‘Yes, here,’ she said, gesturing around her at the huge kitchen dining room that ran from front to back in his double-fronted Victorian semi. ‘Your house is massive, Jake. There’s tons of room.’
‘Em, it’s a heap. I only bought it because I thought it would make a fantastic family home, but then Jo changed her mind and I ended up running two households, so I haven’t had the money to sort it out. It’s just a millstone round my neck and if it wasn’t such a wreck I’d sell it.’
‘Rubbish, it’s a fabulous house, a fantastic family home, as you said. It just needs a lick of paint.’
He sighed. ‘It needs much more than that. It’s just tired from one end to the other. I was going to put an en suite next to the main bedroom, refit the bathroom, refit the kitchen, change the carpets, repair the roof—at the very least the whole house needs a coat of paint, and then there’s the garden which has been neglected for years—it’s endless.’
‘That’s cosmetic,’ she pointed out. ‘There’s a downstairs shower room. I could use that. And you have five bedrooms, so even if we take two, you’ll still have a spare for visitors. And there’s your study, which is big enough to be another sitting room, so we don’t even have to share that if you don’t want to.’
His brow furrowed, the worry evident in his eyes. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to share with you, Em, that’s not an issue, we were housemates for years, but we’re not at uni anymore. We’re adults, parents, and anyway, you don’t want to leave your house. You shared it with Pete for so many years, you can’t walk away from that just to help me out. You’d be giving up so much.’
She would, but she wouldn’t let herself think about that. Not now. Pete was gone, but Jake was very much alive, and he needed her. And she needed a job.
‘It’s just a house,’ she lied, ‘and believe me, my motives for suggesting it aren’t entirely selfless. I need a job as much as you do, but the reality is we both need cover for nights and weekends and random shift patterns, and that’s going to be really difficult to manage without live-in help, but if we lived here together that would solve it, and it would also mean taking a cut in salary was more viable for both of us because we’d be paying out much less in childcare and only be running one household. And it needn’t be for ever. A couple of years, maybe a little more? Five, even, and who knows where we’ll be by then? You might have met someone you want to marry, someone you love, someone who loves Matilda. But for now, it would solve both our problems. We could make it work, Jake.’
He stared at her for the longest moment, hope flaring in his eyes, and then he dug around on his plate with his fork, moved the food around, then looked back at her again searchingly.
‘Are you serious?’
‘Yes, I am. Why not? I want a part-time job with consultant pay, and you think nannies don’t grow on trees? I’ve networked my butt off the last couple of months and there’s not a glimmer of part time or a job share anywhere in our field at the level we’re at. Well, there’s a staff grade post in Cumbria, but that’s miles from everyone I know and miles from Pete’s parents, and they have a right to share in Zach’s life. They’ve already lost their son. I can’t take their grandson to the other end of the country, it’s not fair. And in the meantime I have to earn a living and make appropriate care arrangements for my child, and so do you. Think about it, Jake. You’d be working part time, so you’d have time with Matilda, I’d have time with Zach, we’d both be working at consultant level—it’s a win-win.’
He scrubbed a hand through his hair and searched her eyes again. Goodness knows what he was looking for, but she didn’t think he’d found it because he shrugged and looked away and his eyes were bleak again, the flicker of hope she’d seen in them extinguished by defeat.
‘I don’t know. It’s a lot to think about, for both of us, and we can’t make a snap decision. Come on, let’s eat this while it’s still hot. I’m starving and I didn’t get time for lunch and I can’t think clearly on an empty stomach.’
She reached out and laid a hand on his, suddenly afraid he was going to spend the rest of the night finding reasons why it couldn’t work, and for some reason she didn’t really understand she was desperate that he shouldn’t do that. ‘Just don’t dismiss it, Jake. Don’t close your mind to it. Promise me you’ll give it serious consideration.’
He nodded slowly. ‘OK. I promise. Right, food. Do you want the last of that rice, or can I have it?’
* * *
Jake stared up at the ceiling, his eyes tracing the cracks in the Victorian plasterwork, seeking out the peeling paper at the edge by the window where the roof had leaked last year. How could he ask Em to give up her lovely home and share this place with him and Matilda? Never mind the job thing...
Enough. He needed to sleep. He turned out the light and rolled onto his side, bashing his pillow into submission, but it didn’t help. Nothing helped, and his mind was still churning, struggling with the concept of a job share with Em.
Could they do it? Would it work? Or would it put such an unreasonable strain on their relationship that it would destroy it? Because it wouldn’t just mean sharing the job. He’d be sharing his home, his child, his entire life with Emily. Could they honestly make it work?
He didn’t know, but sleep evaded him and he lay awake for hours turning it over and over in his mind without coming up with anything better—or anything else at all.
He knew they could live together, they were already doing it, and they were coping, even if he did spend hours every day slamming the door on his lust. They’d squabble about stuff and she’d complain about his untidiness, but there was no malice in it. But was it fair on Emily to ask her to leave the home she’d shared with Pete?
No, but then the whole situation was unfair. It wasn’t fair that Pete had died and left Emily widowed and Zach without a father. It wasn’t fair that Jo had walked out first on him and then on Matilda, and almost bled him dry in the process.
None of it was fair and they had no choice but to deal with the hand life had dealt them, but the children weren’t coping, and that was the root of the problem. Matilda didn’t really know Emily. How was she feeling being left with her every day? Not great, if today was anything to go by, but would Zach fare any better when it was the other way round? And how would he feel, looking after Zach? Looking after his own daughter, come to that?
He’d never anticipated being a full-time father, but it was just an extension of what he’d already been doing, with Zach chucked into the mix for good measure.
Could they manage to make it work, juggling the childcare between them? It was an awesome responsibility. Was he up to it? Was Emily?
He had no idea, but short of finding a nanny in the next few days he was out of options. It had to work, they had to make it work, and the first thing he was going to do tomorrow was run the idea past Ben Walker, and see what he thought of it.
He wasn’t even going to consider what he’d do if Ben said no.
BEN DIDN’T SAY NO—well, not a flat-out no, at any rate, and maybe even tending towards a yes.
He was on call that weekend and already at the hospital when Jake sent him a text at six-thirty saying he needed to talk. He rang straight back, and didn’t turn a hair when Jake suggested they meet on the benches outside the Park Café before eight on a dewy April morning. He didn’t even mind that Matilda was with him, sitting on the damp bench between them eating a little muffin from the café for her breakfast. He listened carefully without interrupting until Jake ground to a halt, then pulled a sort of ‘maybe’ face and nodded slowly.
‘Would you consider taking on a bit more? Because we could really