Falling For The Single Dad

She made herself a drink, went back to the sitting room and had another try at the television. Maybe another programme, something less dependent on her not having missed a huge chunk. She flicked though the channels.

A cookery programme, yet another make-over show, a soap she’d never watched and a documentary on one of the many messy wars that seemed to be going on all over the world.

Which took her straight back to Harry Kavenagh and the tiny crying baby next door…

‘Hush, little one,’ he pleaded, jostling her gently. ‘Have a drink, sweetheart, you must be hungry. Is it too cold? Too hot?’

Hell, how was he supposed to know? He liked his coffee scalding hot and his beer ice-cold. Somewhere in between was just alien to him.

He stared in desperation at the house next door, the lights just visible through the screen of trees.

No. He couldn’t go round there. She’d hardly greeted him with open arms, after all.

‘Well, what the hell did you expect?’ he muttered, swapping the baby to his other arm and trying a different angle with the bottle. ‘You drop out of her life for years and then stroll back in with a baby in your arms—she probably thought you were going to dump the baby on her!’

He tightened his grip on his precious burden and the crying changed in pitch. Instantly he slackened his grip, shifted her to his shoulder and rubbed her back, walking helplessly up and down, up and down, staring at Emily’s house as he passed the window.

The lights were out now, only the lovely stained-glass window on the stairs illuminated by the landing light. Strange. He didn’t remember her being afraid of the dark. Maybe it was because she was alone in the house…

‘Stop thinking about her,’ he growled softly, and the baby started to fuss again. ‘Shh,’ he murmured, rubbing her back again and going into the bathroom. ‘How about a nice warm bath?’

Except she pooed in it, and he had to change the water in the basin one-handed without dropping her, and then it was too hot and he had to put more cold in, and then it was too full, and by the time he got her back in it she was screaming in earnest again and he gave up.

He could feel his eyes prickling with despair and inadequacy. Damn. He wasn’t used to feeling inadequate. ‘Oh, Gran, where are you?’ he sighed a little unsteadily. ‘You’d know what to do—you always knew what to do about everything.’

He dried the baby, dressed her in fresh clothes and tried to put her in the baby-carrier, but she wasn’t having any. The only way she’d settle at all was if he held her against his heart and walked with her, so he did exactly that.

He pulled his soft fleecy car rug round his shoulders, wrapped it across her and went out into the mild summer night. He walked to the cliff top and then down through the quiet residential roads to the prom, strolling along next to the beach and listening to the sound of the sea while the baby slept peacefully against his heart, and then when he could walk no more and his eyes were burning with exhaustion and he just wanted to lie down and cry, he took her home and sat down in the awful chair that the tenants had left and fell asleep.

Not for long.

Not nearly long enough. The baby woke, slowly at first, tiny whimpers turning gradually to a proper cry and then ultimately a full-blown blood-curdling yell by the time he’d found her bottle in the fridge and warmed it and tested it and cooled it down again by running it under the tap because of course he’d overheated it, and by the time he could give it to her she’d worked herself up to such a frenzy she wouldn’t take it.

He stared down at her in desperation, his eyes filling. ‘Oh, Kizzy, please, just take it,’ he begged, and finally she did, hiccupping and sobbing so she took in air and then started to scream and pull her legs up, and he thought, What made me think I could do this? I must have been mad. No wonder women get postnatal depression.

He wondered if it was possible for men to get it. Clumsy, inadequately prepared fathers who’d never been meant to be mothers to their children—men whose wives had died in a bomb blast or an earthquake and left them unexpectedly holding the baby. Or men widowed when their wives died in childbirth. Or even men who’d taken the decision to be the house-husband and main carer of the children. How did they cope?

How did anyone cope?

He changed her, then changed her again when she was sick down her front, then gave her another little try with the bottle and finally put her down in the carrier, shut the door and went upstairs to the bedroom he’d used as a child, leaving her screaming.

He had to get some sleep if he was going to be any good to her.

But the only furniture in the room was a bare, stained mattress, and he couldn’t bring himself to lie on it even if he could ignore the baby’s cries for long enough to get to sleep.

He looked around him critically, taking in the state of the place properly for the first time, and realised that if he was going to live in it, it was going to need a team of decorators to come in and blitz it, new carpets and furniture throughout and probably a new kitchen.

And in the meantime he’d be living there with the baby?

He must have been insane.

He should have let the doctors throw the switch all those weeks ago instead of interfering.

Acid burned his stomach and he shook his head.

No.

Whatever came next, what he’d done so far had been exactly the right thing. The only thing. And it would get easier. It had to. He’d learn to cope. And right now he was going back downstairs, and he’d lift her out of the carrier and lie down on the grubby chair and cuddle her on his chest until they both went to sleep. The rest he could deal with tomorrow…

‘I’m going to get you!’

Emily ran after her giggling son, chasing him down the garden and scooping him up, and straightened to find Harry standing on the other side of the fence staring at her and Freddie in astonishment.

‘Um—hi,’ he said. She smiled back and said, ‘Hi, yourself. How’s the baby?’

Freddie looked at him with the baby on his shoulder, gave his lovely beaming smile and said, ‘Baby!’ in his singsong little voice and clapped his chubby hands in delight.

Now she’d had time to register it, Emily was too busy searching Harry’s exhausted face to worry about the baby. There were deep black smudges under his eyes, and his jaw was shadowed with stubble. She ached to hold him, to stroke that stubbled chin and soothe the tired eyes with gentle fingers—’ Are you OK?’ she asked, trying to stick to the plot, and his eyes creased with weary humour.

‘I’m not sure. I’m so tired I can’t see straight at the moment. We had a bit of a problem in the night.’

‘I heard,’ she said, feeling guiltier still for her less-than-enthusiastic welcome the evening before. ‘Um—look, why don’t you come round and have a coffee? We’re not doing anything, are we, Freddie? And we’ve got an hour before we have to pick up Beth.’

‘Beth?’ he said.

‘My daughter.’

She wondered if he’d notice the use of ‘my’ and not ‘our’. Maybe. Not that it mattered. If he was going to be living next to her for longer than ten minutes, he’d work out that she was alone. Anyway, she didn’t think he was worrying about that at the moment. He was busy looking slightly stunned, and she wondered if she’d looked like that last night when she’d seen his baby for the first time.

Probably. She’d been shocked, because the last time they’d met, they’d both been single and free, and now, clearly, he wasn’t. And as for her—well, she was single again, but far from free, and maybe it was just as much of a shock to him to know she was a parent as it had been to her to realise he was.

Because, of course, if she knew nothing about his private life for the last umpteen years, it was even more likely that he knew nothing about hers.

Or the lack of it.

He gave her a cautious smile. ‘Coffee would be good. Thanks.’

Coffee? She collected herself and tried for an answering smile. ‘Great. Come through the fence—the gate’s still here.’

She opened it, struggling a little because the path was a bit mossy there and the gate stuck, and he grabbed it and lifted it slightly and shifted it, creaking, out of the way.

‘The creaking gate,’ he said, and added, with that cheeky grin that unravelled her insides, ‘It always did that. I used to know just how far to open it before it would rat on me.’

And she felt the colour run up her cheeks, because she remembered, too—remembered how he’d sneak through the gate and meet her at the end of the garden in the summerhouse, late at night after everyone was asleep, and they’d cuddle and kiss until he’d drag himself away, sending her back to bed aching for something she hadn’t really understood but had longed for anyway.

‘We were kids,’ she said, unable to meet his eyes, and he laughed softly.

‘Were we? Didn’t always feel like it. And the last time—’

He broke off, and she took advantage of his silence to walk away from the incriminating gate and back up the garden to the house, Freddie on her hip swivelling wildly round and giggling and shrieking, ‘Baby!’ all excitedly.

She really didn’t want to think about the last time! It should never have happened, and there was no way it was happening again.

She scooped up the runner beans from the step, shoved open the back door with her hip and went in, smiling at him over Freddie’s head.

‘Welcome back,’ she said, without really meaning to, but she was glad she had because the weariness in his eyes was suddenly replaced by something rather lovely that reminded her of their childhood, of the many times she’d led him in through her parents’ back door and into the welcome of their kitchen.

‘Thanks.’ He reached out and ruffled Freddie’s bright blond curls. ‘I didn’t know you had kids.’

There was something in his voice—regret? She shot him a quick look, filed that one for future analysis and put the kettle on. ‘Yup. Beth’s three, nearly four, and Freddie’s nineteen months. Real or instant?’

‘Have you got tea? I daren’t have too much caffeine. I had so little sleep last night I want to be able to grab every second of it that’s offered!’

She laughed and reached for the teapot, lifting it down from the cupboard and putting Freddie on the floor. ‘Darling, go and find your cup,’ she instructed, and he trundled off, humming happily to himself.

‘He’s cute.’

‘He is. He can be a complete monster, if it suits him, but most of the time he’s gorgeous.’

Harry gave a strangled laugh. ‘I wish I could say the same for this one, eh, Mini-Dot?’

‘Mini-Dot?’ she said, spluttering with laughter, and he chuckled.

‘Well, she’s so tiny. It’s not her real name. Her real name’s Carmen Grace—Kizzy for short.’

‘Oh, that’s pretty. Unusual.’

‘Grace is for my grandmother.’

‘And Carmen?’

His face went still. ‘For her mother,’ he said softly, and there was an edge to his voice that hinted at something she couldn’t even begin to guess at. Maybe he would tell her later. She hoped so, because she didn’t feel she could ask. Not now.

She would have done, years ago, but they’d spent every waking minute together in those halcyon days of their youth and there had been nothing they hadn’t shared.

But now—now she didn’t know him at all, and she didn’t know how much he was going to give her, and how much she wanted to give back.

So she said nothing, just made them tea and found a few chocolate biscuits and put them on a plate. Then Freddie came back with his cup trailing a dribble of orange juice behind him, and she refilled it and mopped up the floor and hugged him, just because he was so sweetly oblivious and she loved him so much it hurt.

He giggled and squirmed out of her arms and ran out into the garden, and they followed him, she with the tray, Harry with the baby—Mini-Dot, for goodness’ sake!—and she led him to the swinging seat under the apple tree.

‘Is this the same one?’ he asked in wonder, but she laughed and shook her head.

‘No, it fell to bits. Dad bought a new one a few years ago, so you don’t have to sit down so carefully any more.’

He chuckled and eased himself down onto the seat, leaning back and resting his head against the high back and closing his eyes. ‘Oh, bliss. This is gorgeous.’

‘Bit of a change from your usual life,’ she said without meaning to, and he cocked an eye open and gave a rusty little laugh.

‘You could say that.’ For a moment he was silent, then he sighed and opened his other eye and turned his head towards her. ‘It takes a bit of getting used to—the quiet, the birdsong, the normal everyday sounds of people going about their daily lives. Crazy things that you wouldn’t think about, like the sound of a lawnmower—when I can hear it over the baby, that is,’ he added, his mouth kicking up in a rueful grin.

She answered him with a smile, then felt her curiosity rise. No. She wouldn’t go there…

‘What happened, Harry?’ she asked softly, despite her best intentions.

His smile faded, and for a moment she didn’t think he was going to answer, but then he started to speak, his voice soft and a little roughened by emotion. ‘I found her—Carmen—sitting by the side of the road, begging. Every day I walked past her on my way from the hotel and gave her money. Then after four days she wasn’t there. The next time I saw her, she’d been beaten up. Her mouth was split, one eye was swollen shut and the other one was dull with pain and despair. She wasn’t expecting anything—a few coins, perhaps, nothing more—but I took her to a café and bought her breakfast, and talked to her. And it was only then that I realised she was pregnant.’

Emily clicked her tongue in sympathy. ‘Poor girl.’

He nodded. ‘She’d been raped, she told me. She didn’t know the father of her child, it could have been any one of several men—soldiers. She’d didn’t know which side they were on. It didn’t really matter. She was a gypsy. They aren’t highly regarded in Eastern European countries—liars, thieves, lazy—you name it. And two nights before she’d been raped and beaten again. But she was just a girl, Emily, and she was terrified, and she’d lost her entire family.’

‘So you took her under your wing,’ she said, knowing that he would have done so, because he’d always been like that.

He gave a tiny hollow laugh. ‘In a manner of speaking. I moved her into my hotel room, fed her, got a doctor for her, and while I was in the shower she stole my wallet and ran away. So I tracked her down and asked her why. Eventually she told me she was waiting for me to rape her.’

Emily asked again. ‘So what did you do?’

‘I married her,’ he said quietly. ‘To keep her safe. Ironic, really. I brought her home to London and installed her in my flat. I gave her an allowance, paid all the bills and saw her whenever I could. And gradually she learnt to trust me, but she was lonely. Then she started going out and meeting up with people from her country and she was much happier. She was learning English, too, at evening classes, and starting to make friends.’

He fell silent, and she waited, watching him, knowing he would carry on when he’d found the words.

‘She was mugged. She was seven and a half months pregnant and someone mugged her on the way home from college one night. She ran away and crossed the road without looking and was hit by a car. She was taken to hospital, but she had a brain injury, and by the time they got hold of me she was on life support and they were doing brain-stem tests. So much for keeping her safe.’

The horror of it was sickening, and she put her hand over her mouth to hold back the cry. ‘Oh, Harry, I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.

‘Yeah.’ He swallowed. ‘They didn’t know whether to switch off the machine. They’d scanned the baby and it was fine, but they didn’t know how I’d feel. I’d just flown in from an earthquake, I hadn’t slept in days and I was exhausted. I didn’t know what to say. I just knew I couldn’t give up on the baby—not after everything we’d been through. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She hadn’t asked for this, and I’ve seen so many children die, Em, and not been able to do anything about it. And here was one I could do something about. I couldn’t let her go. So I asked them to keep Carmen alive, long enough to give the baby a chance. And last week she ran out of time. Her organs started to fail, and they delivered the baby and turned off the machine. I got there just too late to say goodbye.’

He stared down at the baby on his lap, her mouth slack in sleep, her lashes black crescents against her olive cheeks, and Emily’s vision blurred. She felt the hot splash of tears on her hands, and brushed them away.

‘Harry, I’m so sorry,’ she said again, and he looked up, his eyes haunted, and then looked down again at the precious bundle in his arms.

‘Don’t be. Not for me. I know it’s hell at the moment and I feel such a muppet—I’m not used to being so phenomenally incompetent and out of my depth, but it will get better. I’ll learn, and she’s amazing. So lovely. So much perfection out of so much tragedy and despair. And I’m all she’s got.’

Emily wanted to cry. Wanted to go into a corner somewhere and howl her eyes out for him, and for the baby’s poor young mother, and for little Carmen Grace, orphaned almost before her birth.

‘So that’s us,’ he said, his voice artificially bright. ‘What about you?’

‘Me?’ she said, her eyes still misting. ‘I’m, ah—I’m fine. I’m a garden designer—fitting it in around the children, which can be tricky, but I manage more or less. Get through a lot of midnight oil, but I don’t have to pay for my accommodation at the moment.’

Although if her parents did sell their house, as they were considering doing, that would all change, of course.

‘And their father?’

She gave a tiny grunt of laughter. ‘Not around. He didn’t want me to keep Beth. Freddie was the last straw.’

Harry frowned. ‘So what did he do?’

‘He walked—well, ran, actually. I haven’t seen lightning move so fast. I was four months pregnant.’

‘So he’s been gone—what?’

‘Two years.’

Two difficult, frightening years that she would have struggled to get through without the help of her parents and her friends, but they’d all been wonderful and life now was better than it had ever been.

‘I’m sorry.’

She smiled. ‘Don’t be. Things are good. Hang in there, Harry. It really does get better.’

He looked down at the baby and gave a twisted little smile. ‘I hope so,’ he said wryly. ‘It needs to.’

‘It will,’ she promised, and just hoped that she was right…

CHAPTER TWO

FREDDIE’S CUP landed in her lap, dribbling orange on her, and she absently righted it and brushed away the drips.

Finally she looked back at him. ‘So—aren’t the legal ramifications vast? Nationality and so on?’

He shrugged. ‘Apparently not. I was Carmen’s husband, I’m down on the baby’s birth certificate as her father. That makes her British.’

‘But you’re not. Her father, I mean. Couldn’t that land you in trouble, if they ever found out?’

‘How? Are you going to tell them? Because I’m not. I know it’ll be hell, but I won’t be the first father to bring up a child alone, and I doubt I’ll be the last. And if not me, then who? The legalities are the least of my worries. I owe her this. It’s the least I can do.’

The least he could do? Devoting his life to her? He was either even more amazing than she’d remembered, or utterly deluded.

Probably both. Rash and foolhardy, his grandfather used to say affectionately. But kind. Endlessly kind. He reached for his cup, the baby held against his shoulder by one large, firm hand, but her head lolled a little and his grip tightened and she started to cry again.

‘Let me—just while you drink your tea,’ she said, and reaching out, she lifted the tiny little girl into her arms.

‘Oh—she’s so small! I’d forgotten! They grow so quickly—not that Freddie was ever this small. Beth was dainty, but even she—’

She broke off, the baby’s fussing growing louder, and she walked down the garden a few steps, turning the baby against her breast instinctively.

And with the same instinct, little Carmen Grace nuzzled her, then cried again. Oh, poor lamb. She needed her mother!

‘She’s hungry,’ she said, her voice uneven, and he got up and reached for her, but Emily shook her head, curiously reluctant to let the baby go.

‘Bring the bottle. I’ll hold her while you get it, it’s all right.’

He hesitated for a second, then went, squeezing through the gate and returning a few moments later with a bottle. ‘I don’t know if it’s the right temperature,’ he said, handing it over, and Emily tested it on the inside of her wrist and frowned.

‘It’s too cold. I’ll go and warm it. Keep an eye on Freddie for me.’

She went into the kitchen, gave the bottle a few seconds in the microwave, shook it vigorously and tested it again, then slipped the teat into the baby’s mouth, silencing her cries instantly.

Good.

She went back down the garden and found Harry on his knees with Freddie, playing in the sandpit. As she walked down the garden he sat back on his heels and looked up at her with a relieved smile.

‘Sounds peaceful.’

She laughed and settled herself on the bench, watching them and trying not to let her stupid thoughts run away with her.

‘Did you love her?’ she asked, then wanted to bite her tongue off, but he just sat back again and stared at her as if she was crazy.

‘She was a child, Em. I married her for her own protection. Yes, I grew to love her, but not in the way you mean. It was just a legal formality, nothing more. I never touched her.’

She felt a knot of something letting go inside her, but she didn’t want to think about the significance of that. She turned her attention back to the tiny scrap in her arms. The bottle was almost empty, the tiny amount she’d drunk surely not enough to keep her alive, but she was so small, her stomach must be the size of a walnut. Smaller.

She lifted her against her shoulder and rubbed her back, waiting for the burp and watching Harry as he piled sand into the bucket with Freddie and helped him turn it out.

‘Mummy, castle!’ Freddie shrieked, and the baby bobbed her head against Emily’s shoulder, her whole body stiffening in shock. She soothed her with a stroking hand, rocking her and smiling at Freddie.

‘I can see,’ she said softly.

‘How about a moat?’

‘Wasa moat?’ he asked, and Harry chuckled.

‘It’s like a big ditch full of water that goes all round the outside—here, like this,’ he said, scraping out a hollow ring around the slightly wonky castle.

‘You made one on the beach with Dickon and Maya last week,’ Emily pointed out, and Freddie nodded and scrambled to his feet.

‘Mummy, water!’ he demanded, running to her with his cup, but Harry got up and grinned and ruffled his hair.

‘Let her sit there for a minute. We’ll get the water. Come with me and show me where the tap is,’ he said, and held out his hand.

Freddie, normally the last person to allow such a familiarity, slid his hand trustingly into Harry’s and trotted happily beside him, chattering all the way to the kitchen.

Emily glanced down at the baby, sleeping again, her tiny face snuggled into the crook of her neck so that she could feel the soft skin, the warm huff of her breath, the damp little mouth, and the ache in her chest grew until she had to swallow hard to shift it.

‘Poor baby,’ she crooned, cradling her head with a protective hand. ‘Don’t worry, darling. We’ll look after you.’

She didn’t even think about the words. They came straight from her heart, bypassing her common sense, and as she rocked the baby in her arms, she felt a sense of rightness that should have rung alarm bells, but the bells were switched off, and the warning went unheeded.