Helena left Aidan and walked back along the corridor towards her husband’s room. The conversation she had just witnessed with the doctor had left her head spinning and goosebumps prickled along her arms. She could feel her heart racing and she took a few deep breaths inwards.
Calm down, she told herself, stop jumping to conclusions.
Aidan hadn’t realised the significance of what he had said, but she had, and she knew by the way Dr Humphreys had raised his brows and been momentarily stuck for words, that he had too. It was a fact that had stuck in her head from all those years ago. But maybe she was getting mixed up or recalling it incorrectly. She knew her brain wasn’t as sharp as it usually was with everything going on at the moment.
She took out her phone and typed ‘O parent AB child’ into Google and was filled with sickening dread as what she remembered from medical school was confirmed. An O blood type couldn’t possibly have an AB child. She clicked onto another link that showed a blood type table and she saw once again that an AB child could only have parents with either A, B or AB blood types, and so if Aidan really was blood type O, then he couldn’t possibly have fathered Milly. She read on that there were very rare instances in medical literature where it had happened in Asia, due to a certain mutation of a gene found there, but even still, it was statistically tiny. So if both Dr Humphreys and Aidan were each one hundred per cent correct in what they were saying, it was unlikely that he was Milly’s biological father.
Aidan had made a mistake, the more rational part of her brain said. It was the most logical explanation. She was forever seeing patients in the practice that swore they were a particular blood type when in fact a blood test revealed they weren’t. Normally she would just brush something like this off as an error and not give it a second thought, but after the revelations of the last few days, she couldn’t help but worry. What was really concreting the fears in her mind, however, was the fact that James also had an AB blood type and when you linked this key piece of information with his revelation about his one-night stand with Rowan four years ago, it was hard not to let her mind run away with the possibility that maybe her husband was Milly’s father…
But, no, she talked herself down, she was being ridiculous. The most obvious explanation for this situation was that Aidan had simply got his blood type wrong.
She entered the room and found her husband sitting up in his bed, reading something on his phone. He was still heavily encased in plaster and the bruising around his face had now turned from blue-black to a dirty greenish yellow. The doctors had said he might be allowed go home early next week as long as he had someone to take care of him. He couldn’t walk unaided and she knew his care would fall to her. She had hoped that once they were away from this hospital and together again in their own home that they could start taking the steps to work on their marriage but now the shockwaves from Rowan’s secrets were reverberating around them and shaking them once more.
James had shown her his messages and call log on his phone and he appeared to be telling the truth about Rowan’s phone call coming out of the blue. It seemed he was as much in the dark about the reason he was in the car that morning as she was. If James was Milly’s father, she couldn’t help but wonder, had Rowan planned on telling him that day? Was that why she had wanted to meet up with him? But no, she shook the thoughts away as quickly as they had entered her head, she was being ridiculous. Of course James wasn’t Milly’s father. There was most likely a perfectly innocent explanation for why Rowan had asked to meet him that day.
James placed his phone down as soon as she appeared at the end of his bed. ‘I wondered where you had got to,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to catch up on emails.’
Colm, his second-in-command, had taken up the reins of GreenCoffee in his absence, but she knew James found it difficult to switch off and was trying to stay on top of everything from his hospital bed.
She pulled out the chair beside him and sat down. ‘I was checking in on Aidan and Milly.’
‘How are they?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Pretty much the same.’ She paused. ‘Rowan’s funeral is on Friday.’ She was studying his face for a reaction.
‘I see.’ His eyes darted away from her and she could see a watery sheen to them. She knew that at some level he must be grieving for her, despite everything that had happened, they had been good friends – even more than that – at one period of their lives.
‘Obviously you won’t be able to attend,’ Helena continued. ‘But that’s probably for the best under the circumstances.’
James nodded. ‘I don’t think it would be fair to Aidan,’ he agreed sheepishly. ‘How is Milly doing?’
‘She’s still tiring easily… The team have recommended that she get a blood transfusion.’
‘The poor kid, she’s really been through the mill.’
Helena took a deep breath. She needed to clarify some things in her mind, maybe the dates wouldn’t match up and she could breathe a sigh of relief that she was wrong in her suspicions. ‘James – I need to ask you something…’ she began. ‘Before we met… when exactly did you and Rowan sleep together?’ She was gripping tightly to the arm of the chair, bracing herself for his answer.
James sighed. ‘Well, I can’t remember exactly when it happened,’ he shrugged. ‘It was a few months before I met you and I remember it was around Christmastime because I was out for my work party when I bumped into her in the pub.’
Helena did a quick mental calculation. She knew Milly had just turned three and she and James had met over three and a half years ago so he was talking about the Christmas before that, which would have been around the time when Milly was conceived. Her heart began pounding. There were too many coincidences for her liking: he had slept with Rowan around the same time that Milly would have been conceived, both he and Milly had a rare blood type and then when you threw in the fact that Aidan claimed to have the blood type O…
‘What’s wrong?’ James asked. ‘You’re looking very pale.’
‘I’m just tired,’ she lied. Her head was spinning. She didn’t want to tell him her suspicions. Judging by his reaction, James had clearly never even realised that he might be Milly’s father. How would she find out for sure? She knew she could check the chart at the end of Milly’s bed for her date of birth, but it still wouldn’t confirm anything. It wasn’t as if she could ask Rowan, and Aidan had been through enough without her telling him this too and crushing him completely. She didn’t want to cause the man any more pain. ‘I think I’m going to head home,’ she said, standing up. ‘It’s been a long day.’
‘Will you be here in the morning?’ he asked hopefully.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said as she left the room without leaning in to kiss him like she usually would.
‘I love you,’ he called after her, but she didn’t reply.
Tears of anger and pain brimmed in her eyes, turning the shapes in the corridor into blurry outlines. Why did you do it? She wondered for the millionth time as she walked down the hospital corridor. They could have been working on their marriage now and looking forward to the future together and even if that was a childless future, she was sure they could have been happy again, but instead James’s confession had left her questioning everything. Her husband had opened up a festering can of worms and he didn’t even know it.