The Baby Swap Miracle

Shocked and curiously light-headed.

She shook her head to clear it as Sam ushered her out of the building into the spring sunshine. Odd, it had been cloudy before, and now it was glorious. How ironic, when her world had been turned upside down.

‘So—what now?’ she asked, looking up at him for guidance and grateful for the feel of his hand, warm and supportive in the small of her back.

‘Well, I don’t know about you but I could do with a nice, strong coffee.’ He smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. They were strangely expressionless, and she suddenly realised she didn’t know him at all. Didn’t know what he was thinking, how he was feeling—which under the circumstances wasn’t surprising, because she wasn’t sure what she was thinking, either.

She tried to smile back, but her lips felt stiff and uncooperative and her eyes were prickling. ‘Me, too. I haven’t had coffee for months but suddenly I feel the need.’

‘One car or two?’

‘Two. I’ll go straight on from there.’ And it would give her the next few minutes alone to draw breath. ‘The usual place?’

She nodded, and got into her car, following him on autopilot, curiously detached. It all seemed unreal, as if it was happening to someone else—until she felt the baby move, and then reality hit home and her eyes filled. ‘Oh, James, I’m sorry,’ she whispered brokenly. ‘I tried so hard for you. I really tried.’

She felt something thin and fragile tear inside her, the last tenuous link to the man she’d loved with all her heart, and she closed her eyes briefly as she pulled up beside Sam, giving her grief a moment. It was a gentle grief, a quiet sorrow now, and it was her constant companion. She was used to it.

‘OK?’

Was she? Probably not, but she smiled up at Sam and got out of the car and let him usher her in. They’d gone, as usual, to the riverfront café they’d all frequented in the past. Before, she’d always had fruit tea. This time, settling into a chair opposite Sam, she had a frothy mocha with a chocolate flake to dunk, and a sticky Danish pastry, also laced with chocolate.

Comfort food.

And, boy, did she need it. Those few minutes in the car had given her breathing space but they’d done nothing to change the truth. A truth neither of them had come up with. A truth that changed everything.

She looked up and met his impenetrable slate-blue gaze, and wondered if her child would inherit those exquisite and remarkable eyes.

It was a different sort of mix-up entirely, something that had never crossed Sam’s mind.

Something that should never have happened, an accident which he’d always taken positive steps to avoid in his personal life for very good reasons, and which he’d trusted the clinic to be equally careful of, but it seemed they’d failed, because this woman sitting opposite him—this very lovely, warm and gentle woman—was pregnant with his child, and she wasn’t going to be handing it over to Emily and Andrew, as he’d feared, because it wasn’t Emily’s baby. It was Emelia’s. And his.

Our child.

He looked away, his eyes carefully avoiding the smooth, pretty curve containing a bomb that was about to blow his life apart. His child was growing inside her body—a body he’d had to force himself to ignore on every one of the occasions they’d met in the past eighteen months. Very few occasions. Hardly any, really. Just enough for her to get right under his skin and haunt his dreams…

His eyes dropped to the gentle but unmistakeable swell of their baby, and something elemental kicked him in the gut, just as it had when he’d held her. Almost as if he’d known—

Damn. He couldn’t do this. Not again. And it wasn’t how it was meant to be. It was supposed to be quick and clean and straightforward. His brother couldn’t have children. This had been something he could do, a way to give them a desperately wanted child which he could legitimately love at a distance and have no further responsibility towards except in the role of uncle.

Tidy. Clean. Simple.

Yeah, right.

And then this. Some administrative anomaly that had totally changed all the rules.

He yanked his eyes away from the evidence and put his own feelings aside for now. He’d deal with them later, alone. For now he had to think of her, the woman carrying not her husband’s child, but the child of a comparative stranger. And that wasn’t going to be any easier for her than it was for him, he realised. Probably a damn sight harder. They said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but to lose twice? Because she was losing James again, in a way, her dream replaced with a living nightmare, and that was just downright cruel.

He met her eyes, the muted green smudged slightly with tears of pain and bewilderment, and his heart ached for her. ‘I’m so sorry, Emelia.’

‘Don’t be,’ she said softly. ‘It’s not your fault.’

His voice was gruff. ‘I know, but—thinking it had worked, thinking all this time you were having his baby, and then to be told it isn’t—you must be just gutted.’

She felt the familiar grief amongst this new rash of emotions, but also guilt, because the man who was the father of her child was sitting opposite her and even now, with the shock of this revelation, she realised she was aware of him with every cell of her body, as she’d been aware of him every time they’d met.

She tried to speak logically, to find something sensible to say to this man when James seemed so long ago and all she could think about now was Sam’s baby growing inside her womb—

Stick to the facts!

‘Sam, really, it’s OK,’ she said eventually. ‘I never really expected it to work. The sperm quality wasn’t good, James and I knew that from the beginning. It was always going to be a long shot if we tried it, and I know it sounds stupid but I was astonished when I found I was pregnant because I never really expected it to happen, so in many ways maybe it’s for the best.’

‘The best?’

Not from where he was looking at it, but maybe she had a different perspective altogether. She shrugged, her slender shoulders lifting in a gesture almost of defeat, and he had a crazy urge to gather her up in his arms and tell her it was all right, she didn’t have to be brave, it was OK to be angry and sad and confused. But then she spoke, and it seemed she wasn’t being brave at all, she was being honest.

‘It’s been harder than I thought. My in-laws were starting to suffocate me. They were completely taking over, as if it was their baby,’ she told him, realising in surprise that, despite the sadness she felt that she wasn’t carrying his child, for the first time since James’ death she felt free.

Free of the suffocating and controlling interference of Julia and Brian, free of the obligation to share her life with them for the sake of their grandchild. She hadn’t realised how much she’d started to resent it, but now, it was as if someone had opened the windows on a hot summer’s day and let in a blast of cool, refreshing air.

But the air had a chill in it, she realised as her emotions see-sawed and righted, and it dawned on her, that instead of her in-laws, she’d be linked to this man, this stranger—this charming, handsome, virile stranger with the unsmiling mouth and stormy eyes—for the next twenty years or more. The feeling of relief was short-lived, and was rapidly being replaced by some very confusing emotions.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘It must have been very difficult for you from the beginning, this whole process. Emily said you were struggling with all the emotional stuff.’

‘I was—and of course I’m sad, but maybe it’s time to let go—and anyway, it’s not just me, is it? What about Em and Andrew?’ she said, not allowing herself to think about Sam yet, thinking instead of her friends, because it was easier. Safer. ‘I’m gutted for them, because it could so easily have worked this time and the treatment’s so physically and mentally gruelling. To think they’ll have to go through it again.’ She fell silent for a moment. Poor Em. Poor all of them.

‘I’m not sure they’ll want to try again,’ Sam said after a thoughtful pause. And thinking about it, he wasn’t sure he could help them. He’d found it harder with each cycle, been more reluctant the more time he’d had to think about it, and now—

‘It’s such a mix-up,’ she said, sifting through the clinic director’s words and trying to make some sense of them.

‘Tell me about it,’ he said tautly, prodding his black coffee with a teaspoon and scowling at it.

He looked frustrated and unhappy, and she could understand that. She’d forgotten much of the conversation, the clinic director’s words wiped from her memory by the shock of his revelation, but she remembered the gist of it, and as she trawled through it again in her head she was just as bewildered as she’d been during their meeting.

‘I still can’t really see how it could have happened,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘They seemed absolutely certain about what went wrong—certain enough to check the DNA of the remaining frozen embryos—which means that everything was properly documented, so why wasn’t it picked up at the time? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Because the embryologist was so distracted she didn’t even realise she’d made a mistake. She was clearly not fit to be at work and didn’t pay sufficient attention to detail, hence the confusion between your names.’

‘What—Eastwood and Hunter? I don’t think so.’

‘But Emelia and Emily? They’re quite similar if you’re not concentrating, and she’d missed off your surnames, and spelt your name with an “i” in the middle, which just made it worse. And it was only when the new embryologist sorted out the backlog of paperwork that the inconsistent reference numbers alerted her. Did you miss that bit?’

‘I must have done,’ she said slowly. ‘I wasn’t really listening, to be honest, after he’d told us what had happened, but if she left off our surnames it makes a mix-up more understandable, I suppose.’

‘Absolutely, but it’s no justification,’ he said flatly, dropping the teaspoon back into his saucer and leaning back. ‘It’s just attention to detail. It’s critical in a job like that. If you’re incompetent, for whatever reason, then you shouldn’t be working there. It’s inexcusable. They’ve created a child that should never have existed, put both of us in an untenable situation, and no amount of compensation can atone for that.’

There was a hint of steel in his voice, and she realised he was more than frustrated and unhappy, he was angry. Furiously angry. Because he didn’t want some random woman having his child? Reasonable, under the circumstances. She’d feel the same in his shoes. But the embryologist—

‘Don’t be too hard on her,’ she murmured. ‘She’d just learned her husband was dying. I know how that feels.’