The Baby Bonding

‘Hi. I hope you don’t mind me ringing. Um, about you seeing Jack—I meant to say something earlier, but I didn’t get round to it. Are you busy this evening? I mean, it’s not very much notice, but I thought, if you’d like…’

Her heart lurched again, and she threw a quick glance at the door. Libby was on the other side of it, scraping on her violin, trying to get to grips with a difficult passage. She’d done her homework, and now she was grappling with this. She’d been at it for nearly half an hour, but she wouldn’t give up until she’d got this bit right, at least. Molly just hoped it was sooner rather than later, for all their sakes.

‘What did you have in mind?’ she asked cautiously.

‘I wondered if you’d like to come over. I mean, don’t worry if you’ve got other plans, or you’d rather not, but I just thought—’

‘I haven’t got plans,’ she said quickly—too quickly. Slow down, she told herself, and drew a deep, steadying breath. ‘Tonight would be fine,’ she went on, deliberately calming her voice despite the clamouring of her heart. ‘I need to check with Libby, of course, but I’m sure there won’t be a problem. She’d like to see him, too, I’m sure.’

‘Fine. Whenever you’re ready—the sooner the better, really, because he goes to bed at about half-seven.’

‘That late?’ she said, and could have bitten her tongue for the implied criticism. It was none of her business…

‘He has a nap when he gets home from nursery, and Debbie lets him sleep as long as he wants. That way I get to see him when I get in,’ he told her, and she wasn’t sure if she’d imagined a mild note of reproof in his voice. ‘Whatever. I think in any case we could make an exception tonight—apart from which, he’s as bright as a button today, so I don’t suppose he’ll be in any hurry to go to bed. He’s full of it.’

She closed her eyes against the image, the ache of longing growing with every word. ‘We’ll come now,’ she said. ‘If that’s OK? It was the first day of the new term today, and Libby goes to bed at eight on school nights. I try and stick to it if I can,’ she added, trying not to sound so pathetically eager and ending up sounding like a school matron instead. Oh, grief, he was going to think she was obsessive about bedtimes…

‘Now’s fine. I’ll give you directions.’

She scrabbled around for a piece of paper on the table and found an old envelope. ‘Fire away,’ she said, jotting down the address—surprisingly in the country, not in the town as she’d first thought. ‘I didn’t realise you lived out of town,’ she said, studying the directions and trying to place the road in her mind. ‘Will it take long to get there?’

‘No. It’s easy to find, and it’s not far out. Ten minutes from the hospital, tops. I’ll see you soon—and, Molly?’

‘Yes?’

‘He doesn’t know—about you carrying him for us. I haven’t told him. I’m still trying to work out how, but in the meantime I’d be grateful if you and Libby could be careful what you say.’

‘Sure. Don’t worry, we won’t say anything. I’ll see you soon.’

She cradled the phone, then sat for a moment gathering her ragged emotions. The scraping had finished, a sweet, pure sound now pouring through the door—well, mostly, she thought with a motherly smile as another tiny screech set her teeth on edge. Still, Libby wasn’t quite ten yet. There was plenty of time.

The door opened and Libby bounced in, the image of her father, blonde hair bobbing round her shoulders, her pale blue eyes sparkling with achievement.

‘Did you hear me?’ she said. ‘I did it!’

‘I heard,’ Molly said, her heart swelling with pride. ‘Well done, your father would have been proud of you. And talking of fathers, I meant to tell you, I saw Jack’s father today. He’s working at the hospital.’

Libby’s head tipped on one side. ‘Jack’s father? Your baby Jack?’

She nodded. ‘Well, not mine, but yes.’

The girl’s eyes sparkled even brighter. ‘Cool! Can we see him? I only saw him that once when he was born, and it was ages ago.’

‘Three years—and, yes, we can see him. Tonight—in fact now. If you’re OK with it?’

‘Sure. Can we go?’

Molly laughed and stood up. ‘Yes. Brush your hair, it’s a mess, and make sure you’ve put your violin away properly.’

‘Yes, Mother,’ she teased, but she bounced out and reappeared a moment later, her hair sort of brushed and the violin case in hand. ‘I’m ready.’

Molly picked up the directions, read them through again and put them in her pocket. ‘OK. But, remember, he doesn’t know anything about me being his tummy-mummy, so don’t say anything.’

Libby’s eyes widened. ‘He doesn’t know? How weird. Laura knows, she talks about it all the time.’

Molly thought of her other surrogate child, with whom she had an affectionate and loving relationship, and smiled gently. ‘Yes, I know—but Jack doesn’t, and it isn’t really our place to tell him.’

‘It’s OK, I won’t say anything,’ Libby promised.

‘There’s another thing you ought to know—his mum died.’

Libby’s face fell. ‘Oh, poor baby,’ she said, her soft heart so typically responding to his loss. ‘Still, he can have you now,’ she suggested, her face brightening again.

If only, Molly thought, the ache returning. Libby would love to put the world to rights, but unfortunately it just wasn’t that easy.

The drive, however, was easy, his house simple to find and really not at all far from the hospital, as he’d promised. It was a lovely house, a simple, red-brick cottage-style farmhouse, with a porch in the middle and windows all around. A rambling rose, intertwined with a late-flowering honeysuckle, scrambled over the porch, and tacked on one end of the house under a lower section of roof was what looked like another little cottage, with its own white front door, and she guessed this was where Debbie and Mark lived.

Bathed in the sunshine of a late summer evening, it looked homely and welcoming, and just the sort of place she could imagine him living in. Nothing like their London house, but she’d never felt that had been him.

The garden was bursting with colour and scent, a real cottage garden, and as they walked up the path she bent to smell the last of the roses, just as Sam opened the door.

She straightened and laughed. ‘Sorry. I can’t resist roses.’

‘Nor can I. They’re why I bought the house.’ His gaze dropped and he gave her daughter a friendly smile. ‘Hello, Libby, nice to see you again. How are you?’

‘OK. I like your garden, it smells lovely.’

‘It does, doesn’t it? I can’t take any credit for it. It was like this when we moved, and Debbie does all the gardening anyway. Come in, Jack’s in the kitchen, “washing up” with her.’ He held up his hands and drew speech marks in the air with his fingers as he spoke, and his face said it all.

‘Oh, dear,’ Molly said, biting her lip at the laughter in his eyes, and they exchanged a smile that made her knees go weak. Oh, lord, this was such a bad idea. She was going to get herself in such a mess.

She followed him down the hall, Libby at his side, and as he ushered her into the kitchen she came to an abrupt halt, her hand coming up to cover her mouth, her eyes filling.

No. She wasn’t going to cry, she wasn’t.

‘Jack, come and say hello to some friends of mine,’ Sam was saying, but she couldn’t move, she just stood there and devoured the little boy with her eyes as he climbed down off the chair and ran over to them.

He was so tall! So tall and straight, and the image of his father, with those same astonishing blue eyes filled with laughter, and a mop of soft, dark hair that fell over his forehead, just like Sam’s.

He tipped his head back and looked up at her, examining her unselfconsciously. ‘Hello. I’m Jack,’ he said unnecessarily, and she crouched down to his level and dredged up an unsteady smile.

‘Hi. I’m Molly, and this is Libby, my daughter.’ She looked at his sodden front and resisted the urge to gather him to her chest and squeeze him tightly. ‘I hear you’re helping with the washing-up.’

He nodded, his little head flying up and down, grinning from ear to ear. ‘I do spoons, and we make bubbles.’

‘We’ve got a dishwasher, but it’s not as much fun, and this way the floor gets washed, too,’ Sam said, laughter in his voice.

She chuckled at the words and straightened up, her gaze finally going past Sam and meeting the clear, assessing eyes of a woman in her late twenties. Her hair was spiky and an improbable shade of pink, and she was dressed in faded old jeans and an orange T-shirt that clashed violently with her hair. She looked like a tiny and brightly coloured elf, but, despite being so small, she radiated energy.