Читать книгу For His Baby's Sake - Jessica Hart - Страница 5

SHE couldn’t afford it. Rose threw down her pen with a sigh. No matter how many different ways she tried it, the figures just didn’t add up. Which left her with a problem.

‘What,’ she asked her small son, ‘am I going to do with you?’

There was no reply from Jack, but Rose hadn’t really expected one. At twenty months, his vocabulary was too limited to suggest the practical solution she needed, but he looked up at the sound of her voice and offered her instead a smile of such sweetness that Rose felt her heart contract. Jack might not be able to deal with her current childcare crisis, but his smile was all she needed to reassure her that somehow, some way, she would manage.

Leaving the depressing bank statements on the kitchen table, she went to sit on the floor beside him while he returned his attention to the brightly coloured bricks that were scattered around him. Absently, Rose piled three on top of each other, showing him how to make a tower.

‘I need that contract, but I can’t take you with me to the studio,’ she said, as Jack instantly reached out to knock the precarious tower over. ‘Peter and Peter are lovely, but their place is much too perfect for toddlers. There are too many sharp edges and antiques, and anyway, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on work if you were there.’

She quite often talked to Jack, knowing that he couldn’t understand. He was happy to listen to her voice, and it made her feel less alone to be able to talk things through, even if the conversations were inevitably rather one-sided.

Jack was looking aggrieved at the disappearance of the tower, and Rose quickly built another one, higher this time, and his face lit up as he realised that he could demolish that, too.

‘Perhaps I should have married your father when he asked me,’ she went on guiltily.

Thinking about how sensible it would be to marry Seb always made her a little uncomfortable. It wasn’t that she had any problem with being sensible normally, but it was a big step to marry someone you didn’t really love, no matter how practical an option it seemed, and Rose still hadn’t been able to commit herself further than saying that she would think about it.

‘But that wouldn’t have solved the problem of what to do with you now,’ she reminded Jack quickly, setting a blue brick precariously on top of the pile. ‘He’d still have had to go to Bristol for that job, and I would still be here wondering how I can afford someone to look after you. I can’t do that unless I start work on this contract, but I can’t work unless I can find someone to look after you.’

Sitting back on her heels, she smiled as Jack destroyed the second tower with a shout of triumph. ‘It’s a problem, isn’t it?’

‘Ya!’ yelled Jack delightedly.

‘That sounds like a yes to me.’ Rose sighed as she looked at her watch and levered herself upwards. She had better start making Jack’s supper. Perhaps some magic solution would occur to her when he was in bed and she had some quiet time to think.

Leaving Jack trying to build his own towers, she went over to the kitchen. She loved this room. Apart from the narrow hallway leading up to the stairs, the whole ground floor of the Victorian terraced house had been knocked through to make a bright, open-plan living room, with comfortable sofas towards the front, and a kitchen with a big table and French windows opening onto her little garden at the back.

Although, strictly speaking, it wasn’t her garden at all. It was Drew’s. Not that he had ever lived here, or would have done anything to the garden if he had. Whenever Rose thought of the absurdly low rent she paid, she felt quite dizzy with relief and gratitude. Without Drew she really wouldn’t have been able to manage since Jack had been born. He had always been generous.

Irresponsible, restless and ridiculously scared of commitment, but undeniably generous.

Her gaze fell on an old photo clamped to the front of the fridge with a Snoopy magnet. It showed her squinting slightly into the sun, and Drew with his arm around her. They were both smiling, both radiating happiness and confidence in the future. Both looking very young.

It seemed right to keep a picture of him up since this was his house, although Rose always felt a pang when she looked at it. Drew, with his crooked smile and his dancing eyes and that odd, distinctive pale star-shaped splodge in his dark hair. She had always known that she loved him. She just hadn’t realised how much until he had left.

Drew. Where was he now? ‘I’m off to Africa,’ he had said cheerfully the last time she’d seen him at some awful party she’d gone to with Seb. ‘I’ve been seconded to an aid project, putting in water supplies to remote villages.’ Rose always forgot exactly where he had gone—one of those sub-Saharan countries whose capitals she couldn’t pronounce. All she had really taken in at the time was the fact that he was leaving.

That he would rather go and work in the heat and the dust and the danger than stay at home and have a family with her.

Her eyes rested on his face in the photo. She could imagine him so clearly, standing under the African sun, sleeves rolled up, eyes screwed up against the light. He would be loving the tough conditions. There had always been a reckless, restless side to Drew, and he had a wonderful capacity to turn even the direst situations into good fun.

How long was it since she had had fun? Rose tried to remember wistfully.

Not since she had handed Drew that ultimatum. Settle down with me and start a family, or let me find someone else who does want children, she had told him.

And Drew had chosen to let her find someone else.

‘But we’ll still be friends,’ he had said, and he had meant it. When Rose had asked if she could rent the house he had bought as an investment while he was away, he hadn’t hesitated. ‘You’ll be doing me a favour,’ he had said. ‘I couldn’t ask for a better tenant than you, Rose.’

Rose stopped the sigh that threatened just in time. Drew had moved on, and so had she. Firmly, she opened the fridge so that the photo was out of sight, and put Drew out of her mind as she made herself think about feeding her small son instead.

Pulling out a piece of chicken and a bowl of fresh tomato purée that she had made earlier, she decided to cook some pasta, as well, and see if she could sneak in some peas. It was amazing how early Jack had come to regard certain green vegetables with suspicion.

She was filling a saucepan with water for the pasta when the doorbell went. Jack looked up, and Rose saw his surprised expression mirroring her own.

‘Who do you think that is?’ she asked him as she turned off the tap. ‘We don’t usually have visitors at this time.’ Jack was so mobile now that she was wary of leaving him on his own even for a moment, and she bent to pick him up. ‘Let’s go and see who it is.’

Balancing him on her hip with the ease of long practice, Rose squeezed past the pushchair that blocked the narrow hallway. She could see a man’s shape through the opaque glass panels in the front door, and she frowned slightly. If this was someone doing a survey it was really inconvenient timing, and so she would tell him.

But the words died on her lips as she opened the door and saw who was standing there.

Drew.

Drew!

With a baby.

Drew shifted the baby awkwardly in his arms. She was heavier than he had thought, but at least she was still asleep, he thought gratefully. What a day this was turning out to be! He had had no idea when he’d set out to see the Clarkes after lunch that he would find his life completely changed by teatime.

‘I’ll be fine,’ he had assured Betty Clarke. ‘I’ve got an old friend called Rose. She’ll help me.’

He should have called, Drew realised, but the situation was much too complicated to explain on the phone. He had just known that Rose was the person he needed, and he’d wanted to get to her as soon as possible. He hadn’t let himself think about anything but finding her.

It was only when he stood on the doorstep, ringing the bell to his own house, that Drew wondered if he should have checked after all. What if Rose were still at work? What if she had decided to go out for the evening? Would she still have the same mobile number?

Then, to his immense relief, he saw through the glass panels that someone was coming towards the door, and for a moment he even forgot the baby in his arms as a rush of anticipation at the thought of seeing Rose again swept through him. It was nearly a year and a half since they had last met, and then she had been with some colourless guy that Drew hadn’t liked at all. With any luck she would be on her own this time, and they could talk properly, the way they had always used to talk.

Drew had hoped that going to Africa would get Rose out of his system at last. That had been the plan, anyway. Rose had moved on, and so would he. Not only would he move on, he would move somewhere so different that he would never even think of her.

But it hadn’t worked like that. All those crushingly hot nights when he lay on his makeshift bed and listened to the relentless shrilling of a million million insects, the memory of her had been as cool and refreshing as iced water.

Drew suspected that he had romanticised Rose’s image in his memory, but when the door opened at last, his first impression was that she was as lovely as ever. She had the same straight silvery blonde hair, the same wide grey eyes, the same sweet curve to her mouth that had haunted his dreams.

But she wasn’t on her own. All those long African nights, and he had never once pictured her with a toddler on her hip.

Which was funny, really, when he had known all along that what Rose really wanted was a baby.

And now it seemed that she had one.

Drew’s carefully prepared speech evaporated from his mind as he looked at her. Rose. He had been planning to cajole her and charm her—to beg her for her help, if necessary. But now all he could think was that he was too late.

Much too late.

‘Hello, Rose,’ he said simply, unable to think of anything else to say, but his smile felt stiff and he had the oddest sensation of stumbling and falling into a deep, dark pit.

Rose’s expression was almost cartoon-like in its astonishment. ‘Drew!’ she gasped, finding her voice at last, although it sounded quite unlike her own. ‘Drew…what…what…?’ She was stuttering with surprise, bewildered by so many questions that it was impossible to decide which to ask first. ‘What are you doing here?’ she managed at last. ‘I thought you were in Africa!’

‘It’s a long story,’ said Drew, realising that he had the advantage. At least he had been expecting to see her, even if he hadn’t been prepared for the shock of realising that she had a child, or for the way his heart had slammed into his throat at the sight of her. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Yes…of course…’ In a daze, Rose stood back, and Drew edged awkwardly past her in the narrow doorway. For a devastating moment they were very close, and she was overwhelmed by the sudden realisation that this wasn’t a dream. This was real, and Drew was right there, bare inches away from her. Browner than she remembered him, tougher somehow, but otherwise exactly the same.

Apart from the baby in his arms, of course.

Rose felt very strange. She didn’t know what she wanted to say or do or know first.

‘Sorry about the pushchair,’ she said breathlessly, for want of anything better to say until she could make up her mind. ‘There’s nowhere else to keep it.’

‘That’s OK.’

Drew made it past the pushchair and into the living room. He looked around him, recognising the house he had bought as an empty shell, but barely. The furniture was his, but Rose had made the room unmistakably her own. She was a designer, of course, and she had always had the gift of making a house stylish with just a few carefully placed pieces.

The brightly coloured bricks scattered over the floor didn’t belong in any style scheme, though, and nor did the plastic highchair at the table or the rest of the unmistakable baby paraphernalia. Rose’s life had changed.

Without him.

Drew made himself smile again as she followed him into the room, and he looked properly at the little boy in her arms for the first time. Grey eyes identical to Rose’s stared back at him.

‘Who’s this?’ he asked. He was trying to sound jovial, but he was uncomfortably aware that his tone wasn’t quite right.

‘This is Jack,’ said Rose, holding Jack a little more tightly than normal.

‘Is he yours?’ said Drew, then cursed himself for a fool as she nodded. Of course Jack was hers. He had known that as soon as he looked into the little boy’s face.

‘Hello, Jack,’ he said, but Jack, overcome by shyness suddenly, hid his face in his mother’s neck.

Drew could remember just what it felt like to bury his face into the curve of her throat like that. He knew exactly how her skin smelt there. He looked away, ashamed to find himself jealous of a small child.

‘He’ll come round,’ Rose said. ‘Just give him a minute or two.’

Drew put his smile back in place. ‘Well…congratulations,’ he made himself say. ‘I know how much you wanted children. You must be very happy.’

‘I am. Jack’s everything I ever wanted.’

No, not everything, Rose, she corrected herself, remembering how many times she had ached to rewind time and unsay that ultimatum. But then she wouldn’t have Jack, and how could she wish that?

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were having a baby?’

Rose lowered Jack to the floor, where he clung to her legs. ‘I didn’t think you’d be that interested, Drew. You’ve always gone out of your way to avoid babies.’ She looked at the sleeping baby in his arms, but avoided the obvious question. ‘Why should you care if I had one?’

A dull flush spread along Drew’s cheekbones. ‘I thought we were friends,’ he said. ‘Of course I’d care about something so important to you. Maybe it wasn’t my business, but…’ He paused, and then shrugged. ‘I wish I’d known, that’s all.’

‘You’ve been out of touch,’ Rose reminded him, trying for a lighter note. ‘You can’t expect to keep up with all the news when you take yourself off to the middle of nowhere for years on end!’

‘Just under eighteen months,’ said Drew, not sure why he was feeling so defensive. ‘I’ve been out of e-mail contact, it’s true, but there’s a postal service. You could have written.’

‘Yes, I could have,’ she conceded. Walking awkwardly, with Jack clinging to her leg, she went over to one of the sofas and gestured to Drew to sit down on the other one. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said honestly. ‘It’s just that you seemed a long way away.’

She should have told him about Jack. Especially since they were living in his house. She just hadn’t been able to find the words.

‘I did mean to write, in fact, but…’ She lifted her shoulders hopelessly. ‘To be honest, I wasn’t sure how to tell you.’

‘Well, there’s no reason why you should have done,’ said Drew after a moment. ‘It’s just strange seeing you with a baby.’

‘I could say the same about you.’ Rose looked meaningfully at the baby, still sleeping peacefully in his arms. It was obviously a little girl, and someone had dressed her carefully in a dress and little coat, with a cute striped hat, although Rose guessed that someone hadn’t been Drew. He was holding her as if she were an unexploded bomb. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Molly.’

‘Nice name,’ said Rose, puzzled by the expression on his face. ‘Whose is she?’

Drew hesitated. ‘She’s mine,’ he said after a moment. ‘Molly’s my daughter.’

There was a long, long silence. Even Jack seemed to sense the tension, pausing in the middle of scrambling up onto his mother’s knee to look up into her face.

‘Your daughter?’ Rose said in a frozen voice. It was the last, the very last thing she had expected.

‘I’ve only just found out myself,’ said Drew. He swallowed. This was much more difficult than he had imagined when he had gaily assured Betty Clarke that he would be able to look after Molly. ‘Rose,’ he confessed, ‘I really need your help.’

Rose stared at the baby. At Drew’s daughter. After everything he had said about not wanting children, he was a father. Another woman had had his baby. Rose was unprepared for how much that knowledge hurt.

Mechanically, she lifted Jack onto her lap. Swallowed. Dragged her gaze from the baby to look right into Drew’s eyes.

‘I think you’d better explain,’ she said.