The Baby Bonding

‘Thanks,’ she said, shooting him a grateful glance, and he smiled down at her understandingly.

‘Any time. Can I get you a drink?’

‘Only tea or coffee, as I’m driving,’ she said, her eyes fixed on Jack’s small body, taking in the strong, straight limbs, the sticky-out ribs so typical of little boys who didn’t sit still long enough to gather any fat. The need to hug him close was an overwhelming ache, and she had to fold her arms and lock them to her sides to stop herself.

‘I’ll make coffee,’ Sam was saying. ‘Mark? Debbie?’

‘Not for me. I’ll have one when I’ve finished in here,’ Debbie said, tugging a clean T-shirt over Jack’s head, and Mark shook his head, too.

‘Another ten minutes and I get my pint,’ he said with a grin. ‘I think I’ll hold on for that.’

So Sam made coffee for Molly and himself, and poured juice for the children, and then, because it was such a lovely evening, they went out into the garden and sat amongst the scent of the roses and honeysuckle and listened to the droning of the bees while the children played in the sandpit a few feet away.

‘What a gorgeous spot,’ Molly said, delighted to know that Jack was living in such a lovely place. She and Libby lived in a very pleasant house with a pretty garden, in a tree-lined street convenient for the hospital and Libby’s school, but it was nothing like this. Sam’s house was only ten minutes from the hospital, fifteen from the town centre, and yet the peace and quiet were astonishing. They could have been miles from anywhere, she thought with a trace of envy, and then quickly dismissed it.

It wouldn’t have been nearly so convenient for them, particularly not for Libby, and Molly didn’t want to spend her life driving her daughter backwards and forwards every time she wanted to see a friend or visit her grandparents. It was hard enough fitting in Libby’s schedule around her own work timetable without having to factor in being a taxi service.

No, living in the town suited them, but she was still glad for Jack that he would grow up with the song of the birds drowning out the faint hum of the bypass in the distance.

‘So, what do you think of him?’ Sam asked softly, and she dragged her eyes from the little boy who wasn’t her son and smiled unsteadily across at him.

‘He’s gorgeous. Bright and lovely and…’

She broke off, unable to continue, and she looked away quickly before she disgraced herself.

‘It’s OK, Molly. I feel the same about him, so I do understand you.’

‘Do you?’ she said quietly. ‘I’m not sure I do. He’s not my son. Why do I feel like this for him?’

‘Because you gave him life?’

‘No. You and Crystal gave him life. I just incubated him until he was big enough to cope alone.’

‘Don’t underestimate your part in it. Without you he wouldn’t be here. I think that gives you the right to feel emotional the first time you see him in three years.’

She closed her eyes against the welling tears. ‘I’ve thought about him so much,’ she confessed softly.

‘You should have seen him,’ Sam said, his voice gruff. ‘I should have kept in touch, no matter what Crystal said. I wasn’t happy with it. I always felt she was wrong, and I should have done something about it. I’m sorry.’

Molly shook her head slowly. ‘She was his mother. She had the right to make that choice,’ she pointed out, determined to defend the dead woman’s decision even though it had torn her apart, but Sam made a low sound of disgust in his throat.

‘She didn’t want to be his mother,’ he said, his voice tight and dangerously quiet. ‘She went back to work when he was four months old, because she was bored at home. Seven months later she went off with her boss on a business trip to the Mediterranean, and she never came back. Her son wasn’t even a year old, and already she’d turned her back on him.

‘She wanted a life in the fast lane, and that was how she died—with her lover, on a jet-ski, late one night. They smacked into the side of a floating gin palace that was just coming into the harbour at Antibes and they were killed instantly. They’d both been drinking.’

Molly stared at him, shocked at the raw emotion in his voice, the anger and pain that had come through loud and clear even though his voice had been little more than a murmur. Without thinking, she reached out to him, laying her hand on his arm in an unconscious gesture of comfort.

‘Oh, Sam, I’m so sorry.’

He looked down at her hand, then covered it with his and gave her a sad, crooked smile before releasing her hand and pulling his arm away, retreating from her sympathy. ‘So was I. It was a hell of a way to find out my wife was being unfaithful to me.’

‘Didn’t you know?’

He shifted slightly, moving away as if even that small distance made him less vulnerable. ‘That they were lovers? I suppose I should have done. The signs were clear enough, although she’d never told me in as many words, but, no, I didn’t know. She’d been itching to get back to work from the moment Jack was born, apparently, but she’d never really said so. Like everything else, she just let me find out.’

‘But—why?’ Molly asked, stunned that anyone could keep secrets in a marriage. It wouldn’t have occurred to her to keep anything from Mick.

‘Just her way.’ He pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘I suppose the first hint I had that things weren’t all sweetness and light was when I came home one day and found an au pair installed—so we’d have a resident babysitter, she told me. She wanted to go out at night to glitzy restaurants where you pay a small ransom for a miserable little morsel of something unpronounceable, when I was coming home exhausted from work and just wanted to fall asleep in front of the television with my son in my arms.’

‘So who won?’

He gave a sad, bitter little laugh. ‘Who do you think? Crystal wanted to go out—and what Crystal wanted, Crystal got. She said she had cabin fever—said she could understand how women got postnatal depression.’

‘And did it make any difference?’

Again the low, bitter laugh. ‘No, of course not. Then a few days later I opened a letter addressed to her by mistake. It was a credit-card bill, and in three weeks she’d run up thousands—and I mean thousands, literally. I went upstairs and looked in her wardrobe, and tucked in amongst the clothes she already had were loads of new things I’d never seen—sexy little dresses, trouser suits, skirts, tops, all designer labels, all from the big Knightsbridge stores—the sort of thing you’d wear if you wanted to seduce your boss.’

‘And it worked, I take it.’

‘Oh, yes. I confronted her about the clothes, and she cried and said she was miserable at home, and of course she loved Jack, but she just wanted to get back to work, she missed it. They were work clothes, she said. She had to look the part. So I paid the credit-card bill, and she went back to work, and the rest, as they say, is history.’

She wanted to reach out again, to comfort him again, but he’d withdrawn from her and she couldn’t. Instead she concentrated on watching the children, wondering how much this fractured upbringing had affected Jack.

Would she have had him for them if she’d known what had been in store? She’d had doubts about Crystal, but only when it had been too late, towards the end of her pregnancy. Had it been a mistake to hand him over at birth?

And then she heard Jack laugh, and saw the happy smile on his face and the love on Sam’s as he watched his son play, and she knew it hadn’t been a mistake, any of it.

Mick had died, too, although their stories couldn’t have been more different, but the result was the same and Libby was now in the same boat as Jack. Molly could never have said that having her daughter had been a mistake, or regretted her birth for a moment.

No, she had done the right thing for Jack. It was Crystal who had failed him, not her, and Sam was certainly making a good job of parenting him now, as she’d known he would.

She looked at her watch. ‘It’s getting late,’ she murmured, and Sam nodded.

‘Yes. I suppose they both ought to go to bed soon. Have another coffee before you go—just a quick one.’

And so she did, just because he didn’t seem to want her to leave and Libby and Jack were getting on so well, and in any case, given a choice she would have sat there all night watching Jack and absorbing every little detail about him.

She followed Sam back into the kitchen, deserted now that Debbie and Mark had gone to their own rooms in the little cottage on the end of the house, and as Sam made the coffee, she watched the children through the window.

‘Penny for them.’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing, really. It’s just so good to see him. I just want to hug him…’

Molly broke off and turned away, but before she could move far she was turned gently but firmly back and wrapped in a pair of strong, hard arms that gathered her against his chest and cradled her in his warmth.

The sob that had been threatening since she’d arrived broke free, and he shushed her gently and rocked her against his body, and gradually she felt her emotions calming, soothed by the comfort of his arms.

‘OK now?’ he asked, his voice gruff, and easing back from her he looked down into her eyes.

She nodded, dredging up a watery smile, and Sam lifted his hands and carefully smudged away the tears with his thumbs.

‘That’s better,’ he said, a smile hovering round his eyes, but then something shifted in their clear blue depths, and she felt her heart thump against her ribs. His brows drew together in a little frown of puzzlement and he eased away, releasing her abruptly and stepping back, busying himself with the coffee.

‘Um—about the photos. I’m not sure where they are. I’ll ask Debbie to dig them out. They know who you are, by the way, so you don’t have to worry about what you say in front of them if Jack’s not there.’

She nodded, willing her heart to slow down and her common sense to return.

If she hadn’t known better, she could have sworn he’d been about to kiss her and had then thought better of it.

No, not better. She couldn’t think of anything better than being kissed by him, but he obviously didn’t agree, to her regret.

Still, he was probably right. Their relationship was complicated enough without throwing that particular spanner in the works, however much she might want him to, and of course he had no idea how she felt about him—how she’d felt about him for years.

They went back out to the garden and drank their coffee and talked about the hospital—nice and safe and neutral, but there was a tension between them that could have been cut with a knife, and it was almost a relief when Sam put his mug down and stood up. ‘Right, time that young man went to bed, I think,’ he said briskly. ‘It’s nearly eight.’

Molly almost leapt to her feet, quick to follow his lead. ‘Good grief. I didn’t realise it was so late,’ she lied, and hustled Libby off the swing and towards the car.

Sam scooped Jack up, and just as she was about to get into the car, he leant over in Sam’s arms and held out his arms to her.

‘Kiss!’ he demanded.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she hugged him gently and received his wet little kiss with a joy that brought the emotion surging back.

‘Night-night, Jack,’ she said unsteadily, and met Sam’s eyes. Her own must be speaking volumes, she realised, but he would understand. ‘Goodnight, Sam—and thank you.’

‘Any time,’ he said, his voice gentle, and the concern in his eyes nearly set her off again. She got hastily into the car, fumbled with her seat belt and drove away, eyes fixed on the road.

‘Are you OK?’ Libby said, seeing straight through her as usual, and with a little shake of her head she pulled over, folded her arms on the steering-wheel and howled.

Libby’s little hand came out and squeezed her shoulder, and Molly wrapped her hand firmly over her daughter’s and squeezed back.

‘Poor Mummy—you’ve missed him, haven’t you?’ she said with a wisdom way beyond her years, and Molly laughed unsteadily and nodded.

‘Yes. I miss Laura, too, but at least I see her. Still, I’ll be able to see Jack now, so it’ll be OK. It was just such a lot all at once. I’m sorry, darling. I’m all right now.’

She pulled herself together with an effort, blew her nose and wiped her eyes, and then swapped grins with her darling daughter. She was so like Mick, so sensible, so good at understanding her, hugely generous and loving.

Crazy, but even after all this time, she still missed him. He’d had the best sense of humour, the sharpest wit, the most tremendous sense of honour.

And dignity. Despite the accident that had left him in a wheelchair, and with all the resultant dependence on others for his most intimate bodily functions, Mick had never lost his dignity, and she’d been unfailingly proud of him.

She wondered what he would have made of her decision to be a surrogate mother. She’d always thought he’d have been supportive and understanding, but he would have worried about her. She could never have done it if he’d still been alive, but he wasn’t, and it had been something to do to fill the huge void that his sudden and unexpected death had left behind.

In those black months after the pneumonia had claimed him, she’d been lost. She’d cared for him for years, and suddenly there had been only her and Libby, and she’d felt useless.

She’d needed to be needed, and because of a chance remark, she’d been given an opportunity to do something to help others who were unable to have children naturally. Because of Mick’s paraplegia they’d only been able to have Libby with the help of IVF, and it was only one step further to imagine the anguish of a fertile mother who, due to a physical anomaly, was unable to carry her own child.

She couldn’t have done it except as a host, but neither of the two children she’d carried had been genetically hers. They’d both been implanted embryos, so handing them over hadn’t been like handing over her own child. That would have been too big a wrench.

Handing Jack over and knowing she wouldn’t see him again had been bad enough. It had taken her years to get over the pain, and she realised now that she had never truly recovered. If he’d been her own child, it would have destroyed her. It had nearly destroyed her anyway, but now, by some miraculous stroke of fate, he was back in her life, and she didn’t intend to let him out of it ever again.

The fact that Sam would also, by definition, be part of her life as well was something she would have to deal with—and so would he.

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