he think she’d change her mind in the face of his denial?
It was her turn now to be frustrated.
She was annoyed with herself. She hadn’t anticipated the conversation happening like this at all. She’d thought she’d be able to control it. To direct the conversation. To break the news to him gently.
She should have realised he wouldn’t believe her. She remembered his reaction to Hannah and Guy’s situation. He’d felt Hannah was tricking Guy. She should have expected this reaction but she’d been lulled into a false sense of security by Guy and Hannah’s experience. They trusted one another but she and Xander didn’t have that same level of trust. She wished they did but she knew that required a strong foundation to a relationship and she wasn’t even sure they had a relationship.
She’d handled it badly but she wasn’t expecting to have to defend herself.
She needed to stay calm. She needed to see things from his perspective.
No one deserved to find out about parenthood this way. He was experiencing the same shock that Hannah and Guy must have felt and she’d empathised with them over that.
She closed her eyes and counted to ten.
But Xander wasn’t giving her any leeway.
‘You’ve made a mistake, Chloe,’ he continued. ‘I’m not her father.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I can’t have children.’
‘What? Why would you say that? Are you accusing me of lying?’
‘No. I’m saying you’ve made a mistake.’
‘Why would you think that? I know how a pregnancy happens.’
‘There must be someone else.’
‘There was no one else.’ Her voice was tight with anger and she fought hard to try to keep her tone level. ‘I know how a pregnancy happens and I know how long it lasts. I know who I was sleeping with when I fell pregnant and that was you.’
‘It can’t have been me.’
‘I promise you. It was.’
‘Chloe, I can’t have children.’
‘Why would you say that? Lily is your daughter.’
‘She can’t be. I can’t have children,’ he repeated. ‘That’s why my wife left me.’
‘What?’ She didn’t understand what he was telling her. She knew Lily was his. There was no doubt about that.
‘My wife, ex-wife, wanted to have children. We tried naturally and when nothing happened we tried IVF. We had four cycles.’
‘Four? And then you gave up? Surely that’s not enough attempts to decide you can’t have kids.’
‘We gave up because, in the middle of all of that, my wife had an affair. That’s why we split up.’
‘But if you’d kept going you might have been successful. Maybe it was a problem with your wife? Sometimes a different partner makes a difference.’
‘The problem was with me,’ he said. His grey eyes were dark as he asked, ‘If you think I’m the father why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant when you found out?’
‘I didn’t know I was pregnant until after I got home. I tried to find you but you’d disappeared. I got in touch with the flying doctor service in Broken Hill but I was told you weren’t working there any more. I contacted the headquarters in Adelaide but HR wouldn’t pass on your information. No one would tell me anything and I started to wonder if you’d instructed them not to pass on your details. If you thought I’d become a crazy stalker.
‘You weren’t on social media,’ she continued. ‘I didn’t know where you were living, where you’d gone. I called Jane, you remember Jane, the flight nurse, but she also said you’d left and she didn’t know where you were. I couldn’t afford to hire anyone to look for you and then, when Lily was born, I didn’t have time to keep looking.’
‘So instead you kept her a secret.’
‘Not intentionally! I tried to find you.’
‘Why didn’t you send a letter to the flying doctor base and ask them to forward it to me?’
‘I did. I sent a letter by registered mail. I wanted you to sign for it. I wanted to make sure it got to you. I thought it was all too easy for the letter to get lost, or for you to say you never received it, especially if you didn’t like what it said, and I would never know the truth, but it came back unopened.’
‘Do you have any proof she’s mine?’
‘How could I? Won’t you take my word for it?’
He shook his head, wincing with the movement. ‘I can’t.’
Chloe
wondered whether she should show him photos of Lily on her phone. She had hundreds. But Lily looked so much like her that she doubted he’d be able to see any resemblance to himself in his current state of mind. Would he see himself in Lily’s grey eyes?
Only if he wanted to.
‘How old is she?’ he asked.
‘She turned three on the tenth of March. She was due in April but she was born six weeks premature. I was in Australia from May to July,’ she said. ‘I only slept with you. You do the maths.’
‘It’s not a question of maths. It’s a question of probability.’
‘Last time I checked, that was maths.’
Xander sighed and rubbed his head. Chloe felt slightly guilty that they were arguing about Lily while he was in his current state but she was upset too. This was not going the way she’d hoped but it was exactly what she’d been afraid of—not knowing how he would react.
It wasn’t ideal having this conversation while he was sore, and medicated, and judging by the look of him, nursing a cracking headache but he’d raised the subject.
‘I’m not sure that now is the right time to be having this discussion,’ she said, knowing they hadn’t finished but they both needed some time to calm down.
‘You’re right,’ he replied. ‘I think you should go.’
* * *
Xander stared out of the window of his rental accommodation. The sky outside was grey and heavy and the weather was dismal, like his mood. Five days after the fire, almost six since Adem had given him the news, and he still wasn’t sure how he felt. He wanted to believe Chloe but how could it be true?
How could Chloe’s daughter be his?
Could he really be a father?
He wanted it to be true but he knew the chances were slim. But why would she lie? What did she hope to gain from this? And if she was telling the truth, then he’d missed out on three years of his daughter’s life. How could she do that to him?
His mind continued in a never-ending circle, hour upon hour, day after day.
When he’d confronted her about her child he’d assumed another man was the father. He’d anticipated feeling self-righteous, upset that she hadn’t shared her story with him. He hadn’t expected it to become his story.
In the five days since the fire he was no closer to figuring it out. He had taken sick leave from the air ambulance but was due back at work tomorrow. He had used the downtime to do some things he should have done years ago. He’d called in some favours. Had some tests.
He scrolled through his emails, looking for the one he had forwarded to his oncologist in Australia. He checked the time and read through the scanned report as he waited for a phone call.
His phone vibrated on the table and the sudden noise in the silence of the room startled him. His hands shook with nerves as he read the number on the screen. An international code. He hesitated before accepting the call. It was the one he’d been waiting for but now he wasn’t sure if he was ready for an answer.
‘You got my email?’ he asked, barely managing to get the pleasantries out of the way first. ‘Is it possible for me to have children?’
‘Yes, is the short answer. Your sperm count and motility is normal. On the low side of normal, which means you’d probably have more chance of having children with a young woman, but it’s completely possible. Have you met someone?’
‘Sort of.’ How did he explain Chloe? ‘There’s a woman claiming I’m the father of her child,’ he said, realising he didn’t need to explain the situation more specifically than that.
‘So your question is retrospective? You’re not planning for the future?’
‘No, this has already happened.’
‘And you didn’t know?’
‘I’ve just found out.’
‘How old is the child?’
‘Three.’
‘So, the pregnancy would have occurred almost four years ago?’
‘Yes. Two years post-chemo,’ Xander said.
‘Your sperm could have recovered by then. Did you not test a sample after you finished treatment?’
‘No.’ Xander shook his head. ‘There wasn’t any need. We had embryos frozen at the time I was diagnosed so I started treatment immediately and then Heather and I separated after the last lot of embryos failed to implant. After that it didn’t matter to me. I wasn’t worried about whether or not I could father children. It wasn’t something I was thinking about at that point.’
‘Without a comparison sample I can’t tell you what the situation was four years ago. There’s a chance that the child is yours but it would be a slight chance. DNA would be the only way to know for sure.’
Could it be true? Could he have a daughter?
Lily. He hung up the phone and said her name out loud for the first time.
Lily Jameson. It was a pretty name, although it was more likely to be Lily Larson.
Regardless of what her full name was or whether or not Lily was his he needed to apologise to Chloe. He’d handled the discussion badly, although he didn’t feel he was completely to blame. She’d blindsided him. He knew he’d brought up the subject but if he’d anticipated how the conversation would go, he would have waited until the painkillers had worn off. Until his head, and his mind, were clear. And no matter what condition he was in, no matter that he had raised the topic, she’d had ample opportunity to tell him about this child, his child, before then and she hadn’t. But still, he needed to clear the air.
* * *
Chloe was surprised to run into Xander when she walked out of the hospital. It was almost a week since the fire. Almost a week since she’d told him about Lily. Since he’d asked her to leave him be and she hadn’t heard from him since. She’d been going crazy, running through different scenarios in her head, trying to guess what he was thinking. What he was planning.
He was leaning against the wall outside the A&E and he straightened up when he saw her and stepped forward. She knew he was waiting for her.
As she got closer she could see he was tired and his grey eyes were full of shadows.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I thought we needed to talk.’ He was holding a bunch of flowers and he held them out to her. ‘These are for you. I owe you an apology.’
No one had ever given her flowers before, Chloe thought as she took them from him. It was an enormous bouquet of lilies. Had he chosen lilies deliberately? She was scared to ask him. Scared of what it might mean.
‘Have you got time to take a walk with me?’ he asked.
She nodded and fell into step beside him. She was pleased to have the lilies to hold. It gave her something to do with her hands and made her keep a little bit of distance from him. She needed to know what he wanted but she was terrified of what she might hear.
‘I reacted badly,’ he said, ‘and I’m sorry. Your news took me by surprise, but still, I should have handled it better.’
‘Are you saying you believe me now?’
‘I’m still not sure.’
Chloe stopped in her tracks and turned to face him. ‘What exactly are you saying, then? What exactly are you apologising for?’
‘Let me explain.’ He leant on the embankment railing and stared across the river, avoiding eye contact. ‘I told you my wife and I got divorced because we couldn’t conceive. That is true but it’s not the whole truth. We’d tried for a year to conceive naturally and then started IVF. We’d gone through two cycles unsuccessfully when I was diagnosed with testicular cancer.’
‘What?’ She couldn’t believe he’d dropped that into the conversation as if it was of no consequence. ‘You had cancer? You accused me of keeping things from you. At least I tried to find you. I tried to tell you I was pregnant. Why didn’t you tell me about the cancer?’
He shrugged. ‘We didn’t talk much about anything personal. And I was angry. There
was a lot of stuff happening in my life when we met. I was grieving. I’d lost my marriage, my health and potentially my chance of having a family of my own. I was in a dark place and you were the one bright light, the one good thing, but you were fleeting. I didn’t want to sully things by talking about what I’d been going through—it wasn’t important when I was with you. You gave me a chance to focus on something else and I was grateful for that. You were the one thing that gave me hope that I would get through that period of time and come out the other side.’
Chloe thought back to when they’d met. She knew he’d been unhappy and she’d taken pleasure in the knowledge that she had been able to make him laugh and smile. That she’d been able to lift those shadows from his eyes even though it had only been temporary. She’d attributed his sadness to his divorce. She’d never imagined there was more to his despair. He was right—they hadn’t talked much.
‘Heather, my ex-wife, is a couple of years older than me and her biological clock was working overtime. When I was diagnosed I wanted to start chemotherapy immediately. We had some frozen embryos in reserve so we continued with IVF while I started treatment. I assumed we’d get lucky with IVF—after all, how much bad luck can two people have—but when none of those embryos implanted successfully either Heather started to consider her options.
‘I was told it could take two years before my sperm was viable again and, worst case, it may never recover. I guess Heather figured I was a bad bet and she couldn’t wait—she didn’t want to wait—for me to recover. I never really found out where her head was at. We were both stressed for different reasons.
‘I foolishly expected her to stick by me, for better or worse. She could only see the worse. She had an affair and fell pregnant. I still wonder if it was deliberate. It was one way to make sure I’d let her go. Loyalty and honesty are really important to me and she betrayed me. Betrayed my trust.
‘So yes, when I met you I was angry and the last thing I wanted to talk about was my divorce or my diagnosis because they were interrelated. One had led to the other and I really just wanted to pretend none of it had happened. Heather had just remarried. She’d wanted to make things official with her new partner before the baby was born so I agreed to the divorce. My whole life had come crashing down and I was living one day at a time. I was too scared to look too far into the future. I didn’t know what sort of future I was going to have.’
