Special Deliveries: Her Gift, His Baby: Secrets of a Career Girl / For the Baby's Sake / A Very Special Delivery

‘It’s a month, Mum.’

‘And I’m old enough to know what I like and that this is right.’

‘Well, why not just see how it goes now you’re back?’ He could hear Penny’s wariness and then her mother’s exasperation.

‘Can’t you just be happy for me, Penny?’

‘Of course I am.’

But they all knew it was qualified and then the strain was back in Penny’s voice, especially when her mother asked how she felt about losing the baby.

‘It wasn’t a baby, Mum! I got my period.’ Ethan closed his eyes. Kate had been right—it was different for everyone, because Kate had had photos and named every embryo. ‘It just didn’t work.’

‘Okay, Penny.’

They chatted some more and then with Penny promising to go round tomorrow she finally got her mother out of the door. Ethan looked up at Penny’s strained features as she came through the bedroom door.

‘Sorry about that.’

‘No need to say sorry.’

‘She just goes too far.’ Penny let out an angry breath. ‘I can’t think of it as a baby.’ Ethan was terribly aware suddenly that he was lying not in a bed but a minefield. ‘I’d go mad otherwise, if I thought like that.’

‘I know.’

‘I bet she didn’t ask Jasmine to hold off trying to conceive till she got back.’ Ethan swallowed, thought it best not to say a thing, though was tempted to fire a quick SOS to his sister just in case he said the wrong thing. ‘Well, she can go over there now and hear Jasmine’s latest happy news.’ Penny joined him on the bed. ‘She’s met the love of her life, apparently.’

‘Bradley,’ Ethan said, and she gave a little laugh.

She turned to him. ‘I’m supposed to be happy for her.’

‘Aren’t you?’

Penny looked back at him. ‘From past experience I really don’t trust my mother’s taste in men so no, I’m not going to clap hands and get all excited. He’s the first person she’s seriously dated since my father left.’

‘Do you ever see him?’

‘Never,’ Penny said. ‘And I’ve never wanted to. I see enough of his sort at work and I’ve stitched up enough of his sort’s handiwork too.’ She didn’t want to talk about her father. ‘What did you do while we were talking?’ Penny asked.

‘Read,’ Ethan said. ‘Had a little walk around the bed, worked out that you rotate your wardrobe …’

‘Of course I do,’ Penny said. ‘I haven’t got time to think what to wear each day.’ She climbed off the bed. ‘I’m going to have a shower.’

‘Good,’ Ethan said. ‘And I’ll find you something to wear.’

‘I can choose my own clothes, thank you.’

‘You don’t know where we’re going.’

‘Ethan, I don’t want to go out.’

‘Which is exactly why you should.’

Penny chose her own clothes, thank you very much. A pair of shorts and a T-shirt and wedge sandals and Ethan watched in amusement as she applied factor thirty to every exposed piece of skin. When they walked out of her smart townhouse and didn’t head straight for his car, Penny actually felt a bit shaky.

‘I’ve been inside too long.’

‘I know you have.’

Really, since her walk on the beach with Jasmine it had been work and appointments and stopping at the supermarket on the way home, she told Ethan as they walked down to the beach.

‘I’m a terrible wife even to myself,’ Penny said, taking off her sandals and holding them as they walked down the path to the beach. ‘I try to remember to make lots of meals and then freeze them and I always mean to make healthy lunches and take them in.’

‘Same,’ Ethan said.

‘And I do it for one day, sometimes two.’

‘That’s why there’s a canteen, Penny.’ Ethan smiled. ‘For all the people who have rotting vegetables in the drawer at the bottom of their fridge and didn’t have time to make a sandwich, and if they did they don’t have any super-healthy grain bread.’

Penny smiled. It was actually really nice to be out. It was a very clear day, the bay as blue and still as the sky, and the beach pretty empty. It was just nice to feel the sand beneath her feet and she thought of the last time she had been here with Jasmine and Simon, having hot flashes and carrying petrified hope and talking about wild flings with Ethan.

Penny glanced over at him, glad and surprised that the one thing she hadn’t wanted that day had transpired.

‘How come you ended up at Peninsula?’ Penny asked.

‘I wanted a change.’ Ethan’s voice was wry. ‘I thought a nice bayside hospital would mean a nice laid-back lifestyle—I mean, given we don’t have PICU and things.’ He gave a shrug. ‘I didn’t count on catchments and that we’d get everything for miles around and then end up transferring them out.’

‘You don’t like it?’

‘I love it,’ Ethan mused. ‘It just wasn’t what I was expecting it to be—and I know that I don’t do this sort of thing enough.’ Ethan thought about it all for a long moment as they walked—thought about the wall of silence he had been met with because he hadn’t been able to suddenly come back when Penny was sick. Thought about all that was silently expected of them. Ethan wasn’t a rebel, just knew that there had to be more than work, and he told her that.

‘You go out,’ Penny said, because she’d heard that Ethan liked to party hard.

‘I do,’ Ethan said, ‘but …’ Just not lately. Ethan had once thought of days off counted in parties and bars and women and how much he could cram in. But since Phil’s death it had all halted. Right now, just pausing on the beach on his one day off, Ethan actually felt like he’d escaped.

‘I’m going to join a gym.’ Penny broke into his thoughts.

‘So you can feel guilty about not going?’

He made her smile because, yes, over the years she’d joined the hospital gym and the one near home many times.

‘Why don’t you just walk here more often?’ Ethan suggested.

‘Why don’t you?’

They took the path off the beach that led into town and ordered brunch—smoked salmon and poached eggs on a very unhealthy white bread, washed down with coffee and fruit juice, and it was nice to sit outside and watch the world passing. Ethan was right, it was so good to be out, but being out meant exposure and after half an hour sitting at a pavement café she heard a woman call his name.

‘Ethan.’