Poor baby. She should have done it hours ago, but she’d thought Harry would be back.
She glanced at her watch, concerned for him. The decorators had been and gone, leaving colour charts behind, and she’d made them tea and chatted over the fence in between feeds and Freddie’s tantrums and Beth’s persistent demands for attention, and somehow the day had disappeared.
Now it was night, almost eight-thirty, and it was getting dark outside.
She was just about to phone him again when she heard a key in the door. She felt a sudden flutter of panic, and glanced down at Kizzy. What if he was angry? What if he didn’t understand? She thought of prising the baby off and reassembling her clothes, but there wasn’t time, and anyway, she couldn’t lie to him. She’d have to tell him, whatever, and she’d just have to hope he could understand.
‘Em, I’m so sorry—the wires were down…’
He trailed to a halt, staring in amazement. She was suckling her! Breastfeeding Kizzy, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and he felt a huge lump clog his throat.
For a moment he couldn’t move, but then his legs kicked in again, and crossing over to her, he hunkered down and reached out a finger, stroking the baby’s head, then looked up into Emily’s stricken eyes. ‘You’re feeding her,’ he said hoarsely.
‘I’m sorry. She wouldn’t settle—she’s been crying for hours, and it seemed the only sensible thing to do. I’m really sorry, it’s the only time—’
‘Sorry?’ He stared at her in astonishment. ‘For giving her what her poor mother was unable to give her? Emily, no. Don’t be sorry. She had donated milk in SCBU, just to start her off, but of course I couldn’t keep it up. Don’t have the equipment.’ He smiled, and then his smile wobbled a bit and he frowned. ‘I just—It was the one thing I couldn’t do for her, the one thing I’ve felt so really bad about, and I never thought for a moment, never dreamt—’
He broke off, choked, and rested a trembling hand on Kizzy’s head, watching as her damp little mouth worked at Em’s nipple, and a surge of emotion washed over him, so strong it would have taken the legs out from under him if he hadn’t already been down there.
‘You couldn’t get me a drink, could you?’ she said, her voice soft, and he nodded and cleared his throat.
‘Yeah. Sure. Of course. What do you want?’
‘Tea? I’d better not have juice, it might upset her.’
He stood up, his legs a little unsteady, and went out to the kitchen, put the kettle on and leant his head against the wall cupboard while the world shifted back gradually onto an even keel.
He’d fantasised about this.
For the past two days, whenever she’d been carrying the baby or holding her like that, turned in to her body, he’d fantasised about her breastfeeding his child.
Not that Kizzy was his, except he couldn’t imagine her being any more important to him whatever her parentage, and Em certainly wasn’t his to fantasise over, but that hadn’t stopped him, and now she’d brought his fantasy to life.
Only the once, he reminded himself. She’d probably never do it again, and why should she, really? It was a hell of a tie, and Kizzy was nothing to do with her. Anybody else would have shut her in a bedroom and left her to cry herself to sleep.
But not Em. His Emily had always been fiercely protective of children, breaking up squabbles on the beach when she was only ten, leading crying toddlers back to their distraught parents—he couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t mothered something, be it a child or an animal.
That was the first time he’d been in the summerhouse, when she’d shown him a hedgehog with a damaged leg. She’d put it in a box in the summerhouse, and she had been feeding it on cat food bought out of her pocket money. He’d helped her look after it, and they’d both ended up with fleas.
He laughed softly at the thought, and her voice behind him caught him by surprise.
‘Penny for them.’
He turned with a smile. ‘I was remembering the fleas from the hedgehog you rescued. And here you’ve got another little stray.’
‘Hopefully not with fleas.’ She chuckled and handed him the baby. ‘Anyway, she’s your little stray and she needs her nappy changed. I’ll make the tea—or do you want something else?’
A large bottle of Scotch? Nothing else would blot out the hellish day—but Emily had, with her gentle smile and her loving kindness to his daughter.
‘Tea would be lovely,’ he said, his voice suddenly rough, and took the baby upstairs to change her and put her in her cot. He checked the others, went back downstairs and found Em in the sitting room, the mugs on the table in front of her. She was sitting on the chair, not one of the two sofas, retreating, he imagined, to a place of safety, a place where it wouldn’t be so easy for him to sit beside her, draw her into his arms and kiss her senseless.
For a second he was tempted to scoop her up out of the chair and sit down in it with her on his lap, but then common sense prevailed—better late than never—and he dropped into a corner of one of the sofas, facing her.
‘Bad day?’
‘Probably nearly as bad as yours,’ he confessed with a wry smile.
‘So how was your boss?’
His laugh sounded humourless, probably because it was. ‘Let’s just say she could have been more accommodating. I’ve taken a month’s unpaid leave to give me time to sort things out. Let’s just hope it’s long enough.’ He picked up his tea and cradled the mug in his hand, his head resting back against the cushion and his eyes closed. ‘Oh, bliss. It’s good to be home,’ he said, and then almost stopped breathing, because that was exactly what it had felt like—coming home.
For the first time in his adult life.
He straightened up and turned his attention to the tea. ‘So how did the decorators get on?’ he asked, once he was sure he could trust his voice.
‘OK. They’ve stripped out all the old carpets and put them in a skip, and they’ve started work on the windows. Here, colour charts.’
She pushed a pile of charts towards him on the table, and he put down his tea and picked them up, thumbing through them. ‘What do you think?’
‘I have no idea. I don’t know what your taste is, Harry. I haven’t seen you since you were twenty one, at your grandmother’s funeral. Our minds weren’t on décor.’
No. They’d been on other things entirely, he remembered, and wished she hadn’t brought it up, because he was straight back to the summerhouse, scene of many a moonlit tryst in their teens, stolen moments together on a voyage of discovery that now seemed so innocent and then had seemed so daring, so clandestine. Except that night, after he’d buried his grandmother, when things had got just that bit closer.
‘Neutral,’ he said, dragging his mind back from the brink. ‘Or should children have bright primary colours to stimulate them?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I go with instinct, and my instinct is earth colours, unless you’re talking about toys, but they can be put away and leave the place calm.’
‘Calm, then.’
‘I think so.’
He nodded and tried to pay attention to the colour charts, but all he could think of was their first kiss and their last—until last night, that was, only twenty-four hours ago, and still much too fresh in his mind. Coupled with coming home—there he went again—and