FOR the first time in their relationship, Alex was aware that the tables had been well and truly turned. He was the one dropping the bombshell, doing something totally crazy and unexpected, and Jennie was the innocent bystander, the one trying to make sense of it all. He’d thought being on the other side of the equation would have given him a sense of power, but it only left him with a lead weight in his stomach, one that was growing heavier with every blink of her incredulous eyes.
Things had been going so well. Too well, maybe.
He’d been on the verge of telling her before Mollie had opened the door. He’d brought Jennie to his study so he could sit her down and methodically fill in the holes of the explanation he’d given her last night. But all those careful explanations had gone out of the window when Jennie had sat in that leather armchair and looked at him with the same hope and expectancy as she had on their wedding day. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from walking over to her. Just one touch, he’d promised himself, and then he’d let the words out of his mouth.
He should have remembered how upside down and inside out she turned him, how she made every hair on his head stand on end and the adrenalin pump through his veins. He should have just stuck to one thing at a time.
Explaining first, touching later.
It wasn’t as if he was good at explanations, anyway. Words just weren’t his thing. Not that he felt clumsy with them, but they were just… unnecessary. He was better at showing how he felt by the things he did, by simply being the man he was. He sighed and ran a hand over the top of his head.
The shock in Jennie’s eyes was quickly turning into something else. This was one time when he definitely should have stuck to the plan.
‘You have a…? She’s your…?’
He nodded again, reached for her. She couldn’t back away, right up against the desk as she was, but she sidestepped him so fast she knocked the cafetière that had been sitting on the other side of the desk over and scalding coffee flowed all over the desk and dripped onto the floor.
She started to try and pick the cafetière up, but the hot liquid made her wince. It didn’t stop her trying, though. She just kept attempting to right the glass jug, all the while looking panicked as more and more coffee sluiced around the table and made a thin, dark brown waterfall over the edge of the desk.
He reached across and held her hands, stopping her from burning herself, held them still and looked at her, until she understood that desks and carpets didn’t matter. She looked back at him, blinking only once, and he couldn’t decide whether she was going to cry or was getting ready to hit him over the head with the half-empty cafetière.
The silence was measured by the squelching drip, drip, drip of coffee hitting the carpet.
She pulled her hands away, stepped back. ‘You have a daughter, and you never thought to tell me?’
‘Until about three weeks ago, I didn’t know…and I’m still not one hundred per cent sure.’
‘How can you not know? What do you mean?’
He sighed. Where Becky had been concerned, he’d come to realise that just about anything was possible.
‘Let me explain.’
This was the moment he’d been dreading. The moment when it all might get too much for his runaway bride. He could see the fear and uncertainty in her eyes. She looked for a long couple of seconds at the door.
‘Please? ‘ he added, and he couldn’t ignore the vague hint of desperation in his voice. Neither could Jennie, it seemed. She stopped flashing angry looks at him and went and stood by the cold firelace, her arms crossed.
Alex made his way back from the hospital cafeteria on autopilot. In the last day or so he’d done the journey so many times he didn’t need to look at the signs to navigate the endless anonymous corridors back to the Intensive Care Unit.
As he entered the ward, he instantly went on red alert. Someone was talking loudly and emphatically and after the relentless serenity, punctured only by the drab electronic music of the machines that beeped and pinged and hissed in and out of time with each other, the noise seemed to reverberate off the walls.
Just before he turned into the section of corridor that led to Becky’s room, a stout woman with a severe ponytail pushed past him, muttering something about not being a flipping free child-minding service. He quickened his pace and half-jogged to Becky’s room, where he found the plump nurse who’d been there the other day when he’d arrived, holding a squirming toddler and wearing a dazed expression.
He’d seen so many nurses in the last thirty or so sleepless hours that he was almost surprised he recognised this one. But she’d stuck in his mind because, not long after he’d walked into this nightmare, she’d come quietly alongside him and asked if he was Alex. He’d nodded numbly, all the while looking at the broken body he hardly recognised amidst all the tubes and machines, and hadn’t thought to wonder until later how she’d known.
The plump nurse, whose name he now noticed was Flora, had calmly told him that one of the paramedics who’d brought Becky in had said she’d whispered something before she’d lapsed into unconsciousness. He’d dutifully informed the staff in the Emergency Department, who’d passed it on to Flora or one of her colleagues. But Becky’s last words must have suffered the ‘Chinese whispers’ effect because it hadn’t made much sense.
Becky had grabbed the paramedic’s hand and told him to tell Alex she belonged to him.
If the situation hadn’t have been so dire, he might have allowed himself a dark chuckle at that. Becky hadn’t been his in a long while. Hadn’t wanted to be.
But he’d mulled the message over while he’d sat by her bedside, watching the ventilator puff air into her and then suck it out again, and he’d taken it to mean she wanted him to look after her, to be on her side. And since he was still listed on her donor card as her next of kin, the hospital had been happy to let him do that.
He supposed he should have been angry at her impudence, but he hadn’t been able to feel anything but compassion for her in this state. And guilt, of course. He always felt the guilt. Becky had finally trusted him to look out for her, something he’d failed to do properly during their seven-year marriage. It helped mend something inside him that she’d at least given him this. He was going to make sure he did it properly this time, especially as things weren’t looking promising. It was the least he could do for her.
Thank goodness Jennie understood. Well, just about understood. Even so, he wasn’t looking forward to phoning her and telling her, once again, that he wouldn’t be taking the two-hour train ride to Paris that evening.
He turned to Flora, who was doing her best to calm the grizzling child, and frowned.
‘That woman? She just left her child here?’
Flora lost the battle and, rather than drop the child, she managed to set her down without too much of a bump. Both he and Flora watched as the little girl ran to the bed and stared at Becky.
‘She says she’s not hers,’ Flora mumbled. ‘Said she was just babysitting…’
Alex frowned. ‘So whose is she, then?’
Flora didn’t move and her gaze never left the bed. The little girl was pulling at Becky’s hand, whimpering. ‘Wake up,’ she said in a tiny, thin voice.
A rock hit the bottom of Alex’s stomach.
‘Wake up, Mummy,’ the girl wailed, then attempted to climb onto the bed beside her. But the bed was too high and her legs were too short, so she just held on to the pale hand nearest her. Her eyes filled with tears.
Becky had a child? A daughter?
He didn’t know whether he ought to be happy or sad for her. Becky had got what she’d wanted—and quickly, too, he guessed. The girl had to be…what? Two?
‘Is the man who was driving the car when Becky was injured her boyfriend?’ he asked Flora.
She shrugged. ‘I believe so. They moved him into one of the other wards earlier this afternoon.’
Alex looked down the hall but, before he could ask Flora where he could find the idiot who’d been driving too fast in the wrong direction down a one-way street, she laid a hand on his arm.
‘It might be better if I go. If you wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on her…’ She nodded to the child. ‘You know what to do if you need help.’
He nodded. Becky’s alarms had gone off with worrying regularity since he’d been camped out here. He knew the drill and the nurses’ station was a two-second sprint away.
While Flora was gone, he walked over to the little girl and crouched down. He tried talking to her, but she didn’t acknowledge him. Not really. She kept staring at her mother, but blinked hard every time he started a new sentence. After a while, he gave up trying to talk and pulled a chair close so he could sit near her. He understood the need to be left alone with your own thoughts when you felt like this.
They stayed like that for quite a while and well before Alex heard Flora’s footsteps in the hall outside he’d decided that making sure this little one was reunited with her family would be part of his debt to Becky. If he didn’t, she’d be in foster care, just like her mother had been. Or, even worse, handed over to Becky’s parents, and he’d breathe his last breath before he let that pack of hyenas mess this child up the way they had their daughter.
He breathed out. It felt good having a purpose, something concrete to do rather than sit here and wonder whether there’d be a miracle
and Becky would open her eyes.
Eventually, the little girl turned and looked at him. He smiled. She didn’t smile back, just yawned. He patted his lap.
‘Would you like to come and sit here? You look tired.’
Slowly, she slid her hand out of Becky’s and sidled over to him. She didn’t reach out with confidence, as his cousin Toni’s boys had done at that age, knowing he’d swing them into his arms. Instead, she backed up until her behind was touching his knee and lifted one leg in a tentative attempt to hoist herself up. He gently slid a hand under each armpit and eased her into his lap. Even though she yawned again, she didn’t rest herself against him.
‘What’s your name?’ he whispered.
She turned her head to look at him. ‘Mollie,’ she said quietly.
Alex looked into her big blue eyes and smiled. He should have known. Becky had always loved that name. When they’d been trying for a child of their own, she’d settled on it straight away.
And then something odd happened. It must be the lack of sleep, he’d thought at first, because he had the oddest sense of recognition as he and Mollie regarded each other. It was like looking at a photograph he knew by heart, which was strange because he’d never seen any photos of Becky as a child, so it couldn’t be the resemblance to her mother that had registered something in his head. Anyway, Becky’s eyes were hazel, not this clear, warm blue with a darker ring around the irises.
Like his.
And then the words that had been circuiting his head for the last couple of days unscrambled themselves and Alex felt himself plummet down a lift shaft that had opened up in the floor of the ICU.
Suddenly, Becky’s last gasped message made sense.
Tell Alex she’s his.
As Alex talked, Jennie folded her arms tighter across her middle, listening with growing horror. Horror at what Alex’s shattered family had endured, and horror at her own adolescent foot-stamping when she hadn’t got her own way.
Worse still, a little voice inside her head was prodding her to stamp some more, to put her hands on her hips and say it wasn’t fair. To demand to know why Alex hadn’t communicated any of this to her earlier. Had he done so, she might not have done such a thorough disappearing act.
But that was also a childish urge. She couldn’t turn things around and blame Alex for her bad behaviour. He’d had a terrible situation to deal with—no wonder he’d sounded so spaced out when he’d managed to find time to call her—and he’d thought he’d married a grown-up, a woman who’d only days before had promised to stick with him through thick and thin. He’d had every right to ask for her understanding, and she’d had no right to deny it.
She sat down on the chair facing him and covered her face with her hands. ‘I’m sorry, Alex. So sorry…’
‘It wasn’t your fault my first marriage was a runaway train,’ he replied bleakly.
‘No… I meant for the way I acted.’ She moved one finger so she could peek at him from behind her hands and found him looking at her. She slid her hands apart and left them on her cheeks. He looked so weary, hardly any hint of the usual vital Alex energy she loved so much.
At least he wasn’t angry with her any more. She could tell that from his eyes—they were no longer hard and icy. But he must be terribly disappointed in her. She should have been there for him. She should have been his shoulder to lean on. A wave of regret washed over her and she ached deep down to her toes. That time could never be bought back. She couldn’t charm her way into having another shot, but she wished she could. She really wished she could.
‘You said you weren’t sure,’ she muttered, as her brain continued to sort through the deluge of facts and images that had bombarded her at the beginning of this conversation. ‘What did you mean by that?’
Alex peeled his gaze from hers and stared into the shadows of the fireplace. ‘Just that. I’m still not sure that Mollie is my child.’
‘But you said…’
Only his eyes moved as he glanced back in her direction. ‘I know what Becky told the paramedic, but I have no idea if it’s the truth.’
Jennie’s hands slipped down her cheeks to cover her mouth. ‘Do you really think…?’
Alex got up and went to stare out of the large bay window behind his desk. ‘The woman—the babysitter—came back the next day to see Becky and apologise. It was too late by then, of course…’
Jennie stood up, wanting to go to him, but a sudden instinct told her to wait, to let him speak.
‘Tracey was Becky’s next door neighbour.’ He paused to make a disbelieving sound that might have been a laugh. ‘I didn’t even know Becky had moved back to London. The last I’d heard, she’d been in Southend.’
She took a step towards him. ‘What did she tell you…this Tracey?’
‘That the idiot driver had only been in Becky’s life a few months, and that when Becky had first moved in next door she’d been living with another man—one she’d referred to as Mollie’s daddy.’ He shook his head. ‘He’s been out of the picture for a year or so now.’
‘And you think…’
He looked over his shoulder at Jennie. ‘It’s possible,’ he replied, then turned to the window again. She walked over and stood next to him, stared at the same fields and bare trees, watched the same rooks circling in the sky.
‘Tomorrow morning everything will start opening up again after the Christmas break,’ he said. ‘I’ve got contacts who know how to get information—records—quickly. We’ll see what the birth certificate says first.’
‘And if it…’ She couldn’t quite bring herself to voice her doubts.
His shoulders slumped a little. ‘Then there’s DNA testing, just to make sure.’
Jennie was just about to place a palm on his shoulder blade when there was a knock at the door.
‘Just a minute, Mollie. This is important.’
Jennie watched him, all of a sudden feeling as if Alex had just stepped out of a cocoon, transformed into something else. This was a father talking to his child. Alex was a father. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that the knowledge had changed him and there would be no going back. The Alex she’d shared a whirlwind romance with was gone. Instead of placing her hand on his shoulder, she smoothed down her jumper, then let her hands fall by her sides.
The door creaked open and Toni poked her head round the door.
‘That was my other half on the phone,’ she said, looking first at Alex and then at Jennie. ‘He says another of the boys has started sprouting spots and that Jacob’s spiking a fever.’ She grimaced. ‘I know I said I’d help out a bit longer, but I’ve got to go…’
Alex was already halfway across the room. ‘Of course you have,’ he said as he put a hand on her arm. ‘They’re your children…’
Toni managed a little wave and Jennie reciprocated, but by the time she’d got her fingers aloft and wiggling, both Alex and his cousin had vanished down the hallway, talking in low tones.
It was only then she remembered the coffee, still dripping from the desk onto the floor, and she hurried to the kitchen to get a cloth. She could see Alex saying goodbye to Toni as she got in her car. Mollie was nowhere to be seen, but Jennie didn’t think much of it as she ran a cloth under the tap and grabbed an armful of cleaning-type stuff from under the sink. Surely one of these sprays and potions was good for carpets?
She hadn’t even got as far as reading the labels when Alex came striding back into the room. ‘Where’s Mollie?’
Jennie just looked at him. ‘I don’t know. I thought she was with you.’
A look of sheer panic crossed Alex’s features, but before he could go into full crisis overdrive there was an ominous flushing sound from the downstairs bathroom. Did toddlers do that themselves these days? She really didn’t know. She and Alex looked at each other, then dashed out of the study.
The scene in the downstairs bathroom wasn’t pretty. Mollie was crying. There was a wet patch on the floor and a nappy wedged down the toilet. It was obvious that they hadn’t heard the first flush, because it was jammed right down the bottom and the toilet bowl was almost full to the brim.
‘No! ‘ Alex yelled as Mollie reached for the handle to flush once more. She froze for a split second, then she closed her eyes, opened her
mouth and the most terrifying sound emanated from it. It had the fluctuating pitch of a World War Two air raid siren, but was twice as loud.
Alex was obviously mortified to have caused that sound and looked helplessly at Jennie, his eyes begging. She looked at the devastation around her. Where did you start in situations like this? The floor? The loo? The air-raid siren? Alex was looking at her as if she was supposed to know. If her eardrums hadn’t been vibrating past the point of comfort, she might have called him on that. As it was, she decided to let him deal with the blockage while she went to the source of her current pain. She took Mollie by the hand and led her back into the kitchen.
Once there, she knelt down beside her and rubbed her hand. ‘It’s okay, sweetheart. Don’t cry.’
But Mollie’s face was bright red and scrunched up into the most unappealing shape. And the noise just seemed to be getting louder.
She took Mollie’s other hand and tried to make eye contact. ‘Mollie. Mollie? Mollie…’
There was a brief hiccupping pause in the wailing and Jennie grabbed her chance. ‘Did you have an accident, darling? Is that what the matter is?’
It was then that Jennie noticed the smell. Uh-oh. When she’d said the word accident, she hadn’t really comprehended the full horror of the situation. A quick peek under Mollie’s dress revealed the truth.
Jennie closed her eyes, gritted her teeth and picked the little girl up, trying not to think about how close her hands were to the source of the smell and whether it could seep through fabric. ‘It’s a bath for you, I think,’ she said brightly, and bounced down the corridor and up the stairs.
She was obviously doing something wrong because Mollie’s face stopped scrunching and she looked at Jennie in surprise. The plus side? She’d shocked the siren into silence. Jennie decided she liked being looked at like an alien better than she did putting her ears through that noise, so she just kept bouncing.
To her complete relief, she found a stack of nappies and a pouch of those baby wipe things in the bathroom. She popped Mollie down on the floor, eased her dress over her head and threw it into the far corner of the bathroom. Then she peeled the girl’s vest off and took off her sodden socks, using her thumb and forefinger like pincers. She’d just about finished when Alex appeared at the bathroom door, looking bemused and dishevelled.
‘What now?’ he said, looking hopefully at Jennie.
She gave him a wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee kind of look. Like she was supposed to know! Possession of an X chromosome did not give her access to some secret wisdom that could be called upon in toddler-related emergencies. Fashion-related emergencies, yes. But definitely not the kind that involved the stuff that was currently sliding down Mollie’s left leg. Euw.
‘Okay,’ Alex said slowly, clearly getting the point. He looked at the shower cubicle. ‘How about we stand her in there and just, well… hose her down?’
Jennie blinked. As good a plan as any. So they did just that. One problem. As soon as they turned the shower on, the siren started up again. Alex lunged towards the bath and turned on the taps.
Forty minutes later, Mollie was asleep on Alex’s bed and Jennie and Alex were standing facing each other in his en suite bathroom.
‘I think we wore her out,’ Alex said with a smile.
Jennie couldn’t help but chuckle. ‘I think the feeling’s mutual.’
For a brief second all the drama of the last few weeks faded away. Jennie almost didn’t want to blink. This was more like the Alex she remembered: funny, in an understated way. Relaxed. Gorgeous. She sighed, and just that tiny noise was enough to pop the moment. The distinctive smell from Mollie’s discarded dress made sure it stayed that way.
‘Did you get the nappy out of the toilet?’ she asked.
Alex made a face. ‘Eventually.’
‘What do you think she was trying to do?’ Jennie asked as she folded a towel, then did it again, realising it was all lumpy and uneven.
Alex huffed out a breath and leant back against the tiled wall. ‘Well, Toni tells me she thinks Mollie is just about potty trained.’
Jennie’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You think?’
There was that smile again. And again without the warning. It really was unfair. ‘Apparently, emotional upset can cause things to go…backwards…in that department,’ he added. ‘So Toni put her in a nappy. I think Mollie just got confused.’
Jennie frowned. ‘So… it’s safe to say that nappies don’t go down the toilet. The question is: what do you do with them?’
He looked heavenwards. ‘I’m thinking a nuclear device of some sort wouldn’t be out of place.’
Jennie laughed out loud, then clapped a hand over her mouth, realising the sleeping Mollie was only a few feet from the open bathroom door. Alex’s eyes twinkled. And right then, covered in smears of stuff she’d rather not identify and looking as if she’d wrestled with a tornado, Jennie started to fall in love with her husband all over again.