The Baby Bonding

‘You must be Debbie,’ Molly said.

The woman nodded, and tipped her head towards the window. ‘This is my husband, Mark.’

She turned her head and saw him for the first time, sitting quietly in a chair in front of the long, low window, one leg propped up on a stool and a cat curled up on a riotous heap of wool in his lap. The sun glinted on an armoury of piercings, and there was an elaborate tattoo running up one arm and disappearing under his sleeve.

The unlikely tapestry designer, of course.

She smiled across at him. ‘Hi, there. Nice to meet you. Sam’s told me a lot about you both.’

‘Oh, dear, sounds ominous,’ Debbie said, laughing and scooping Jack up to sit him on the table and strip off his soggy T-shirt. ‘I think you’d better put something dry on, don’t you? You’ll catch a cold—and don’t tell me it’s an old wives’ tale,’ she said, levelling a finger at Sam.

He threw up his hands in mock surrender and pulled out a chair. ‘Molly, have a seat,’ he said, and she sat, quickly, before her suddenly rubbery legs gave way.

‘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.’