For His Baby's Sake

‘Hannah was a very strong personality. You’d have liked her,’ said Drew. ‘No, you would,’ he insisted, when she looked sceptical. ‘Her parents told me that she’d been completely straight with them about wanting to do it on her own. All she would say about me was that I worked at the office and that she liked me, but that I was the last person she wanted to get involved with.’

He didn’t add that Hannah had told her parents that he was still in love with Rose, and that she knew that any attempt at getting together for the baby’s sake would be doomed to disaster.

‘So you went off to Africa none the wiser?’

‘Exactly. Hannah was very casual about it when I saw her the next day. She said it was just a fling for both of us, and that as far as she was concerned we were just friends. And that was a bit of a relief, to be honest.’

‘I’m sure it was,’ said Rose acidly. ‘You wouldn’t have wanted to have to take any responsibility for your actions, now, would you?’

A dull flush crept up his cheeks. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘And I’ve taken responsibility now. When I heard that Hannah had died, I wanted to see her parents and say how sorry I was, how much I’d liked her…it seemed like the right thing to do somehow.’

It had been. Rose studied him, a little frown between her brows. She had been so staggered to see him, and so thrown by the news that he was a father, that she hadn’t had a chance to look at him properly yet. Now she looked at him more carefully. He was browner, yes, and leaner. There were more lines around the green eyes, but otherwise he looked just as she had remembered him.

But something had changed. He seemed more solid somehow. His face was still humorous, with that long, curling mouth and the glinting amusement in his eyes, but there was a new assurance to him now, a thoughtfulness that hadn’t been there before. Africa had changed him. His time there seemed to have made him responsible rather than reckless.

He was different. Rose couldn’t quite put her finger on why or how, but she knew that it was true. And it wasn’t just to do with the baby sleeping in his lap.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘I wasn’t looking forward to it,’ Drew said. ‘I didn’t know what on earth I was going to say, but in the event I didn’t really have to say anything. As soon as Mrs Clarke opened the door she just stared at me, and then stood back to let me inside. I couldn’t understand what was going on, but she showed me into a sitting room and there was a baby in one of those bouncy chair things.’

‘This is Molly,’ Hannah’s mother had said.

‘Is she Hannah’s?’ he had asked, and she had nodded with a wavering smile as Drew approached the baby. His tentative smile had been wiped off his face as he’d looked at her properly and seen the telltale splodge in the baby’s soft dark hair. Dumbly, he had raised his eyes, and Betty Clarke had nodded again.

‘And yours,’ she had said.

Now Drew pulled the cap off Molly’s head, and Rose saw for herself. It hadn’t taken her long to get so used to Drew’s hair that she hadn’t even noticed it after a while, but she vividly remembered how startled she had been to meet his father and see exactly the same pattern on his head.

‘It’s a form of vitiligo,’ Drew had explained to her once. ‘It’s an auto-immune thing. For some reason melanin isn’t produced, and in our family it’s inherited, a sort of genetic quirk, because if we get it at all, it always shows up in exactly the same pattern.’

Molly was dark-haired, with a distinctive star-shaped streak of pale hair above her right eyebrow. Exactly like Drew.

There was no doubting whose daughter she was.

Rose watched Drew tentatively smooth Molly’s hair, and something painful—jealousy? Bitterness?—gripped her heart so hard that she had to look away.

‘Didn’t Hannah’s parents try and find you when she died?’ she asked after a moment.

Drew shook his head. ‘She’d been very careful not to give any information away, but they’d noticed that she’d smiled when she’d seen that streak when Molly was born. “Just like your dad,” she’d told Molly. So at the funeral they hoped that someone with that hair would turn up, but of course, I was overseas. They didn’t have much choice but to carry on looking after Molly themselves, but they’re struggling. Betty—her mother—is due a hip operation soon, and her husband has a bad heart. They were just wondering whether they would have to call in the social services when I turned up at the door. It seemed like providence. There’s no need to do a DNA test with that hair—all the babies in my family have that.’

‘I remember,’ said Rose slowly.

Drew looked down at Molly and then straight at Rose. ‘I couldn’t just walk away when they needed help. It takes two to make a baby, as you pointed out, and I had to take some responsibility, so I said I would look after her at least until after her grandmother’s operation, and then if that goes well we would try and sort something out.’

‘But you don’t know anything about babies,’ Rose protested. ‘I can’t believe they just handed her over to you.’

‘Betty was a little reluctant at first, but there didn’t seem to be any option, and I…I told them you would help me,’ he confessed in a rush.

Rose drew a sharp breath of exasperation. That was typical of Drew. He had always taken her for granted, always believed that he could charm her into doing whatever he wanted. ‘You hadn’t even told me that you were back in the country, Drew!’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I only got back yesterday. It all happened so suddenly. Everything was going well on the project when we had word that insurgents were making their way towards us. We were ordered to withdraw to Ouagadougou, and then the decision was made to repatriate us until the situation became clearer, and who knows when that will be?’

‘So you suddenly found yourself back in London?’

He nodded. ‘I’d been seconded to the project in Burkina Faso from my company, so I reported back to head office to see what I should do in the meantime.’

‘What did they say?’

‘They told me to take a couple of weeks’ leave, and if I’d heard nothing by then they’d find me another job. I could probably go back to the team I was working with before I left. I went to see them, and that’s when I heard about Hannah…’

Drew sighed. ‘You know, there’s part of me that wishes I’d never gone to see the Clarkes.’ He glanced down at his daughter. ‘Molly has changed everything,’ he said, sounding almost baffled.

‘Babies have a habit of doing that.’

Rose tried to imagine what it had been like for him, arriving back in London from Africa. Working in a dusty rural village one day, checking in at swish City offices the next. Believing himself to be as irresponsible and free as ever, then discovering that he was a father. She wasn’t surprised that he still looked faintly shell-shocked. He must be reeling from jet-lag and cultural shock, let alone the terrifying and unexpected responsibility of fatherhood.

But, dammit, she didn’t want to feel sorry for him! How could he turn up here with a baby, after all he’d had to say about not wanting to be a father, and just assume that she would drop everything to help him?

‘So you thought of me?’ she said, her voice hard.

‘I was going to come and see you anyway,’ said Drew. He wanted to tell her that the thought of seeing her again had been the one thing he had held onto in the muddle and chaos of leaving, but this was clearly not the time. He hadn’t really thought about how she would feel when he turned up with a baby, but it had clearly been a tactless thing to do.

‘I was looking forward to seeing you,’ he persevered, ‘but I thought you’d be working until the evening, and when I heard about Hannah I felt I should go and see her parents straight away rather than keep putting it off.’

He hesitated. ‘When I saw Molly and understood the situation…you were the first person I thought of, Rose.’ He couldn’t explain how strong his feeling had been that she was one person he needed, and that if he could only find her and show her Molly that everything would be all right. ‘You know what my mother’s like. She was never exactly hands-on with her own child, so I can’t imagine she would be much help, even if she could be persuaded back from Spain. My father might have helped, but he’s ill, and my stepmother is taken up with him at the moment. I could only think of you.’

‘You didn’t think that I might be busy? That I might have my own child to look after?’

‘No,’ said Drew. ‘I never thought of you having a baby. I thought you’d be just the same, and that I could rely on you the way I’ve always done before.’

His green eyes looked straight into hers. ‘There’s nowhere else I can go right now. I knew you would know what to do with a baby, and I had to bring Molly somewhere.’

‘And this is your house,’ Rose added for him in a dull voice, her gaze sliding away from his. ‘Don’t forget that bit.’

‘I hadn’t forgotten, but I don’t want to use that to threaten you. You live here, and nothing’s going to change that. You can tell me to leave if you want to, and I’ll go, but I’m begging you, for Molly’s sake, to help me. I’m a water engineer, Rose. I don’t know the first thing about babies. I’ll get a nanny for Molly tomorrow, but for tonight I really need your help.’

Rose looked at Molly. She was just a baby. How could she refuse to help her? Drew had known that she wouldn’t be able to do that. Her grey eyes lifted to meet his green gaze once more.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you tonight, but then we need to talk about this, Drew.’

‘Whatever you say,’ said Drew, unable to hide his relief.

As if she had been waiting for some signal, Molly’s face puckered and she began to squirm. Rose saw the relief in his expression wiped away by panic.

‘Oh, God, she’s going to wake up,’ he said desperately, sitting rigidly still, as if he could will the baby back to sleep. ‘What shall I do?’

The words were barely out of his mouth before Molly began to wail, startling Jack, who looked up from the box of toys he was emptying.

‘Ga?’

‘It’s all right, Jack, it’s just the baby,’ said Rose, getting up to take Molly from Drew, who looked frankly terrified. ‘Let me take her.’

Lifting Molly against her shoulder, she held the warm little body close and rubbed her back soothingly as she bawled. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart…Shh, now…you’ll be all right…’ she murmured, swaying in a comforting rocking motion.

Drew watched them both nervously. ‘Is she OK? Why’s she crying like that?’

‘She’s woken up in a strange place with strange people, Drew. Wouldn’t you want to cry if you were Molly?’

Out of the corner of her eye, Rose could see that Jack had stopped what he was doing and was regarding her with a scowl, jealous of the attention she was giving the baby. She badly wanted to tell Drew exactly what she thought of him, but that was going to have to wait.

‘Jack needs his supper,’ she told Drew, ‘and Molly will need something to eat, too. Did her grandmother give you food for her?’

‘I’ve got a whole car full of stuff.’

‘Why don’t you go and bring it in?’ she suggested, resigning herself to the inevitable. ‘We need to get both these children in bed, and then, Drew, we’re going to have to talk.’

CHAPTER THREE

BY THE time Drew had struggled in with the last of Molly’s stuff, the front half of the living room was crowded, but Jack’s supper was almost ready. Rose had made it largely one-handed, while inviting Jack to patronise Molly for being so small and helpless that she couldn’t do half the things that he could, like pick up his bricks. Showing off about that kept him occupied for a while, but she could tell that resentment at the attention Molly was getting wasn’t far off, and she was very glad when Drew had finished and she could hand his daughter back to him.

‘Here—you take her,’ she said.

Before Drew had a chance to protest, she had laid the baby in his arms. Molly stared up at him, and he stared back, suddenly overwhelmed. His daughter. Her eyes were the same colour as his. She had the same streak in her hair. His throat seemed to close with an emotion he couldn’t name, a mixture of terror and love.

And then Molly began to wail and the moment had passed.

‘Hold her against your shoulder and walk around with her,’ Rose told him. ‘Talk to her. She doesn’t know where she is or who we are or what’s going on. Try and comfort her.’

Gingerly, Drew did as he was told while Rose put Jack in his highchair and set his supper in front of him. She offered him a plastic spoon, as well, but without much hope that he would use it. Jack hated being fed but, while he would occasionally have a go with the spoon, generally he preferred to use his hands. He loved his food, but there was no denying that he was a messy eater. By the time he had finished, half his meal seemed to have ended up garnishing his hair or ears. It was never a pretty picture.

Rose was used to Jack’s eating habits, but she noticed that Drew averted his eyes. ‘Better get used to it,’ she told him. ‘I don’t suppose Molly’s table manners are much better! And, talking of which, we’d better find her something to eat…’

He wouldn’t have known where to begin, Drew realised, feeling horribly inadequate but profoundly grateful at the same time that Rose seemed to know what she was looking for as she dug through the pile of stuff the Clarkes had sent with Molly, emerging eventually with a bib, a jar of prepared food and a smaller version of Jack’s highchair.

‘OK, we’re in business.’ Rose carried the chair over to the table and set it next to Jack’s as she pretended to marvel at how much he had eaten. ‘Do you think you deserve some pudding now?’ she asked him, and Jack shouted an enthusiastic reply and banged his plate on the plastic tray.

Drew liked watching her with her little boy. She was so relaxed and natural with him. Would he ever be like that with Molly? he wondered, glancing down at his daughter. It was hard to imagine. All he had to do was hold her at the moment, and he felt much, much more tense just doing that than he had done when he had heard that rebel troops were closing in on the village. Insurgents he could deal with; an eight-month-old baby was a much more alarming proposition.

‘Shall we just get Molly settled first?’ Rose was still chatting to Jack, wanting him to feel pleasantly superior rather than resentful. ‘She’s just a baby. She’s not a big boy, like you, and she probably doesn’t know about puddings, does she?’ She glanced over her shoulder at Drew. ‘Do you want to put her in the chair?’

‘Um…Rose…’ Drew held Molly away from him with a grimace.

‘What is it?’

‘She…smells.’

Rose couldn’t help it. She started laughing at his expression. ‘I should have thought of that! Time for your first lesson: changing a nappy!’

Digging out the changing mat, she laid it on the kitchen floor and talked Drew through the whole process as she gave Jack his pudding and encouraged her son to condescend to Molly. She could have changed and fed the baby in half the time it was obviously going to take Drew to do it, but she would have to be careful not to make Jack jealous—and besides, Drew had to learn. She had only promised one night.

One night with Drew.

How different this night would be from all the others they had spent together, from all those long sweet nights when they had tumbled, laughing, into bed, and woken cosily entwined the next morning. Rose could still remember the smell of his skin, the heart-cracking feel of his arm holding her close into the curve of his body. The warmth of his breath on her shoulder, the touch of his lips at the nape of her neck, sending that telltale shiver of response down her spine no matter how hard she tried to pretend that she was asleep…

Hastily, Rose yanked her mind back on track. This night wasn’t going to be like that. Drew wasn’t here because he had changed his mind. He wasn’t here because he wanted her. He was here because he needed her help, that was all.

Because he had had a baby with somebody else.

Think about Jack, Rose told herself with a kind of desperation. Think about Molly. Think about anything other than what it’s going to be like lying in bed tonight, knowing that Drew is at the other end of the hall—there, but not with her.

‘Whew!’ Drew screwed up his nose as he pushed the dirty nappy into a plastic bag. ‘Who would think something so small could make such a stink?’

Rose pushed the thought of the night to come aside, and got up from her chair next to Jack’s to dispose of the nappy. ‘Welcome to my world,’ she said.

After the nappy-changing, learning how to feed Molly would be relatively painless—or at least that was what Drew thought, until he discovered that there was a lot more to it than simply popping a spoonful of food into her mouth every now and then. Molly turned out to have a will of her own, and if she didn’t feel like having what he offered she would close her little mouth firmly and avert her face, batting the spoon away with an imperious hand. Drew ended up with more food on him than in the baby, but Rose didn’t seem to think it mattered.

‘She’s had something to eat, that’s what’s important,’ she said, wiping Molly’s face with the deftness of long practice and lifting her out of the highchair. ‘Now, what about a bath?’

‘That would be great,’ said Drew, looking down at his smeared shirt. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’

‘Not you, dummy! Molly and Jack.’

Drew was exhausted by the time Molly was finally ready for bed. ‘Do you mean to say you have to do this every day?’ he asked, appalled.

‘But this is the best bit,’ said Rose, unable to resist cuddling the warm, clean baby who snuffled into her neck.

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