Undertaking Love

Chapter Forty-Three




‘Marla.’

God, she had to get a grip. Jonny had even started to sound like Gabe in her head now. Marla peeled her hands away from her eyes and looked down at the feet in front of her.

Hmmm.

They definitely weren’t Jonny’s cowboy boots, and the purple satin trousers had been replaced by faded jeans that hugged in all the right places. She forced her eyes to skim past the crotch area, even though they wanted to linger.

Gabe’s leather jacket clung to him, and snowflakes clung to it.

Lucky snowflakes.

Marla licked her dry lips and finally looked up into his face.

Still beautiful. But did he look a little gaunt?

Neither Jonny nor Cecilia moved a muscle nor said a word.

‘Is everything okay with the baby?’

Marla frowned, too dumbstruck by his presence to know the answer to any question more difficult than her own name.

What baby?

Again, Jonny rushed to her aid. ‘No news yet, bud.’ He reached down and yanked Cecilia onto her feet. ‘Come on. Let’s go and find you some coffee.’

‘My shoes …’ Cecilia grumbled and tried to bend to retrieve them, but Jonny, who had her tucked firmly under one arm, frog marched her down the corridor.

Marla’s throat constricted with nerves as Gabe sat down next to her.

‘You came back,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘How have you been?’

He studied her face for a few seconds before he answered. ‘Okay.’

‘Will you be leaving again soon?’

‘Depends. Will you be done with the small talk soon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank God for that.’

He glanced around the waiting area with its constant ebb and flow of people.

‘Come on. Lets go and find somewhere more quiet.’



Dan jumped out of the taxi he’d just paid an extortionate fare for and watched in relief as Gabe and Marla left the reception area.

How the hell would he have explained his presence here to them, when he couldn’t even explain it to himself?



Cecilia leaned against the side of the drinks machine as Jonny stabbed at the buttons.

‘Well, let’s just hope those two stop pissing around and get their act together,’ she grumbled under her breath.

Jonny stared at her in amazement. Firstly, he’d never heard her swear before, and secondly he hadn’t thought she possessed the perceptive powers to have noticed what was going on with her daughter.

‘What?’ She arched her eyebrows. ‘I’m her mother. I gave birth to the girl. Well, almost, anyway.’

‘Almost?’ Jonny’s mind boggled.

Cecilia waved her arm around in an airy fashion.

‘Heck, Jonny, I’ve told you enough times that I’m built like a Barbie doll down there. She’d never have got out.’

Jonny shoved his fingers in his ears and closed his eyes before she could say anymore.

‘La la la! Stop talking, I can’t hear you.’

Cecilia rolled her eyes and waited for him to stop humming and open his eyes.

‘All I was going to say, if you’d let me finish,’ she shot him the daggers, ‘is that I’m hopeful for an Irish extension to the family.’

‘Still match-making, I see.’

Jonny jumped at the rich voice behind him, and turned to see a vaguely familiar guy in doctor’s whites smiling at Cecilia.

‘Robert!’

Jonny noted the way Cecilia turned pink and straightened her shoulders, and the dishy doc slotted into place in his head as the ex-husband from Franco’s.

‘Cecilia, we must stop meeting like this.’

Something in Robert’s twinkling eyes told Jonny that he didn’t actually mean those words at all, and for the second time in half an hour he felt like a third wheel.

‘I’ll just go and check how Emily’s doing,’ he muttered, and left Cecilia in the capable looking hands of her dishy ex-husband.



‘You have a beautiful son.’

The midwife wrapped a towel around the tiny, gunky-but-perfect child, before placing him in his mother’s outstretched arms. Tom stood beside Emily and smoothed a damp strand of hair back from her brow.

‘You were amazing.’ He kissed her forehead and gazed down at the baby. ‘Hey there, little guy.’

He reached out and the baby’s miniature fists curled around one of Tom’s fingers and held on fast.

Emily couldn’t keep still after the nurses had finished their work. The birth had been quick and mercifully straightforward, and she still couldn’t quite believe that she’d actually brought their baby safely into the world. The midwives melted away and Tom gathered them both into his arms.

‘My family,’ he whispered.

Emily leaned on his chest as tears slid down her cheeks onto the towel wrapped around her new boy.

Tears of joy, and tears of love.



A little while later, Emily belted her dressing gown around her already deflating waistline and shuffled out of the en-suite on her way back to the bed. She was relieved to have been to the loo and not lost her insides down the bowl, as she’d feared she might. Good old mother nature.

Tom had nipped outside to share their happy news with the others, and to grab the camera that had been on permanent standby in the glove box of his car for at least a month. He’d forgotten all about it in his panic to get to Emily’s side.

She froze statue-still in the bathroom doorway. There was a man standing next to the baby’s crib, and it wasn’t Tom.

It was Dan.

‘Hello, baby,’ he whispered. He stepped closer, and Emily’s less than strong legs wobbled with fear.

What was he going to do?

She’d have to intervene if he reached out to pick him up, she knew that much.

But he didn’t. He just shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and watched the tiny child swaddled in pale blue.

‘A boy, huh? Wow. Well, that’s good.’ Emily heard the catch in his voice. ‘That’s really good.’

Dan pressed his hand against the outside of the maternity cot.

‘Listen, bud. You be a good boy for your mum and dad, okay?’ he whispered. Emily stepped back and held her breath, suddenly feeling like an intruder.

These were Dan’s only few seconds with the son that, God willing, she’d have in her life forever. She watched silently as Dan looked at his child, then touched his fingers to his lips and placed them back on the glass.

‘Right then. I better go. You didn’t see me, right?’ Dan tapped the side of his nose and winked at his son.

Emily dipped back into the bathroom, and gripped the sink as the sound of his footsteps receded. Her reflection in the bathroom mirror gazed back at her, familiar yet somehow different. She wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but she wasn’t the same person as she’d been yesterday.

She was a mother.



‘Hey there, handsome.’

Jonny glanced up from his iPhone at the Love God who’d just joined him in the smoking shelter.

Tall.

Blonde.

Muscles.

Come to Papa.

‘Not many people could pull those trousers off, but you totally do.’

They both looked down at Jonny’s purple satin trousers, and he wondered if it would be too forward to tell Love God that he was more than welcome to pull the afore-mentioned trousers off any time he fancied. He decided that, on balance, it probably was, so he accepted the proffered cigarette instead. A pleasant electric shock rippled through his fingers when he cupped his hands around the flame of Love God’s lighter.

‘So. Do you come here often?’ Over the years, Jonny had come to realise that sometimes the old lines were the best.

Love God took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘I’m a nurse, so you could say that.’

Jonny blew out an elegant plume of smoke. ‘What kind of a nurse smokes?’

‘A lonely one.’

Jonny cast his eyes to the skies and wondered if Santa had just dropped his Christmas present off right here in the smoking shelter.

He grinned and shuffled closer. ‘Well, as it happens, I’ve been feeling a little under the weather myself lately …’



Emily gathered her sleepy son into her arms and nuzzled her face against his to breathe in his delicious new baby scent.

Yes, baby, I’m going to love you forever.

She settled herself onto the deep window ledge to give him his first ever glimpse of the outside world. ‘It’s snowing.’ She whispered against his forehead. ‘You’ll love this when you’re a big boy. Your crazy daddy’s already talking about buying a sledge.’ She smiled at the image of them all in bobble hats and wellies in years to come.

Down below, she spotted Tom slip-sliding his way across the car park with the camera clutched in his hands. She lifted her hand to tap the glass, but her knuckles stilled as another figure emerged out into the splash of light that spilled from the foyer.

Dan.

They were the only two people out there, and on a direct collision course. They couldn’t miss each other if they tried.

She watched in agony as Tom lifted his head. Dan’s steps slowed, his hands still bunched up in his jean pockets. ‘Keep walking Tom, please keep walking.’ Emily whispered, and the baby snuffled into her neck, content against her shoulder.

Tom stopped walking.

It was like watching a silent movie. She could see the serious, guarded look on Tom’s face as he spoke. Dan looked away for a few seconds, and then in slow motion, pulled his hand out of his pocket and held it out towards Tom. She saw Tom falter as he tried to decide how to play it. She didn’t need to hear their conversation to know what was going on inside his head at that moment.

In every way that mattered this was Tom’s child, and her heart ached with love as he reached out and accepted Dan’s hand. They lingered for a moment longer before Dan touched his fingers against his forehead in silent salute and disappeared into the darkness.

Emily stroked the baby’s velvet-soft head as she waited for Tom to come back upstairs, humbled beyond words by his love, and his strength.

He’d changed today, too. He was a father.