Читать книгу New Year Wedding For The Crown Prince - Meredith Webber, Meredith Webber - Страница 9

CHAPTER TWO

CHARLES LOOKED AROUND the room, realising that when rain wasn’t lashing the windows, Dottie would have an expansive view of the sea from her bed. Here, too, there were the early signs of Christmas decorations—a small, stained-glass decal on one window, a box of tinsel in a corner. Had someone—Jo?—started on the task before the weather turned?

But what really interested him in the room was a chest of drawers to one side of the bed, and the ranks of framed photos taking pride of place across the top of it.

Was there one of his mother?

He could hardly walk over and have a look.

Jo had pulled two chairs closer to the bed from what would be a sitting alcove by the window, and put small side tables beside each of them.

She waved him to one of them, but as she bent to set down her tray, he thought he saw her wince.

Strangers don’t ask questions, he told himself, but the doctor in him had to say, ‘Are you okay?’

‘Practice twinges, that’s all,’ she said, but the pink had gone from her cheeks and she looked a little drawn.

‘I’m also a doctor,’ he said to her quietly, ‘so if your baby decides to come early, and you can’t get into the village, I have delivered them before.’

‘This baby is not coming early,’ was the reply, no less forceful for being whispered. ‘This is to be a Christmas baby, timed to the minute!’

He considered that a bit ambitious. Would she consider having it induced on Christmas morning if it wasn’t showing signs of arrival?

‘What are you two whispering about?’ Dottie demanded to know.

Charles smiled at her.

‘I was just saying it’s a coincidence, Jo being a doctor, because that’s my profession.’

‘Ha!’ said Dottie with malicious glee. ‘I knew that vagabond was lying!’

Charles shook his head—unable to make any connection.

Jo must have been equally confused, for it was she who asked the question.

‘And just why, Dottie, does Charles being a doctor make his father a liar?’

‘Because his father always said he was a prince, and if that was true then his son would be a princeling, or whatever a prince’s sons are called, and this fellow says he’s a doctor.’

She paused, smiling in malicious glee, then went on, ‘Although he could be a liar, too, and the doctor thing just humbug!’

‘Oh, Dottie,’ Jo said, barely able to speak for laughter, ‘you do come up with the most startling logic. If his dad’s a prince then he’s probably one, too, but he could hardly hang around waiting for his father to die so he can have a job. If the liver place is as small as he says it is, there probably aren’t enough duties to keep his father busy, let alone Charles as well. He would have needed a job.’

Charles had watched Dottie while Jo was speaking—better by far than watching Jo with the laughter lingering in her eyes. The old lady didn’t seem at all perturbed, eating her way through her plate of cheese toast and sipping at her cocoa.

But her eyes were on him the whole time.

Trying to make out if he was the imposter she thought him?

Or trying to see some resemblance to his mother? A family likeness of some kind...

He hoped it was the latter, but after thirty-six years would she be able to tell?

The photos up here would definitely be off limits unless Dottie agreed he could look at them. There’d been no obvious photos of his mother in the parts of the house he’d seen so far. And, like Jo, he didn’t want to pry into drawers.

But he had come all this way to learn something of the mother he’d never known, so although her behaviour so far had been hardly welcoming, he had to overcome Dottie’s suspicion and distrust somehow.

‘Why did she call you Charles? Or did your father do that?’

The questions were so unexpected Charles swallowed some cocoa the wrong way and had to cough before he could answer.

‘No, my mother named me—well, she and my father chose the names before I was born. Apparently, they both liked Charles as a name, then Edouard after my father’s father and Albert after hers.’

He looked directly at Dottie.

‘Your husband was called Albert, wasn’t he?’

He thought the scowl she gave him might be all the answer he’d get, but then she said, ‘Bertie—we called him Bertie!’ in such a gruff tone Charles guessed at the emotion she was holding in check.

And why wouldn’t there be emotion? How would he have felt if she’d suddenly turned up at home?

Overwhelmed, to say the least.

He set aside the rest of his toast and moved his chair a little closer to the bed.

‘I know this must be a terrible shock for you, but I did write a couple of times and never received a reply so it seemed the only thing to do was to come. I’ll go away again as soon as your flood goes down, if that’s what you want.’

The scowl turned to a full-blown glare.

‘I do not open letters with foreign stamps,’ she said. ‘You do not know what germs they might be carrying. It’s how they spread anthrax, you know.’

Though slightly startled by the pronouncement, most of Charles’s attention had turned to Jo, who had her eyes shut and her hand to her belly.

That, he knew, was a contraction!

Had his inattention drawn Dottie’s eyes to Jo so that she said, ‘If that was a contraction, look at your watch and start timing them.’

After which she lifted the table off her legs, set it aside on the bed, and clambered out, remarkably spry for someone who looked about a hundred.

‘And don’t worry,’ she added, crossing the room to Jo. ‘I’ve delivered most of the people still alive in the village, grandparents, parents and even some of the older children. I’ll take care of you.’

The look of horror on Jo’s face told Charles what she thought of that idea, but she rallied.

‘That’s very kind, Dottie, but I’m a doctor, I should be able to manage. I mean, don’t women in some developing countries give birth in the fields where they are working, then wrap the baby in a sling on their back and keep working? If they can do that, I should be able to manage.’

She closed her eyes, pausing as another contraction tightened her belly.

‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘I absolutely cannot have the baby now. It’s not Christmas Day, and Chris and Alice can’t get through, and you know they want to be here.’

‘You’ve got no choice, my girl,’ Dottie told her. ‘And too bad if they can’t be here. I never did approve of them using you like this.’

Jo lifted her hand.

‘Please, Dottie, no more of that. And I’ll be glad of your help, but perhaps...’

She turned to Charles.

‘You’d have a mobile, wouldn’t you? If I do go properly into labour, we could start with video chat on my mobile and if it runs out of charge, could we use yours?’

‘You want your labour going out on video chat?’ Charles asked, totally bewildered by the speed at which things had moved from his meeting with his grandmother to possibly having to deliver a total stranger’s baby in the midst of the gale that thrashed the windows and shook the house. ‘With who, and why?’

‘Only to Chris and Alice,’ Jo said. ‘You see, it’s their baby.’

She spoke as if that explained everything, though from Charles’s point of view it only made things more confusing.

Their baby?

‘You’re a surrogate?’

But even as he asked the question he watched the colour drain from Jo’s face, and knew it was another contraction, a bad one. Childbirth hurt. So why would she go through it for someone else?

And how would she feel when it came time to hand over the baby she’d carried—nurtured—for nine months?

Now Dottie was issuing orders so he couldn’t pursue the matter.

‘Take the supper things down to the kitchen,’ she was saying to him. ‘Then when you get back I’ll tell you where to find clean linen. There are some sheets that are washed so thin they’re soft, and plenty of old towels. We’d better use this room, because the others all leak. The little chaise longue should be ideal because the back of it only comes halfway. And gloves, I suppose. There might be gloves in the kitchen!’

‘Washing-up gloves?’ Jo said faintly. ‘You’re going to deliver Lulu with washing-up gloves?’

‘You just relax,’ Dottie ordered. ‘We’ll do whatever is necessary.’

Charles carried the half-eaten meal down to the kitchen, wondering whether he should get out of this madness before he caught whatever brought it on!

Was the road really flooded?

And that thought horrified him!

Surely he wasn’t thinking of leaving these women on their own—one to deliver her baby, the other as dotty as her name.

Of course he couldn’t, flooded road or not.

So he carried his burden to the kitchen, noticed the bucket was full on the way and came back to empty it, checking there was no new stranger standing at the door before he threw the water.

Back upstairs for more orders! That part at least was a novelty. At home, and at the hospital, he was more likely to be giving them...

* * *

Jo closed her eyes and wondered if she willed it hard enough she could stop the contractions.

Forget about it!

But what about Chris and Alice? her mind protested.

Charge your mobile.

She stood up, ignored Dottie’s shriek that she needed to wait for the next contraction to time it, and went to her bedroom, where, by some miracle, her mobile was already on the charger and, even more wonderful, fully charged.

The linen cupboard was her next destination. He might be willing, this Charles who’d appeared from nowhere, but she doubted he’d fathom the system in Dottie’s linen cupboard.

But Dottie had been right, there were sheets washed to a softness that could be used to clean and wrap a newborn, and plenty of old towels—Dottie rarely parted with anything—on which the baby could be delivered. And she could cut up some of the old sheets to use as nappies—they’d be softer than the towels...

She pulled out an armful of each, then, because it felt good to be standing, she walked along the hall, avoiding buckets on the way, then back again.

Walking was good, until the next contraction came—far too close to the previous one—and she leant against the wall, the linen pillowed in her arms.

‘Was that a contraction?’ Dottie asked, peering out the bedroom door to see where her patient had gone.

Jo nodded, so bemused to discover she was thinking of herself as Dottie’s patient she couldn’t manage words.

The pain passed and she carried the linen through to Dottie’s room, then turned back. What she really needed was a shower—and just in case this baby really was coming, she’d have a shower, put on a clean nightdress and—

And what?

No! The baby couldn’t come. She wasn’t ready! Chris and Alice weren’t ready! And worst of all, there was this stupid low off the coast with wind gusts too strong for a helicopter to make it out here if anything went wrong—not with her so much, but with the baby...

She considered crying, so great was the frustration, but she wasn’t the crying type—tall, well-built women couldn’t get away with tears the way petite women could. Besides which, she’d never seen the point. What good did it do? And it made her eyes red! She’d have a shower. That way, if she did happen to cry—well, in the shower, who could tell...?

She stood under the streaming hot water for so long it began to turn cold. She knew the ancient hot-water system would take hours to heat it again and felt guilty about using it all, though Charles and Dottie had already showered.

The next contraction was strong enough for her to grab the washbasin to hold herself steady until it passed.

This couldn’t be happening!

It was bad enough that she’d spent the last weeks of this pregnancy wondering how she could stop herself shrieking or swearing in front of Chris and Alice, but in front of Dottie and the stranger?

Dear Heaven! What was she to do? Didn’t soldiers in bygone times bite on bullets while surgeons extracted other bullets from their wounds.

How did they not break their teeth? she wondered as she walked back to her room.

Not that Dottie would have a bullet to bite on—at least Jo hoped not, although with Dottie you couldn’t be sure of anything.

Another wave of pain washed over her. This was ridiculous, she thought as she gripped the end of the bed for support. Baby was two weeks early when the obstetrician had assured her it would be late, and she was out on the bluff with the worst weather in a hundred years raging all around her, and a total stranger and an eighty-five-year-old midwife for support!

Not that she doubted Dottie’s ability to do anything she set her mind to—sheer stubbornness would see to that!

As the pain ebbed, Jo pulled out a clean nightshirt, packed because it was slightly more decent than the long T-shirts she usually wore to bed, and she’d thought she might have to get up to Dottie in the night. She put cream on her face and sat on the bed, her hands on the low swell of her belly.

And images she didn’t want came flooding back, sitting like this on a hospital bed at fifteen years old, a child still herself, about to have a child—a child she was going to give away.

Then Gran had been there, in her head, Gran’s arms around her shoulders, telling her it would all be all right and to think how happy someone would be—the couple waiting for the baby, as Chris and Alice were waiting for this one.

And everything had been all right.

Another contraction brought her back to the here and now—with a vengeance! She rode the wave of pain, checked her watch, and realised she’d have to leave the sanctuary of her room.

At least if she had the baby here and now she’d be spared the indignity of a hospital gown that invariably left the wearer’s backside hanging out. Should she phone Chris and Alice now, or wait until she was certain this was going to be the main event?

Unable to decide, she emptied the upstairs buckets again, then paced the corridor, up and back and up and back, not wanting to return to Dottie’s room with nothing more than a purple and white striped nightshirt covering her body.

Charles appeared at some stage of her pacing, fitting his step to hers.

‘I know it probably helps to keep moving but at some stage I need to check on your cervix to see how dilated it is.’

A complete stranger checking out her cervix?

Particularly this handsome and apparently princely stranger...

Panic welled inside her and for all she told herself that most of the doctors she saw were strangers at first, nothing eased the disturbing thought of this man looking at her most private parts.

‘Dottie can do that,’ she said, and the man had the hide to smile.

‘I have no doubt at all about that,’ he said. ‘I rather imagine she can do anything she sets her mind to, but she is frail, and a little arthritic, I imagine. It would be easier for me to check.’

And as another wave of pain was clutching at Jo’s body she couldn’t argue. In fact, it was bad enough, she realised as it waned, that she wasn’t really going to care who did what to her as long as they got Lulu safely out.

And soon!

‘Do you have to do it now?’ she muttered ungraciously at him.

‘I think so,’ he said, putting an arm around her waist to steady her as she straightened up from the wall. ‘It will give us some idea of how far along you are, and if Dottie has happened to keep an old stethoscope, I should be able to hear the baby’s heartbeats as well, to check it’s all right.’

‘Her heartbeats—she’s all right!’ Jo reminded him, but all he did was smile and continue to guide her towards Dottie’s room with his arm around her waist.

Totally unnecessary—at least until she stiffened as her belly tightened and another wave of pain rose inside her. She clung to him, and felt the strength in the arms that held her. Wondering how a prince might get strong arms diverted her momentarily, until keeping back the urge to yell blocked everything but the pain from her mind.

Dottie had covered the end of the low chaise longue with clean towels and was now engaged in tearing the fine old sheets into large squares.

‘We can dry it with some of these then swaddle it. We’ll think about nappies and such later.’

She must have caught sight of Jo’s pale face.

‘Coming faster, are they?’ she said. ‘Well, get up there so we can check your cervix. If it’s not already dilated to seven or eight centimetres, you might as well go to bed in your room and try to get some sleep. It will be a long night.’

Jo, who’d managed between pains to subside onto the chaise, tried to work out Dottie’s thinking. She rarely did any obstetrics work herself but was aware that the cervix started thinning out and dilating over the days and sometimes weeks before the active phase of labour began.

‘I imagine she’s been timing your contractions better than you have,’ Charles said, answering her unspoken question. ‘You’re well into the active phase of labour, hence her guess.’

‘But we’ll have to get the phones ready. Mine’s fully charged in my room across the passage. Would you use yours too? Please?’

‘Will you stop whispering and concentrate on what you’re here to do,’ Dottie said in an exasperated voice, as she threw a light sheet over Jo’s lower body and levered her legs up to they were bent at the knees. ‘I’m quite capable of holding a phone if someone gets the number and sets the camera on go. If this bloke is a doctor, then we’ll let him do the business. You’re pretty low down and I don’t bend as well as I once did.’

But the words were lost in a haze of pain, while Jo gripped the high side of the makeshift bed and gritted her teeth so tightly she wondered if she’d break them.

Even without the bullet, she thought grimly as the wave diminished.

‘Close to ten,’ she heard Charles say, but the wave returned with renewed ferocity, and she heard herself yell to someone, anyone, to get her phone.

‘Chris and Alice, under C in the friends list,’ she panted, now imagining Lulu’s passage down the birth canal. Sliding forward with the contraction, retreating slightly as it passed.

And Chris and Alice not here to experience it...

Tears formed in her eyes and she tasted blood as she bit down on her lower lip.

‘You’re allowed to yell, or moan, or even swear, you know,’ Charles said, squatting at the bottom of the chaise with her phone focused on her dilated cervix.

So moan she did as the next contraction seized her tortured body, although through the haze of pain she heard Charles order Dottie to take over filming, telling them the head had crowned.

Did she push now? She tried to remember her classes. No, maybe not now—let Lulu come out gently. But hadn’t she pushed earlier? Pushed, puffed, panted—she’d been relying on Chris and Alice who’d attended all the antenatal classes with her to tell her what to do when, but now she was too tired to remember any of it, while her first experience had been wiped completely from her memory!

And now the contractions had stopped—well, eased at least—and Charles and Dottie were whispering at the bottom of the bed.

‘What’s happened?’ Jo demanded, as a cold sense of dread enveloped her exhausted body.

‘There, all’s well,’ she heard Charles say, as the small, wet mortal in his hands finally let out a cry.

‘Not a Lulu, I’m afraid,’ he said, coming close to reef open the buttons on Jo’s nightshirt and place the baby on her chest, his head towards her breasts. ‘Let’s see how his instinct is.’

He was beaming down at Jo, while Dottie had come around to the side of the bed, still filming—ignoring the conversations being flung at her from the other end of the phone.

‘See,’ Charles said, while Jo watched in amazement as the tiny newborn wiggled his way across her body to latch onto a nipple. ‘He’s fine—he’ll do. We’ve no drugs to help expel the placenta but if you let him suckle, and I massage you a bit, that should work.’

Dottie, having abandoned the phone now the main event was over, draped a soft sheet across the two of them, then glared at Charles across the bed.

‘My way would have worked just as well,’ she said, so much belligerence in her tone, Jo was frowning as she looked at them.

‘What way? What are you talking about?’ she asked when it became apparent no one was going to enlighten her.

‘He was born flat,’ Charles explained, ‘but I cleared the mucus from his mouth and blew a breath into him and you heard his squawk.’

‘In my day,’ Dottie said, drawing herself up to her full five feet one and glaring at Charles across the bed, ‘we flicked the sole of the foot with a finger and that made them cry—worked every time.’

Jo smiled, then looked down at the little bundle in her arms.

Letting him suckle was good.

They’d agreed, she, Alice and Chris, that the baby should take advantage of the colostrum in her breasts to help ward off infection. Had it all gone to plan, she’d have taken tablets to stop her milk coming in but the early arrival and the state of the floods had put paid to that.

She might have to feed him for a day or two, but that was okay. Right from the day she’d taken the decision to act as a surrogate she’d realised she had to stay focused on the pregnancy as a job, something she was undertaking for someone else, so although her hormones had gone all weird on her, she’d always been totally aware that this baby wasn’t hers, and feeding him wouldn’t change that.

Although she’d hardly have been human if she didn’t feel a thrill to hold the little fellow to her breast, and she smiled up at Charles, thanking him, pleased he’d been here to help her through it all, calm and efficient—a perfect prince of a man, in fact!

She smiled again at the silly thought and, looking up, caught him smiling back, a look of such pride on his face she knew the miracle of birth had affected him as well.

* * *

Charles looked down at the mother and child, full of a feeling of pride that he’d pulled off a successful delivery, mixed with a kind of wondrous pleasure about the miracle of birth.

He saw serenity under the tiredness in Jo’s face, but something else that puzzled him.

Distance?

A lack of pride?

Some kind of pain?

Because the baby wasn’t hers?

Or because of something that had happened in the past?

The dread thought of rape crossed his mind, but he knew that women didn’t have to proceed with an unwanted pregnancy these days.

He studied Jo again—yes, she was tired, but...detached too. That was the word he sought.

Was it not affecting her at all?

Or was she fighting whatever her hormones were telling her to stay detached from this child she had to give away?

But why were his emotions in such an uproar?

Was it being here in his mother’s house that had made him susceptible to this sudden attraction?

Probably!

He looked around the room. Dottie had disappeared, and the phone she’d been using was ringing.

‘Could you answer that?’ Jo asked, gesturing to where it lay on a side table. ‘It will be Chris and Alice—they’ll want to see him.’

He had picked up the phone when Dottie returned to the room with a basin of water—warm, he hoped—more towels, and a hefty pair of scissors dangling from one finger.

‘You’re way ahead of me,’ he told her, as he lifted the phone and pressed the button to answer it.

‘Can we see her?’

Two excited voices rumbled in his ear and he switched the phone back to video chat mode and held it out to show the baby lying on Jo’s chest.

Jo gestured for the phone.

‘He’s fine, although he’s not a Lulu but a Louis. I’m fine, we’ll see you as soon as the water goes down, but right now there’s stuff we have to do, and we all need a sleep.’

She shut down the phone.

‘We’ll have to turn it off, they’ll be ringing every ten minutes.’

‘Damn silly idea, I said so all along,’ Dottie was muttering as she carefully lifted the baby boy and set him on the bed to dry him off.

‘Take these,’ she said to Charles, producing two large stainless-steel pegs from a pocket of her Chinese robe. ‘I’ve poured bleach over them so they should be sterile.’

Charles thought back to training days and knew exactly what was required. He clamped the cord at both ends then cut between the clamps. And with a quick twist of his fingers, the cord on the baby’s end was tied, a little nub still sticking out, to dry, and fall off later.

There, baby boy, he thought as he worked, you’ll have something to remember me for ever, your neat little belly button.

And as Dottie wasn’t watching, he touched the baby’s cheek, smiling when he opened huge eyes to check out who was near him. And the lump in his throat was probably from tiredness.

Jo had turned on her side to watch Dottie ministering to the baby, and although he guessed she’d have been happy doing that herself, she didn’t want to take the fun away from her old friend.

Once satisfied he was dry and comfortable, Dottie swaddled him in a square of sheet, and handed him back to Jo.

‘Try to keep him suckling, it will help with this last stage,’ she said firmly, although Charles fancied he could see the glassiness of tears in her eyes.

She was as affected as he was by the birth...

By the time the placenta was delivered, Jo had drifted off to sleep, and as he helped Dottie clean up he realised that the wind had lessened and the rain no longer thundered down on the damaged roof.

‘It’ll be gone by tomorrow,’ Dottie told him, peering out the window, a bundle of towels in her arms.

‘And the road to the village?’

‘It’ll go down at low tide. Might flood a little more when the tide comes in again but not enough to cut us off.’

‘And Jo and the baby?’

He had to ask.

Would the parents just turn up and take the infant?

How would Jo feel about that?

Surely it had to affect her—she’d carried the baby for nine months after all.

‘Hmph!’ Dottie said. ‘Damn fool idea right from the start. Would you believe they’d phone poor Jo at all hours of the day and night and she’d have to put the phone on her belly while they talked to Lulu. And they sent music she had to play to her. As if a developing foetus would hear all that going on, let alone understand it.’

‘They took the surrogacy thing that far?’ Charles asked, wondering just how much of a trial this pregnancy must have been for Jo.

‘Oh, she’s told you, has she? Dottie said. ‘Come down to the laundry while I get rid of this lot and I’ll explain,’ Dottie told him, and, sensing a slight weakening towards him on the part of his grandmother, Charles was only too willing to go along.

‘Alice couldn’t carry children and they longed for a baby of their own, so Jo offered to be a surrogate. Stupid idea! Worse timing! She had a perfectly good man who wanted to marry her then suddenly she’s off having someone else’s baby—well, he couldn’t hang around nine months, could he?’

She paused, then, apparently needing to be honest, she added, ‘Not that Jo was all that keen on him. Not keen on marriage at all. I think her home life as a child put her off.’

The slight tightness in his chest as he heard Dottie’s words Charles put down to tiredness. It had been a long night and he hadn’t finished his grilled cheese on toast before he’d been drawn into the drama of the birth.

Down in the antiquated laundry, Dottie was running cold water into a deep stone tub.

‘We’ll soak all this for now,’ Dottie told him, although she was doing all the work. ‘Then get Jo off to her own bed for the night, not that she’ll get much sleep if the baby wakes through the night, which, of course, it will. That Chris and Alice are in for some fun!’

She pushed the towels and sheet into the cold water, pressing them down so they were all covered, then headed for a door he hadn’t noticed before. The place was like a rabbit warren.

‘Box room,’ she said, throwing open the door. ‘See if you can find a decent, dry box we can pack with sheets for the baby. Having got this far, it would kill Jo if she rolled on the little fellow in the night and smothered him.’

Charles had to smile as he peered into the unlit room. It was obvious cardboard boxes had been going there to die for years, possibly decades. Which made the ones at the top of the pile the newest and most likely to be sanitary.

Pleased to have been co-opted by Dottie to help—surely it would thaw her attitude towards him, if only a smidgen—he examined the boxes with care, finally producing a clean-looking one with KURL printed in blue along the top.

He had no idea what KURL might be—tinned food, paper, linen?—but he pulled it out and held it for Dottie to inspect.

‘You’ll have to cut down the sides,’ Dottie told him, after a nod he took for approval. ‘It wouldn’t do for him to suffocate at this stage.’

She turned and led him from the room, through the kitchen where he looked a little longingly at the debris of his supper.

‘The scissors are in still in my bedroom, so we’ll take it up there.’

And if he manoeuvred himself into a good position he might be able to see the photos on the chest of drawers.

Clutching his box like a prize, he waited until Dottie had ascended in her lift, then followed her up to find Jo awake, sitting on the little chaise, holding the baby in her arms and looking slightly bemused.

She smiled as he and Dottie came into the room.

‘I obviously didn’t dream it because there’s this baby here to prove it, but I can hardly believe it all happened.’

‘You’ll believe it soon enough when he wakes you every couple of hours during the night,’ Dottie told her, going forward to lift the infant from Jo’s arms. ‘Now, you go to bed and try to get some sleep. We’ll fix a bed for him and put him by you.’

But Charles and his box had stopped in the doorway, transfixed by the sight of this woman, her red-gold hair wild and dishevelled around her pale face, the baby resting in her arms. It was a scene worthy of the great Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and he could only stare.

She’s not keen on marriage.

‘Well, are you going to cut the box?’

He hoped he hadn’t been standing there more than a few seconds, for all it had seemed like a lifetime. He strode forward, smiling at Jo as he passed, taking the scissors from Dottie and hacking away at the sides of the makeshift crib.

‘You do that and sort through the linen for padding. You need to keep it firm. I’ll take Jo to her room,’ Dottie ordered, still holding the baby and occasionally smiling down at him when she thought no one was watching.

Not as tough as she made out, this grandmother of his, Charles thought, but still a very redoubtable lady.

He’d kind of accidentally moved to the far side of the bed so as he cut the cardboard he could also take in the photos.

But although he’d hoped to see at least one of a young woman, or even a girl, who might be his mother, he was disappointed. There was Dottie as a young woman, in her nurse’s white uniform, clutching a rolled certificate, and a handsome young man in army uniform he assumed would be his grandfather. Unfortunately, the wide-brimmed, slouch hat of the Australian Army shadowed the man’s face and before he could do more than glance at the rest he heard Dottie returning.

Hastily dropping the cut pieces on the floor, he put the scissors on the bedside table, grabbed a sheet and wadded it into the bottom of the box, then put a cut sheet, wide enough to swaddle the baby, over it.

‘That should do,’ Dottie told him, although she seemed reluctant to relinquish the baby into his new bed.

‘You’d better get some sleep yourself,’ she said instead, as Charles picked up the debris from the floor and stood there wondering what on earth to do next. ‘If you turn left at the top of the stairs you’ll come to the front room, though why it’s always called that I don’t know. But it has a view if ever it stops raining—looks south and west towards Anooka.’

He had to say something, Charles knew, but what?

He went with courtesy.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It’s very good of you to take me in. I hadn’t realised just how isolated this place would be. I had arranged accommodation—well, the hospital at Anooka had arranged it—but having come all this way I wanted—’

‘Why should the hospital have arranged accommodation for you?’ Dottie demanded, definitely frosty now.

Charles shrugged. It seemed silly now, given Dottie’s reaction to his arrival, but the old cliché about a person might as well being hung for a sheep as a lamb seemed appropriate here so he told her.

‘I thought, when I decided to come to see you, that it wouldn’t be fair to either of us if I just came for a few days. I wanted to learn something of what my mother’s life would have been like growing up here, so I came in on a six-week working visa, sponsored by the Anooka and District Hospital Board. Apparently, they are only too happy to have British-trained doctors to fill in as locums, especially over Christmas.’