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They ended up going for a walk in the nearby park. And when Jared’s fingers brushed against hers for the third time Bailey gave in and let him hold her hand. He didn’t say a word about it, just chatted easily to her, and Bailey knew they’d turned another corner. That she was letting him closer, bit by bit.
Everything was fine until they walked past the children’s play area.
‘I used to take my niece to the park when she was small. Before she grew into a teen who’s surgically attached to her mobile phone,’ Jared said. ‘The swings were her favourite. That and feeding the ducks.’
So that picture back at his place was of his niece. Even though Bailey’s mouth felt as if it was full of sawdust, she had to ask the question. She needed to know the answer. Clearly he loved being an uncle—but would that be enough for him? ‘Do you want children of your own?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’d love to have kids—someone to kick a ball round with and read bedtime stories to. One day.’
Was it her imagination, or did he sound wistful? She didn’t quite dare look at him. Besides, panic was flooding through her again.
He wanted children.
OK. So this thing between them was new. Fragile. There were no guarantees that things would work out. But it wouldn’t be fair of her to let things go forward without at least telling him about her ectopic pregnancy. If he wanted kids, he needed to know that might not be an option for her. Yet, at the same time it felt too soon to raise the subject. As if she were presuming things.
She’d have to work out how to tell him. And when.
‘What about you?’ he asked.
How did she even begin answering that?
It was true. She did want children. But that would mean getting pregnant, and the whole idea of that terrified her. It was a vicious circle, and she didn’t know how to break it. ‘One day,’ she said. Wanting to head him off the subject, she added, ‘The café’s just over there. The ice cream’s on me.’
To her relief, he didn’t argue or push the subject further. But he didn’t let her hand go, either. He was just there. Warm and solid and dependable, not putting any pressure on her.
So maybe, she thought, they might have a chance.
She just had to learn to stop being scared.
CHAPTER NINE (#ua494eb00-dfea-56d1-8a9f-d4f6192707bc)
EVERYTHING WAS FINE until the following Monday, when Bailey was having her usual chicken salad with Joni after the yoga class.
Joni had been a bit quiet all evening, looking worried.
‘Is everything OK?’ Bailey asked.
‘Ye-es.’
But she didn’t sound too sure. Bailey reached across the table and squeezed her hand. ‘What? You’ve had a fight with Aaron? It happens. One or both of you is being an idiot, one or both of you will apologise and it’ll be fine.’
‘It’s not that.’ Joni bit her lip and there were tears in her eyes. ‘Bailey, I don’t know how to say this—I mean, it’s good news, but I also know that …’
At that moment Bailey knew exactly what her best friend was going to tell her. And, even though it was ripping the top off her scars, no way in this world was she ever going to do anything other than smile—and she was going to try and make this easy for Joni, because she knew exactly why her best friend was worried about telling her. ‘Joni, are you about to tell me something really, really fantastic—that you and Aaron are going to be …?’
The sheer relief in Joni’s eyes nearly broke her.
‘I’ve been dying to tell you since before the wedding, but …’
Yeah. Bailey could remember how it felt. The moment she’d suspected she was pregnant, the moment she’d done the test and seen the positive result, the way Ed had scooped her up and swung her round when she’d shown him the test stick. The sheer joy and happiness of knowing that they were going to have a baby, start their own family … She’d managed to keep the news to herself for four whole days before it had been too much to keep it in any more; she’d sworn both her mum and her best friend to total secrecy and had burst into happy tears when she’d told them. And whilst Ed had been worried about her jinxing it by telling everyone too early and not waiting until the twelve-week point was up, she’d been so happy that she just couldn’t contain her news any longer.
Maybe Ed was right—maybe she had jinxed it by telling everyone too soon.
She pushed the thought away. Not now. This was about her best friend’s future, not the wreck of her own past.
‘Oh, Joni, I’m so pleased for you.’ And she was, she really was. Just because it had gone bad for her, it didn’t mean that she couldn’t appreciate anyone else’s joy. ‘That’s fantastic news. How far are you?’
‘Ten weeks. I went for the dating scan today,’ Joni said almost shyly.
‘Good.’ So Joni definitely wasn’t going to go through the pain and fear of an ectopic pregnancy. Bailey almost sagged back in her chair in relief. ‘So do I get to see a photograph, then?’
‘Are you sure you want to see it?’
At that, Bailey got up, walked round to the other side of the table and hugged her friend. ‘Don’t be so daft! Of course I want to see the scan picture—I’d be really upset if you didn’t show me.’
Joni blinked away tears. ‘Sorry. I just didn’t want to bring back … you know. And I’m being so wet.’
‘Hormones,’ Bailey said with a grin. ‘You’ll be crying at ads with puppies and kittens in them next.’
She sat down again as Joni reached into her bag for a little white folder and handed it to her. She studied the ultrasound photograph. ‘You can see the baby’s head, the feet, the spine—this is incredible, Joni.’
‘And the heart—it was amazing to see the baby’s heart beating.’
Bailey hadn’t even got to do that bit, so it wasn’t as if this was bringing back memories; it was more the shadow of what might have been. And she wasn’t going to let any shadows get in the way of her best friend’s joy. She was fiercely determined to share that joy with her.
‘Bailey, there’s something else I wanted to ask you,’ Joni said. ‘Will you be godmother?’
‘Of course I will! I’d be utterly thrilled.’ Bailey blanked out the fact that she’d wanted Joni to be godmother to her baby, too. ‘So that means I get to do all the fun things, all the cuddles and the smiles and the messy toys, and then I hand the baby back to you for nappy changes and the night feeds. Excellent.’
She could see in Joni’s eyes that her best friend knew exactly how much effort this was costing her and how much she was holding back, but to her relief Joni didn’t say it. She simply smiled and said, ‘Bailey Randall, you’re going to be the best godmother in the history of the universe.’
‘You can count on that,’ Bailey said. ‘And you can still do yoga during pregnancy, though maybe …’ She took a deep breath. ‘Maybe you need to switch to a water-aerobics class, one of the special antenatal ones. And I’ll do it with you for moral support.’
She meant it, she really did—even though it would be hard seeing all those women with their bellies getting bigger each week and trying not to think about how that hadn’t happened for her.
Joni reached across the table and squeezed her hand. ‘I know you would. This is yet another reason why I love you. But I’m not going to make you do that. I’ll stick to yoga—I’ll talk to Jenna before the next class and ask her where I need to take it down a notch.’
Bailey kept it together at the restaurant, but all the way home she could feel the pressure behind her eyes, the sobs starting down low in her gut and forcing themselves upwards. Once her front door was closed behind her, she leaned against the wall and slowly slid down until she was sitting with her knees up to her chin and her arms wrapped round her legs. Then and only then did she let the tears flow—racking sobs of loss and loneliness, regrets for what might have been.
She didn’t hear the doorbell at first. She was dimly aware of a noise then recognised the sound. Who was it? She wasn’t expecting anyone. She scrubbed at her face with her sleeve and took a deep breath. Right at that moment she wished she hadn’t cut her hair short, because then at least she could’ve hidden her face a bit. As it was, she’d have to brazen it out. She opened the door just a crack. ‘Yes?’
‘Bailey, are you all right?’
‘Jared?’ She frowned. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘We have a meeting to discuss Darren, remember?’
She remembered now. Joni’s news had knocked the meeting completely out of her head.
She couldn’t let Jared see her in this state. ‘Can we do it tomorrow?’
‘Are you all right?’ he asked again, and this time he pushed the door open. He took one look at her and said, ‘No, you’re not all right.’ Very gently, he manoeuvred her backwards, closed the door behind them and cupped her face between his hands. ‘You’ve been crying.’
‘Give the monkey a peanut,’ she muttered, knowing that she was being rude and unfair to him but hating the fact that he’d caught her at a weak, vulnerable moment.
But he didn’t pay any attention to her words. ‘Come on. I’ll get you a drink of water.’ He put one arm round her. ‘Your kitchen’s at the end of the corridor, yes?’
‘Yes.’
She let him lead her into the kitchen and sit her down at the bistro table. He opened several cupboard doors before he found where she kept her glasses, then poured her a glass of water; she accepted it gratefully.
Jared waited until Bailey had composed herself for a bit before he made her talk. He knew she’d been to yoga with Joni and then out for dinner; it was their regular Monday night catch-up. But he’d wanted to have a quick chat with Bailey about Darren, their problem player, so she’d agreed to be home for nine o’clock and meet him at her place. Jared had been caught up in a delay on the Tube after a signal had broken down, so he’d been all ready to apologise for being twenty minutes late for their meeting, but that didn’t matter any more. Clearly something bad had just happened.
‘What’s happened? Is Joni all right?’
‘She’s fine.’ Bailey dragged in a breath. ‘It was good news.’
‘Good news doesn’t normally make you cry or look as if you’ve been put through the wringer,’ he pointed out.
‘I’m fine.’
They both knew she was lying.
‘It’s better out than in,’ he said softly. And he should know. He’d bottled it up for a while after Sasha, until his oldest brother had read him the Riot Act and made him go to counselling. And that had made all the difference.
‘I can’t break a confidence.’
‘Under the circumstances, I think,’ he said softly, ‘that Joni would forgive you. Or maybe I can guess. Good news, from someone who’s just got married—it doesn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to know what that’s likely to be.’
And it didn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to put the rest of it together, either. What would make someone bawl their eyes out when they learned that their best friend was going to have a baby? Either Bailey couldn’t have children or she’d had a baby and lost it. Miscarriage, stillbirth, cot death … a loss so heartbreaking that she’d never really recovered from it. And neither had her marriage.
Was that why she’d been so adamant that the break-up hadn’t been her ex’s fault? And was that why she’d suddenly been so antsy at the park, when she’d asked him if he wanted children?
The way she looked at him, those beautiful dark eyes so tortured, was too much for him. He came round to her side of the table, scooped her out of her chair, sat in her place and settled her on his lap, his arms tightly wrapped round her. ‘I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me. And whatever you say isn’t going any further than me, I promise you.’
She didn’t really know him well enough to be completely sure that he wouldn’t break his promise, but he hoped that she’d got to know him enough over the time they’d worked together to work out that he had integrity.
‘What happened, Bailey?’ What had broken her heart?
‘I was pregnant once,’ she whispered.
He stroked her face. ‘When?’
‘Two and a half years ago. I was so thrilled. We both were. We wanted that baby so much.’
He said nothing, just holding her close and waiting for her to tell him the rest.
‘And then I started getting pains. In my lower abdomen. It hurt so much, Jared. I was worried that I might be having a miscarriage. And my shoulder hurt—but I assumed that was because I was worried.’
Jared knew that when you were stressed and tense you tended to hold yourself more rigidly and the muscles of your shoulder and neck would go into spasm, causing shoulder pain. Clearly that hadn’t been the reason for the pain in this case.
‘I went to the toilet,’ she said, ‘and there was spotting.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I felt sick. Light-headed.’ She dragged in a breath. ‘Then I collapsed. Luckily one of my colleagues found me and they got me in to the department. I told them I was pregnant, but I knew what was happening. I knew.’
A miscarriage? Heartbreaking for her.
‘They gave me a scan. I was six weeks and three days. The pregnancy was ectopic.’
Even harder than he’d guessed. The fertilised egg hadn’t implanted into the uterus, the way it should’ve done. Instead, it had embedded in the Fallopian tube and stretched the tube as it had grown, causing Bailey’s lower abdominal pain.
‘My Fallopian tube had ruptured. They took me straight into Theatre,’ she said, ‘but they couldn’t save the tube.’ Her voice wobbled, and then a shudder ran through her. ‘I wanted that baby so much. And I—I …’
‘Shh, I know.’ He stroked her hair. ‘And it wasn’t your fault.’ It happened in something like one out of eighty pregnancies. Often it sorted itself out and the woman hadn’t even known she was pregnant in the first place. But Bailey had been unlucky, caught up in one of the worst-case scenarios.
And clearly the fact her best friend had just shared the news of her pregnancy had brought it all back. Joni had doubtless been one of the first people that Bailey had told about her own pregnancy, and Jared would just bet that Joni had agonised over telling her best friend the news, knowing that it would bring all these excruciating memories back. And he was equally sure that Bailey had gone into super-sparkly mode to reassure her that it was fine, all the while her heart breaking into tiny pieces again.
‘The ectopic pregnancy wasn’t my fault,’ Bailey said, ‘but the rest of it was.’
The rest of it? He’d obviously spoken aloud without meaning to, or maybe the question was just obvious, because she started talking again.
‘I pushed Ed away afterwards. I—I just couldn’t cope with the idea of it happening all over again.’
Jared knew that a second ectopic pregnancy was more likely if you’d had a first. He’d never worked in obstetrics, but he was pretty sure that the statistics weren’t shockingly high. Bailey’s fears had obviously got the better of her.
‘I was so scared of getting pregnant again. So scared of losing another baby. So scared of losing my other Fallopian tube, so I’d never be able to have a baby without medical intervention. I wouldn’t let Ed touch me. I knew he was hurting and he needed me, but I just couldn’t let him touch me. I couldn’t give him the physical comfort he wanted.’ She leaned her head against his shoulder. ‘I was such a selfish bitch.’
‘You were hurting, too, Bailey,’ he reminded her softly. ‘You weren’t being selfish. You were hurting and you didn’t know how to fix it—for yourself or for your husband.’
‘In the end, Ed found comfort elsewhere. But he—he wasn’t like your ex,’ she whispered. ‘He wasn’t out there looking for someone else. He would never have done it if I hadn’t pushed him away and made him feel as if I didn’t care. It was all my fault.’
And now he understood why her family worried about her so much and were so keen for her to meet someone. Not because she was ‘on the shelf’, but because they knew how much she’d been through and they wanted her to find someone to share her life with and to cherish her, someone who’d stop her being lonely and sad.
If she’d let him, maybe he could do that. Maybe they could both help each other heal.
But Bailey had pushed her husband away, terrified of getting pregnant again. She’d ended her marriage rather than risk another pregnancy going wrong.
And that explained why she’d responded to him and then backed off again so swiftly. She’d felt the pull of attraction between them just as much as he had, but she was too scared to act on it. Too scared to date, to grow intimate with him, to make love with him—in case she became pregnant and she ended up having another ectopic pregnancy.
‘It takes two to break a marriage,’ he said. ‘Your ex gave up on you.’
‘You gave up on your marriage,’ she pointed out.
He knew she’d only said it because she was hurting. Clearly she thought that sniping at him would make him walk away and leave her to it. Maybe that was one of the tactics she’d used to push her husband away, but it wasn’t going to work on him. ‘Yes, I did,’ he said. ‘I’ll take my share of the blame. Just as long as you accept that not all the blame of your break-up is yours.’
‘It feels like it is,’ she said, sounding totally broken.
If only he had a magic wand. But this wasn’t something he could fix. The only one who could let her trust again, let her take the risk of sharing her life with someone, was Bailey herself. Until she was ready to try, it just wouldn’t work.
So he said nothing, just held her. If necessary, he’d stay here all night, just cradling her on his lap and hoping she’d be able to draw some strength from the feel of her arms around him.
