Читать книгу Single Dads Collection - Lynne Marshall - Страница 21

‘EM?’

There was something about Dan’s voice that sent a chill right through her. He was watching the news—something she’d steadfastly refused to allow herself to do—and she left her desk and went through to the sitting room.

Dan was standing there in front of the television, and he took her hand. ‘Em, it’s Harry, they’re filming this live. He’s pulling some crazy stunt. He’s gone inside this house to help the man find his wife and baby, and—

The picture shuddered, and the cameraman exclaimed in shock, but he kept filming, live, on the other side of the world, as a cloud of dust rose up and the building shifted and settled.

She stared at it, her mouth open, and her heart all but stopped.

No.

Please, God, no.

She sat down abruptly and watched the rescue workers desperately trying to clear the rubble. The cameraman who’d been filming at the time was being interviewed now, and he was clearly shocked. ‘I told him not to go in, but he just went anyway. He’s never listened to reason, I guess this is just another of those occasions. We all do it and we try not to think about the consequences, but you never think it’s going to happen to you.’

He turned back, staring at the rubble. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t talk to you. I have to help.’

And he went over to the gang working on the house and joined in, while Emily sat in shocked silence, twisting her hands together and forgetting to breathe.

‘Dan, he’s going to die,’ she whispered. ‘He may already…’

She broke off, distraught, and grabbed the remote control from his hand, switching to the satellite news and selecting the newsflash. Then Nick rang. Dan answered the phone, and a few minutes later he arrived to collect Beth and Freddie and take them to play. He’d seen the news, and knew what it would have done to her.

‘Hang in there,’ he said to Emily, hugging her, but she was numb.

All she could think of was Harry, the body she’d held so lovingly, that had brought her such joy, crushed by the weight of the rubble. All the tenderness, the passion, that wicked sense of humour and enormous energy snuffed out like a candle.

Kizzy woke, and she sat there in front of the endless news and fed his daughter while the tears streamed unheeded down her cheeks and her eyes stared unblinkingly at the unfolding drama before her.

God, he hurt.

Everywhere.

There was something pressing on his back and shoulders so he could scarcely breathe, and just beyond him he could hear Ismael’s wife weeping. Ismael was silent, and he hadn’t heard the baby cry at all.

He could hear rescue workers, though, the shouted instructions, the sound of machinery. And then they called for silence, and he tried to yell, but his breathing was so restricted he couldn’t do more than whisper.

He could knock, though. He managed to make his hand into a fist around a rock, and he smacked it as hard as he could against the slab above him.

‘I can hear something,’ someone shouted, and he recognised the voice of Tim Daly, the cameraman.

He banged again, and again, and then he heard the scrape of a shovel and the urgent voices.

Thank God. He closed his eyes and assessed the situation.

He was lying on his front, his head turned to one side and his left arm twisted up behind his head. He must have lifted it up to protect his head and neck, but it was stuck now, and he didn’t want to think about the pain. But he couldn’t move at all. He could feel everything—only too well—but apart from his right arm and a very small amount of movement in his left leg, he was trapped. And if they managed to free him, he might end up with crush syndrome, from all the muscle proteins pouring into his bloodstream when the circulation was restored. And then he’d go into multiple organ failure and die.

He felt panic begin to rise, and squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating on slowing his breathing and not wasting energy. He wasn’t getting enough oxygen into his body to waste it on futile panic.

So he thought about Em, and the baby, and how he would have felt if it had been them in here and he’d been in Ismael’s place.

What was it Dan had said about being between a rock and a hard place? He nearly laughed, but the laugh turned to a sob, and he forced himself to be calm. He focussed on Emily’s face, the tender smile as she reached up and touched his mouth when he’d made love to her, her fingers exploring him.

He should have stayed there with her. He should have told his boss to go to hell, and stayed there with her, with the woman he loved, and with the family that had become his own.

But then he wouldn’t have been there to help Ismael.

And Ismael might have been outside still when the aftershock had hit, instead of inside, lying still and silent while his wife wept at his side.

Just like Carmen, dead and cold in the hospital chapel while her tiny motherless daughter had struggled for life in the special care baby unit. All because he’d interfered.

He felt bile in his throat, but he could hardly swallow, and it seared his parched throat. He ignored it. Precious little else he could do, and all he could think about was Kizzy and what would become of her if he died.

If only Emily wasn’t so set on not having her. They’d make such a wonderful family, but she’d made it quite clear that she didn’t want any more to do with her than was absolutely essential. Take the breast pump, for example. He’d thought it was crazy right from the start, taking the milk out of Emily into the pump and then a bottle to give to her, when the sensible, best and most convenient thing would have been to feed her directly.

But she’d been adamant, and who was he to argue? Just a relic from her past come back to complicate her carefully ordered existence.

It hadn’t done a lot for his, either. Well, a lot for his existence, but damn all for the careful order. Or was it careless disorder he meant? Being able to walk out of the door at a moment’s notice with nothing more than a phone, his wallet and his keys. A far cry from leaving the house with a baby. You had to be seriously orderly to achieve that. It was like a military operation.

He thought of his flat in London. He’d given Dan the keys the day before he’d left, so he could go and stay there. Was he still there? He hoped not, because when—if—he got out of this mess, he’d have to move back there.

Back there, alone, without Kizzy, without Em, without Beth and Freddie, without Nick and Georgie and their children. He wondered if they’d had the baby yet. Maybe not. It wasn’t quite due, he didn’t think, but he couldn’t remember.

It seemed suddenly very important that he did, but he was losing focus. His right leg had gone to sleep, and his left arm was beginning to break through the mental block he’d put on it and give him hell. If only he could breathe…

It took ten hours to get him out.

Ten hours, during which Emily sat glued to the screen, watching the endless loop of tape until she knew it by heart, waiting for any further news to dribble through.

And then suddenly, without warning, they cut live to the scene where they’d been working all night, and they showed the rescue workers freeing him, lifting him carefully onto a sheet of corrugated iron and carrying him out.

Alive!

He was alive! His hand was moving, his legs shifting, and they cut to his face, battered and dusty, his mouth crusted and bleeding, and the emotion she’d held back for so many hours poured out in a torrent.

‘Shh, baby, I’ve got you,’ Dan said, cradling her against his chest, and she sobbed and sobbed, her eyes never leaving the screen as they carried him over the rubble and off down the street, Tim Daly, the cameraman, at his side.

‘He’ll be all right, won’t he?’ she asked, and Dan hesitated for a second and then nodded.

‘Hopefully. At least he’s alive. That’s a good start.’

She straightened up and shot him a keen look. ‘You think he could die? You do, don’t you? Dan, he can’t die. I can’t live without him.’

She phoned the television centre but she got nowhere. She didn’t know the name of his boss, and even if she had, who was she? A neighbour. That was all she could say. Not his lover, the woman looking after his baby. Not to the person on the switchboard. He might not want it to be common knowledge.

But she was desperate to get a message to him.

‘Send him a text,’ Dan said, reading her mind. ‘He might have his phone on him.’

But it was lying in the rubble where he’d left it, together with the rest of the contents of his pockets, and it had been crushed beyond repair.

He was alive.

Sore—he gave a humourless laugh at that—but alive. His left arm was broken in two places and they’d pulled it out straight and put a cast on it without anaesthetic because he had been in danger of losing his hand because of the kinked arteries. That had been a bundle of laughs. And as for the rest of him, he was scraped and filthy and bruised to the point of Technicolor, but he was alive.

And so, to his relief, were Ismael and his wife and child. Ismael had a broken leg and concussion, but Rom and the baby were miraculously unharmed by their ordeal.

He went and saw them before he left the field hospital, and Rom took his bandaged hand and pressed it to her cheek and cried.

He hugged her gently, touched the baby’s tiny hand with his bandaged finger and left them to it. They were all alive, and together. That was all that mattered. They were the lucky ones.

And so was he.

He knew what he had to do. Right now, before he did anything else.

But there was no reply, either on her house phone or her mobile, and he didn’t feel he could leave a message. He didn’t know what to say, in any case. He just knew he had to talk to her.

Face to face.

Yes. That was better. He’d do that.

Tim got him back to their base, helped him pack up his few things and took him to the airport.

‘Good luck.’

‘Thanks.’

Tim went to shake his hand, took one look at the bandages and hugged him instead. ‘It’s been good working with you, you crazy bastard,’ he said, his voice choked, and then he let him go and gave him a little shove towards the departure lounge.

He needed no further encouragement.

There was no word from him.

She’d thought, in all the time that had elapsed, that either he or one of the team could have given her a call, but no. There had been nothing.

She knew he was all right. She’d seen him landing at Heathrow two hours ago, battered and bruised, his left eye swollen shut, his arm in a sling and both hands bandaged to the fingertips, but she’d had no word.

Well, what had she expected? That was Harry all over, dropping in and out of her life as if nothing had ever happened, breezing through and leaving her a mangled wreck in his wake.

She stared at the ceiling, wondering when he’d turn up. He would, of course. There was no question about that. He’d come back to sort out Kizzy, as he’d put it. And if she was stupid enough to encourage him, he’d probably stay for a while, but he’d go in the end, like he always had.

Well, she wouldn’t encourage him. She’d let him make his arrangements for the baby, and she’d wave him goodbye and get on with her life.

Somehow.

She turned over and banged the pillow, but she couldn’t sleep. She heard a car stop on the street, then drive on, and then a few moments later there was the sound of stones against her bedroom window.

What on earth…?

She heard it again, and got out of bed and peered round the curtain.

‘Harry? What on earth are you doing?’ she whispered hoarsly, throwing up the window and telling her heart to stop it, but he just grinned, and her heart flipped again and raced.

So did she, all the way downstairs, out of the back door and round the corner, straight into his arms. Well, arm. The other one was a hard line across her chest, and she realised it was in a cast.

‘Ouch,’ he said, laughing, and then the laughter died and his face contorted a little. His bandaged right hand came up to touch her face. ‘It’s nice to see you,’ he said, and she gave a little hiccup of laughter that could just as easily have been a sob, and nodded.

‘It’s nice to see you, too. I wondered—when they showed it…’

She broke off, unable to finish, and he hugged her hard against his side with his right arm and led her into the house.

‘Do you want a drink?’ she asked, but he shook his head.

‘All I want is to talk to you. To hold you. To try and let myself believe that I’m really here with you. But first I need to get my head down.’

‘Do you want your keys?’

‘Keys?’

‘To your house. So you can go to bed.’

His eyes searched her face. ‘Where’s Dan?’

‘Here. Upstairs in bed.’

‘Then come with me.’

She shook her head. ‘I’ll need to feed Kizzy.’

‘Can’t Dan do it?’

She shook her head. ‘No, because…’ She looked away. ‘I gave up with the pump. It seemed pointless. Wrong. So I need to be here. But you could stay,’ she added, and then held her breath.

‘Em?’

She shrugged. ‘I know I shouldn’t. I know you said you were going to give her up for adoption, and it’ll tear me apart to let her go, but—it was all I could do for her, and you weren’t here for her, and I just…’

‘Oh, Em,’ he breathed, and wrapped his arm around her. ‘Come to bed with me. We need to talk, but I have to lie down. We’ll go in your room.’

So they went upstairs, Harry limping slightly, his right leg reluctant to bend, and she led him into her bedroom, closed the door and undressed him, her eyes filling at the sight of the bruises.

‘Sorry. It’s a bit gaudy,’ he said with a strained smile as she helped him ease back onto the mattress.

‘You could have stuck to one part of the spectrum, instead of going for the whole rainbow,’ she said, but her voice cracked unconvincingly and he sighed and drew her down against his chest.

‘Come and lie next to me,’ he murmured, and she lay down carefully and cuddled up, her head on his shoulder, worried about the bruises.

‘Doesn’t that hurt?’ she asked, but he shook his head.

‘Not so much that I’m going to let you go.’ He turned his head and kissed her, just a brush of his poor, bruised lips against her brow, and she lifted her head and touched her mouth to his.

‘Oh, Em,’ he sighed, and his arm eased her closer. ‘I thought I’d never see you again. I lay there, listening to Rom crying in the darkness, and I wondered if any of us would get out of there alive.’

‘Rom?’

‘Ismael’s wife. She’d got a two-week-old baby in there with her. Em, if you’d seen the look on that man’s face—heard his voice…’

‘I did,’ she told him. ‘Tim was filming it. He filmed it all, right up to the aftershock, and then he put the camera down and left it running while he got help and joined in. Someone else picked it up and carried on filming, and they interviewed him, but he wouldn’t talk, he wanted to help. They showed it live. I was watching when it all went shaky and the buildings shuddered, and I knew you were in there…’

She couldn’t go on, couldn’t relive it, and his arm tightened. ‘Shh, it’s OK, I’m here,’ he said, and his mouth found hers again, his kiss urgent in the darkness.

He rolled towards her, his cast bumping against her hip, and she lifted her hand and cradled his jaw. ‘Harry, we can’t. It’ll hurt you.’

‘You’ll have to be gentle, then, won’t you?’ he replied, and drew her tighter against his body. ‘Because I need you, Em. Don’t imagine for a moment that once was ever going to be enough.’

She took a ragged breath and let it out. ‘I thought…it was goodbye.’

‘No way. There’s something you have to know. I’ve handed in my notice. You were right. It isn’t what I am, it’s just what I do. What I did. But there are other things, more important now. Other people can do my job. It’s time for a change. In all sorts of ways.’

He shifted, his bandaged right hand stroking up and down her back, the touch strangely soothing. ‘About Kizzy,’ he said softly. ‘How would you feel about adopting her?’

For a moment she thought she hadn’t heard him right, because until that moment it had sounded as if there was hope for them, but this…?

‘You ought to know, though,’ he went on, his hand still stroking her, ‘that she comes complete with her father. So if you did feel you wanted to take her on, you’d be taking me on, too. For better, for worse etcetera. And if you agreed, I’d very much like to adopt Beth and Freddie, too. So we all belonged to each other. Because I’ve realised that home isn’t a place, it’s the people, and my home is with you. You and Kizzy and Beth and Freddie. And I want to come home for good, Em. To you.’

He was holding his breath, she realised. His chest had frozen under her cheek, his heart thudding wildly.

‘Oh, Harry,’ she whispered, unable to speak. Instead she lifted her face to his, and kissed him.

‘Well?’ he demanded, his voice shaking, and she gave a funny little laugh that cracked in the middle.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said unsteadily. ‘Yes, please. I can’t think of anything I’d like more.’

His mouth found hers, cutting her off, and she lifted herself up so she could kiss him back better. Then gently, tenderly, so as not to hurt him, she eased out of his arms and settled down beside him.

‘Hey!’

‘Shh,’ she told him. ‘Just rest now. There’s no hurry. We’ve got the rest of our lives ahead of us.’

And snuggling against his side, her hand over his, she listened as his breathing eased into sleep. He gave a soft snore, and her mouth kicked up into a contented smile.

So he did have some habits she’d have to get used to, she thought, but she didn’t care. She’d embrace every one with joy.

Harry was finally home.