Читать книгу: «Baby on Board», страница 3

He carefully replaced the picture and left the room, closing the door behind him.

Later. He’d go through his papers later. Not that it would take long. He knew that all bills would be paid, life insurance up to date, will filed with the family lawyer.

Then he frowned. Had he changed it since Posie had been born? There hadn’t been much time but Michael had never, in the normal way of things, believed in leaving a mess for other people to clear up. But playing fast and loose with life, keeping secrets, even with the best of intentions, had a way of coming back to bite you. And that tended to make things very messy indeed.

Whatever he’d done, it seemed likely that Grace would be the person most affected.

He wondered if she had the least idea how her life was about to change. How, on top of the loss of her closest family, she might also lose the home she loved. The baby who she’d so selflessly surrendered and yet hadn’t totally surrendered, knowing that she would always be close to her. That she would still be hers to comfort. To hold.

He wiped those thoughts from his mind, took a breath, pushed open the kitchen door.

‘Sorry,’ he began. ‘I had to make…’

He stopped. Looked around. He could have sworn he’d heard her talking to Posie but the kitchen was empty.

He shrugged, crossed to the cutlery drawer, planning to lay the table. He’d barely opened it when he heard her again. ‘Night-night, Rosie Posie…’ she said, laughing softly. ‘Daddy’s gorgeous little girl.’

He spun around, then saw the baby monitor on the dresser. Was it two-way? Could she hear him? No, of course not. But even so he stepped away from the drawer, planning to escape before she came down and found him eavesdropping on her private conversation with her baby.

There was the sound of something being wound up, the gentle tinkling of a lullaby.

‘Night-night, sweetheart. Sleep tight…’

His imagination supplied the vivid image of her bending over to kiss this very precious baby.

And then she began to sing and nothing could have torn him away.

CHAPTER THREE

GRACE came to an abrupt halt at the kitchen door. The table was laid. A bottle of red wine had been uncorked. A jug of water beside it on the table. Everything ready for them to eat.

‘Oh, Lord,’ she said. ‘Have you been waiting long?’

‘I guessed you were still busy and made a start, that’s all’ he said, pulling out a chair. ‘Sit down. I’ll get the casserole.’

‘No, I’ll do that…’

‘I’m here to help, not add to your burdens, Grace.’ He picked up a cloth, took the casserole out of the slow oven and placed it on the heatproof mat. ‘Did Posie go off to sleep?’ he asked, looking up.

‘Like a lamb. Until her next feed.’

‘And when is that?’

‘Whoa… Enough,’ she said as he heaped the meat and vegetables on her plate. Then, answering his question, ‘Around ten. There are jacket potatoes in the top oven.’ She leapt up to get them, but he reached out and, with a hand on her shoulder, said, ‘Stay. I’ll get them.’

She froze and he quickly removed his hand. It made no difference. She was certain that when she took off her shirt, she would see the imprint of his fingers burned into her skin.

He turned away, took the potatoes from the oven, placed one on each of their plates.

‘No—’

‘You have to eat,’ he reminded her.

‘Yes, but…’

But not this much.

She let it go as, ignoring her, he fetched butter from the fridge, then picked up the bottle of wine, offering it to her. She shook her head and he beat her to the water, filling her glass.

‘Michael told me that Posie was sleeping through the night,’ he said when, all done, he sat down, picked up a fork.

‘She was, but she’s started waking up again. Missing her mother.’ Then, not wanting to think about that, she said, ‘Michael told you?’

‘He e-mailed me daily bulletins. Sent photographs.’

Why was she surprised? That was Michael. Josh might have walked away, but they were brothers and he would never let go.

‘He wanted you to share his happiness, Josh.’

‘It was a little more complicated than that.’

‘Your understanding, then,’ she said, when he didn’t elaborate.

‘I understood.’

‘You just didn’t approve.’

‘No.’

‘Why? What was your problem?’ She hadn’t understood it then and didn’t now. ‘He didn’t pressure me. Neither of them did. It was my idea. I wanted to do it.’

For a moment she thought he was going to explain but, after a moment, he shook his head, said, ‘When did you have your hair cut?’

Her hair? Well, maybe that was better than a rerun of a pointless argument. Although, if the general male reaction to her cutting her waist-length hair was anything to go by, maybe this was less a change of subject than a change of argument.

‘About six months ago,’ she said, trying not to sound defensive. Every man she knew seemed to have taken it as a personal affront. She, on the other hand, had found it liberating. ‘When did you grow the beard?’ she retaliated.

‘About six months ago.’

‘Oh, right. It’s one of those clever/dumb things, then.’

He thought about it, then shook his head. ‘No. Sorry. You’re going to have to explain that one.’

‘Whenever someone does something clever, in another part of the world another person does something stupid to balance it out,’ she said, as if everyone knew that. She shook her head and then, unable to help herself, grinned. ‘Sorry. It’s just a ridiculous advert on the television that drove Phoebe…’ She stopped.

‘Say it, Grace. Talking about her, about Michael keeps them with us.’

‘That drove Phoebe nuts,’ she said slowly, testing her sister’s name on her tongue. How it felt. It brought tears to her eyes, she discovered, but not bad tears. Thinking about her sister being driven mad by Michael, them both laughing, was a good memory. She blinked back the tears, smiled. ‘Michael used to tease her with versions he made up.’

‘Like you’re teasing me?’

‘Oh, I’m not teasing, Josh. I’m telling it the way I see it.’

‘Is that right? Well, you’re going to have to live with it. But while I’m not prepared to admit that the beard is dumb, I have to agree that your new style is clever. It suits you, Grace.’

‘Oh…’

She picked up her fork, took a mouthful of casserole. Touching her hair would have been such a giveaway gesture—

‘I really, really hate it,’ he added, ‘but there’s no doubt that it suits you.’

—and much too soon.

‘Pretty much like the beard, then,’ she said. And, since the food hadn’t actually choked her, she took another mouthful.

‘Grow your hair again and I’ll shave it off.’

It was an update of the arguments they’d used to have about the clothes she’d worn. The girls he’d dated. The music she’d listened to.

‘If you hold shares in a razor-blade company, sell them now,’ she advised.

Perhaps recognising that step back to a happier time in their relationship, he looked up, smiled.

And it was as if he’d never been gone.

For a moment they allowed the comfortable silence to continue, but finally Josh shifted, said, ‘Do you want to tell me about the funeral?’

She sketched a shrug. ‘Michael and Phoebe had left instructions…’ She swallowed. ‘How could they do that? They were much too young to be thinking about things like that.’

‘I imagine they did it for one another. So that whoever went first wouldn’t be faced with making decisions. What did they want?’

‘A simple funeral service in the local church, then a woodland burial with just a tree as a marker for their grave. I imagine that was Phoebe’s choice. Your father wasn’t impressed, but there was nothing he or your mother could do.’

‘One more reason for Michael to lay it all out in words of one syllable.’

‘Josh… He was their son,’ she said helplessly.

‘Not in any way that matters. His mother is living in Japan with someone she isn’t married to. His father is in Strasbourg, raising his second family. He hadn’t spoken to either of them in years.’

‘You’re their son, too. Have you spoken to them?’

‘We have nothing to talk about.’

She said nothing. What could she say? That they had both been dealt rubbish hands when it came to parents?

In a clear attempt to change the subject, Josh said, ‘How are you coping with your business? I heard your answerphone message cancelling your classes for the time being and obviously Posie needs full-time care at the moment, but what are you doing about the craft centre workshop? Private commissions?’

‘Beyond asking someone to hang a “closed until further notice” sign on the workshop door?’ she asked. ‘Not much.’

‘Have you actually been out of the house in the last few days? Apart from the funeral?’

She shook her head.

‘Go into Maybridge tomorrow. Pick up your post, at least. You need to keep some semblance of normality in your life.’

‘Normality?’

How on earth did he expect her to think about something as frivolous as jewellery at a time like this?

‘It’s all you can do, Grace. It’s what Michael and Phoebe would want.’

Of course it was. She didn’t need Josh to tell her that. But knowing it and doing it were two entirely different things.

‘I’ll drop you off there when I go into town tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I have to talk to Michael’s lawyers. I spoke to them from the car on the way from the airport. They’re expecting me first thing.’

‘Right. Well, I suppose I should go to the workshop. Process what orders I can fill from stock, send notes to people about anything that’s going to be delayed, give them the chance to cancel.’

‘Maybe you should think about taking someone on to help out for the time being,’ he suggested. ‘Who takes care of things when you’re gallivanting off to the Isle of Man?’

‘I wasn’t gallivanting. The craft centre received an invitation from a fair being held over a holiday weekend and a group of us went.’

‘You’re getting very adventurous.’ Then, ‘A group?’

‘I wouldn’t have gone on my own, but Mike Armstrong sent some of his smaller pieces of furniture, there was a candlemaker, Toby took some of his toys and one of his rocking horses and there was—’

‘So who took care of the shop while you were away?’ he asked, cutting her off.

‘Abby. She started as one of my students. She’s very gifted.’

‘Then call her. You can’t afford to turn down business.’

‘That’s the tycoon speaking. I’m sorry, Josh, but the world won’t end if Baubles and Beads is closed for a few weeks. I promise you it’s never going to trouble the FTSE 100.’

‘No? You don’t see yourself as a franchise operation with a shop in every shopping mall five years from now?’ he asked, with a smile that she remembered from the days when he’d been planning to be the world’s youngest billionaire.

Did he make it?

‘Er… No.’ She liked the way things were. Controllable. Totally hers.

‘No surprise there,’ he said.

Did he look a touch disappointed in her lack of ambition? He was the one who, when she had made jewellery for college fund-raisers, her friends, had pushed her into taking a Saturday stall at Melchester market. It was Josh who’d printed flyers on his computer, handed them out, called the local press who’d sent out a photographer to take pictures. He’d gone out of his way to prove to her that it wasn’t only friends and family who would pay good money for something original, different.

‘I’m not into mass production, Josh. People come to me because they know they’ll never see anyone else wearing the same pair of earrings. The same necklace.’

‘Then you need to find some other way to grow. A static business is a dying business.’

‘Possibly, but not now.’ Then she groaned.

‘What?’

‘I promised Geena Wagner that I’d make a wedding tiara for one of her brides. It’s almost done. I can bring it home, finish it here.’

‘No,’ he said, and she looked up, startled by the insistence in his voice. ‘I really don’t think that’s wise.’

‘But Posie…’

‘You need to keep your work and your home life separate.’ Again he had the look of a man with something on his mind.

‘Easy to say. Elspeth would take care of her, but Posie needs continuity, Josh. She’s already confused. Leaving her with anyone who has an hour to spare just so that I can keep working won’t do.’

‘I know,’ he said. Then, more gently, ‘I know.’

‘I suppose I could take her with me.’ Was that his point? That she was about to become a single mother with a business to run and she needed to think about how she was going to manage that. Answering herself, she said, ‘I’d have to install some basic essentials if it’s going to be a permanent thing.’

‘Like what?’

‘You want a list?’ she asked, smiling despite everything. ‘How long have you got?’

‘I’m in no hurry.’

‘Do you have the slightest idea how much stuff a baby on the move needs?’ It was a rhetorical question and she wasn’t expecting an answer. ‘Actually, I suppose I could ask Toby to partition off the far end of the workshop so that I could turn it into a little nursery.’ Then, irritated at how easily he’d manipulated her into thinking about the future when she didn’t want to think about anything, she said, ‘Okay, that’s my life sorted. Now tell me about yours. About Nepal. China. What are you doing there?’

He began to talk about a major engineering project which should have bored her witless, but just being the centre of his attention, being able to listen to him without pretence was such a rare treat that she didn’t actually care what he was saying.

And when he turned the conversation to the jewellery-making workshops she ran, showing a keen interest in what she did, her stories about some of the odder characters who came to them made him laugh.

He told her about places he’d visited, both fabulous and foul. The wonders of the world, natural and man-made. The remote, the exotic, the emptiness of a tropical beach lit only by the stars.

She told him about her recent trip to Brighton for a jewellery convention.

Finally, long after they’d finished eating, Josh stood up. ‘It’s late, you’re tired,’ he said, clearing the dishes.

She didn’t bother to fight with him over it—he was right, she was finding it hard to stay awake—but instead rinsed plates and cutlery, stacking them in the dishwasher as he cleared the table. She wiped mats as he put away the butter, the wine. Their hands momentarily entangled as they both reached for the cruet and she found herself looking up at him.

‘I’ll take the pepper. You take the salt,’ he said after a moment.

‘No,’ she said, pulling back. ‘It’s all yours, Josh. You’re right. I’m done and by the time I’ve had a bath, Posie will be awake again, demanding food.’

‘Are you okay up there by yourself now that Elspeth’s gone home?’ he asked. ‘I could just as easily sleep in one of the spare rooms.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

He lifted a hand, laid his palm against her cheek. ‘Sure?’ he asked.

She swallowed. ‘Really. Besides, if Posie is restless she’ll keep you awake.’

‘I have to fall asleep first. I’m going to look through some of Michael’s things before I go down to the flat.’

‘Right, but don’t forget you’re supposed to be working on UK time.’

He smiled. ‘I won’t.’ Then, before she could move, he leaned close and kissed her cheek. ‘Good night, Grace.’

‘Um… good night,’ she said, backing away until she reached the door, then turning and running up the stairs before she said or did something stupid.

She took a steadying breath before she glanced in at Posie and then, in the safety of the bathroom, she leaned back against the door, her hand to her cheek, still feeling the soft prickle of his close-cropped beard as it brushed against her skin.

Remembering the shock of his kiss as he’d woken her—when she was anything but Sleeping Beauty—knowing how easy it would have been for her to have asked him to stay with her. How easy it would have been to turn into his arms for the comfort they both craved.

Wondering what would it be like to lie beside Josh Kingsley on a white beach in the starlight with only the sound of the ocean shirring through the sand, the chirruping of tree frogs, the scent of frangipani on the wind.

He’d made it sound so magical. Doubtless it had been. And she wondered who had shared that tropical night with him?

He hadn’t said and, unable to bear the thought of him with another woman, she hadn’t asked.

He’d only once brought someone home. They’d been expecting him, but not the tall, tanned Australian girl he’d married without telling a soul. A girl who was, in every way, her opposite. Outgoing, lively, ready to follow him to the ends of the earth. Or so she’d said. It had lasted a little over a year. Since then he’d never brought anyone home, never even talked about anyone in his life, at least while she was around and although he was, by any standards, a rich and eligible bachelor, he didn’t seem to live the kind of lifestyle that brought him into contact with gossip magazines. But just because he didn’t date the kind of glamorous women who were pursued by the paparazzi meant absolutely nothing.

Only that he preferred to keep his private life just that.

Private.

She ran a bath, added a few drops of lavender oil. But even up to her neck in soothing warm water she discovered that once having thought about it, it was impossible to get the image of Josh, of her, their naked bodies entwined, limbs glistening in the surf, out of her head.

Horrified that she could be thinking about such things at a time like this, she sank beneath the water in an attempt to cleanse the thoughts from her mind. Or maybe just to blot out everything. Only to erupt in a panic when she thought she heard Posie crying.

Her ears full of water, she couldn’t hear anything, but when she threw a bathrobe around her and checked, she found the baby lying peacefully asleep.

She rubbed her hair dry, then eased herself into bed in the room next to the nursery. Closed her eyes and slept.

Josh replaced the telephone receiver in Michael’s study, then opened the door, pausing at the foot of the stairs, listening. Everything was quiet. Grace couldn’t have heard the phone—his Chinese partner hunting him down with impatient need to set up a meeting—or she’d surely have come down. Unless she’d fallen asleep in the bath?

The dark hollows beneath her eyes told their own story and, knowing he wouldn’t rest until he’d reassured himself, he kicked off his shoes and, as quietly as he could, went upstairs. The bathroom door was unlocked. He opened it a few inches and said, ‘Grace?’ When there was no response, he glanced inside and saw, with relief, that it was empty. Then, as he turned away, he saw the nursery door was slightly ajar and, unable to help himself, he pushed it open, took a step inside.

He stood for a moment by the cot, looking down at the sleeping infant. Listening to her soft breathing, assailed by a torment of confused emotions as he considered every possible future. For Posie. For Grace.

Grace laughed as, her bottle empty, Posie turned to nuzzle at her breast, searching for more.

‘Greedy baby,’ she chided softly.

It was just getting light and, miraculously, they had both slept through.

She looked up as the squeak of the door warned her that she was no longer alone.

As Josh padded silently across the kitchen floor on bare feet, unaware that he had company, her first thought was that he didn’t look so hot.

Then, as he reached the kettle, switched it on and stood by the window, staring out of the window at a pink and grey dawn while he waited for it to boil, she thought again.

He might have the hollow-eyed look of a man who’d spent the night staring at the ceiling but, in washed thin jogging pants and nothing else, he looked very hot indeed.

‘Tea for me,’ she said, before that train of thought joined last night’s beach fantasy and got completely out of hand. Then, as he spun around, ‘If you’re offering.’

‘Grace… I didn’t see you there. Why are you sitting in the dark?’

‘I’ve been feeding Posie,’ she said. ‘There’s more chance that she’ll go back to sleep if I leave the light off.’ Then, ‘Is the kettle playing up again?’

He looked at the kettle, which was clearly working, then at her.

‘The one in your flat,’ she said. ‘Phoebe was going to buy a new one before…’ Before the christening. But Josh had been ‘too busy’ to fly home, so she hadn’t bothered.

‘What? No,’ he said. Then, ‘I don’t know. It was claustrophobic in the basement. Since I moved last year I’ve got used to seeing the sky when I wake up.’

‘You have to go to sleep before you wake up,’ she pointed out.

He shrugged. ‘I managed an hour or two. I don’t need a lot of sleep.’

‘I remember,’ she said.

‘Do you?’

It was just as well the half-light was pink because she blushed crimson. That wasn’t what she’d meant….

‘I remember Michael saying that you’d moved to some fabulous new penthouse with views to the end of the world.’ They’d gone out there to visit, just after he’d moved in and BP. Before pregnancy. ‘He said you wanted a closer look at all those horizons still waiting to be conquered.’

‘Is that what you think?’

‘I haven’t the first idea what you want, Josh.’ She shifted the baby to a more comfortable position, then said, ‘So? What’s it like?’

He regarded her for a full ten seconds before he turned away, dropped a couple of tea bags into two mugs and poured on boiling water. Then, his back to her, he said, ‘It’s like standing on the high board at the swimming pool without a handrail. You’d hate it.’

That hurt, cut deep, mostly because he was right, but, refusing to let it show, she said, ‘I don’t have a problem with views. I just don’t have your unstoppable urge to find out what lies beyond them.’

‘Still clinging to the safety net of home, Grace?’ he said, lifting his head to challenge her.

‘Still searching for something to cling to, Josh?’ she came back at him.

He was the one who looked away and she realised that she’d touched an unexpected nerve.

‘Will you stay and keep an eye on Posie while I go and take a shower?’ she asked, easing herself to her feet, laying the sleepy babe in her crib, then fetching the milk jug from the fridge. ‘Milk?’ she asked, after fishing out the tea bags.

He didn’t answer and, when she looked up, she realised that he was staring down at the overlarge dressing gown she was wearing, or rather at the way it was gaping open where she’d held Posie against her breast as she’d fed her from the bottle, as Phoebe had, giving the same skin to skin closeness as breastfeeding.

‘This is Phoebe’s,’ she said, self-consciously pulling it around her, tightening the belt. ‘It’s a bit big, but I’ve been wearing it so that Posie has the comfort of her scent.’

‘Until yours and hers become indistinguishable?’

‘No! It was just while she was away.’ Except, of course, her sister wasn’t ever coming back. ‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead.’

‘No,’ he said, with a heavy finality that suggested she hadn’t thought very much about anything. ‘Although I suspect that, unless her table manners improve, all she’s going to get is the smell of stale milk or dribble.’

She frowned.

‘There’s a damp patch,’ he said, then, when she looked down. ‘No, on the other side…’

‘Oh, nappy rash! I’m leaking.’

‘Leaking?’

She opened a cupboard, grabbed a sealed pack of sterilised bottles. ‘Make yourself comfortable. I may be a while,’ she said, heading for the door.

‘Wait!’ He caught her arm. ‘You’re feeding Posie with your own milk?’

He sounded shocked. Instantly on the defensive, she said, ‘Of course. Why wouldn’t I?’

‘You have to ask?’

Confused by his reaction, she said, ‘Apparently.’

He shook his head. ‘You’re expressing your own milk, putting it in a bottle and then sitting down and feeding Posie with it. Do I really have to explain what is wrong with that picture?’

‘There’s not a thing wrong with it. Breast milk is the very best start for a baby. Everyone knows that.’

‘In an ideal world,’ he replied, ‘but I suspect that precious few surrogate mothers stick around to play wet nurse.’

‘I’m not!’

‘As near as damn it, you are.’

She stared at him, shaken by the fierceness of his reaction. ‘You know this isn’t a normal surrogacy, Josh.’

‘Really?’

How could anyone invest such an ordinary word with such a mixture of irony, disdain, plain old disbelief? Grace didn’t bother to respond, defend herself, since clearly he was a long way from finished.

‘In what way isn’t it normal?’ he asked. ‘You’re not married, so there was nothing to stop Michael’s name being put on the birth certificate. I assume that happened?’

‘Of course.’

‘And presumably you went through all the legal hoops with the court-appointed social worker? Signed all the paperwork so that the Parental Order could be issued, along with a new birth certificate in which Phoebe and Michael were named as Posie’s parents?’

‘Of course. We were really lucky. It can take up to a year to get everything settled, but there was space in the court calendar and, since the social worker was happy, the paperwork was completed in double quick time.’

‘So you are aware that you’ve surrendered any legal rights you had as Posie’s birth mother?’

Grace clutched the plastic container of feeding bottles against her breast, a shield against words that meant nothing and yet still had the power to hurt her.

‘You’ve done your homework,’ she said, more than a little unnerved at his thoroughness in checking out the legal formalities. Trying to figure out what, exactly, he was getting at.

‘I did, as a matter of fact,’ he replied, ‘although, since Michael explained everything in his regular progress bulletins, it was more for my own peace of mind than necessity.’

That was Michael, she thought. He would never have given up trying to make Josh see how perfect it all was. Trying to break down whatever his problem had been with this arrangement.

Poor Michael….

‘So why are you asking me all this?’ she demanded, making an effort to concentrate, trying not to think about what had happened, but how totally happy Michael had been. ‘Since you already seem to have chapter and verse.’

‘I just wanted to be sure that you fully understand the situation.’

‘Of course I understand. And I didn’t “surrender” Posie. She was always Phoebe’s baby.’

‘Truly?’

He slipped his hand inside the gown and laid his hand over the thin silk of her nightgown, fingers spread wide across her waist to encompass her abdomen in a shockingly intimate gesture. Her womb quickened to his touch, her breast responding as if to a lover’s touch.

‘Even while she was lying here? When you could feel her moving? When it was just the two of you in the night? You didn’t have a single doubt?’

It was as if he were reading her mind. Had been there with her in the darkness, the restless baby in her womb keeping her awake, thinking about how different it could have been. How, all those years before, she’d longed for the protection he’d used to have failed, knowing that a baby was the one thing that would have brought him back to her.

She’d hated herself for wishing it, knowing how wrong it was to want a baby only to bind him to her. If he’d loved her, he would not have left. Or, if he had, would not have been able to stay away.

Knowing that carrying his brother’s child for her sister was the nearest she was ever going to get to having Josh’s child growing within her womb. But that was for her to know. No one else.

She knew she should move, step back, stop this, but the warmth, strength of his hand against her body held her to him like a magnet.

‘Well?’ he demanded, pressing her for an answer.

‘No,’ she mouthed, no sound escaping. Then again, ‘No!’ No doubts. Not one. ‘It isn’t unknown for a woman to carry a baby for her sister,’ she told him. ‘It was once quite normal for a woman to give a childless sister one or even two of her own babies to raise.’

‘This isn’t the nineteenth century.’

‘No. And I’ve no doubt some of the neighbours believe I actually had sex with Michael in order to conceive but, since you’ve done your homework, you couldn’t possibly think that. Could you?’

‘Of course not—’

‘Only, for your information, he was at a conference in Copenhagen when all the planets were in alignment but since the clinic already had his contribution in their freezer that wasn’t a problem.’

‘I know how it’s done, Grace.’

‘You have been thorough.’

‘I didn’t need to look that up on the Internet,’ he said, his face grim now.

‘No? Well, know this. Since I was here, living under the same roof, it made perfect sense to give Posie the very best start possible.’

‘Did it? And whose idea was that? The whole breast is best thing.’

‘Does it matter?’ He didn’t answer, just waited for her to tell him what he already believed he knew. And, infuriatingly, she couldn’t deny it. ‘Phoebe would never have asked.’

‘No, I didn’t think it was her idea. So how long had you planned to stretch it out, Grace? Six, nine months? Or were you planning to be one of those earth-mother types—?’

‘That’s enough!’ she said, finally managing to step away from his hand. ‘This wasn’t about me. You told me that Michael was incoherent with joy. Well, I want you to imagine how Phoebe felt. After years of tests, hoping, waiting, longing for a baby of her own. The fertility treatment. All those failed IVF cycles. How do you think she felt when the midwife put Posie in her arms?’

‘No one would deny that you did a generous, beautiful thing, Grace.’

‘You thought I was wrong then and you still do.’

‘No… Not you.’

‘Michael, then?’ Now she was confused. Who exactly did he blame for what had happened? ‘Phoebe?’