Unlocking the Italian Doc's Heart

by Kate Hardy

  He hugged her back. She was right. This was what he needed most at this precise moment.

  They stayed there for a while, just holding each other, and then she said, ‘I also have a very English answer for right this very second. A cup of tea.’

  He couldn’t help smiling. ‘That,’ he said, ‘would be good.’

  ‘With scones. Warm ones.’

  ‘Jam or cream first?’ he asked.

  She spread her hands. ‘I can never decide, so I split mine between the two.’

  Funny how just being with her made his heart feel lighter. Her solution of a cream tea really did make him feel better. As did the fact she asked him to stay when he drove them home, that evening. If he’d gone back to his own place, he would have lain awake and brooded. Instead, he fell asleep in Jenna’s arms, feeling lighter of spirit than he had since Georgia left. There would always be a Florence-shaped hole in his life. But right now Jenna had made him feel so much less alone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘I TOLD YOU you were fussing over nothing, Mum,’ Cameron said.

  ‘Nope, she was dead right to bring you in to see us,’ Jenna corrected the teenager. ‘I’d much rather see you now than in three weeks’ time when you’re in major pain. And a parent’s intuition should never be underestimated.’

  ‘Mum does fuss, though,’ he said in a stage whisper.

  ‘I do,’ Mrs Blake admitted. ‘Probably more than the average mum, because he’s my only one.’

  ‘Actually, given all the mums I’ve met in my career, I’d say most mums worry just as much as you do—it’s perfectly normal,’ Jenna said with a smile. ‘I can give you a leaflet on Henoch-Schönlein purpura if you like, so you don’t have to think back to our conversation today and worry that you can’t remember it all.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Mrs Blake said. ‘I don’t want to miss any important signs if he gets worse.’

  Cameron rolled his eyes. ‘Mum, I’m going to get a drink from the vending machine. See you in reception.’

  ‘He’s hitting the independent years, then,’ Jenna said as she signed into the computer system and printed off the leaflet.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Mrs Blake said wryly. ‘Everything I do or say is wrong.’

  ‘For what it’s worth, you did the right thing bringing him in. We know what’s wrong; if he gets any worse we can give him the steroids to sort out the stomach pain, so he’s not distracted in his exams.’ She gestured to the computer. ‘I’ll just need to take you over to the office where we have the printer to grab this, if that’s OK.’

  ‘It’s fine. And thank you for being so calm and reassuring.’ Mrs Blake followed Jenna over to the offices in the department. ‘Cam’s right, though. I do fuss too much. We couldn’t have children naturally, and we had to admit defeat after four cycles of IVF. Luckily a very, very kind woman acted as our surrogate, and because of her we have Cam. I still can’t thank her enough for what she did for us.’

  It was just what Jenna had done for her sister, so she understood completely from both sides of the situation—how her sister had felt as a woman who was desperate for a baby, and how she’d felt as a surrogate who’d really wanted to help make things better in someone else’s world. She squeezed Mrs Blake’s shoulder. ‘Knowing that you love him to bits and worry about him would be enough thanks for your surrogate, believe me. You carry a baby for someone else because you know how much that child is wanted and just how much he or she will be loved.’

  * * *

  That sounded really personal, Lorenzo thought, looking up from the notes he was writing in the office next door to where Jenna was talking to her patient’s mum.

  Or maybe he was overthinking it. From what he knew about surrogacy, surrogate mothers tended to have children of their own already, and he knew Jenna was single and childless. Maybe she had a close friend who’d acted as a surrogate, so she was talking from her friend’s perspective. Though asking her would make it sound as if he’d been deliberately listening in instead of catching the tail end of a conversation and being curious; he didn’t want her to think he was snooping, so he left it.

  But then the question of surrogate mothers came up in the staff kitchen, a couple of days later, when some of the staff were chatting about a programme they’d seen on the television, the night before.

  ‘I can’t believe that storyline on the soap last night about the surrogate mum,’ Keely said. ‘If Jenna’s been watching it, she’ll be frothing at the mouth.’

  Why on earth would Jenna be upset by a soap storyline about surrogacy? Lorenzo wondered.

  Then he remembered the conversation he’d partly overheard. Had he been right in guessing that maybe one of Jenna’s closest friends had acted as a surrogate?

  ‘That’s so horrible, with those poor people having a legal fight with the surrogate to keep their baby, and they’d already paid her all that money,’ Keely continued.

  ‘What I hate about it is that it’s nothing like real life,’ Sanjeev, one of the junior doctors, said. ‘In the UK, you can’t pay someone to be a surrogate mum for you. You’re only allowed to pay their expenses.’

  ‘Exactly. You know what you’re going into when you’re a surrogate,’ Keely said. ‘You’re prepared right from the start that you’re carrying a baby for someone else, so they’re obviously doing it for dramatic purposes.’

  ‘But if you were desperate for a baby and you couldn’t adopt, and you were thinking about finding a surrogate, watching that storyline would put you right off,’ Laney added. ‘You’d be worried sick that it’d all go wrong, when in real life the agencies are really careful about putting the right people together. I really wish these dramas would get their facts right instead of twisting them to suit the plot—and I know they put that notice up at the end of the show with a helpline number to call if you’re affected by any of the events in the programme, but it’s too late by then. They’ve already planted the doubts and given them time to fester.’

  ‘The woman who gives birth is the legal parent, and she can’t agree to a parental order until the baby’s six weeks old,’ Sanjeev said. ‘Plus there are all sorts of conditions about getting a parental order in the first place.’

  Lorenzo knew about parental orders first-hand. His lawyer had broken the bad news to him. ‘You have to be in a stable long-term relationship, one of you has to be biologically related to the child, and the child has to be living with you.’ None of which had applied to him where Florence was concerned, and he’d had no rights whatsoever. He hadn’t even been able to ask for access, because Georgia had proved that Florence wasn’t his biological daughter. Bringing her up for eighteen months and being there for her mother during her pregnancy counted for nothing in the court’s eyes.

  Even so, everyone here seemed really well versed in the legal side of surrogacy—much more so than in the paediatric department at his last hospital. It was the sort of thing that the maternity unit staff would be more likely to know more about, especially if there was a specialist IVF unit attached to the department; so why did the paediatric department here know so much about it? Did someone here in the department have first-hand experience, maybe?

  And again, he wondered, why had Jenna’s name in particular cropped up?

  Did it have anything to do with the sabbatical she’d mentioned, but never actually said what she’d done on her time away from her job? And Jenna had said that her ex had disapproved of a decision she’d made. Would that have been the decision to act as someone’s surrogate and have a baby for them?

  As a theory, it all hung together.

  But she hadn’t chosen to confide in him.

  It was none of his business.

  He should just leave it.

  But it nagged at him for the rest of the week. That half-heard conversation with a patient’s parent and the chatter in the ward kitchen... Perhaps he was ad
ding two and two and making five. But somehow he didn’t think he was. The answer he kept coming back to was that Jenna had had a surrogate baby.

  * * *

  The thought twisted deep in his gut, reminding him of how Georgia had lied to him about Florence. Why would Jenna not tell him about something like this?

  Maybe he was being oversensitive and overreacting because it was getting so close to Florence’s third birthday, and he knew from seeing his niece and nephew just how much he was missing out on; but it unsettled him enough for him to bring up the subject casually when he went out to dinner with Jenna on Saturday night.

  ‘Keely and Sanjeev were talking about that soap storyline, the other day,’ he said. ‘The one about the surrogate mum.’

  ‘Oh?’ Her voice was perfectly neutral, as if he was talking about something as anodyne as the price of bananas.

  Part of him knew he ought to change the subject. But part of him was hurt that he’d opened up to her and she was still completely closed off from him. Was she keeping a big secret from him, the way that Georgia had?

  ‘Never mind. Forget I said anything.’ He looked away.

  * * *

  Jenna had known for a while that she needed to tell Lorenzo about Ava. Especially because he’d told her about Florence.

  But the words had stuck in her throat, along with the memory of how scathing Danny had been. And the accusation Danny had thrown at her when she’d refused to give in to his ultimatum—untrue, unfair and totally unjustified.

  She didn’t think that Lorenzo would take the same approach. But what if he did? What if she’d made the same mistake all over again? She’d got Danny totally wrong. Who was to say she hadn’t got Lorenzo wrong, too?

  But she couldn’t put this off any more. Not really. It was time to tell him. She took a deep breath. ‘You told me about Florence. So I guess I ought to tell you about Ava.’

  ‘Ava?’ he asked. ‘Your niece?’

  She nodded. ‘She’s why I took that year’s sabbatical.’ And now for the hard bit. ‘I was a surrogate mum for my sister, because she couldn’t have a child of her own.’

  She was almost afraid to look into his face, just in case she saw the same disapproval she’d faced from Danny. But she made herself do it. She had to look twice, because she wasn’t quite sure what she was seeing.

  ‘You took a year out of your life because you were being your twin’s surrogate mum?’ he asked. And then he said something she wasn’t expecting. ‘That’s the most amazing, selfless thing I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘You don’t think I was stupid? Naive and...’ The words choked her.

  He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. ‘No, I don’t. That’s the most incredible gift to give anyone—a child. Why would you think I’d judge you like th—?’ He stopped. ‘Your ex, right?’

  She nodded. ‘I know you’re not him, but...’

  ‘But, thanks to him, you’ve lost faith in your own judgement and you don’t trust yourself or anyone else. I get that. Jenna, we all make mistakes—I’ve certainly made enough of them—but I’m telling you now that what you did for Lucy wasn’t one of them. It was a brave, kind and selfless thing to do.’ His fingers tightened round hers. ‘You don’t have to say anything more. You don’t owe me any explanations.’

  He didn’t think the same way Danny had.

  He actually approved of what she had done. He thought she’d done the right thing.

  And that gave her the courage to carry on. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have judged you. Or expected you to react the same way Danny did.’

  ‘It’s fine. If it makes you feel any better,’ he said, ‘I was feeling worried that you might be keeping a secret from me, the way Georgia did. Though now I know with you it’s the other way round—you were giving a baby, not taking one away.’

  ‘I kind of understand why Georgia did what she did, even though I would have handled the situation very differently,’ Jenna said. ‘I would never have taken a baby away from anyone.’

  ‘Wasn’t it hard to hand the baby over, though, when she was born?’ Lorenzo asked. ‘You’d carried her for nine months. Bonded with her.’

  ‘She was always Lucy’s baby, not mine,’ Jenna said. ‘Yes, of course I felt that rush of love that you hear mums talking about when Ava was born. But I’m also a doctor. I knew what the hormones were doing to my body, and right from the start I thought of Ava as my sister’s baby. She’s my niece, and she’s a joy to have in my life. I love being her aunt and spending time with her, seeing my sister’s little girl growing up and exploring the world—and I see Lucy in her all the time.’ Though she’d caught herself since feeling all wistful and wondering what it would be like to have a baby of her own and a partner to share that love with.

  ‘So how come...?’ Lorenzo stopped. ‘Sorry. I don’t mean to grill you. You don’t owe me any answers.’

  ‘And you’re not judging me,’ Jenna said.

  ‘No. Not at all. Though I’ll listen if you want to tell me. And everything you tell me,’ he said, echoing what she’d said to him on the beach, ‘will be strictly in confidence.’

  She knew he’d chosen those words deliberately—to give her courage, the same way she’d tried to give him courage to talk. ‘Can we... Just not here?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure. Go to the bathroom or something and I’ll sort everything out here.’

  ‘Sorry. I ruined dinner.’ She bit her lip.

  ‘You didn’t ruin anything. It’s fine. I’ll make us an omelette or something back at mine if you want to eat later, or we can grab a kebab on the way somewhere.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She really appreciated how kind he was being. She would never have believed he could be so understanding about the situation. Though she knew it was wrong to let Danny’s behaviour colour her judgement of all men.

  She went to the bathroom and splashed water on her face, then joined Lorenzo by the reception area.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, and took her hand.

  They walked by the river until they found an empty bench, then sat down. Lorenzo simply waited until she was ready to talk, not pressuring her.

  She took a deep breath. ‘When we were twenty-seven, Lucy was in a serious car crash,’ she began. ‘She was driving up to York to spend the weekend with her best friend from university, having a fitting for her bridesmaid’s dress—but she never got there. A lorry hit her on the motorway and her car was pretty much squished. She had serious internal injuries, with a ruptured womb—her ovaries were damaged, too, and they couldn’t stop her bleeding in Theatre. It was a choice of giving her a hysterectomy or losing her completely. So obviously Will, as her next of kin, opted for hysterectomy. And we were all there, too, to support him—me, Mum and Dad.’

  ‘A hysterectomy is a horrible thing to happen when you’re that young,’ Lorenzo said. ‘It takes away a lot of your choices.’

  Jenna nodded. ‘Lucy and Will had planned to start trying for a family, the following summer. She was devastated, Renzo, when she realised that couldn’t ever happen. But she got over the operation and recovered from her injuries, and then she and Will applied to be put on the register for adoption.’ She grimaced. ‘Except the authorities turned her down. Will’s fifteen years older than Lucy, and the authorities decided that meant he was too old to be a dad.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘I hate the fact that some faceless bureaucrat could take away their dreams like that, for such a ridiculous reason, because it was obvious to the rest of the world that Lucy and Will would both be brilliant parents.’ Anger at the injustice flooded through her. ‘Lucy and Will appealed against the decision but, even with the social worker’s help, they lost the case.’ She shrugged. ‘So then it hit me. I was the one with the answer—I could be Lucy’s surrogate and carry a baby for them.’

  ‘That’s an amazing thing to do for someone,’ Lorenzo said. ‘
To give them their dreams.’

  ‘She’s my twin. She would’ve done the same for me.’

  ‘It’s still amazing.’

  ‘It was an arrangement between me and Lucy, and we opted for IVF. The IVF team prefers surrogate mums to finish having their own family first, before they carry a baby for anyone else—because of course there are always risks with a pregnancy, and we didn’t know whether I’d even be able to carry a baby to term. But we argued that we were a special case,’ Jenna said. ‘Because I’m Lucy’s identical twin, this would mean we’d be having a baby who was genetically the same as her own would have been. The IVF team insisted that we had counselling first, but it was all fine. We used Will’s sperm and my egg. Our family and friends were supportive—well, nearly all of them were.’ She looked at him. ‘The only problem was Danny, my ex.’

  ‘Why didn’t he want you to do it? Did he want you to have a baby with him first?’

  ‘No. It wasn’t that at all. He couldn’t see that I was making the world all right again for Lucy.’ Her lip curled. ‘He saw it in terms of losing all my promotion prospects at work, the sheer cost of the IVF treatment—even though Lucy and Will paid for that, he still thought of it as money—and the amount of salary I’d be losing by taking a year’s sabbatical.’

  Lorenzo winced. ‘That’s an appalling way to look at things.’

  ‘You’re telling me. And, when I argued that none of that was important,’ she said, ‘he said he’d end things between us if I went ahead. I was so angry, I told him I didn’t want to be with someone like him anyway.’ Bile rose in her throat. ‘Then he accused me of wanting Will and said this was the only way I’d get to have Will’s baby.’

  Lorenzo stared at her. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Sadly not.’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘This was the man I’d actually been considering marrying. But I don’t want to be with anyone who has no compassion and sees everything in terms of money, and who turns spiteful if you disagree with him. So I walked away.’